In 2002, I got my first cell phone. June was stuffy in Manhattan, and my summer internship copy-editing the New York Sun, the now-defunct right-wing newspaper,...
In 2002, I got my first cell phone. June was stuffy in Manhattan, and my summer internship copy-editing the New York Sun, the now-defunct right-wing newspaper, was just about to start. I swam through the humid air past Madison Square Park to get to the store before closing. "You want this one," said the salesman at the RadioShack, pointing to a sleek model then on sale. "It's a 3G phone. It'll work with Sprint's new 3G network they're rolling out later this summer." "Ok," I...
In 2002, I got my first cell phone. June was stuffy in Manhattan, and my summer internship copy-editing the New York Sun, the now-defunct right-wing newspaper, was just about to start. I swam through...
Sometimes as a sysadmin the logfiles just don't cut it, and to solve a problem you need to know what's really going on. That's when I turn to strace -- the...
Sometimes as a sysadmin the logfiles just don't cut it, and to solve a problem you need to know what's really going on. That's when I turn to strace -- the system-call tracer. A system call, or syscall, is where a program crosses the boundary between user code and the kernel. Fortunately for us using strace, that boundary is where almost everything interesting happens in a typical program. The two basic jobs of a modern operating system are abstraction and multiplexing....
Sometimes as a sysadmin the logfiles just don't cut it, and to solve a problem you need to know what's really going on. That's when I turn to strace -- the system-call tracer. A system call,...
Today is System Administrator Appreciation Day, and being system administrators ourselves, we here at Ksplice decided to have a little fun with this holiday....
Today is System Administrator Appreciation Day, and being system administrators ourselves, we here at Ksplice decided to have a little fun with this holiday. We've taken a break, drank way too much coffee, and created a very special Choose Your Own Adventure for all the system administrators out there. Click here to begin the adventure. Feedback and comments welcome. Above all: Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day. Share the love with your friends, colleagues, and...
Today is System Administrator Appreciation Day, and being system administrators ourselves, we here at Ksplice decided to have a little fun with this holiday. We've taken a break, drank way too much...
Anyone who administers even a moderately sized network knows that when problems arise, diagnosing and fixing them can be extremely difficult. They're usually...
Anyone who administers even a moderately sized network knows that when problems arise, diagnosing and fixing them can be extremely difficult. They're usually non-deterministic and difficult to reproduce, and very similar symptoms (e.g. a slow or unreliable connection) can be caused by any number of problems — congestion, a broken router, a bad physical link, etc. One very useful weapon in a system administrator's arsenal for dealing with network issues is traceroute (or...
Anyone who administers even a moderately sized network knows that when problems arise, diagnosing and fixing them can be extremely difficult. They're usually non-deterministic and difficult...
If you've ever seriously used a Linux system, you're probably already familiar with at least the basics of ssh. But you're hungry for more. In this post, we'll...
If you've ever seriously used a Linux system, you're probably already familiar with at least the basics of ssh. But you're hungry for more. In this post, we'll show you six ssh tips that'll help take you to the next level. (We've also found that they make for excellent cocktail party conversation talking points.) (1) Take command! Everyone knows that you can use ssh to get a remote shell, but did you know that you can also use it to run commands on their own? Well, you...
If you've ever seriously used a Linux system, you're probably already familiar with at least the basics of ssh. But you're hungry for more. In this post, we'll show you six ssh tips that'll help take...
As a system administrator, I work with dozens of large systems every day--Apache, MySQL, Postfix, Dovecot, and the list goes on from there. While I have a good...
As a system administrator, I work with dozens of large systems every day--Apache, MySQL, Postfix, Dovecot, and the list goes on from there. While I have a good idea of how to configure all of these pieces of software, I'm not intimately familiar with all of their code bases. And every so often, I'll run into a problem which I can't configure around. When I'm lucky, I can reproduce the bug in a testing environment. I can then drop in arbitrary print statements, recompile with...
As a system administrator, I work with dozens of large systems every day--Apache, MySQL, Postfix, Dovecot, and the list goes on from there. While I have a good idea of how to configure all of these...
FUSE is awesome. While most major Linux filesystems (ext3, XFS, ReiserFS, btrfs) are built-in to the Linux kernel, FUSE is a library that lets you instead write...
FUSE is awesome. While most major Linux filesystems (ext3, XFS, ReiserFS, btrfs) are built-in to the Linux kernel, FUSE is a library that lets you instead write filesystems as userspace applications. When something attempts to access the filesystem, those accesses get passed on to the FUSE application, which can then return the filesystem data. It lets you quickly prototype and test filesystems that can run on multiple platforms without writing kernel code. You can easily...
FUSE is awesome. While most major Linux filesystems (ext3, XFS, ReiserFS, btrfs) are built-in to the Linux kernel, FUSE is a library that lets you instead write filesystems as userspace applications....
Dear Fellow System Administrators, I like excitement in my life. I go on roller coasters, I ride my bike without a helmet, I make risky financial decisions. I...
Dear Fellow System Administrators, I like excitement in my life. I go on roller coasters, I ride my bike without a helmet, I make risky financial decisions. I treat my servers no differently. When my Linux vendor releases security updates, I think: I could apply these patches, but why would I? If I did, I'd have to coordinate with my users to schedule a maintenance window for 2am on a Sunday and babysit those systems while they reboot, which is seriously annoying, hurts our...
Dear Fellow System Administrators, I like excitement in my life. I go on roller coasters, I ride my bike without a helmet, I make risky financial decisions. I treat my servers no differently. When...
It's a well-documented fact that RAM in modern computers is susceptible to occasional random bit flips due to various sources of noise, most commonly...
It's a well-documented fact that RAM in modern computers is susceptible to occasional random bit flips due to various sources of noise, most commonly high-energy cosmic rays. By some estimates, you can even expect error rates as high as one error per 4GB of RAM per day! Many servers these days have ECC RAM, which uses extra bits to store error-correcting codes that let them correct most bit errors, but ECC RAM is still fairly rare in desktops, and unheard-of in laptops. For...
It's a well-documented fact that RAM in modern computers is susceptible to occasional random bit flips due to various sources of noise, most commonly high-energy cosmic rays. By some estimates, you...
