#arpnetworks 2011-07-22,Fri

bob^^

plett

More specifically that would be our MD, Adrian

bob^^

yeah, that's right - he did a talk on v6, was interesting
more specifically about v6 capable CPEs iirc

plett

Yes, that's one of our common rants. Everything else in the chain from an end user to (say) facebook is IPv6 capable. It's just their DSL router that isn't.

[01:35]

bob^^

yeah, it's quite frustrating
more frustrating how few ISPs can actually deliver v6 to the house
i'm with Be, no sign of v6 yet at all annoyingly

[01:35]

plett

They are starting to be produced though. We have a £100+ "Billion 7800N" which works fine with IPv6, but at that price it's not one we can just give away to every new customer

[01:36]

bob^^

i've heard zyxel have quite a bit of v6 capable stuff now including a few home routers

[01:37]

plett

They like to say that they have. The difficulty we have getting hold of them says otherwise.

mercutio

bob: zyxel are still around?
i thought they made weird modems

bob^^

yeah, zyxel make all sorts of stuff

mercutio

weird dialup modems that is
i never see anything zyxel around these days

bob^^

plett: ahh, not tried actually getting one :)

mercutio

nor us robotics

bob^^

US Robotics got bought up by 3com
years ago

mercutio

ahh

bob^^

:)
that's a name i've not heard for a long time
bob^^ digs out his courier

mercutio

v.everything

bob^^

:)
mercutio: i just bought a zyxel nas for home (their kit isn't brilliant but it's alright for home imho)

mercutio

i've never seen a home nas that was any good

[01:40]

bob^^

this one has two bays and does raid etc - only had it a couple of days but so far so good
not gonna set the world alight with it's feature set or performance, but good enough for me :)

[01:40]

plett

bob^^: We have a "ZyXEL P-2612HNU-F1" here in the office for testing, which they sent us this week. It came with an european plug, as they haven't made a UK model yet, required a beta firmware flashing to it to make it even claim to do v6, and then doesn't work.

[01:41]

bob^^

oh, that's promising then!

[01:41]

mercutio

speaking of ipv6
whatever happened to the internet having larger muts
mtus
what with ipv6 having higher overhead and all
surely it's time for it to get bumped up a bit

[01:43]

***

LT has joined #arpnetworks

[01:43]

plett

It's stupid though, as all the manufacturers of cheap routers use the same chipsets, and use the chipset manufacturer's canned "build me a firmware" GUI wizard thingy. And that wizard has supported v6 for about 3 years now, but nobody ever ticks the box to enable it

[01:43]

bob^^

hah, i didn't know that

mercutio

plett: real
maybe they don't do it in hardware

toddf

larger address family != larger mtu

mercutio

do cheap adsl modems do checksum offloading etc?
toddf: i know

bob^^

our customers are all connected over ethernet so (apart from a few on DSL) thankfully we don't have to worry too much :)

mercutio

but because it's using up more overhead
and that it's not in serious production use
surely it's about time for mtus to rise in size

plett

Yeah. If you've ever wondered why the user interface on cheap routers all look very similar, it's because they _are_ all the same. The "manufacturer" just copies the reference hardware design, cutting as many corners as they can get away with, and then uploads their logo and brandname into the firmware wizard, and ships it :)

mercutio

i dunno the few modems i've used the gui on have all been radically different
dlink, linksys, tp-link

toddf

mercutio: I think you oversimplify the task at getting everybody to participate in the larger mtu crowd

bob^^

mercutio: jumbo frames would be the only option, and not everything supports them
(assuming ethernet is the technology being used, obv)

mercutio

toddf: well i'm not saying it's easy, but it's not easy to get ipv6 going either

bob^^

(and in our case everything core is based on ethernet)

plett

mercutio: Cheap DSL modems/routers do everything in software. These days they are a single IC with combined CPU, ethernet and DSL, but there's still no offloading etc

toddf

mercutio: there are larger mtus, they're called jumbograms, and if all os's behaved sanely, you'd set max mtu of your hardware, and 'discover' (path mtu) the max mtu available per remote host, end of story
mercutio: IPv6 is pleanty easy, I've been doing it for 10+ years

mercutio

toddf: well lots of dsl has mtu < 1500
mss clamping kind of helps
toddf: but it's not really serious yet

plett

mercutio: PPPoE has a default of 1492, unless you have modern enough kit to support RFC4638

toddf

discovering max mtu is the key to anything greather than and less than standard mtu size

mercutio

plett: even in pppoa 1492 is pretty common
ob
on
and then there's ipsec etc
mpls
people running mpls on 1500 byte networks
etc

toddf

mercutio: you can say its not serious, but I use it daily for 90% of my traffic, so however you define serious is up to you

mercutio

toddf: 90%?!
what do you do over ipv6?

plett

mercutio: Really? My only experience with DSL is in .uk , but here all PPPoA is clean 1500

mercutio

plett: here pppoa is common

toddf

mercutio: everything. dns64 / nat64 / even tunnel afs over v6 back to my fileservers, smtp, www, dns, imap, ping, ... etc etc

mercutio

but the telecoms provider was routing over pppoe afterwards
you'd think they'd just raise the mtu on the ethernet segments
but like when i look at traffic on the net in general

bob^^

that's not particularly straightforward

mercutio

lots of people have mtus of 160 etc

bob^^

you'd have to ensure that everyone you connected to ran the same jumboframe size (again, assuming ethernet)
and that all your kit supported it (not all kit supports jumbo by a long way)

mercutio

bob: yeah a bit doesn't
maybe it's hopeless
but it seems weird to have 10 gigabit ethernet etc around, and 1500 byte mtus
and even 100 mbit ethernet could handle bigger mtus

[01:50]

bob^^

increasing mtu would probably be many times more difficult than trying to implement v6 end-to-end :)

mercutio

most gigabit stuff handles jumboframes

bob^^

yup you can do jumbo on 100mbit on some kit (extreme networks kit has done jumbo for years)

plett

mercutio: Here, the telco is most often BT. They do PPPoA on the tails from the EU to the exchange, and then trunk it over PPPoE in their backhaul network. They use a 1600 byte MTU for that, which easily fits the 1500 MTU + PPPoE header

mercutio

plett: well yeh that's the sensible way :)
to my mind the biggest issue with adsl these days is the upload speed though
and annex-m isn't supported here

bob^^

that's a problem with more than just adsl

[01:52]

plett

mercutio: There are lots of other ways that DSL is deployed, and most of them are less sensible :)

[01:52]

mercutio

you can congest it really easily

[01:52]

bob^^

my line is annex m'd but i still only get 1.2mbit up

mercutio

bob: real
bob: i get 1.2 mbit up without annex m

bob^^

exactly
it's not as good as you'd think

mercutio

what do you get without annex m?

bob^^

i actually need to re-route some cables here, only recently moved in to this flat and the phone point is miles away from the modem (no power near the phone point)
just under 1mbit

plett

mercutio: bob^^ said he is on Be at home. They don't use PPP at all. The ethernet coming out of the DSL modem goes straight onto your LAN, and the default gateway for your desktop machine is on the other end of the cable in the exchange.

mercutio

bob: i have the same problem
so i'm using extension cable

bob^^

indeed plett

mercutio

it kills 1mbit off my down sync rate
plett: oh weird

bob^^

Be has been pretty good for me so far - we use them sometimes (buying through Cerberus) for backup links in work

mercutio

so it's like bridged plett?
like cable etc usually is

bob^^

i did actually consider going with AA plett :)

plett

bob^^: Good good :)

bob^^

for the amount my line is used it was a little pricey though :(
(bandwidth hungry housemate0

mercutio

bob: you "needed" it though?

bob^^

[01:56]

mercutio

oh it's used a lot you mean?
i thoughtyou meant it was hardly used

[01:56]

bob^^

oh no, my broadband is pretty heavily used
i use a lot of upload (i back everything up to a colo box at work, etc)

[01:56]

plett

mercutio: I don't know much about how cable is set up. I didn't think it bridged the EU's LAN out to the cable head-end, at least not here in .uk

mercutio

plett: here they used to have one huge big arp domain

bob^^

i used to have cable in my old flat

mercutio

enough to overload most routers
well most of the shit routers that people tend to use
the ones that top out < 30 mbit
there's no cable reselling here
but ther eis for dsl
so cable is expensive
but better technology
ilke i think they upgraded to docsis 3

bob^^

cable here is priced similarly to dsl on average but we only have one cable provider and no resellers

[01:58]

mercutio

i don't know why there's so many people keen on ftth
when docsis 3 is good
and has existing cable
cheaper etc

bob^^

not much of the UK has cable

mercutio

bob: why are you on dsl then?
ahh ok

bob^^

there's cable in the town i live in
but not down my street

mercutio

when i had a little look on the web at cable in UK it looked good
there was virginmedia?

bob^^

that's always the problem with cable

mercutio

and like 50 mbit
calbe

bob^^

yeah, that's it
yup

plett

mercutio: What makes you think cable is a better technology?

bob^^

it's a good service actually - i used to have the 20mbit cable product, worked great

mercutio

plett: then what?

plett

I assumed you meant better than DSL

mercutio

oh cable is more reliable than dsl
like
most people have old shitty wiring
line faults etc are common
dsl routers are usuaally shit

bob^^

cable has those issues too tbh

plett

Ahh. Okay

mercutio

and break reasonably often
yeah it doesn't seem to be as often
and it can support higher bandwidth

bob^^

twice i had to have engineers out to 'fix' the coax between my house and the street cab

mercutio

bob: oh real?
i've had cable twice
err three times
four times?
shit

bob^^

but in 6 years total of DSL, had an engineer out once and he had to replace the line... because..........

mercutio

i've moved around a lot

bob^^

(And this is a great story)

plett

bob^^: To be fair, no copper in a cable network is going to be much older than 1960. I've seen phone lines that must be 100+ years old :)

mercutio

anyway, the only problems were with the isp doing transparent proxying
and with the aforemented arp domain issues

bob^^

there was a fracture somewhere in my line - on hot days the cable expanded and for some reason the fracture 'fractured more' and i lost sync

mercutio

whereas i've had dsl in multiple places too

bob^^

so during the summer there were afternoons where i'd get no service :)

mercutio

and had problems with drop outs line noise, problems when it rains etc etc

bob^^

plett: very true - and cable won't have the MK-style alumninium lines either ;)
ripping off the bell wire here can be a big improvement

mercutio

and docsis 3 can do 100mbit+

bob^^

ftth can do anything at all though

mercutio

ftth is expensive though

plett

bob^^: Ironically, it's the older phone lines that are more reliable for DSL - over the years as copper prices have increased, the wires have got thinner and thinner :)

bob^^

fttc i agree though i don't really see the point - surely easier to concentrate on ftth

mercutio

it costs a lot of money to run the fibre etc
so if ther'es already cable

bob^^

yeah plett, very true!

mercutio

it seems pointless to run fibre

toddf

i could get 50mbit down 25mbit up with docsis 3 today. I just don't want to pay $384/mo for it.

bob^^

some of our customers are on 50mbit down/50mbit up

mercutio

here they're doing vdsl
which uhh

bob^^

...but they're delivered over straight ethernet so that's pretty easy and cheap to do :)

mercutio

hasn't ahppened properly yet

plett

mercutio: DOCSIS 3 can do 100Mb, until a second person in the same broadcast domain (typically several thousand houses) wants to use it at the same time. At that point you have to share your 100Mb :)

bob^^

yeah, our FTTC is vdsl for the last mile

mercutio

and there were plans for fibre i think, but people are concentrated on available bandwidth rather than performance/reliability/latency/international transit etc etc
plett: it does over 100Mb total though doesn't it?
cable here was 15mbit
it was always pretty good for those speeds nationally
international it was fucked
especially if used web
because it hit a transparent proxy with small window sizes
which tended to get evening peformance degredation etc etc
leading to the "bittorrent is fast but web is slow" dilemma.
which also happens on congested networks without shaping/qos
so peopla re like - can pull line rate with bittorrent - it must be the remote servers.
is transparent proxying used in the UK?

plett

Depends on the ISP
In our case, we don't do any proxying, filtering or shaping. IP packets in == IP packets out

[02:07]

mercutio

i reckon it actually makes sense for international stuff

bob^^

it used to happen on cable here mercutio, but i think they've (mostly?) stopped now
plett: we're the same
much easier and fairer imho

plett

Indeed

mercutio

fairer?

bob^^

you pay an ISP to transit packets from A to B
if they interfere with the packets in-flight that doesn't seem very fair

mercutio

hmm
what do you think about explicit proxies?

[02:09]

bob^^

i don't see the point these days
ihmo, there is no need for proxying today

[02:09]

mercutio

because cdns are used more?

[02:09]

bob^^

because transit/peering are so cheap and content is normally local through a CDN

mercutio

heh
transit is expensive here

the things that really eat bandwidth aren't cachable anyway... eg youtube

mercutio

i'm in new zealand

bob^^

it's cheaper to just buy more connectivity than to build a proxy cluster
ahh, that would be an issue then :)

mercutio

lt: google provide caches

bob^^

actually that's true, they do indeed

mercutio

bob: i think there can be higher performance, when it's done proeprly.

bob^^

google will happily drop a cache node in to your network if you meet some criteria and don't mind giving them half a rack and some power

mercutio

yaeh it's some amount of sustained traffic, depending on your country

bob^^

i disagree, i'm really not a fan of proxying at all

mercutio

lowest in south america i seem to recall
highest in US

well they brand it as a cache... but isn't it really just a cdn node?

mercutio

LT: it's a cache
it forwards along to the closest peer

http://ggcadmin.google.com/ggc

bob^^

mercutio

unless it's already downloaded it before then sends it direct to user

blurry.... a cache that only works for google stuff, is kinda different to a traditional cache

bob^^

it's a smart idea

I don't see it's much different from an akamai box

mercutio

LT: it's pretty similar?

bob^^

yeah, it's not really

plett

It's more of a dynamic CDN

mercutio

oh
it's the same as akamai
just for different content

bob^^

however - if google+ catches on, it might be good for users and for ISPs

mercutio

it really depends if you have peering to a google node directly or not
whether it's worthwhile

bob^^

yeah

mercutio

ilke don't google peer over linx for you guys?

yeah. it's sensible enough... but I got the impression you were talking about sticking all http through a proxy, which is a slightly different beast

plett

We already peer with Google at LINX and LoNAP, so already have zero bandwidth costs for traffic to them

bob^^

hehe
i can't remember if we peer with google or not
we peer with a GGC on MaNAP
(or whatever it's called today)

mercutio

they have an open policy don't they?

plett

bob^^: Edge-IX, I think

bob^^

yes, we peer with google on linx now too
so yeah, our traffic to google is free too
that's the one, Edge-IX :)

mercutio

that said
if you were starting to congest your peering link

plett

And, for UK networks, Google server content from their Ireland datacentre, so it's relatively low latency too

mercutio

you could get google cache

bob^^

mercutio: you'd just get a private interconnect

mercutio

bob: oh true
that's another way to go
it'd be nice if google was in nz :)

[02:16]

bob^^

they must have a presence there? or in australia?

[02:16]

mercutio

australia
nz<-> australia connectivity isn't amazingly cheap
it's the same monopolistic cable that runs to US
just different segment on it
hmm, it is interesting to see different peoples opinions
i've been working on an explicit proxy mesh system to accelerate web browsing
by routing to a proxy near the end destination
and keeping persistent connections open to the proxies
reduces latency etc etc

[02:16]

plett

In the case of NZ, international traffic is always going to be expensive and high latency, just because of geography and the speed of light. The only way round that is to either serve content from local servers, or do caching

[02:19]

mercutio

plett: yeah - but - i've found that NZ<->UK is extra shit
it goes via the US

[02:19]

plett

mercutio: It mostly goes via USA?
Yeah

mercutio

and so it's like 260 msec minimum
but
web sites won't send you more than like 4k of data in one round-trip-time
so it's like .. 4k.. 8k. . 16k..
etc etc
assuming no packet loss

plett

The other route would be via Asia, and taking an over-land route to europe

mercutio

but on top of that in my testing, it seems some uk sites are slow etc too
plett: asia routing is /messy/

plett

Indeed

mercutio

plett: that's the way planes fly though
so sometime in the distant future it may work that way

plett

I'm not surprised that the BGP hop count is lower for traffic via USA than via Asia

mercutio

in my testing, i've found that guardian.co.uk is faster on average than bbc.co.uk
but then i've tried curl frm a uk host to bbc.co.uk
and i find weird 200 msec delays etc
seemingly randomly

bob^^

strange

mercutio

even with a 2msec ping or something
oh is that not normal?

DDevine

plett: There is a lot of countries in APAC... lots of hops.

plett

mercutio: I've not seen that here

mercutio

plett: things don't go in a direct line
oh, i only have one uk host
so maybe it's that host
but latency doesn't seem to spike
time curl --compressed http://www.bbc.co.uk/> /dev/null
like what's that say for you?

plett

real 0m0.083s
user 0m0.004s
sys 0m0.000s

[02:23]

mercutio

oh that's fast
right now i got 1 second, 113 msec, 130 msec, 60 msec, 131 msec, 130 msec
from nz it's way worse though

[02:23]

plett

That's from my desktop in the office, which is gig-e or higher all the way to the bbc

[02:24]

mercutio

1.981, 1.920
1981 msec that is
for what, 25k of data
then you have all the images etc etc

[02:24]

plett

From my DSL at home:
real 0m0.179s
user 0m0.008s
sys 0m0.008s

[02:25]

bob^^

0.016u 0.008s 0:00.18 5.5%288+1668k 0+0io 1pf+0w
(from work)

[02:25]

mercutio

from my proxy is 990 msec, 726 msec
i think bbc has low ttl
on dns

bob^^

from home dsl:
real 0m0.315s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.020s

mercutio

hmm
315 msec is ok

bob^^

(i'm using my connection atm to watch f1 free practise over iplayer too!)

mercutio

2 seconds isn't :)
wow your guys times look diff to me
curl --compressed http://www.bbc.co.uk/ > /dev/null 0.01s user 0.00s system 7% cpu 0.130 total
like mine just shows on one line
i suppose that's bash

[02:27]

bob^^

my colo is freebsd and my desktop at home is ubuntu
probably just differences in 'time'

[02:28]

plett

Differences in the time command, I would expect. My examples were both Ubuntu

mercutio

hmm i get the same on linux and openbsd

bob^^

this was freebsd: 0.016u 0.008s 0:00.18 5.5%288+1668k 0+0io 1pf+0w

mercutio

linux being ubuntu
it must be the shell i think
i'm using zsh
yeh freebsd is hard to read

bob^^

csh on freebsd, bash on ubuntu
not if you know what you're looking at hehe

mercutio

yeh i rekcon it's the shell

bob^^

bob^^ loves freebsd

mercutio

heh i usd freebsd 10 years ago
for a bit
then i ran into probelms with it and switched to openbsd

bob^^

oh, time -p on freebsd should give a POSIX comliant output

mercutio

as a desktop
etc etc
i went to freebsd cos i thought it was meant to make a better desktop or something

bob^^

nah, no way

mercutio

but i actually found openbsd worked better as a desktop even
i shifted cos freebsd corrupted data on me though

bob^^

it's not designed for desktop at all - it's usable, but far from ideal if you want multimedia
yeah, it didn't
that'll have been hardware
:)

[02:31]

mercutio

mm
it was like a k6-2 or somtehing
i think it's cos i was using ata66
and it had some timing problem or something
but seriously openbsd was a lot simpler than freebsd
like i was meant to update freebsd with cvsup
and openbsd was cvs

[02:31]

bob^^

openbsd and freebsd are pretty similar from a config point of view

mercutio

and updating openbsd proved much simpler

bob^^

freebsd is cvs too - cvsup just makes it easier

mercutio

and like i had to setup networking or something

bob^^

(plus there's freebsd-update now!)

mercutio

and like manpages on openbsd were MUCH better

bob^^

yeah, freebsd won't hold your hand

mercutio

i found freebsd way more complicated
openbed had /etc/rc.conf
etc
and you could read the files

bob^^

so does freebsd :/

mercutio

and they made sense
then freebsd seemed to do similar things
but have like 3x as much stuff

bob^^

mercutio

but yeah, i've been meaning to try freebsd again now

plett

freebsd-update? Does that mean you can finally do binary updates?

mercutio

that i'm more used to it

bob^^

yeah plett

mercutio

usd to these things

bob^^

freebsd's had that for a while now

mercutio

but freebsd wouldn't run in virtualbox

bob^^

virtualbox had some issues with freebsd but i think they're sorted now

[02:34]

mercutio

hmm i think i was trying 8.2?
it was quite recently
it may have been a beta
hmm
maybe i should dl again now
i have vmware on this machien aynway
i should try netbsd out again too

[02:34]

bob^^

ah, i think it was virtualbox that was fixed

mercutio

netbsd confused me a bit 10 years ago i remember

bob^^

yeah, netbsd is not particularly obvious

mercutio

but vmware will work out of the box?
i was suprrised that openbsd was obvious tbh

bob^^

yeah - though there were issues with vmware and timing on freebsd

mercutio

i like didn't want to try it at first because it was designed towards security

bob^^

no idea if those are fixed, i never actually had them but i know people who did

mercutio

and i wanted speed
but i actually foudn openbsd faster than freebsd
for simple things like loadign xterms
bringing up man pages etc
not exactly heavy usage

bob^^

you could tweak freebsd if you had the patience
but in general that isn't needed

mercutio

now if xterms come up slowly there must be some kind of hardware problems

bob^^

or a scheduling issue if the box is doing other stuff too

mercutio

oh or linux with it's screwed up hard-disk stuff now days

bob^^

or that :)
linux always feels 'laggy' to me compared to freebsd

mercutio

have you used linux recently?

bob^^

yeah, i use ubuntu on all my desktops

mercutio

i've used it on more than one machine

bob^^

but i don't use it on servers

mercutio

and you extract a huge tarball
or mocve lots of files or aynthing
on a desktop
and it'll drag like hell

bob^^

this ubuntu box has an ssd so i don't really notice disk access now hehe

mercutio

like i don't know how they let that happen?
ah this box has ssd too

bob^^

<3 ssd

mercutio

yeh ssd is ok
i dunno i also have 16 gig ram now
i just upgraded
it's crepey in a way

bob^^

this desktop only has 2gb, i REALLY need more

mercutio

i got so used to things going really slowly all the time
with linux?

bob^^

yeah

mercutio

i used linux ona laptop with 2gb fo ra while
recently

bob^^

it's not bad, it just sometimes feels like it could use a bit more

mercutio

it had dual boot windows 7
seriosuly windows 7 was better on 2gb ram than linux by far

bob^^

i've got two spare slots and ram is cheap for another 2gb so i'll order it when i get paid

mercutio

like it'd keep going into swap hell
ddr3?

bob^^

i'm also keen to stop this box swapping given it's swap is on ssd
nah, ddr2 i think - this thing is a bit on the old side :)

mercutio

ahh yip
that's why i upgraded

bob^^

amd x2 5600+

mercutio

cos ddr3 ram is way cheaper

bob^^

yeah

mercutio

i tried just jumpign frmo 4 gig to 6 gig

bob^^

i want to upgrade before ddr2 goes up too much more

mercutio

and then i tried using visual studio
i dunno how anyone copes with visual studio
it's so resource hungry
why not just get new mbd/cpu?
you know you can get really cheap sandybridge cpus
like there's ones even cheaper than i3
dual core

bob^^

just don't need the extra performance tbh
this thing will do me another couple of years at least

mercutio

hmm
lower power use

bob^^

most of my work i do on my laptop which has 4gb of ram anyway

mercutio

oh yip

bob^^

and it's all brand new (5 months old or sth) so it's alright for performance :)
i just want to buy an ssd for it nowt oo

[02:42]

mercutio

yaeh
it gets like that doesn't it
you use non ssd computers
and you're like how do they cope
and then you realise you got an ssd 6 months ago
and had coped for years

[02:42]

bob^^

hehe yeah

[02:42]

mercutio

ahh shit
4 gig?
i don't know what freebsd file i want

bob^^

yeah

mercutio

oh 4gig iso
for freebsd i meant

bob^^

sec
nah - get the mini iso

mercutio

what's pc98?

bob^^

it'll download anything else you want during install, saves wasting bandwidth

mercutio

is that like win98?
ahh cool

bob^^

nah, it was a pc standard from 1998
no one does it anymore

mercutio

i386-bootonly?
except freebsd?

bob^^

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_System_Design_Guide
unless you're running on 64 bit hardware, yup

mercutio

is 64 bit or 32 bit better for vmware?
it's i5-2500k

bob^^

32 bits for vmware i suspect
not honestly sure - i don't virtualise much tbh :/

mercutio

so should do either
i386 is probably smaller
leaner
wtf
can't find the dl link
oh there
http://torrents.freebsd.org:8080/stats.html?info_hash=e86c8124f8c942a3b3bff101b97d908bf26c5b73
i see freebsd is staying professional looking

[02:45]

bob^^

freebsd is pretty professional, it's used by a lot of large corporations

[02:46]

mercutio

real?

bob^^

oh yeah

mercutio

i thought freebsd had kind of died for some reason

bob^^

yahoo use it for example
ahh everyone says that on slashdot, it's not true at all

mercutio

heh i remember people used to say freebsd was using for lots of porn sites
as examples of "heavy traffic web sites"
nah this isn't about slashdot
it's more i just never hear about anyone using freebsd

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2011/07/08/most-reliable-hosting-company-sites-in-june-2011.html

bob^^

mercutio

i don't hear of much openbsd or opensolaris eitther

bob^^

check out the top 10 most reliable hosts

mercutio

using both openbsd and opensolaris at work
(and linux)
wow
how did windows get on that list?

bob^^

hehe no idea

mercutio

i've actually never heard of any of those providers

[02:49]

cool it's installing

[02:55]

bob^^

they're all pretty big

[02:56]

mercutio

yeh looked at top 40 and had heard of more of them
maybe just my luck

[02:57]

got it installed it didn't even setup ssh hmm

[03:09]

bob^^

you missed a step during install then
because one of the questions is 'do you want to enable ssh login' towards the end
:)

[03:10]

mercutio

oh
the installer screwed up
because i went to some options page
then i tried to eit
then somehow it trieed to isntall on top itself so i did exit
found it though

[03:11]

bob^^

easy to enable after though
add sshd_enable="YES" to /etc/rc.conf
then /etc/rc.d/sshd start
it'll generate keys and fire it up

[03:12]

mercutio

yeh
but now it won't let me ssh in
do you need to create a non-root user?

[03:12]

bob^^

are you trying as root?
ys
only linux is stupid enough to let you ssh as root by default ;)
you can always edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config to allow root login if you're feeling brave

[03:12]

mercutio

i don't think that's stupid

bob^^

or it's a local box or whatever
well what's one username that exists on all unix-like systems?
root
that's a pretty easy start for an attacker

mercutio

i can't su either
gah
so i need to add to wheel?

bob^^

if you prevent logins on root then they also have to find the usernaem, which complicates things a lot
yeah
you need to be in wheel to su
most people will install sudo as soon as they're installed
then you don't need to be in wheel

mercutio

how do i install sudo?
is there pkg_add
?
# pkg_add sudo
pkg_add: can't stat package file 'sudo'
hmm
i suppose it needs to know where it is

[03:14]

bob^^

pkg_add -r sudo
will fetch it remotely

[03:14]

mercutio

ahh ocol
ok not too bad

[03:14]

bob^^

or you can use ports (portsnap fetch extract && cd /usr/ports/security/sudo && make install clean) or something

mercutio

yeh it said ports tree was over 400 megs

bob^^

(you only need the portsnap fetch extract if you don't already have a ports tree :)
yeah, it's big, but VERY well worth having

mercutio

i dunno
you can always download original source tarballs
i installed kernel source

bob^^

sticking with ports is a smarter move

mercutio

but that was all

bob^^

meh, you won't really need kernel source

mercutio

gah
it keeps going to ftp.freebsd.org

bob^^

you can override that, sec
PACKAGEROOT iirc
ah, yeah: http://www.rainingpackets.com/pkg_add-specifying-a-mirror-server/

mercutio

no export command?

bob^^

depends on your shell
setenv if you're still in csh
chsh -s <newshell> if you want to change

mercutio

# pkg_add -r zsh

Fetching ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-8.2-release/Lates t/zsh.tbz... Done.

Fetching ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-8.2-release/All/libiconv-1.13.1_1.tbz... Done.
Updating /etc/shells
# zsh
zsh: Command not found.

bob^^

rehash

mercutio

what's with that?

bob^^

wait are you still running sh?

mercutio

oh shit
wow
no idea
i have zsh now
# zsh
zsh: Command not found.
# rehash
# zsh
[Fri 11/07/22 22:19 NZST][pts/0][i386/freebsd8.0/8.2-RELEASE][4.3.10]
<root@:~>

bob^^

csh
csh needs a rehash to reload paths
now do
which zsh
and chsh -s /path/to/zsh
however
*however*

mercutio

cool
got it changed

bob^^

do not do that for root

mercutio

chsh -s zsh rowrked

bob^^

leave root on csh or sh

mercutio

why not?

bob^^

because you may note that zsh has probably gone into /usr/local/bin
and not /bin

mercutio

yeh it has
so copy it over?

bob^^

as a result, if you end up needing to rescue, you may not be able to mount /usr/local

mercutio

i'd rather have a shell that "export" works in
yeh it's just a test system

bob^^

no don't copy it over, just don't use root

mercutio

but maybe can find static compile of zsh

bob^^

create yourself a user that has sudo
:/
that's nasty

mercutio

mm
i hate prefixed sudo over everything
i reckon sudo is less ecure

bob^^

the chance of you needing a recovery shell are minimal, but on a production box it's a really smart idae

mercutio

then just using root
that's a dirty linux hack

bob^^

bob^^ shrugs
i find sudo useful when i don't trust people
it can be locked down

mercutio

hmm

bob^^

giving someone root on the other hand cannot

mercutio

i dunno i'd rather not give someone a shell i don't turst :)

bob^^

well of course :)

plett

sudo is less secure in that it's just the normal user's password which has to be leaked/stolen in order for an attacker to get root access, rather than both the user and the root password

mercutio

i suppsoe there is that

bob^^

but sometimes you have no choice
as long as sudo is locked down, it's handy

mercutio

plett: yeh

bob^^

and passwords? keys ;)

mercutio

and also it encourages going frmo normal user to root
so if someone hacks into a normal user account they can get root
and when it's a box you don't use as a desktop or anything

plett

But if you have to give someone root access, doing it via sudo allows you to lock it down greatly, and get a log of each time it's used

bob^^

exactly

mercutio

you may as well just ssh in as root
and not as root

nesta

I agree that sudo is insecure but I have been reliably informed that it can be locked down pretty tight

mercutio

depending on what you're running

bob^^

sudo has its uses
i don't believe in using it all the time (like, say, ubuntu tries to insist on)
that's pointless

mercutio

now i can set this packageroot i suppose

nesta

I have witnessed peoples servers getting 'rooted' purely from sudo.. but then again those people were re-using passwords from public shell boxes on their own private server
go figure :)

bob^^

ugh :)
it's amazing what goes on really

nesta

indeed

mercutio

option is invoked. An example setting would be "ftp://ftp3.FreeBSD.org".

plett

Personally I use sudo all the time on my personal boxes. I am the only user on the box, and my password is a secure one

mercutio

hmm
ok that's not so hard
now i need to find close mirror

bob^^

plett: i'm the same tbh
it's just me being lazy and not wanting to type two passwords too

plett

bob^^: You can set sudo up as NOPASSWD, so it just does it without prompting for your password, if you wish ;)

[03:24]

bob^^

that's how i have it :)
dirty, but i'm quite happy with it on my personal stuff with just me using it

[03:24]

mercutio

wtf
vim is installing ruby?
and x stuff
argh
tcl, ruby, hicolor-icon theme
python, perl

[03:26]

bob^^

vim-lite
is what you want

mercutio

bob^^

and this is why you want the ports tree

mercutio

i tried to google

bob^^

you can customise stuff before it installs then

nesta

use ports.

mercutio

SECURITY NOTE: The VIM software has had several remote vulnerabilities
discovered within VIM's modeline support. It allowed remote attackers to
execute arbitrary code as the user running VIM. All known problems
wow?!
y'know it seems pretty snappy
other than being a bit confusing
ok suppose should use ports tree

nesta

mercutio: it is very easy, just use this -> http://pastebin.com/XBCqFdWe ... save it as /etc/csup-ports.conf
then run

[03:31]

mercutio

i found a tarball

nesta

csup /etc/csup-ports.conf
nah just do this

mercutio

that's not cvsup is it?
i have bad memories of cvsup

nesta

no, it is csup
yeh forget cvsup
you don'tneed it
csup is in base
do what I said and it will download the ports tree painlessly
:)

mercutio

should i extra tarball first?
or not bother?

[03:33]

nesta

forget the tarball

[03:33]

bob^^

nesta: are you serious?!
portsnap
!!
portsnap fetch extract

mercutio

ok downloading

bob^^

job done
way quicker too

nesta

nesta shrugs
different strokes
:)

bob^^

hehe true enough :)

mercutio

i dunno i'm not really in a rush
i've got curl and vim
and ssh

bob^^

since portsnap arrived i haven't gone back, i love it :)

mercutio

what more could i need?

nesta

this is why *nix rocks
many different paths

bob^^

exactly
pick what you want and do it the way you like

mercutio

actually i wanted tmux
have you guys tried tmux?

bob^^

not personally but i've heard it's good
i still use screen

plett

mercutio: What makes it better than screen?

mercutio

plett: the code isn't dirty

bob^^

it's in base isn't it?

nesta

I still <3 screen

mercutio

it doesn't seem to be in freebsd base
it's in openbsd base

nesta

no bob^^ its not

bob^^

ah, that's right, it's openbsd that ships with it

nesta

mercutio: do you code?

bob^^

there was talk of putting it in freebsd on a mailing list a while back

mercutio

nesta a little

plett

I've not looked at the source for either, but screen works well enough for me

mercutio

i used to code
then i got slack
i was trying to do some modifcations to squid today
i hate squid's code
but like seriously, when code is disgusting it makes me not want to use the program

jlgaddis

tmux++
used screen for years, but haven't used it once since i first installed tmux

mercutio

actually some gnu code is pretty disgusting
jlg: ditto
i just used it in case my shells died normally with screen
but with tmux i find myselfa actually using multiple windows

jlgaddis

once i got my .tmux.conf how i wanted it, it just rocks

bob^^

i use it to run irssi
brb!

mercutio

i liek it how it updates the line at the bottom with what's running in the shell

jlgaddis

mercutio: yeah, makes it handy when you're waiting on something to finish
the visual notifications too

mercutio

i dunno it just seems like it did what screen set out to do but properly and nicely and cleanly
oh yeah

jlgaddis

jlgaddis nods

mercutio

like i always know hwen i have mail
cos it'll inverse the colours
years ago i used to be a text mode junky
and i had a computer without much resources

jlgaddis

i still am =)

mercutio

and i hated screen with a passion
but still used it because it was handy

jlgaddis

i spend probably 90% of my time staring at terminals

mercutio

but like you could seriously notice it slowing down and bloating up
back then i was like "why's curses so slow?"
i was like used to dos etc
where text was fast, then everything in text moed was slow
but some things way slowe than others
linux 2.1 sped up text mode a lot
jlg: oh i actualyl used to use text mode
not X
with terminals
then i shifted to ion
and X
but mostly so that i could use firefox occasionally
it wasn't firefox
netscape navigator
then mozilla
netscape navigator was really gay
motif is slow too

jlgaddis

yep, on my linux box at home i just use an 80x50 console. when i need a gui (for chrome or something), i fire up awesome.

mercutio

it looked better than tcl/tk

jlgaddis

i'm a total cli nerd

mercutio

jlg: ever heard of svgatextmode?

jlgaddis

yeah

mercutio

jlg: i rebound my keys
so i could have more virtual consoles
like 30 of them
and then i had single number pads keys to hop desktops
or alt-ctrl
modifieriers
to get 10 more on each
then like i hacked getty
to "autoload" programs
on various virtual desktops
virtual screens i should say
so like i booted my computer
and up would come 6 web browsing esesions
on like 78 9
4 5 6
where 4 5 6 were google
7 was like slashdot 8 was freshmeat, 9 was lwn or something
then 1 2 3
would start shells in download directory
then like alt-1 to 9 etc
would start in ~/src
etc etc etc
it works well
worked
in the end i had the getty so you pressed enter to start a shell
cos shells took up ram etc
and soemtiems i closed them
cos i had a puny machine
then i wrote my own irc client
cos epic/bitchx etc were memory hogs
and took up like 2 megs+
god
i started ranting there
2 megs memory now days is like nothing

jlgaddis

holy hell man, give your enter key a break! =)

[03:48]

nesta

hahah

[03:48]

jlgaddis

i gotta go into scrollback to read what you said while i was gone for a minute :P

[03:48]

mercutio

heh
i wonder what memory use is like these days
ben 21805 0.2 0.3 7896 2752 pts/9 S+ Jun19 102:30 epic4 mercutio irc.freenode.net
it didn't get much worse

[03:52]

jlgaddis

wow, epic4
i haven't seen that name in a long time

[03:54]

mercutio

linux bloated up from libc5 to glibc
hmm it's what i used before i wrote my own irc client, and what i went back to
it's ok, not wonderful, not terrible
i used irssi once a little bit, it actually seemed ok

[03:54]

jlgaddis

yeah, i moved from ircii to epic to irssi

[03:55]

mercutio

epic, mutt, and vim are probably the programs i've used the longest
i moved ircii, epic, fade, epic
my irc client was called fade
it was real simple

[03:55]

jlgaddis

heh, irssi, mutt, and vim are probably the three i use the most

[03:56]

mercutio

like 28k binary or something
used readline
and other than that just as basic as you can get pretty much
no dcc, etc etc
always logged to a file set on command line
set nick and server name like in epic
just on command line
but it managed to make my machien swap less
what made you move to irssi?

[03:56]

jlgaddis

nfi
it's been a long time ago

mercutio

i used it for a brief moment and it seemed to have more sensible keys i seem to recall
gah i'm going to try it now
brb

***

mercutio has quit IRC (Quit: oops)

jlgaddis

initially, i think it support for perl scripting