Drupal 7 Painfully Slow Performance

We recently (yes, finally) started testing Drupal 7 and there is only one word for its performance....SLOW! It seemed to load quickly on the home page after the installation but once we logged back in it was as if we were attempting to run the site on a x86 with 512MB of RAM from a USB RAID array.

This server has a dev version of Drupal 6 that screams along without any issues but the defaul Drupal 7 installation was not performing well. After some research on the web it appears the performance issues are caused by modules that provide functionality to the server and client (a.k.a. browser).

To help with client speed disable the following modules (http://yoursite.com/admin/modules/list).
- Overlay module
- Toolbar module (Disclaimer: Make sure you have installed a module which replaces the admin functionality such as the Administration menu module before disabling this module.)

Server side:
- Update Manager Module

Disabling those three modules caused a significant increase in the response time and performance of our Drupal 7 sites.

All the best.

Compound Interest Calculator

Have you ever wanted to do a compound interest calculation but don't have a calculator in front of you? Here is a nifty way of doing it with Google.

A more detailed description of the below formula is provided in the Wikipedia link above however here is simple example which takes US$10,000 which is compounded at 5% annual interest 2 times per year for 20 years.

10000(1+(.05/2))^(2*20)=

Each number is as follows, the bolded number represented the item being described:
10000(1+(.05/2))^(2*20) = US$10,000.00
10000(1+(.05/2))^(2*20) = Fixed value (do not change)
10000(1+(.05/2))^(2*20) = 5% interest rate converted to decimal
10000(1+(.05/2))^(2*20) = Numbers of times the interest is compounded per year
10000(1+(.05/2))^(2*20) = Number of years the money will have to grow

Find Text Within Files

If you're a Linux Geek who likes to spend time figuring out a problem and writing grep commands this post is not for you. If you're using Linux, specifically a Debian distro such as Ubuntu, and need a quick solution and do not have a mastery of the command line nor time to write scripts for Gnome Nautilus this is your post!

Background:
Started using Ubuntu again due to finally having decent support in Google Talk for Drag/Drop file transfer and Google Voice Chat in Empathy. Since I use this quite a bit in my business it was imperative this work correctly.

Problem:
The ability to search inside of a variety of files (such as: pdfs, office 2K3 and 2K7 files, text files, etc.) for specific text. Tried apps such as sagasu, regexxer and even tried a few Nautilus scripts but they didn't perform what I needed.

Solution:
Google Desktop
If you've used it before you know how it works, if you haven't download it and give it a try. Here is a short post about how to install, setup and use Google Desktop on Ubuntu.

Help - SearchFilterHost.exe is hogging CPU!

Are you having the problem of SearchFilterHost.exe, SearchProtocolHost.exe and/or SearchIndexer.exe performing a HIIT workout on your CPU? We had the same problem with our Vista machines having an usually high CPU utilization and found that the following minor change helped fixed the problem.

Try and disabling the .XML file extension from being indexed in the Indexing Options control panel.
Answer by Eric Wolz - MSFT
via this thread

How do I change Windows indexing options?

Thank you Eric!

Show all NVRAM Settings in Tomato

1. Log onto the router
2. Go to Tools > System
3. In the textbox type nvram show
4. Click Execute button
5. Should see results similar to below:

DD_BOARD=Asus WL-520GU/GC
Fix_WL520GUGC_clock=1
NC_DocumentRoot=/www
NC_ExcludePorts=25
NC_GatewayMode=Open
[snip]

For NTP Update on Tomato

1. Log onto the router
2. Go to Tools > System
3. Type ntpc in the text box. If U.S. based you can use ntpc 0.us.pool.ntp.org
4. Click Execute button
5. Should see results similar to below:

Trying 0.us.pool.ntp.org [72.14.177.132]:

Time: Sat, 23 Oct 2010 00:53:23 +0000, no change was needed.

Send MySQL Backup thru Google Apps Email using PHP

This post combines items that were gathered from a few sites. The problem we were trying to solve is emailing a MySQL database backup using PHP PEAR through Google Apps. This script could also be easily modified to send through gmail. The file includes some hints and links to assist you whenever/wherever possible. Thank you Peter for providing the starting point for this script.



// enhanced from original provided @ http://www.theblog.ca/mysql-email-backup

// install the following pear modules
// pear install mail_mime
// pear install mail
// pear install net_smtp

// see this entry for more information about pear mail
// http://www.phpmaniac.net/wiki/index.php/Pear_Mail

// mysql database connection information
$dbhost = "localhost"; // usually localhost
$dbuser = "mydbuser";
$dbpass = "mydbpass";
$dbname = "mydbname";

// create the mysql backup file
$backupfile = $dbname . "_" . date("Y_m_d") . '.sql';
system("mysqldump -h $dbhost -u $dbuser -p$dbpass $dbname > $backupfile");

// includes
include('Mail.php');
include('Mail/mime.php');

// smtp settings
$params["host"] = "smtp.gmail.com";
$params["port"] = "587";
$params["auth"] = true;
$params["username"] = "myusername@mydomain.com";
$params["password"] = "mypassword";

// email settings
$cr = "\n";
$recipients[] = "Recipient 1 ";
$recipients[] = "Recipient 2 ";
$sendfrom = "sender ";
$sendsubject = "Backup - MySQL - mydomain.com";
$text = "Database backup performed on " . date("m/d/Y @ H:i:s", time()) . $cr;
$text .= "File name: " . $backupfile;

// *************************************
// do not edit below this line
// *************************************

$message = new Mail_mime();
$message->setTXTBody($text);
$message->AddAttachment($backupfile);
$body = $message->get();
$extraheaders = array("From"=>$sendfrom, "Subject"=>$sendsubject);
$headers = $message->headers($extraheaders);
$mail = Mail::factory("smtp", $params);
$mail->send($recipients, $headers, $body);

// Delete the file from your server
unlink($backupfile);

?>