Fri, 25 Jul 2008
I got a muffin
And not just on the waist line. Not the worst sysadmin appreciation day
ever.
I do now have this feeling of dread as I wait for the other shoe to drop though.
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Posted: 2008/07/25 12:43 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Fri, 11 Jul 2008
Bootstrapping Kickstart for Free
Having spent a (very) little time over the last month fiddling with an
existing FAI setup
(which is used to install Debian machines) one amazingly insightful
feature of Kickstart (a provisioning tool for Redhat and Fedora) has
earned a place in my heart - /root/anaconda-ks.cfg.
It might not seem like much, but by having the interactive installer produce a working config that can be reused, the barrier to entry is seriously lowered and makes experimentation much easier. If you want to add a feature to your new machines then just add it to the test install and crib from the config file. Excellent.
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Posted: 2008/07/11 23:22 | /operatingsystems/linux | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Replacing The Opening Talk at Conferences
Over the last couple of years (apart from this year oddly enough) I've
been to a fair few tech conferences and one of the most annoying things
about them (especially YAPCs) are the opening talks. If you're lucky you
get a good keynote. Otherwise you get either a bad sponsor session or
even, don't be afraid - you don't have to attend, a "Getting the most
out of a YAPC" talk.
So now I've whinged about it what's my suggestion to fix it? Have a short session where each speaker who's presenting at the conference gives a brief peek (and a chance to hook people in) to their talk.
This should be no more than a minute or two, 3-6 slides at most, all using the same laptop and lined up in the front row of the audience to keep it smooth and fast. Although a lot of people already know what they want to see doing this will help people to spot the speakers who have an... "incompatible with the audience" presentation style and may even change their mind about what to see.
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Posted: 2008/07/11 23:19 | /events | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Randexp - Generating test data with Ruby regexs
While paging through reddit programming recently
(seems only fair since they linked to me ;)) I stumbled on to the very
nifty Randexp gem, a
library that uses regular expression patterns to generate data that would
satisfy the pattern. Or in less tech terms - a really good test data
generator.
# install randexp
$ irb
require "rubygems"
require "randexp"
# simple fake phone number -
/020(7|8) \d{3} \d{4}/.gen
# build a reusable class.
class Randgen
def self.version()
/\d{1,3}\.\d{1,4}/.gen
end
end
# and use it.
/[:version:]/.gen
I especially like the ability to make your own character classes. I'm not a ruby guy but I can see this being very useful in lots of little data generation scripts and test harnesses.
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Posted: 2008/07/11 19:29 | /ruby | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Wed, 09 Jul 2008
Amazon^WLoveFilm DVD Rentals
I've been a happy Amazon UK DVD rental customer for the last couple of
years. They've got a wide selection, the DVDs ship fast, come in
separate envelopes and in nice sturdy plastic cases. In nearly 200 DVDs
I've had three that were unplayable and only one that got lost in
transit - a replacement for which was sent the same day.
'Luckily' for me Amazons DVD rentals are now handled by LoveFilm. I had my first batch through last week and I'm less than impressed. All three films came in a single envelope (so I have to watch them all before I can sent them back for replacement), they are in flimsy paper containers and out of my first two one is broken - with a split straight through. This is not the best start I could have hoped for.
There's a reason Amazon gets a lot of my online cash - they provide a damn good service.
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Posted: 2008/07/09 19:52 | /tools/online | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Debian and Monolithic Networking Configs - Why?
When it comes to config files the Debian people and I agree on basic
principles - we're both keen on applications having a directory where
you drop multiple config files to allow for easier deployment and
management. Even if they do sometimes seem a little... over zealous
(Debian developers? Never!) and you end up with the split Exim4
configs.
So one of the little quirks that I'd like an answer to is, why does Debian have a single big interfaces file and no support for a directory of files? Something like the eth0-cfg files Red Hat uses. It'd make adding additional interfaces a lot easier and would let me use puppet to manage them without breaking in tears every time I try and write a native type for it.
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Posted: 2008/07/09 19:43 | /operatingsystems/linux/debian | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Tue, 08 Jul 2008
Dear Lazyweb - Command Line YSlow!
The title pretty much says it all, I'd like a command line version of YSlow! (what is it with
Yahoo and !s) that I can run from cron and import in to a nice
spreadsheet for trending and site comparisons.
I don't have XUL on my list of things to play with so I'll give it a couple of months and watch someone else implement it. Hopefully.
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Posted: 2008/07/08 20:59 | /tools/commandline | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
More Memory Than Sense
My recent bugbear is - servers with inaccessible memory.
You go and spec a nice new server with say 8Gb of RAM (a little box),
you install Debian, you start adding applications to the machine and then a
couple of months later some anal sysadmin comes along, does a free
-m and mutters about under-specced virtualization servers when he sees
-
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3287 225 3062 0 24 149
For those of you not paying attention - the machine isn't using over half of it's memory. So first of all how do you spot this and secondly how do you fix it?
If you're on Debian then the spotting is easy (for some hardware) -
apt-get install lshw
lshw -class memory | grep -A 4 '\-memory'.
If the size is bigger than the total from free then you've got
wasted resources.
The fix? Install the right bigmem kernel. And then recompile VMware server. Dammit.
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Posted: 2008/07/08 20:55 | /serversmells | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Back in to the fold!
It's been a while since I posted anything here but now seems like as good a
time as any to get back in to the wider world of tech. Where's a good place
to start? Since this years YAPC::EU only has two or three talks I want
to see I've decided to use the cash (and holiday time) and invest them
in to PyCon UK instead.
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Posted: 2008/07/08 20:46 | /meta | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Copyright © 2000-2005 Dean Wilson
