rsdesigns.com

Cost-effective visual design and publishing at the World Health Organization

rsdesigns.com — 2007-12-19T10:52:33Z

Lessons learned from two years of design work for the Department of Chronic Diseases and Health Promotion (CHP) at the World Health Organization.

Dedibox configuration : Apache and MySQL benchmarking and optimization

rsdesigns.com — 2007-07-09T13:53:21Z

Dedibox is a French company which offers a dedicated server for 30€ a month.

We use a dedibox to host a web site with an average of 4000 visitors per day using SPIP, an excellent content management system (CMS).

Here is the relevant information from the configuration files for both Apache and MySQL.

/etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Timeout 15
 
 KeepAlive On
 MaxKeepAliveRequests 100
 KeepAliveTimeout 3
 
 
 StartServers 1
 MinSpareServers 1
 MaxSpareServers 15
 MaxClients 10
 MaxRequestsPerChild 300

The SQL configuration is copied from the MySQL sample configuration files located in usr/share/doc/mysql-server-4.1/examples/my-large.cnf, described as an example config for "large systems" with "memory = 512M where the system runs mainly MySQL."

/etc/mysql/my.cnf

[client]
 port = 3306
 socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
 
 [mysqld_safe]
 socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
 nice = 0
 
 [mysqld]
 user = mysql
 pid-file = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
 socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
 port = 3306
 basedir = /usr
 datadir = /var/lib/mysql
 tmpdir = /tmp
 language = /usr/share/mysql/english
 skip-external-locking
 skip-innodb
 
 old_passwords = 1
 
 max_allowed_packet = 8M
 #thread_stack = 1024K
 
 query_cache_limit = 1048576
 query_cache_size = 8M
 query_cache_type = 1
 
 #log-bin = /var/log/mysql/mysql-bin.log
 #max_binlog_size = 104857600
 
 skip-bdb
 
 connect_timeout = 10
 interactive_timeout = 25
 join_buffer_size = 4M
 
 max_connections = 800
 max_user_connections = 800
 max_connect_errors = 999999
 
 myisam_sort_buffer_size = 32M
 read_buffer_size = 1M
 sort_buffer_size = 2M
 table_cache = 1024
 thread_cache_size = 286
 tmp_table_size = 32M
 wait_timeout = 1800
 
 log_slow_queries=/var/log/mysqld.slow.log
 long_query_time=3
 
 [mysqldump]
 quick
 quote-names
 max_allowed_packet = 16M
 
 [mysql]
 
 [isamchk]
 key_buffer = 32M
 key_buffer_size = 32M

This configuration was benchmarked using

ab -kc 100 -t 30 http://www.survivreausida.net/

Benchmark results

rs-mbp:~ reda$ ab -kc 10 -t 30 http://www.survivreausida.net/
 This is ApacheBench, Version 1.3d <$Revision: 1.73 $> apache-1.3
 Copyright (c) 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
 Copyright (c) 1998-2002 The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/
 
 Benchmarking www.survivreausida.net (be patient)
 Finished 89 requests
 Server Software: Apache/2.0.54 
 Server Hostname: www.survivreausida.net
 Server Port: 80
 
 Document Path: /
 Document Length: 24512 bytes
 
 Concurrency Level: 10
 Time taken for tests: 30.000 seconds
 Complete requests: 89
 Failed requests: 88
 (Connect: 0, Length: 88, Exceptions: 0)
 Broken pipe errors: 0
 Keep-Alive requests: 0
 Total transferred: 2275265 bytes
 HTML transferred: 2229265 bytes
 Requests per second: 2.97 [#/sec] (mean)
 Time per request: 3370.79 [ms] (mean)
 Time per request: 337.08 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
 Transfer rate: 75.84 [Kbytes/sec] received
 
 Connnection Times (ms)
 min mean[+/-sd] median max
 Connect: 61 69 3.2 69 81
 Processing: 796 2568 1994.0 1901 10620
 Waiting: 724 2567 1994.0 1900 10619
 Total: 796 2637 1994.4 1972 10690
 
 Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
 50% 1966
 66% 2316
 75% 3046
 80% 3446
 90% 4356
 95% 7977
 98% 8308
 99% 10690
 100% 10690 (last request)

Quote of the day : “I sent this earlier but it didn't leave my mail box”

rsdesigns.com — 2007-06-26T10:13:25Z

We were waiting on revised text to be sent by e-mail by an editor who shall remain nameless.

After several repeated requests for the text — which still hadn't arrived — we finally got the file, along with this nugget :

As promised, attached is the revised text of [expletive deleted] with tracked changes.

I sent this earlier but it didn't leave my mail box. Thank you.

Lovely.

Eid and New Year's Greetings 2007

rsdesigns.com — 2007-01-01T06:00:00Z

With our best wishes for the New Year and Aïd. The team at rsdesigns.com sàrl - Design weblog

Eid ul-Adha and New Year's Greetings 2006

rsdesigns.com — 2006-01-10T13:06:00Z

With our best wishes for the New Year and Eid ul-Adha. The team at rsdesigns.com sàrl - Design weblog

Lebanese film director Maher Abi Samra's visit to my workshop

rsdesigns.com — 2005-11-16T17:30:45Z

Today, long-time friend Maher Abi Samra dropped by for coffee and to chat about his ongoing projects and web site, arabfilm.net.

Maher makes documentaries about burning questions in the Arab world.

His most recent work, Round about Chatila, won the Ulysses prize at the 27th international festival of Mediterranean film.

I am responsible for the opening sequence which retraces the history of the Chatila Palestinian refugee camp through a series of chalk illustrations on black screen. These drawings were done in a single coffee-fuelled evening as animation in After Effects using a Wacom graphics tablet.

For more information about his work, check out his web site.

My dog ain't stupid: Saïd Chergui visits my workshop

rsdesigns.com — 2005-11-04T14:49:01Z

Saïd Chergui is a talented designer and friend who dropped by today. In addition to his ongoing design practice, he's recently opened a café called Mon chien stupide near place de Gambetta, in Paris's 20ème arrondissement... Saïd and I have started work on a new web site. - Design weblog

Launch of new global report: Preventing chronic disease: a vital investment

rsdesigns.com — 2005-10-12T16:28:00Z

The World Health Organization published on Tuesday 4 October a new global report, "Preventing chronic diseases: a vital investment". The publication makes the case for urgent action to halt and turn back the growing threat of chronic diseases. It presents a state-of-the-art guide to effective and feasible interventions, and provides practical suggestions for how countries can implement these interventions to respond successfully to the growing epidemics. The design development was done (...) - Design weblog / Robert Beaglehole, Global Report, JoAnne Epping-Jordan

The Lancet feature: Face to face with chronic disease

rsdesigns.com — 2005-10-12T16:27:54Z

This week's Lancet features chronic diseases, and the medical journal used a series of posters as the masthead on their web site.

The posters were designed by Reda Sadki featuring photography by Chris Debode.

Back in Geneva on 9 August 2005

rsdesigns.com — 2005-08-04T14:15:58Z

I'm back in Geneva on 9 August, and will be staying for at least a week. Please don't hesitate to get in touch.