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Diddle Widget Plugin

Table of Contents

  1. Description
  2. Download
  3. How it looks
  4. How it works
  5. What it does
  6. Installation
  7. Testing
  8. Configuration
  9. Support

Description

The “Diddle” widget is based on the diddle.ksh script by KrazyWorks. This is a simple performance analysis tool designed for Linux-based shared hosting Web servers. The script has been designed to run under unprivileged user accounts.

Download

diddle-widget.zip

How it looks

How it works

The diddle.ksh is a Korn shell script that resides in your WordPress “plugins” folder. Whenever somebody visits your site, the script runs and updates system performance data, which is then displayed on your site via the widget. The script is designed to cache the results of its previous run for 600 seconds. You can change this cache timeout by editing the “cache=600” line in the “diddle.ksh” file.

What it does

Server namewhatever is returned by the "hostname" command
Operating systemthe script will attempt to identify the exact flavor of Linux running on the server
Kernel versionkernel version and revision
Architecturethe script will determine if the OS and the CPU are 32-bit or 64-bit
CPU detailsCPU brand, model, clock frequency, number of cores, number of CPUs
RAMtotal RAM, percentage utilization, number and size of DIMMs
Swaptotal swap, swap utilization, swap paging
Uptimetime since last reboot
Average loadaverage true system load for the available number of CPUs and CPU cores for 1, 5, and 15 minutes
CPU utilization`average utilization of all CPU cores over the past 15 minutes
Applicationsversions of common Web-related applications, such as MySQL and Perl
Issuesthe script will attempt to detect and summarize most serious performance issues with the server

System requirements

Your Web server must be running Linux. You must have SSH access to your Web server. Your WordPress version must be 2.8 or newer.

The “Diddle” script and widget are designed to work in the most common Linux-based shared hosting configurations. However, not all such servers are configured identically. Therefore, it is possible that the script may fail to collect the required data. Below we explain how you can test th script before enabling it on your site.

Installation

1. Download the plugin and unzip it into the wp-content/plugins folder of your WordPress installation.
2. SSH to your Web server and cd to the wp-content/plugins/diddle-widget directory.
3. Type “ls” and make sure you can see the diddle.ksh file.
4. Make the script executable by typing chmod 755 diddle.ksh
5. Determine the path by typing pwd in the directory where diddle.ksh is located.

Testing

While you are still in the wp-content/plugins/diddle-widget directory, you can test the script by typing ./diddle.ksh The output should look something like this:

krazyworks.com [~/public_html/wp-content/plugins/diddle-widget]# ./diddle.ksh

Server: meru.site5.com
OS:     Red Hat 3.4.6-11
Kernel: Linux 2.6.27-grsec4
Arch:   32-bit OS running on 64-bit hardware
CPU(s): 8 x 4-core Intel Xeon CPU E5420@ 2.50GHz
RAM:    8Gb (92% used), 16 x 512Kb DIMMs
Swap:   6Gb (13% used), paging in/out: 28/47
Uptime: 1 day
Load:   .11, .13, .14
CPU %:  32 CPU cores at 14% combined utilization
Apps:   MySQL 5.0.89, Perl 5.8.8
Issues: occasional RAM shortages

If you are getting any errors, then this plugin is not a match for your Web hosting environment.

Configuration

1. Go to the “Widgets” section of your WordPress administration interface.
2. Drag the “Diddle Widget” into the sidebar location of your choice.
3. Enter the desired title and path to the diddle.ksh script and click Save Changes

IMPORTANT! The path should look something like this:

/home/your_username/public_html/wp-content/plugins/diddle/diddle.ksh

Support

The widget comes “as is” with out any official support from KrazyWorks, LLC. However, feel free to post your questions on the support forum and you may get an answer from other forum members or from KrazyWorks staff when the time allows.

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