Paul D. Ouderkirk

Words of wisdom

admin — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:31:13 +0000

I have a stack of deadlines a mile high, but I think I’m also going to sit around with a bottle and just think for a while. The thinking time is essential. At least half of all writing involves just sitting and staring into space. Letting your brain out to hunt down ideas, bringing them back all warm and bloody between its teeth.

Warren Ellis

RAS: Reliability, Availability, Serviceability

admin — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:19:00 +0000

Reliability: parts that tend not to fail
Availability: when a part fails, there’s a backup
Serviceability: when you’re replacing a failed part, you don’t need to down the server

Server Burn-in

admin — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:42:08 +0000

I used to burn-in new servers by having them compile MySQL from source in a loop for 24-48 hours, but let’s face it, that’s not much of a challenge for today’s servers.

You know what is? Building OpenOffice.org.

On Debian Lenny, here’s the shortest path:
# apt-get install build-essential dpkg-dev pbuilder # apt-get source openoffice.org # apt-get build-dep openoffice.org # cd openoffice.org-2.4.1 # debuild -us -uc

On a Sun x4100 with dual Opteron 275s and 8GB RAM, this takes about 5.5 hours, and uses way more disk I/O and memory than a mere MySQL compile.

Run this 4-5 times and you can probably feel pretty safe that your server won’t burst into flames at 3AM the day after you deploy it in production.

Airing of Grievances, part two

admin — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:04:59 +0000

Who picked these example cities for timezones in Canada? Dawson *and* Dawson Creek? (populations: 1,327 and 11,811, respectively).

Atikokan?!? (population:3,293) I wasn’t even sure what province this one was in, I had to look it up.

Airing of grievances, part one.

admin — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:37:00 +0000

Default install of OpenSUSE 11 (meaning I didn’t explicitly include or exclude any particular software packages during the installation).

Comes with OpenOffice.org, Banshee (media player), F-Spot (like iPhoto) and Firefox.

Not included? A whois client.

OLPC XO-1 /proc/cpuinfo

admin — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 03:51:33 +0000

[olpc@xo-11-42-2b ~]$ cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : AuthenticAMD cpu family : 5 model : 10 model name : Geode(TM) Integrated Processor by AMD PCS stepping : 2 cpu MHz : 430.931 cache size : 128 KB fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu de pse tsc msr cx8 sep pge cmov clflush mmx mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow bogomips : 863.19 clflush size : 32

Chumby /proc/cpuinfo

admin — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 03:41:55 +0000

chumby:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo Processor : ARM926EJ-Sid(wb) rev 4 (v5l) BogoMIPS : 174.89 Features : swp half thumb fastmult edsp java CPU implementer : 0x41 CPU architecture: 5TEJ CPU variant : 0x0 CPU part : 0x926 CPU revision : 4 Cache type : write-back Cache clean : cp15 c7 ops Cache lockdown : format C Cache format : Harvard I size : 16384 I assoc : 4 I line length : 32 I sets : 128 D size : 16384 D assoc : 4 D line length : 32 D sets : 128

Hardware : Freescale MX21ADS Revision : 0000 Serial : 0000000000000000

UNIX Truism

admin — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:06:21 +0000

If you’re a UNIX user, all UNIX are pretty much the same.
If you’re a UNIX programmer, all UNIX are a little bit different.
If you’re a UNIX system admin, all UNIX are completely different!

— Bob Koehler
Hubble Space Telescope
Payload Flight Software Team

Progress indicator from dd

admin — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:44:14 +0000

Yes, you can get a progress indicator from dd. Here’s the relevant section from the GNU dd manpage:

Sending a USR1 signal to a running `dd’ process makes it print I/O
statistics to standard error and then resume copying.

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/null& pid=$!
$ kill -USR1 $pid; sleep 1; kill $pid

18335302+0 records in 18335302+0 records out 9387674624 bytes
(9.4 GB) copied, 34.6279 seconds, 271 MB/s

The Mentat Handbook

admin — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:30:08 +0000

Above all else, the Mentat must be a generalist, not a

specialist. It is wise to have decisions of great moment

monitored by generalists. Experts and specialists lead you

quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit

picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma. The Mentat-

generalist, on the other hand, should bring to decision-

making a healthy common sense. He must not cut himself off

from the broad sweep of what is happening in this universe.

He must remain capable of saying: “There’s no real mystery

about this at the moment. This is what we want now. It may

prove wrong later, but we’ll correct that when we come to

it.” The Mentat-generalist must understand that anything

which we can identify as our universe is merely part of

larger phenomena. But the expert looks backward; he looks

into the narrow standards of his own specialty. The

generalist looks outward; he looks for living principles,

knowing full well that such principles change, that they

develop. It is to the characteristics of change itself that

the Mentat-generalist must look. There can be no permanent

catalogue of such change, no handbook or manual. You must

look at it with as few preconceptions as possible, asking

yourself: “Now what is this thing doing?”

-The Mentat Handbook