The Comms Room

Also I get to learn ruby, hadoop and puppet all in one day

WesleyDavid

@JoelESalas For me, the heuristic has become "Who will pay more than $25 an hour and not haggle over invoices, or throw tantrums when I won't give out my personal cell number or work on weekends without pay."

And even then, it's been surprisingly dry.

@WesleyDavid Stay strong ;_;

WesleyDavid

I think the ultimate problem is that I'm an inch deep and a mile wide. No one really needs what I've got to offer. I'm not a hot shot at anything. I can work with anything, but not market myself for anything as a leader or great brain at it.

At least, that's what I'm thinking now - I dunno.

Most places I've interviewed at when I was doing the W2 hunt picked me apart for not having one speciality or another.

@WesleyDavid Specialize in DEVOPS

mossy

12:38 AM

Hey cat

what's everyone doing for building large numbers of trivial rpms (in house ones to distribute bash scripts, small c code projects etc). atm i'm using a bunch of cobbled bash scripts, but it seems.... icky. -- is there any well known tools that you can give a sources and rpmspec dir to and it'll chug off and come back with a bunch of rpms and srpms files ?

I'm a devopsapotamus

2

@voretaq7 heh

@RyanRies Do you actually know Mark Russonovichdfkjlsadfla or do you just tweet at him enough so that he replies to you?

I've tweeted at him a couple of times and never gotten a response

@WesleyDavid Dude, relocate

I know cats are desert animals, but still

12:54 AM

@mdmarra is right. never be scared to relocate. its good for you

@MDMarra I don't know him at all, I just have a man-crush on him

@MDMarra I've had a few short email conversations with him, that's about it

@RyanRies I feel the same way about John Carmack

@JoelESalas Yeah Carmack is pretty rad as well

Ugh whenever a story starts out with "I had an old Windows 2000 server running in a closet on a DSL line," my eyes instantly glaze over

ryan. that sounds alot like the place i used to work.

@RyanRies Was just about 3/4 through that then closed the tab.

1:05 AM

the place where the official upgrade route to solve the terrible wiring cabinet involved a pair of garden shears.

Jeff Ferland

We have a little script in our Makefile that checks to see if you have any syntax errors. I forget to run this before committing all the time. 31 lines of precommit hook later, that's just so much easier than remembering the obvious...

or putting in an alias. shrug

puppet precommit hook was best copy/paste i've done in ages.

1:27 AM

@MDMarra Also don't lose heart, he doesn't reply to half the shit I spam at him either

haha

I need to decide if I want to work for a VAR/consulting company or not

I feel like I get really bored with single environments

And working with @ewwhite lately makes me realize how totally fucked up a lot of places are...

mdmarra. if only you knew the half of it ;p

there's a certain sinking feeling when you start a job at those places and realise what your up against.

WesleyDavid

1:42 AM

@Sirex I relocated to Phoenix for health and so far it's been great. Just crappy jobs.

@MDMarra It's hard, hard work and you rarely ever get the time to park and finish a job right. All the things you do are slapped in and left with loose ends to keep project costs within budget.

i emmigrated recently. job market here is way smaller, but when you get one come up, noone goes for it. like literally noone.

@WesleyDavid We have some people coming in from a VAR to help set up VMWare SRM

They're going to spend about a month with us, do some knowledge transfer, and peace out

I'd like to do stuff like that

In fact, I should see if they're hiring

1:58 AM

"I have a datacenter in my basement, now what?"

I saw that

How do you get all of that equipment and have such a shit question

@Sirex What is your story? Where did you immigrate from and where are you now?

Ever hear of virtualization? It's pretty cool stuff. — Michael Hampton 7 secs ago

I've thought about it and I can't really decide which I would like more - some place where I can settle in and do things up "right," or a more consulting-like gig where I roam from issue to issue and just sort of set things back and track and then go on to the next engagement. I enjoy both of those things. It's so dependent on exactly what the project is.

@Sirex Also notice that if you want to get someone's attention, use an @ in front of their name and they'll get a notification

I think I get bored too easily to stay in one spot for too long

@RyanRies from uk, to nz. so from 62 million people, to 4 million.

2:06 AM

Which is a good thing about my current employer; they do a lot of different stuff so if you're fed up, you can just move to a different team within the same department

@Sirex Wow, yeah, I'm putting up a datacenter in London as we speak... NZ isn't on the radar though

@Sirex Closest I can do is Hong Kong :)

nz isn't on anyone's radar. aws moving into sydney was like christmas morning.

@MarkHenderson for the win.

still a bit far for some of our needs, but it beats using singapore, anyhow.

Yeah we've got our sights on AWS

They're leaders in Gartners magic quadrant right now... I wanna close that gap.

Garrett

Is this the general chat for stack exchange network?

2:12 AM

@Garrett It sure is

Garrett

Cool, the description just says what it isn't haha

@JoelESalas It is?

@Garrett I'm dicking with you. This is ServerFault chat. Did you ask a question on SF?

Garrett

Ah, many times, but not today

Damnit I'm lost again

How do I computer

2:13 AM

@RyanRies I accidentally the entire SE network, is this dangerous?

in Linux what is the procedure to hot unplug a drive

nothing seems to spell it out

or is just umount fine? I sware I saw a way to shut down the drive in /proc or something but hard to find docs

@sabgenton part of a raid set or what ?

i guess you can spin the drive down after unmounting, but i normally just pull the lever a bit to cut to power to the drive and leave it in situ for a few seconds to spin down, then yank it.

ymmv.

@Sirex I remember kernel.org or something saying pull data cable then pull power lol

I'm shure you way is a better if you don't know the drive is shutdown

depends. typically i'm dealing with sas drives and such in sleds and caddies rather than sata drives

no cables to pull

on the other hand. typically im yanking it cos the dirve is broken, so who cares ;-)

hmm

yeah I think kernel.org was talking sata

2:25 AM

prolly safe to do it in that order. my home machine has a sata drive that slams straight into the front of the case for backups, and so both leads disconnect together. - i dont think it really matters as long as the drive is unmounted.

A: How can I safely remove a SATA disk from a running system?

echo 1 > /sys/block/(whatever)/device/delete

yay

2

Naturally, you need to unmount any filesystems on the disk, and it'd be a good idea to deactivate any LVM groups (vgchange -an), and generally make sure nothing is using the disk for anything. Once you've done that, it should be safe to unplug. If you want to be extra cautious, do echo 1 > /...

ugh. hate it when this happens. you know there's a 'right' language to do the script in, but the language is bash.

I am amazed how hard that information was to find on the internet

every hotplug guide scream it

should*

@sabgenton You can press the up arrow to quick edit.

you know, that ability is properly not intuitive.

2:34 AM

@Sirex If you hover your post, the drop down on the left also offers edit/delete options.

yeah, that's not intuitive either ;p

The edit option is only available for a short period of time. 60? seconds. Like that pen?

should have a pen edit icon right side of the line.

i dunno ! i just know it sucks. ;-) </end of review>

@jscott no for some reason I can't I am a superuser and stackoverflowe not a serverfaulter maybe this is y

If you have the stomach/time for it, "most" of that sort of stuff is [ahem] documented on meta.stackoverflow.com.

@sabgenton The edit option is only available for a brief period after the post.

2:38 AM

wrong I will click it straight after >this post< and nothing will happen

(there wasn't even a drop down I did it like within 2 seconds

That's odd, I just went into a gaming chat room, which I've never been before, and was able to edit my post.

was it still .stackexchange?

hold on I will go troll someware to see if it works where a normally go

@sabgenton Yes. Aren't all the chat rooms under .stackexchange?

@jscott ok your right I think IE ten is srewin me up

opps I mean't chat.stackoverflow.com is a domain

IE 10 is screwed flash doesn't work for me properly either but fine in firefox

ewwhite

@MDMarra things are f-ed up, but it's not my fault

2:45 AM

Yes, just tested here... I have the default 101 rep on sf

in Windows 8 Developers on Stack Overflow Chat, 1 min ago, by jscott

Whoops, wrong channel. Sorry.

@sabgenton Weird. I don't use IE, so I can't be much help. I didn't even know chat required Flash either.

2:59 AM

@jscott I think flash is for browsers that don't have websockets

I don't have flash and I can chat just fine

its java, afaik

javascript, even. for the picky ;p

@Sirex Hardly being picky; java and javascript are alike in the same way as apples and crackwhores

@MarkHenderson What, they're both red and crispy?

@jscott Or green and sour

3:15 AM

@MarkHenderson I lol'd

Adrian

Evenin gents

Q: Web scraping with a simple http client? Is it possible?

3:46 AM

0

I've been performing successfully webscraping with python. However, I was thinking I want to scrap a large website for statistical data but I don't want to read the entire html page to get to the tags, is it possible to build a simple http client whose is going to filter the data received accordi...

http

Check out the original post on SO.

stackoverflow.com/posts/14249719/revisions

4:01 AM

@MichaelHampton There should be a filter that disallows you from posting a duplicate of the same question on a different site in the network. This is not an uncommon problem.

No, what we need is a filter that disallows stupid people from breathing.

@MichaelHampton Yeah, I'm sure that's a pretty quick Python script, I'll just whip that up for you...

Nick M.

4:25 AM

Am i the only person who isnt a big fan of ubuntu?

4:39 AM

@NickM. Hating Ubuntu is sort of a hobby in here

I still don't fully understand why

5:07 AM

I know why I don't like them.

I can't ignore them because they're possibly the only major distro that doesn't hobble themselves with an overzealous crusade for "freedom." So they're the only distro that actually works out of the box. But on the other side, they're centrally driven with little or no regard for community input, which leads to a frustrating slide away from what people want.

Case in point: Unity. Another case in point: "shopping lens"

I don't like any Linux. I don't discriminate against any one Distro.

OK

What about BSD makes such a big difference?

It's all POSIX....

Linux was written by some asshole from Finland. BSD was written by a bunch of stoners from California. See the difference?

^Yeah, that just about sums it up...

My biggest complaint is always organization. It seems every Linux Distro thinks they can reinvent the wheel better and usually end up something like

Sure it looks sleek as heck, then you try it out, and find out just how "fun" those new wheels are.

5:45 AM

I always wondered why there were so few *BSD "distributions". What are we down to now, three?

Depends on what you call a distribution.

FreeBSD is an OS, not a distribution.... pfSense, FreeNAS, and PC-BSD are distro derived from FreeBSD.

OK, I deserved that one.

NetBSD, OpenBSD, and DragonflyBSD are also OSes... Not sure if the last one still counts... You really need a minimal userbase otherwise everyone's personal repos could be considered another OS.

Q: What do different BSDs have in common?

18

... and what are the differences between them? I formulated my question like this to make it clear I'm not interested in a flamewar of opinions, rather in an objective comparison between the different flavors of BSD Unix. Ideally I could get feedback from users who have experience in all of them....

distribution-choice bsd

6:45 AM

@ChrisS Hm. I don't think that's a distinguishing characteristic. You end up with asshats on both sides of the fence.

And sometimes, if you're lucky, they're the same guy.

Theo de Raadt

Theo de Raadt (; ; born May 19, 1968 in Pretoria, South Africa) is a software engineer who lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He is the founder and leader of the OpenBSD and OpenSSH projects, and was a founding member of the NetBSD project. Childhood Theo de Raadt is the eldest of four children to a Dutch father, and a South African mother, with two sisters and a brother. Concern over the mandatory two-year armed forces conscription in South Africa led the family to emigrate to Calgary, Alberta, Canada in November 1977. In 1983 the largest recession in Canada since the Great Depression...

@tylerl Nice answer. :)

A: How does IPv6 subnetting work and how does it differ from IPv4 subnetting?

@MichaelHampton :)

Posted a lengthy answer to your canonical IPv6 Q, which is why I haven't been paying much attention for the last 2 hours.

1

IPv6 is 128 bits, so why is /64 the smallest recommended subnet for hosts? First of all, a little ASCII art from the RFCs to establish terminology: | n bits | m bits | 128-n-m bits | +------------------------+-----------+----------------------------+ | global ro...

Yeah, I saw that. I think you missed a point or two, though :)

@MichaelHampton Yeah... it's an absurdly long question. And many points were already covered very well by the other answer, so I didn't bother with all of them.

Guess I'll just come back when you're done editing. :)

7:00 AM

done. just saw one word i wanted to clarify

Ha. I asked for a /56 for my house. I got a /48. I've used maybe six subnets so far...

@MichaelHampton Whom did you ask?

SixXS. Still waiting for Comcrap to roll out IPv6 here...

though I think they're giving it to residential customers first, and business customers last. So who knows when I'll ever get it.

Worst part is I don't think the SMC piece of crap they give us business customers even supports IPv6 at all.

hm. I got a tunnel from HE many many years ago. Only started actually needed it about a year ago.

Wonder if Sixxs is faster...

Yeah, I think I got the sixxs tunnel back in 2006 or so. I chose it over HE because they easily punch through NAT, while HE not so much.

pauska

7:13 AM

g'day everyone

Ah. I found the autoconfiguration of ipv6 crazy-useful for communicating to VMs that would otherwise be behind NAT. Everything just sets itself up.

Oh yes, I'm already using IPv6 for that.

Once you understand how it all works and why, suddenly the world seems simpler.

I already have all my SNMP, puppet, nagios/zenoss stuff on IPv6 across 100% of my servers. It's a nice place to be. No more stupid proxy agents and port-forwarding hacks.

Agreed. But I'm in the same boat as you with Cox for my ISP. Bunch of monkeys.

7:18 AM

Oh, they'll do it eventually. I'm just afraid they'll replace my POS cable modem with something even worse.

@tylerl I find SixXS faster than HE here in the UK

(Hell, my puppet master is IPv6-only)

@MichaelHampton Seriously? Buy your own damn cable modem. You'll save money in the long term. I went with the Zoom DOCSIS 3 a couple of years ago. It's pretty rock-solid. WAAAY better than the Cisco or Motorola were.

amazon.com/Zoom-5341-DOCSIS-Cable-Modem/dp/B003VWXYUC

@tylerl Might have to do that. The cable modem that Comcast Business hands out is an utter piece of shit.

@Iain My HE tunnel terminates in LA. Pings around 30ms, I think. If Sixxs has a POP in Phoenix, it may be worth it.

@MichaelHampton Which one is that?

7:24 AM

@tylerl My SixXS and HE pops are both in London bit SixXS is somewhat faster

smc.com/…

@tylerl One of my sixxs subnets is on their phoenix PoP, just 2ms away from one of my clients. :)

@MichaelHampton At PhoenixNAP I assume? Or IO.

Yes, it's at Phoenix NAP

@MichaelHampton If you're having recurring trouble w/ it, get the Zoom modem. Just keep the recepit.

@MichaelHampton Really considering putting my backup servers there. The facility has more techno-eye-candy than any other I've toured.

It's a nice little place. I'm on their public VMware cloud

7:29 AM

The there network meet-me cage is behind bulletproof glass specifically so that you can look at it while you're touring the place. Kinda weird, kinda fun.

I hope to never find myself in Phoenix again, unless it's the dead of winter. Desert heat and I do not get along.

So my whois record says I've been watching the dancing turtle since 20061029. ... And I have a whois record.

pauska

@tylerl I worked for a docsis ISP once, every modem had to be whitelisted..

9:33 AM

hey @KennyRasschaert

Ooh you can upload an avatar directly to SE and select between it and gravatar

tombull89

@Iain well, that's new.

jesus this new search result page on MSO is awful

ewwhite

9:50 AM

@MichaelHampton Think I could get OpenNMS monitoring, etc. working to a bunch of client sites with IPv6?

A: Disable gravatar on Stack Overflow

@tombull89 new search is default everywhere

tombull89

22

We will be rolling out an alternative to Gravatar in the next couple of weeks. You'll be able to either use Gravatar or upload your own picture from your computer - or switch between the two whenever you like. This feature is now live: Please try it out and report any bugs you find.

Interesting - you can upload .gif files but it doesn't show in your profile the movement. The popup box where you can choose between images, however, does.