hmm
ok - that's odd. Neil's VPS froze at 1am, would ping but wasn't running cron jobs or TCP connections
and it was nmap'able, but didn't connect
as in, nmap showed the right tcp ports open, but none of them did anything
had to hard-reboot
I wonder if ZFS went nuts
strange
that's the only thing we're probably doing unusual there
ZFS on a 768k machine :)
I haven't had problems on my 2G machine, with a lot more traffic
well now I'm hoping I didn't cause myself problems by jumping on that bandwagon.
I think it's the 768 size. I get a lot more traffic on my 2G box, and it hasn't done this
might just require tuning some zfs parms too
... http://wiki.freebsd.org/ZFSTuningGuide
...  On memory constrained systems it is safer to use an arbitrarily low arc_max. For example it is possible to set vm.kmem_size and vm.kmem_size_max to 512M, vfs.zfs.arc_max to 160M, keeping vfs.zfs.vdev.cache.size to half its default size of 10 Megs (setting it to 5 Megs can even achieve better stability, but this depends upon your workload).
I think I'll try that
let us know how it works.
actually - it looks like zfs automatically did that
those numbers are close to what the current conf is
I'm getting 'socket failed: Protocol not supported' trying to start lighttpd in my jail.
I'm guessing I need to loosen the jail restriction to allow that? (it's been so long since I setup a web server in a jail)
looks like this helps: http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/freebsd-jail-allow-ping-tracerouter-commands/
also don't want to allow all jails, just specific one
well, I ordered the FreeBSD VPS last night with block of 5 ip's.  This should be fun :)
jwfoxjr: welcome! :)
Hi, any email or phone where i contact some one from supports
i have been emaling since yesterday but no answer yet
cedwards: I figured it was appropriate to order it yesterday since it was the Lucid Lynx launch :)
nbari: support@arpnetworks.com is usually the best way. I generally expect a 12hr or so turnaround.
nbari: is there something we can help you with in the interim?
I have an issue with a reverse DNS
they have to set the delegatin
now I keep checking my email constantly for the Welcome package. Can't wait to start building out my ZFS enabled system
my wife will become a BSD widow for the next few days :)
well, it is the weekend after all
well i emai 2 days ago
nbari: not sure what to tell you, other than maybe we can help?
maybe a good email system for arpnetworks could help :)
at the moment everything is going perfect with the servers but just imagine i really hade an issue with the server
the response time is frustrating, I know this service is more for experienced users but what do you do when the ball is not on your side  and need to fix somethig quick (lees 24hrs) ?
VNC
And I assume up_the_irons prioritizes responses based on priority.
i have to admint that VNC really is exellent
is like having your own dedicated servers
yeah. vnc has helped me solve quite a few of my little.. mishaps.
That vnc thingy sucks for me :D
I can't type slash, pipe or any other special (Useful) character (that I actually need)
|o|
dxtr: what client/OS?
same happend to me (mac os)
dxtr: what vnc client are you using?  Is it a keyboard mapping issue?
cedwards: WinXP, tightvnc and ultravnc
dxtr: I rebuilt two boxes over VNC using JollysFastVNC on OSX.
but used a full keyboard and could type the /
nbari: "full" keyboard?
dxtr: I've been using just plain old vnc client and it's worked fine. Same thing I use for work.
the one with the numbers at the right
dxtr: VNC Viewer Free Edition 4.1.2 for windows
jwfoxjr: I prefer tight or ultra
dxtr: you may prefer them, but they may introduce incompatibilites.  This just from my experience.
I didn't have any keyboard issues
using JollysFastVNC ?
I opened the VNC but can not type tye |
nbari: regarding support request time; emergency support issues are provided for network / host down issues only.  reverse DNS is based on priority and i've just replied to  your ticket, in which you did not set up your side correctly ;)
and I will not provide support for how to do RFC 2317 delegation, you can read the RFC :)
ok thanks for the reply
let me check the email
np
RandalSchwartz: you're crazy running zfs on a vps :)
i am runiing zfs and so far everything going very well
space is much optimized
jdoe: explain?
cedwards: freebsd's implementation still has some problems even with large amounts of memory, let alone low specs.
worse, the failure mode seems to be "Eh, lock the machine."
... I'm glad it works for him, I just think he's nuts ;)
Where did you read this?
read... what?
That it still has some problems even with large amounts of memory, let alone low specs.
bear in mind I'm defining "large" as like... 4g, when I realize that isn't, really.
mailing lists, people I know.
OK.
on the other hand, fbsd calls it stable now, so there are obviously a lot of people it works for.
filesystems that might misbehave make me nervous though.
I think that is the reason most Linux people/distros can't seem to move away from ext.
everyone is too afraid to use it, therefore it never matures. repeat.
I theorize that Linux people are more adventurous than BSD people.
I was surprised that BSD just has ufs after coming from Linux and having a dozen choices.
..although those dozen choices never were used. the largest change I ever made was ext3->ext4.
Linux is mostly stuff that few people use, from what I've seen.
question: I'm still new to zfs. If I made a zfs-based jail at 5G and later want to expand it, how do I do that?
cedwards: look at the alternative though.
you end up with things like reiserfs (for a good time, fsck a reiserfs system that has a reiserfs disk image on it ;)) or the drama with ext4 losing data because of programmers' expectations
most of the extra filesystems are niche or contributed by some ubercorp (JFS, XFS)
yeah. xfs has specific uses. jfs has specific uses. reiserfs is.. in prison.
er, jfs/xfs are general purpose filesystems.
for niche I was thinking more like unionfs, cramfs etc.
Ack!
Wraithan: what's up
I have the time today so I was going to buy a vps and y'all are sold out!
oh are they? I wonder if I got in under the wire or not.
yeah. up_the_irons did mention the other day that orders would be closed right about May.
ah. I put one in yesterday morning, got the "24-48 hours" email, so I guess we'll see.
fingers crossed
wow - glad I got my order in last night.
glad I picked up my second one when I did :) (but I knew this was coming, so I jumped on it)
jwfoxjr: who knows, maybe we missed it ;)
I dunno - I got the 24-48 hour email as well.  We may have made it in just before the cutoff
there's a cutoff?
did I miss something?
RandalSchwartz: no more orders at ARP website.
RandalSchwartz: when they run out of hardware resources they shut off ordering
RandalSchwartz: up_the_irons did mention expansion and other work pending, so no new orders for the month of May.
Heh!  good for them!
yeah.
see, I told him it'd be good to have me on board. :)
yeah, see what your word of mouth did? :P
I like the fact that they don't over-subscribe the hardware...
I'm more curious about kvm version. Apparently the openbsd workaround in their FAQ isn't necessary on newer versions using seabios instead of bochs
must be what they're running then
?
eh?
jdoe... doesn't help to just go "?" :)
well there are two equally plausible options, they're running an older version, or they're not and the faq entry is stagnant
I can confirm that on the server where my vps is on, you still have to disable mpbios
I don't know if he runs the same kvm version on all hosts
Everyone who received an order confirmation email _will_ get a VPS, despite the sold out message I put up this morning. <-- jdoe jwfoxjr others? :)
Wraithan: email preorder@arpnetworks.com; stuff usually opens up, just not enough for me to keep the regular order page going
up_the_irons: What should I email to that, my full information (CC, billing address, etc) or just ask to be put on the list?
jdoe: the thing with seabios is, there is no handy "Press F12 to pick boot device" option, as far as I can tell.  very annoying.
DaCa: jdoe : same kvm version on all hosts, for now.  I like to repeat what works :)
Wraithan: just ask to be put on the list
Wraithan: i'll email u a special order link when space opens up
up_the_irons: ok thank you
Wraithan: np
up_the_irons: sent, hopefully I'll be able to shut down my linode soon
Wraithan: awesome, thanks
back to work now :)
I've been working on migrating my Linode all day long.
trying to get it done before new billing starts tomorrow! :)
up_the_irons: awesome, thanks
up_the_irons: re: bios, oh yeah? Never actually tried it, I was just reading through the some-user-vs-theo thread about how KVM is broken, OBSD is the holiest of holies, blah blah blah.
jdoe: oh GAWD
i like OpenBSD but I can't stand Theo...
of COURSE he'd say KVM is broken
anything but OpenBSD is broken to those guys
theo's a little sociopath
toddf is like the only nice guy I've seen in the OpenBSD community, no joke; and i'm not saying that just cuz he's here
I was about to make some comment about theo being impossibly rude for a canadian, but it turns out he was born in south africa
and lives in calgary, which isn't really canada
he's HELPFUL and the serial port feature of our SSH-based VM management console was made possible because of a ton of helpful input he gave me
CESSMASTER: interesting :)
maybe he grew up in one of the townships and got robbed a lot
hehe
ok that's my spontanious rant for today, back to work...
now let me say something positive: it is absolutely bad ass how I can do a regular install of OpenBSD on a USB thumb drive and that drive now becomes three things: 1) OpenBSD "live" system (think "LiveCD" here") 2) rescue disk, 3) an OpenBSD installer
maybe I should tinker more with OpenBSD, but coming from FreeBSD it just seems a less-polished version of the same product.
and I add TWO lines to /etc/boot.conf, and that system is now completely accessible over serial.  the live system, the rescue, and the installer.  no fucking around with anything else needed
it's just differently polished
in the sense of "differently abled"
you can't do that with freebsd?
can't you install an installer?
and from the installer, I say "yes" to active com0, and bam, that new system is completely accessible over serial port.  no fucking around with anything else, not even /etc/ttys (it does it for you)
I just set up console access on my Linux VMs at work yesterday and it requires a number of changes.
RandalSchwartz: can you?  I didn't find anything to guide me that way...  If I do "boot -D" in FreeBSD, I get all the kernel messages over serial, great, but then the curses installer starts and that is not output over serial, only vga.  so, kinda useless when i use serial for out-of-band.  i'm sure i can modify something here and something there, and it'd work, but w/ OpenBSD and I didn't have
 to do anything of the sort
cedwards: yep.  /boot/grub/menu.lst, several lines to be edited there.  then /etc/event.d/ttyS0, about a 10 line file there.
with linux it is: 1) get your ttys over serial, 2) get your kernel to output to serial, 3) get grub to output to serial
three completely disconnected tasks
up_the_irons: I've still yet to get grub to output properly, but I have all boot output and I can login.
don't get me wrong, i run linux in a lot of places; most of my systems are linux.  but i can't get over the awesome simplicity of some of the things within the *BSD field
install a boot loader on linux?  well, you better get your grub on
install a boot loader on FreeBSD?  'fdisk -BI <device>'. DONE
up_the_irons: bear in mind though, Theo was right. KVM *was* broken, or at least the bochs bios was.
... he's still an utterly insufferable asshat, but in this one specific instance he was right ;)
jdoe: oh i don't doubt it; he's probably right..  i just don't care ;)
haha.
I could have sworn I did a freebsd over serial. I know I've done a linux install over serial.
... freebsd still has two disconnected steps for serial, one for the boot process, and then a tty for users
jdoe: yeah, i've done linux over serial a few times; but i just remember there was a lot of places to tinker
up_the_irons: can you tell us what the VPS host is running? the guess was Ubuntu, but I'm curious.
I don't really remember, most of the time it's been through a remote console that did some or all of the work for me.
cedwards: Ubuntu 9.04
cedwards: I publish the KVM/QEMU version I use:
https://launchpad.net/~gdolley/+archive/ppa
cool
that surprises me actually. When I had xen/host related questions at linode or slicehost it was all top-secret.
usually the only thing they REALLY care about not-telling you is how many guests per box ;)
as geeks it's just as interesting to know how the system is setup.
it's not like telling me what xen/kvm version they used is going to put them out of business. like i'm suddenly going to come into a rack full of servers and support team.
cedwards: I find that hypocritical.  Basically, I'm making money of software I didn't write and barely contribute to, so I *must* give back in some way.  One of the ways is publishing my small changes, and the other is testing for the Ubuntu maintainers
*off
I agree, but I kinda see where they're coming from too.
if they invested X time/monies into their setup, why give that info away for free?
up_the_irons: i bet money doesn't hurt
CESSMASTER: LOL, srsly
jdoe: sure, *their* setup they can keep secret.  but the things they didn't invent, they should disclose (like Xen / Linux / etc.. versions)
they should keep secret how many hamsters are spinning on treadmills :)
jdoe: I don't have to tell people what hardware I buy or how I put the network together, b/c that is stuff *I've* truely invested in (in time and dollars)
up_the_irons: right, that's what I'm saying. Not giving out versions would be weird.
jdoe: right
NO, I AGREE.
jdoe: I KNOW
;)
HAVE THE REST OF YOU FINALLY FIGURED OUT HOW GREAT CAPSLOCK IS
no.
I hold down shift, like a real man.
LOLZ
Chuck Norris could make that all capital without shift *or* lock
true dat
Chuck Norris can follow a null pointer, and end up anywhere he wants to be.
hahahha
let's not start this again
i gotta tweet that
Chuck Norris ran an infinite loop in 28 seconds.... twice.
last time somebody reived chuck norris's fame, he started a political blog
Chuck Norris isn't political... if we disagree, we're just wrong.
LOL
huckabee 08
huckabee 04!
palin 12
08 isn't a valid octal number
Our current development codename at work is "Chuck Norris". It's funny hearing project managers throwing it around all day.
haha
My contract boss was Ed Norris... I used to send out memos about him saying "Ed 'Chuck' Norris said..."
I want to get it on tape when the project manager finally announces "Release Chuck Norris"
..and then the apocalypse happens.
every project should be named Kracken for a while
then we could all "release the kracken"
actually, the codenames were Kracken vs Chuck Norris. not surprisingly, Chuck Norris won.
When Harry McCracken left PCWorld magazine, the Twit show that week was named "release the mccracken" :)
... http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/007041.html
I still have quite a bit of migration to finish if I'm going to migrate my linode before billing tomorrow.
always surprises me how much "stuff" ends up on a server after two years.
depends on what you do with it, I guess.
I had one on slicehost for 2.5 years, no significant cruft
... it was just a mail/dns server though.
I have a ton of cruft on my linode... because I didn't have a laptop for a while and my desktop was busted
well, time to go pick up my kids. i need a break anyway :)
So I used my linode via my girlfriend's laptop so I could do development
you should log everything you do on a server (build log).  might sound time consuming, but trust me, the time you save when repeating the same thing, is enormous
you never have to figure out something twice
Hmm, I should do that
I recently resetup my desktop and had to go through some stuff that I couldn't quite remember
or automate it from the beginning
yeah, i log everything i put on my T61 (main laptop).  when I got an X300, it was easy peasy to set up ;)
DaCa: not always possible or worth it
Documenting it, that'd be worth it but going through the effort to try and automate the whole setup sounds like more work than needed
but it's much more fun than documenting :)
I am too busy for that sort of 'fun'
DaCa: but when you document it, you learn it well
up_the_irons: yeah. You should be doing that even if it's just a one-off, makes disaster recovery less.... stressful
jdoe: right.  the way i see it, there is no such thing as "one-off".  i can't remember a time where I did something only once.
there is OCD medication
lol
LOL
you should see how shiny i get my shoes...
and how thoroughly you wash your hands
"I UPDATE MY BUILD LOG AND THEN I WASH MY HANDS, AND THEN I WASH MY HANDS AND THEN I UPDATE THE LOG AND THEN I WASH MY HANDS..."
(shoe shining is THE perfect OCD task)
jdoe: LOL
I am OCD about keeping my phone's screen free of smudges... I have a nexus one...
I sometimes stop mid text message and clean it, only to clean it again when I am done
hahaha
It'd be good if I was kidding... but I am not.
lol
my iphone is so old, i no longer feel compelled to keep the screen clean
... man, my iphone looks like a junior high kid's forehead.
hahahaha
more grease on it than a big mac.
John Travolta's hair has nothing on your phone?
my phone is great, I got it in like spring 2006
guys, that's called "face juice"
maybe 2007
CESSMASTER: I was rocking the same flip phone from 06 until about 1.5 months ago when I got my nexus one.
which I <3
I kind of don't want to spend money on a new phone because I'm in canada half the year anyway
Yeah, and we all know they don't have cell towers in Canada.
up_the_irons: if you take a type A personality with an arguably good cause, the defense of said cause tends to be less than polite, and there you have Theo in a nutshell. *shrug*.
to some people anything that doesn't work by default is broken, thus kvm _is_ broken by that definition.
i have two cell phones, an american one and a canadian one
chuck norris doesn't need a cell phone.  he knows your thoughts, and that's enough.
Why not get one with a SIM
that would involve switching providers
worth it imo
maybe i'll get around to it
I prefer to see it as 'needing a little tweak to work better' but thats me being non type A and having been labeled 'the workaround king' I guess its in my nature to accept things which can work with workarounds ;-)
better than an up_the_irons slot. :)
toddf: you can defend a good cause without being inpolite; the idea that "we can be rude because we don't owe anyone politeness" is something I don't really understand.  It doesn't cost anything to be nice, IMO
toddf: eh, in this specific case it's explicitly KVM being broken though. The only "tweak" I can think of would be... er... well why DOESN'T it get the SMP info from acpi instead?
toddf: regarding kvm being broken, i don't care about that argument.  it works "enough" for me :)
Theo has hemmorhoids from sitting and hacking all day, that's why he's always angry
aha
up_the_irons, know you are bussy but can you please check the issue with my bill
toddf: i tend to find workarounds acceptable; i mean, if I have a need for something, and the only way to satisfy it is to implement a workaround, or not get anything at all; i'd do the workaround
up_the_irons: no compromises! binary blobs hide vulns!
oh i tend to not like binary blobs too
that's why i buy intel...
like, low-end graphics, but the drivers are open source
instead of nvidia closed garbage
nvidia's okay. ati's is garbage for sure.
didn't ATI release full specs for some of their shit?
(and presumably expect someone else to write the drivers for them)
no they're also contributing developers, I think.
I dunno, the "radeon" driver is pretty solid noe.
now.
radeonhd is ... unpleasant.
up_the_irons: I respect those who unfailingly settle for nothing but workaround free code/solutions/etc .. to them that `we' capitulate and `accept' the workaround means we're not actively solving the problem; perhaps ..
yawn.
ok, time to start building my FreeBSD box in VirtualBox to make sure I don't forget anything. :)
don't forget to replace sendmail :p
jdoe: I use postfix anyway :)
like I said
toddf: i can see that
lol dongs.
:3
thanks
i've been meaning to change my username to lol for a while but i keep forgetting
I've never tried *BSD I should probably install it in a VM or something someday
Wraithan: probably.
up_the_irons: one thing I am concerned about is if I get a VPS and need to move up in size, is that pretty much frozen right now due to the orders lock as well?
My 540 on linode is getting to be a little slim, for me, so in the near (next 2 months) I'll probably need to move up to a 768
because I don't want to pay for a more expensive linode :(
Wraithan: a 512 -> 768 upgrade shouldn't be a problem
up_the_irons: sorry for all the pestering you even though I am not paying for the service (yet)
Wraithan: oh, no worries
not a bother
up_the_irons: Once the orders open back up (and assuming I like it) I'll probably be telling everyone I know, since I know a lot of Linode users who would like to pay less and are more advanced users like myself
Wraithan: ah great :)  Referrals tend to be common around here; I don't advertise and yet people still knock at my door, hehe
I've already got a few people pending as well..
wow
Yeah, I have 2 friends that are waiting on me to tell them if I liked it
pretty sure you'll like it
I've got at least two, probably three that'll sign up after my approval..
up_the_irons: are you thinking a month before signups are ready again?
I like spreading the word on good deals, saving my friends money makes me happy
so what is it that makes you guys come here?   lower price?  freebsd is an option?  both?   I figure I know the answer, but I've never asked directly
Wraithan: hehe nice
Lower price, and being able to run whatever thing I want
I don't really care about BSD, it is neat and possibly will be using Clang as default in the near future which is exciting, but, I like my Arch Linux
cedwards: yeah probably beginning of june i'll have a new box ready to go; before then, some slots will inevitably open up, so anyone interested should email preorder@arpnetworks.com and i'll email a special order link as slots open
Which actually uses a BSD style init
Wraithan: word
I have friends that <3 BSD though, so they will be stoked
hehe nice
The Linux/BSD choice to me is a lot like car choice, most of us have opinions on what we want our cars to look like but in the end they all (hopefully) just get you from point a to point b which is the main concern
Wraithan: ya know, that's a real interesting way to put it.  I like it :)
up_the_irons: did I hear you say there was a referral bonus as well? not that these prices don't sell themselves, but incentives are nice ;)
Feel free to take that
that really sums it up it up
Wraithan: thanks :)
Oh snap!
<.<
cedwards: yes, there is; a free month if you refer someone and they stay
Wraithan: nice!
ugh, time to clean my desk
back in a bit
up_the_irons: I assume "stay" means.. X months?
good luck
cedwards: maybe like 3 months, but i'm not very strict in either case (ya think I have time to keep track of it all? ;)
does bsd not have a periodic / cron hourly?
FreeBSD comes with a cron tool afaik
Desk is clean
amazing what a week of hacking does to my desk
have 7 weeks until launch of a gian warehouse app
cron may be off by defaul
no wait... it has to be on. :)
I don't have cron in /etc/rc.conf
and yes, there are periodic's
RandalSchwartz: it's on, but I notice I have /etc/periodic/{daily,weekly,monthly}, but no hourly.
yes - no hourly
you can just add that to a crontab
in Linux I'm used to /etc/cron.{hourly,daily,weekly,monthly}
cedwards: those are just dirs called by your crontab
apparently, nothing to be installed needed hourly :)
crontab -e
check it out on a linux system you'll see that
It is just some helpful defaults is all
You guys probably know more sysadminy stuff, but I am a developer and most of it is black magic... co-worker showed me that you can resize a LVM partition while it is hot.
I didn't believe him, then he proceeded to do it
I damn near shat a brick... resizing a live FS is something that is ingrained deep in my head that you NEVER EVER DO
with zfs you can do that too. :)
Wraithan: shrinking you shouldn't do, but extending is just fine.
since you're merely changing the quota size
It was always pounded into me to never do it on a live FS
simple number update and... "bing"
It seems so dangerous!
you can grow a partition live on OSX too, as I recall
This was Reiser running on our server
just not shrink it
Reiser, the deadly FS?
RandalSchwartz: still magic.
hahaha yeah
"Oh this must have been setup before he went fucking nuts" - Quote from our sysadmin at work
heh
Our sysadmin is a good guy, he puts up with a lot from us developers
including our comments about "can't we just throw more hardware at it?"
o/~ I'm mr heat reiser... I'm mr sun.  I'm mr wife atomizer... I'm mr 101... o/~
(cue sax riff)
Mr 5?
"a hundred and one"
the original line was that
... http://www.santasearch.org/music.asp?PID=1&SongID=1821
I want to do that at karaoke now. :)
Ah cheaper hosting means I can run Hudson or the like on my VPS without having to cry about ram
I keep meaning to write my own CI
... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k83NlMFJUoc
there we go
Girlfriend is here, time to go out to dinner, later folks
RandalSchwartz: presumably you're Mr. Heat Riser, unless you're feeling stabby.
RandalSchwartz: ah, that was intentional and a joke that I missed utterly. I'm a moron.
which joke?
the reiser thing from a couple hours ago.
oh hjeh
shows me for not reading scrollback.
ok
NO.