/dev/chat - 2016-08-27

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2:01 AM

Bad Stephen, Bad Stephen.. stop taunting OOP users

2:41 AM

Funny... I see some people answer questions and I think "wow, huh, I'd like to hire these people at the place I work".... but we don't have any 1-1 chat option. Of course I'm current between roles, so can't recommend anyone, but I still see people and think "yes, I want to work with these people. They get it!"

I'm an old school fart. I've been doing this stuff for almost 30 years. And when I see someone who gets it I want to hire them. "Smart people are smart"

(FWIW @julie-pelletier was the latest that causes this mini-rant)

6 hours later…

8:47 AM

@StephenHarris Who or what is OOP?

@StephenHarris You can create private chat rooms. Or exchange email addresses and continue the conversation off-line.

3 hours later…

11:23 AM

Though I'd strongly suggest commenting or otherwise interacting first, unless it's someone you already know. (Like, say, someone from the Monastery...).

I find it fairly creepy when people invite me to chat rooms without any previous interaction.

11:59 AM

Hi @JennyD.

OOP is Object Oriented Programming.

And, no, I wouldn't use a private chat room. As Jenny mentions, that can come over as "far too creepy".

12:21 PM

@StephenHarris I don't think that it would be a problem. Maybe if you were a new user with no rep.

@StephenHarris Right, that. And where you were you taunting this hapless users?

@JennyD Monastery?

@StephenHarris Nice rep increase. From nothing to 12K+ in what looks like a couple of months. Congrats.

1

A: Why can't unix be object oriented or at least organized

The Unix semantic was designed 30+ years ago and is based around 'everything is a file'. This kinda got lost a little (eg Berkeley sockets) but it still mostly holds. The consequences of this are "here's a resource, use it how you like". It's a lot more flexible than an object oriented view o...

Scary Devil Monastry aka alt.sysadmin,recovery - old school "social media" from before when the term was coined ;-)

@StephenHarris Huh. I'd forgotten the alt hierarchy existed. It's been so long since I've heard about it. Are you a Usenet veteran?

Apparently yes.

Yeah, since around 1988/1989 or so.

@StephenHarris Consider an entry to the (sadly neglected) "getting to know you" thread.

I see your blog has a section. You could just cut and paste + maybe a little adjustment. But from the looks of it, not much.

Oh, you're English?

Oxford? Which college?

Ok, now that 12K makes more sense.

St Peter's College.

12:33 PM

I think you're one of the those people that Dilbert cartoon refers to.

@StephenHarris Ok. Trinity, Cambridge here.

What, the one at the top of my "about me" page? :-)

Ah, "that place in the Fens"...

@StephenHarris Oh, I didn't see that there. Heh.

Yes, that one.

I know it mostly from Stephenson's mention of it in "In the Beginning was the Command Line".

@StephenHarris Yes, your competition on Boat Day. Or whatever they call it.

"Get yourself a better computer". LOL.

Though you've forgotten to get yourself a beard.

The closest I ever came to rowing in an 8's was the "inebri-8" hic

I had a beard and a pony tail in the past :-)

@StephenHarris But no longer? :-)

Girl friend doesn't like beards so I got rid of it; she kept the pony tail as a keep sake when I got it cut off.

12:38 PM

Anyway, do you want a link to the "getting to know you thread"? Or are you one of those strong silent types?

@StephenHarris I see.

I used my uber-Google skills (that's how I got 12K ahem) and found it :-)

@StephenHarris Congratulations.

Dunno; almost tempted to say "my computer is older than some of you folk!" :-)

(It's 32 years old and still going strong)

Impressive resume. Do you know any Lisp?

@StephenHarris Sounds like a good line.

@StephenHarris What, seriously?

BBC Micro from 1984.

Don't know LISP, nah.

12:43 PM

Ok.

Actually, the kind of people we see around here with that kind of speed increase in rep are usually Debian Developers and suchlike.

sweh.spuddy.org/Beeb/growing.html

@StephenHarris Fancy. Does it run Linux?

What distribution do you use?

The Beeb? Heh, no. But it can be a terminal onto my CentOS server 'cos I've wired it into the serial port :-)

The server is CentOS; the desktop I'm currently using is Debian

The CentOS server is also my VM server, so I have a number of installs for playing around in (FreeBSD, Solaris 10, Solaris 11, Fedora, Kali, etc)

@StephenHarris Ok. So a foot in both worlds, then.

Any preferred distribution?

I first used Linux when it was a "root+boot" disk pair, and in 1993/4 built my own distribution for supertankers linuxjournal.com/article/1111 - then in the mid 90s I install RedHat 4 (pre RedHat Enterprise!) from InfoMagic CDs and pretty much stayed on that path.

12:49 PM

@StephenHarris Yes, I was just reading that interview.

So CentOS is my primary OS these days. Helped that my previous employer was a RHEL shop :-)

I don't think many people here have been doing it that long.

@StephenHarris Ok. More of us are on the Debian side, I think.

I think @cas has been doing it for a pretty long time too. Maybe you know him.

@StephenHarris Which is nearly 10 years longer than me. I think I got into Usenet in the mid 1990's.

@FaheemMitha Don't recognise the name

@StephenHarris Ok. He's one of our resident DDs.

12:53 PM

DD ?

Speaking of usenet, one of the ServerFault regulars used to work with Barry Bouwsma

@StephenHarris Debian Developer. See above.

Ah

The other visible one is @StephenKitt, who you've probably seen around.

There are a few other less active ones here.

1:20 PM

@JennyD I don't recognize the name.

@FaheemMitha Pretty much a Usenet legend

@JennyD Oh

2 hours later…

3:19 PM

umm since my question was put on hold due to being opionion based, i was like maybe ask the people in chat :
What would you guys recomend for a book about all Linux basics, I ve been working a lot on redhat derivations like fedora and centos and sometimes i don t get what s going on, So i thought i should have a better grasp of the subject.
I don t mind if it s like 1 k pages.
just let me hear your thoughts

@Ezwig There are lots of books. But looking at stuff online is also effective.

Depending where you are, you could try browsing in a bookstore.

I was going to suggest looking at the BSD unixes, but then I saw you only mentioned Linux...

But I'd say it depends on what it is you want to know and why, and how you learn most easily. For me, it'd work best to just install another variety and read manuals as needed. For others, a complete "learn all about X" book would be much better. Or a Coursera course, or something else.

I learned just by practice. Experiment, break things, fix them... "what happens when I do this... oh, interesting!"

Me too.

Heh, the books I read 30 years ago were mostly DOS based - eg pbs.twimg.com/media/Cc_t1ABWoAAW0HS.jpg:large

"Includes version 4"... heheheheh

3:38 PM

yeah actually that s how i learnt too for the past 6 months i just installed centos on my laptop and then fedora arm on my rpi and i was breaking and fixing stuff, i figured out that kind of learning process takes too long, The reason am going for a book is because it s mainly a condesed experience of the authors wich will allow you to aqcuire much more experience from someone elses trial and error

Many years ago, one of the books I had was "A Practical Guide to Linux". Also "Running Linux". Not sure how useful either of those books would be to someone.

@Ezwig You can look up a lot of stuff online. I'm not sure how much a book would get you.

Sobell's book is quite nice. But it was written in 1997, I think.

I got given a few old basic sysadmin books by some of the alt.fan.pratchett bofhs. They were very useful, since I basically got thrown in at the deep end on my first sysadmin job... It's one thing to be able to figure out how to do the things; i've always been good at that. But the Nemeth book and others helped me figure out which things to figure out how to do.

And "Running Linux" 5th Edn is 2006.

@FaheemMitha yeh am looking at it right now

@JennyD Yes, I have the Nemeth book too. Not used it, though.

3:40 PM

@JennyD The Coursera idea is a good one

@JennyD Nemeth == Linux Administration Handbook, right?

@StephenHarris I need to do something to get better at algorithms and data structures, and I can't seem to manage on my own. So I'm planning on some coursera one, after the current project gets finished.

@FaheemMitha Yep.

@FaheemMitha I still have it, for sentimental reasons

Shame about Evi Nemeth. An unusual end of a sysadmin. Lost at sea.

@JennyD You don't use it, then?

Ms. Nemeth sounds like she must have been quite a woman.

@FaheemMitha The one I have is more than 20 years old, and the stuff I do now isn't really sysadminning as such, so I don't need it much anymore. But it's useful to read through every now and then; getting reminded of the basics is good for you.

@JennyD Agreed on being reminded of the basics.

3:45 PM

@Ezwig what is it you're really wanting to learn? How to code? Or how to be an SA? Or how things work? Or...?

@StephenHarris am actually doing My memoire to aqcuire the embedded systems Engineering Diploma

@FaheemMitha One of the things I like about unix, as compared to Windows, is that a book that's 25 years old will still have a lot of useful information. One about windows would be pretty much useless.

and i feel so damn hungry for information

@JennyD I don't know enough about Windows to say, but I'll take your word for it.

i want to know all there is about compiling cross compiling make files

3:47 PM

And basic Unix hasn't changed much, that's true. For better or worse.

how the linker works

shell scripting

i also had to do networking

Tom Limoncelli's book "The Practice of System and Network Administration" is a good book to learn the "why's" and top level "how's" for running an environment. But it's not a deep dive on any specific topic.

For the sort of stuff you're asking... I don't know a good book. I just learned it over time.

yeh what am looking at right now is constructing a solid base so i can abord all the subjects later on

Do people talk about cross-compiling when writing for different Linuxes? I've only thought of it when working with different Unixes, e.g. BSD/Solaris/HPUX/Linux...

Different hardware platforms; eg compiling for ARM target on an Intel machine

3:50 PM

i think they do in new books

@Ezwig You might want to do a search through oreilly.com - they have a lot and most of it good.

@StephenHarris right

@JennyD are those free?

@Ezwig No. Some of them, maybe, or you could look at getting a Safari subscription which IIRC is cheap if you're a student.

I've never heard of the phrase "cross compile" for CentOS->Debian... but I guess it might be doable. I'd probably create a virtual machine and do it that way :-)

@Ezwig This stuff isn't rocket science. Mostly people learn by doing.

3:53 PM

cross compile CentOs Debia?

i thought that just works for diffrent cpu architectures

@StephenHarris Virtualbox is almost usable, as long as you're OK with fairly crappy network handling

@FaheemMitha am mostly looking to accelrate the process

@Ezwig Write your own Unix kernel? :-)

Actually, working on suitable free project would not be a bad way to learn stuff.

And free software projects are always looking for help.

writing my own unix kernel?

u did that?

@Ezwig That was a joke.

@Ezwig Nobody does that. Except crazy Finns, perhaps.

3:57 PM

i think there is no point at reinventing the wheel

but it might be intresting for educational purposes

@JennyD I use KVM on CentOS as my virtualisation solution.

last thing i tried and made me pumped up to learn more was trying to adjust a deb package to work on my fedora arm

i noticed i don t know how linking the binarys and packaging them works

@FaheemMitha Prentice_Hall_A_Practical_Guide_to_Linux_Commands_Editors_and_Shell_Programming_2nd
this is the one u told me about , right?

@Ezwig The Sobell book. Yes.

@FaheemMitha alright thank you i ll be reading this

You're welcome. Though there are lots of other books.

4:17 PM

@StephenHarris I run most of my VMs in VMWare on my macbook

My virtualization story from 2010->2012 :-) sweharris.org/tags/virtualization

@StephenHarris When we moved to the house a couple of years ago, we weren't able to get a good internet line. So instead of running all my servers at home, like before, I've moved them to VPSes. Thus, no actual virtualization work at home at all - the VMs I run are my lab environment.

The VM server was originally meant to be a lab setup, with a separate physical machine as my primary server. But one time I was travelling and managed to hard-crash that machine. Since I wasn't going to be back for 3 weeks I restored the backup to a VM (all from the BA airport lounge in Newark)... and then never moved it back :-)

I enjoy being able to carry a fairly complete lab environment in my backpack

I enjoy not carrying anything much at all :-) I try not to carry any bag! If I have to carry a laptop then I want a really light solution. Currently that's an 11" Chromebook. It's enough for Chrome and an ssh window :-)

1 hour later…

5:39 PM

@FaheemMitha - i can't remember exactly when i first started using linux. sometime in 91 or 92. i think i first downloaded some linux floppies (MCC distro) in ~ 91 when i was looking after a lab full of sun xterms at unimelb. toyed with that for a while, then switched to SLS.

I really started using linux seriously when I realised that PDUUCP for OS/2 would never work as well as uucp does in unix (at that time, you
considered yourself lucky if you could get even a uucp news+mail feed at home - you had to have good contacts. i was working at one of the first ISPs in au, using SCO Xenix. SLIP was new and unobtanium, and PPP didn't exist until 93 or 94). plus, linux let me run a few serial terminals around the house. multi-user mail/news on a home PC - amazing!

@cas SLS is what drove me to creating my own stuff (and what lead to me to being part of the Filesystem standards); it had both /bin/ls and /usr/bin/ls... and they were different versions! gibber

6:14 PM

Hi @cas. How are you?

@StephenHarris, meet @cas. He's a fellow veteran.

@cas meet @StephenHarris. Ditto.

@StephenHarris You're part of the Filesystem standards? What does that mean?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard - latest version is at refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/FHS_3.0/fhs-3.0.txt

I haven't been involved in it for a long time, but I was busy in the early days

6:44 PM

Oh, the FHS.

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