Switched to pure ruby ldap library

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 13:58:00 -0600

I wrote an article awhile back about using the Ruby/LDAP library to handle LDAP authentication in Ruby on Rails. I just finished swapping out the LDAP client library in that application from Ruby/LDAP to ruby-net-ldap. The problems with Ruby/LDAP are that it isn’t a GEM, so installation is a bit more difficult, and it relies on a common LDAP library, like OpenLDAP, to already be installed on the system. The ruby-net-ldap library is written in pure Ruby, so no other library needs to be installed on the system.

Here is the new code that performs the authentication:

require "net/ldap" 

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  def self.authenticate(login, password, host, port)
    if login.to_s.length > 0 and password.to_s.length > 0
      ldap = Net::LDAP.new
      ldap.host = host
      ldap.port = port
      ldap.auth = "cn=#{login},cn=users,o=xyz...", password
      if ldap.bin
        return find(:first, :conditions => ['username=?', login])
      else
        return false
      end
    end
  end
end

ActiveMailer email performance on site5

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 13:52:00 -0600

The site I am working on, RealIdaho.com, is hosted by site5. There are some forms that, when filled out by the user, send confirmation emails to the user, to us internally, and to the realtor’s cellphone. We started getting some reports that the confirmation page wouldn’t come up, and users were resubmitting the form many times. I discovered a few things while investigating that may be useful to others.

The first thing I noticed, is that the page would timeout after 15 seconds and just return a blank page. Not very friendly, and definitely explains why the users were unsure that the form was submitted properly. The site however continued to process the request, and eventually got all the emails out. I contacted the site5 support team and asked the 1) why is the page timing out after only 15 seconds, and 2) why was sending email so slow.

Here’s the answer I got for item 1:

“Changing the timeout would affect the global settings for apache. This results in a significant increase in the number of open connections that apache has and degrades server performance. I can ask about this but I don’t think it will be possible to increase the timeout.”

While I understand their reasoning, 15 seconds seems awfully short. I believe the default for apache is 5 minutes. Hopefully, they’ll consider increasing that amount at least to 30-60 seconds. While I never want a page that takes more than 5 seconds, I’m sure we’ll have some pages that do take longer, especially ones that need to communicate with external systems.

Regarding number 2, the support technician suggested using sendmail directly instead of sending email over SMTP, as that should be much faster. So, I went into RAILS_ROOT/config/environments/production.rb and added the following line:

ActiveMailer::Base.delivery_method = :sendmail

Here are the performance numbers:

Previous method (SMTP):

Sending Mail to user (25.22760)
Sending Mail to internal (31.11207)
Sending Mail notification (20.70688)

Current method (Sendmail):

Sending Mail to user (0.16841)
Sending Mail to internal (0.28479)
Sending Mail notification (0.24701)

Wow, that’s quite a difference! When I tested the form submission, the confirmation page appeared almost immediately. Now that’s more like it. Now I just need to see about increasing the timeout.

Pearware Blog : Archives for November 2006

Switched to pure ruby ldap library

ActiveMailer email performance on site5