/dev/chat

Faheem Mitha

6:45 AM

@cas Ok, that's what I thought.

Any idea how stable a VPN is over international distances?

cas

it's as stable as the underlying network connections. or less so, depending on the quality of the VPN operator.

Faheem Mitha

@cas So about the same as ssh, then? Have you used openvpn?

I'm not sure why this amazing exhibition of cluelessness got 5 votes...

5

Q: Why are programs not distributed in compiled format?

But they give instructions like cd downloaded_program ./configure make install This creates the ELF that is needed, and probably some .so files. Why not put those inside a zip file for download, like with windows apps? Is there any reason why they need to be compiled by the user?

cas

7:05 AM

that's got to be one of the dumbest, most ignorant, just plain wrong questions i've seen. HTF did it get 6 upvotes?

Faheem Mitha

7:42 AM

Ah yes, 6 upvotes, 1 downvote.

I think I'll post a question about whether I should use Linux at all. Since the GPL is viral, and therefore evil. Or something.

Faheem Mitha

8:18 AM

Question: is there some easy way for figuring out how old my hard drives are?

cas

9:28 AM

@FaheemMitha smartctl can tell you the total power-on hours, which is probably more important than the manufacture date. smartctl can also tell you other details. also, hdparm -i can give you info about your drive

mikeserv

10:19 AM

@FaheemMitha - i haven't even been here very long, but in a year or two i've noticed a marked upturn in activity which i only guess is due to increased overall popularity of this website. i think possibly the cumulative knowledgebase here may have negligibly increased as a result, but i have a strong conviction that the average such is tolling the lower end of the bell curve.

people vote for what they understand, and, (as i consider it) inexplicably, the less they understand, the more they vote!

3

Faheem Mitha

@cas Ok, thank you.

@mikeserv It's true that there is more activity here than there used to be. Whether the overall clue level has diminished is harder to measure.

@cas What would that particular field be called?

mikeserv

@FaheemMitha - do smartctl -a.

and see the wikipedia article for all of the attribute codes:

S.M.A.R.T.

S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology; often written as SMART) is a monitoring system included in computer hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs) that detects and reports on various indicators of drive reliability, with the intent of enabling the anticipation of hardware failures. When S.M.A.R.T. data indicates a possible imminent drive failure, software running on the host system may notify the user so stored data can be copied to another storage device, preventing data loss, and the failing drive can be replaced. == BackgroundEdit == Hard disk failures...

Faheem Mitha

1:00 PM

@mikeserv Ok. Thank you.

Ok, for one drive I get:

9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   044   044   000    Old_age   Always       -       40933

It is actually called "Power_On_Hours"

9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   044   044   000    Old_age   Always       -       40985

That's another one. Those are the two newer drives. I have two older drives.

Huh, that seems to be over 4 1/2 years. I didn't think it was that much.

My computer's basically on 24/7/365, so that should be a close approximation to age. Am I interpreting this correctly?

Also, I don't understand why these two values are different. These drives were paired together. They were put in the same computer at the same time.

9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   027   027   000    Old_age   Always       -       64024
9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   050   050   000    Old_age   Always       -       43904

Those are the final two drives.

cas

@FaheemMitha - yes, interpreting correctly. on some (most? all?) drives, though, that value is 16-bit and wraps around at 65536.

Faheem Mitha

Again, these were originally paired, so I'm not sure why those values are so different. Though I've been using them differently recently.

@cas I see. So at 65537 it goes back to 0 hours?

Yikes, that third drives lists as over 7 years.

cas

yep. no idea why the 2 drives are different. anyway bedtime for me. 'night.

Faheem Mitha

I do know when those were put in, roughly. Early 2007. They're the original drives of that machine.

@cas Have a good night. Thanks for the assistance.

cas

prob time to think about replacing them then

night.

deostroll

1:32 PM

what does the first two lines in this script say? gist.github.com/isaacs/…

Why the 2nd line?

Braiam

it sources the .bashrc to have the user environment

deostroll

we are appending a line to .bashrc ... isn't an export usually enough ... so that this script can be more reusable...

Braiam

normally, depends of what you want to do

if npm is trying to imitate bash configuration, then sourcing the bashrc file makes sense

deostroll

thats just an install scriptfor node...

define imitate

terdon

1:49 PM

@deostroll The first line adds ~/local/bin to the beginning of the $PATH. It then sources .bashrc to be sure of having the entire $PATH and of having the binaries in ~/local.bin` first.

And, presumably, just in case there's anything else there that should be taken into consideration.

deostroll

@terdon yeah but isn't the export to PATH usually enough in this case?

terdon

@deostroll No, because the $PATH available to a script is not the same as the one set in .bashrc. A better question is why they're setting PATH in .bashrc in the first place, but they are, so they do.

Scripts are run in a special shell that doesn't read the normal initialization files.

See man bash:

       When  bash  is  started  non-interactively,  to run a shell script, for
       example, it looks for the variable BASH_ENV in the environment, expands
       its  value if it appears there, and uses the expanded value as the name
       of a file to read and execute.  Bash behaves as if the  following  com‐
       mand were executed:
              if [ -n "$BASH_ENV" ]; then . "$BASH_ENV"; fi
       but  the value of the PATH variable is not used to search for the file‐
       name.

So by exporting PATH in the script, you only get the PATH from the script itself, none of the modifications a user might have made in their ~/.bashrc. For some reason, the author is ignoring ~/.profile.

deostroll

so technically I'd only need lines 6-9

the others are some sort of a one-time setup

Faheem Mitha

2:26 PM

@cas Probably. Good night.

terdon

2:52 PM

@deostroll No, they would be needed to make sure that the script has the same environment (or almost) as the user has when running an interactive shell. I don't know if that's necessary here or not though.

mikeserv

4:32 PM

@FaheemMitha - i dunno if you should really worry about it terribly. maybe get one extra disk and do a backup to it occasionally, or buy a slice of tarsnap to put the important stuff until they die.

or else buy the drives now, but don't install them.

let them die, you know? don't kill them prematurely.

Faheem Mitha

@mikeserv Worry about what? The drives?

mikeserv

hard disks are pretty lazy, anyway. your computer might be on all of the time, but that doesn't mean your disks are spinning.

yeah.

Faheem Mitha

I wasn't particularly worrying. Just wondering how old they were.

mikeserv

oh. well, now you know.

Faheem Mitha

Well, approximately. They do feel a bit old, though. They creak and groan a lot. And my I/O seems to be going through the floor. And they seem to be writing constantly. Not sure why.

Unfortunately, SSDs are pretty expensive here still. Otherwise I'd consider buying some.

@mikeserv tarsnap seems like an interesting option. Do you use it?

$0.25 / GB-month) is kind of pricey, though.

mikeserv

4:45 PM

yes. i mean, not consistently. i just have some stuff there - and have had for a long time. when i need it, i can call upon it.

well, maybe. he charges in picodollars - you don't have to buy the gb.

put important stuff there - stuff that should keep, small things. just use google drive for your photos or whatever.

Faheem Mitha

@mikeserv So, this is a fairly serious form of backup, then.

mikeserv

yeah, it's pretty secure. the maintainer awards bounties - and publishes the awards - to any one who might find a bug of any kind in his stream encryption.

its simple, but sturdy.

the entire server is open-source.

Faheem Mitha

@mikeserv Ok. And it takes regular snapshots automatically?

Interesting. Something to think about.

mikeserv

it can do. it's just tar from you to CA.

Faheem Mitha

The stuff I really care about, I tend to put in version control repositories. But not everything in the checkout is under version control...

Plus of course there is email, which isn't really very version control friendly, but is of course very important.

Hmm, maybe I could try it for my email to start with...

All my email together is a bit under 2.5 GB.

And probably compressible.

Does anyone else here have any experience with it?

@mikeserv How similar is this to something like rdiff-backup?

Tarsnap review - blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/2100

mikeserv

5:20 PM

@FaheemMitha - i dunno - what's rdiff-backup? it sounds like a differential backup of some kind. and so i guess it is similar in that way...? the review is good. if you want to know more about it though, just go to the website. the maintainer keeps a blog about it, and publishes all bounties he pays for bug reports.

Faheem Mitha

@mikeserv Yes, I was looking at the web site.

mikeserv

i mean, hes just got a lot of online storage, a sort-of famously well-written stream algorithm, and extremely well-documented and open access to knowledge about what is done with your data and how.

the site owner cant get your data without your key either. in your blog review the reviewer is right to warn you to keep that key safe.

Fabby

@FaheemMitha One favour??? :P

Faheem Mitha

5:37 PM

@Fabby Ah, favor.

Hi Fabby. How are you?

Fabby

I mean: One apple is good too, but how're you going to get it to me?

My teleporter is off-line, so...

I'm OK...

Faheem Mitha

@mikeserv Yes, rdiff-backupis an incremental backup thing. I used it around 10 years ago (how time flies) and was favorably impresded. Unfortunately the maintainers have all gone away, and it's now unmaintained.

@mikeserv Yes, I see.

@mikeserv Security is certainly an important aspect of data storage/backup.

I might give it a try for my email. On a trial basis.

mikeserv

yes

and honesty

Faheem Mitha

Well, that was certainly a brisk compile. I just ran ./configure and make on tarsnap.

@derobert Thoughts about tarsnap? (assuming you have heard of it.)

Hmm, he gives $5 for patches. Interesting.

Faheem Mitha

6:07 PM