webadmin-devel

[webmin-devel] Debugging and Shorewall module

[Paul G. <pa...@ge...>]

Hi folks,

I've made a few useful (i think) changes to the Shorewall module, and i
plan to make a few more before i send in the patches.  However, i would
like to do some more testing & debugging, and i'd like to know what sort
of debugging tools are at my disposal.

=46rom what i can tell, the Perl errors from my module actually go nowher=
e
at all.  Is this correct/intended?  What is the preferred mechanism to
capture Perl errors and produce debug output?  I've experimented with
saving temporary files using a technique i borrowed from another module,
and that seems to work sometimes, but not always (and possibly is
dependent upon the actual path used).  I'm confused!  :-(

Thanks in advance,
Paul
<http://paulgear.webhop.net>
--
Did you know?  It is illegal to use your copy of Microsoft Office on
multiple computers without multiple licenses.  Why not try the free
alternative OpenOffice.org?  <http://www.openoffice.org>

Re: [webmin-devel] Debugging and Shorewall module

[Jamie C. <jca...@we...>]

On 31/Jul/2007 14:12 Paul Gear wrote ..
> Hi folks,
> 
> I've made a few useful (i think) changes to the Shorewall module, and i
> plan to make a few more before i send in the patches.  However, i would
> like to do some more testing & debugging, and i'd like to know what sort
> of debugging tools are at my disposal.
> 
> From what i can tell, the Perl errors from my module actually go nowhere
> at all.  Is this correct/intended?  What is the preferred mechanism to
> capture Perl errors and produce debug output?  I've experimented with
> saving temporary files using a technique i borrowed from another module,
> and that seems to work sometimes, but not always (and possibly is
> dependent upon the actual path used).  I'm confused!  :-(

Hi Paul,
The debugging technique I usually use is to print to STDERR, which is
then logged to /var/webmin/miniserv.error . Not exactly the most modern
technique in this age of source-level debuggers, breakpoints and variable
watching, but it works for me :-)

 - Jamie

Re: [webmin-devel] Debugging and Shorewall module

[Paul G. <pa...@ge...>]

Jamie Cameron wrote:
> On 31/Jul/2007 14:12 Paul Gear wrote ..
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> I've made a few useful (i think) changes to the Shorewall module, and i
>> plan to make a few more before i send in the patches.  However, i would
>> like to do some more testing & debugging, and i'd like to know what sort
>> of debugging tools are at my disposal.
>>
>> From what i can tell, the Perl errors from my module actually go nowhere
>> at all.  Is this correct/intended?  What is the preferred mechanism to
>> capture Perl errors and produce debug output?  I've experimented with
>> saving temporary files using a technique i borrowed from another module,
>> and that seems to work sometimes, but not always (and possibly is
>> dependent upon the actual path used).  I'm confused!  :-(
> 
> Hi Paul,
> The debugging technique I usually use is to print to STDERR, which is
> then logged to /var/webmin/miniserv.error . Not exactly the most modern
> technique in this age of source-level debuggers, breakpoints and variable
> watching, but it works for me :-)

Works for me - but i'm a bit old-school, too.  ;-)  Here's a first cut
patch at what i've done with Shorewall.  (Important points are in the
changelog.)  I've done some basic testing of the changes, but i'm sure
it could use more.

I wasn't sure about a lot of the webmin idioms for things, so i tried to
preserve the coding style (except for the zero-indent technique!) as
much as i could.  Hope it works for everyone.  I'd appreciate any feedback.

-- 
Paul
<http://paulgear.webhop.net>
--
Be nice to apostrophes!  http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/

Re: [webmin-devel] Debugging and Shorewall module

[Jamie C. <jca...@we...>]

On 1/Aug/2007 00:35 Paul Gear wrote ..
> Jamie Cameron wrote:
> > On 31/Jul/2007 14:12 Paul Gear wrote ..
> >> Hi folks,
> >>
> >> I've made a few useful (i think) changes to the Shorewall module, and
> i
> >> plan to make a few more before i send in the patches.  However, i would
> >> like to do some more testing & debugging, and i'd like to know what
> sort
> >> of debugging tools are at my disposal.
> >>
> >> From what i can tell, the Perl errors from my module actually go nowhere
> >> at all.  Is this correct/intended?  What is the preferred mechanism
> to
> >> capture Perl errors and produce debug output?  I've experimented with
> >> saving temporary files using a technique i borrowed from another module,
> >> and that seems to work sometimes, but not always (and possibly is
> >> dependent upon the actual path used).  I'm confused!  :-(
> > 
> > Hi Paul,
> > The debugging technique I usually use is to print to STDERR, which is
> > then logged to /var/webmin/miniserv.error . Not exactly the most modern
> > technique in this age of source-level debuggers, breakpoints and variable
> > watching, but it works for me :-)
> 
> Works for me - but i'm a bit old-school, too.  ;-)  Here's a first cut
> patch at what i've done with Shorewall.  (Important points are in the
> changelog.)  I've done some basic testing of the changes, but i'm sure
> it could use more.
> 
> I wasn't sure about a lot of the webmin idioms for things, so i tried to
> preserve the coding style (except for the zero-indent technique!) as
> much as i could.  Hope it works for everyone.  I'd appreciate any feedback.

Thanks for the patch! I'll take a closer look at it tomorrow ..

 - Jamie

Re: [webmin-devel] Debugging and Shorewall module

[Jamie C. <jca...@we...>]

On 1/Aug/2007 00:35 Paul Gear wrote ..
> Jamie Cameron wrote:
> > On 31/Jul/2007 14:12 Paul Gear wrote ..
> >> Hi folks,
> >>
> >> I've made a few useful (i think) changes to the Shorewall module, and
> i
> >> plan to make a few more before i send in the patches.  However, i would
> >> like to do some more testing & debugging, and i'd like to know what
> sort
> >> of debugging tools are at my disposal.
> >>
> >> From what i can tell, the Perl errors from my module actually go nowhere
> >> at all.  Is this correct/intended?  What is the preferred mechanism
> to
> >> capture Perl errors and produce debug output?  I've experimented with
> >> saving temporary files using a technique i borrowed from another module,
> >> and that seems to work sometimes, but not always (and possibly is
> >> dependent upon the actual path used).  I'm confused!  :-(
> > 
> > Hi Paul,
> > The debugging technique I usually use is to print to STDERR, which is
> > then logged to /var/webmin/miniserv.error . Not exactly the most modern
> > technique in this age of source-level debuggers, breakpoints and variable
> > watching, but it works for me :-)
> 
> Works for me - but i'm a bit old-school, too.  ;-)  Here's a first cut
> patch at what i've done with Shorewall.  (Important points are in the
> changelog.)  I've done some basic testing of the changes, but i'm sure
> it could use more.
> 
> I wasn't sure about a lot of the webmin idioms for things, so i tried to
> preserve the coding style (except for the zero-indent technique!) as
> much as i could.  Hope it works for everyone.  I'd appreciate any feedback.

Ok, the patch looks good. I have applied it to my source tree, and will
include it in the Webmin 1.350 release, which I plan to build today. 

Thanks again!

 - Jamie

Re: [webmin-devel] Debugging and Shorewall module

[Paul G. <pa...@ge...>]

Jamie Cameron wrote:
> On 1/Aug/2007 00:35 Paul Gear wrote ..
>> Jamie Cameron wrote:
>> ...
>> I wasn't sure about a lot of the webmin idioms for things, so i tried =
to
>> preserve the coding style (except for the zero-indent technique!) as
>> much as i could.  Hope it works for everyone.  I'd appreciate any feed=
back.
>=20
> Ok, the patch looks good. I have applied it to my source tree, and will=

> include it in the Webmin 1.350 release, which I plan to build today.=20

There is at least one user-visible problem in what i've done, which is
no icons for the params & shorewall.conf configs.  I'm not much at
art...  ;-)

--=20
Paul
<http://paulgear.webhop.net>
--
Tired of paying for Microsoft Office?  Running an illegal copy and want
to make it legal?  Try OpenOffice.org!  It's free and does most of the
things Microsoft Office does.  <http://www.openoffice.org>

Re: [webmin-devel] Debugging and Shorewall module

[Jamie C. <jca...@we...>]

On 3/Aug/2007 16:26 Paul Gear wrote ..
> Jamie Cameron wrote:
> > On 1/Aug/2007 00:35 Paul Gear wrote ..
> >> Jamie Cameron wrote:
> >> ...
> >> I wasn't sure about a lot of the webmin idioms for things, so i tried
> to
> >> preserve the coding style (except for the zero-indent technique!) as
> >> much as i could.  Hope it works for everyone.  I'd appreciate any feedback.
> > 
> > Ok, the patch looks good. I have applied it to my source tree, and will
> > include it in the Webmin 1.350 release, which I plan to build today.
> 
> There is at least one user-visible problem in what i've done, which is
> no icons for the params & shorewall.conf configs.  I'm not much at
> art...  ;-)

No worries, I'll make some up ..

 - Jamie

Re: [webmin-devel] Debugging and Shorewall module

[Hugo C. <hug...@ya...>]

I use two independent debugging techniques when developing webmin/apache modules:

1. The first one is a kind of logging, complementary to what webmin already does.  Webmin logs to a single file for all requests, I log to a set of rotating files, each file contains a information of the execution of cgi script.  The implementation of this can be found in the sesa scripts, a small application framework on top of webmin (available on sourceforge.net/projects/sesa, the specific files that implement the feature are Sems.pm and Persistency.pm).  The advantage of these log files is that they don't fill your disk (they are rotating), and give you a good history of what a user has done in the recent past.  The disadvantage is obviously performance.

2. From CPAN, there is a module Devel::ptkdb that allows to do source code debugging, also for cgi scripts running on a remote server.  To do this, you set the DISPLAY variable to your display (where your browser is runnning), in a very first _BEGIN_ block in your cgi script.  Then, second, you use the interpreter sequence '#!/usr/bin/perl -d:ptkdb' to call the debugger.  Then, make a request to the server, such that it executes your cgi script.  Perhaps small changes are required to the webmin configuration, I am not entirely sure about it (e.g. to fork cgi scripts ?).  I have used this technique a lot for debugging complicated cgi scripts.


Hugo


Paul Gear <pa...@ge...> wrote: Hi folks,

I've made a few useful (i think) changes to the Shorewall module, and i
plan to make a few more before i send in the patches.  However, i would
like to do some more testing & debugging, and i'd like to know what sort
of debugging tools are at my disposal.

>From what i can tell, the Perl errors from my module actually go nowhere
at all.  Is this correct/intended?  What is the preferred mechanism to
capture Perl errors and produce debug output?  I've experimented with
saving temporary files using a technique i borrowed from another module,
and that seems to work sometimes, but not always (and possibly is
dependent upon the actual path used).  I'm confused!  :-(

Thanks in advance,
Paul

--
Did you know?  It is illegal to use your copy of Microsoft Office on
multiple computers without multiple licenses.  Why not try the free
alternative OpenOffice.org?  

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