Monthly Archives: November 2008

Review: Silicon Mechanics

Hardware, Reviews

After some hilariously frightening reactions from Dell support to simple problems, and HP becoming aggressively competitive on price, we’ve been using HP servers for a few years now. The hardware is good, and the support, while reasonable, always… pauses… when I mention that we’re running Debian. I try not to let it slip if I don’t have to.

We put in some HP blades a couple of years ago, and I was annoyed to discover that they have discontinued that enclosure and all the blades in it. I decided this was a good time to look at their newer options, as well as at other companies.

Back in July, I had noticed a Silicon Mechanics booth at OSCon. I noticed their slogan “experts included.” That sounds great; we’ve got software experts here, but not hardware experts, and I’d enjoy dealing with a company that knows more about their hardware than I do. I went up to their booth and asked what they’d say about us running Debian on their hardware. “That would be just fine.” “So you’d fully support it when I’m running Debian?” “Sure.” “What about management software – do you have any of that which I’d find annoying to port to Debian?” “Our servers don’t need any management software other than what comes with your kernel.” Good answers.

So, when it came time for us to decide what to do about getting a new server in here, I figured I’d call up Silicon Mechanics and see what they’d recommend. They put me on a conference call with a sales rep and an IT engineer, and wound up recommending a 1U server for us to start with, and an iSCSI storage device to address some of the storage needs we have (both for that server and others). I had heard of iSCSI only vaguely, and asked how it worked, and what the performance would be like compared to our 2Gb FC SAN. I got back intelligent (and correct) answers.

They probably spent 2 hours with me on the phone before we placed an order. I was incredibly happy with their service, level of expertise, and helpfulness. They even did a webinar to demo the management interface on the storage unit for me.

Today, the 1U server arrived. I unboxed it and set it on my desk to configure. First item: set an IP address for the IPMI card. That’s the device that lets me connect to it over a web browser and interact with the console, power cycle it, etc. as if I was there. I set an IP, but somehow couldn’t seem to figure out the username and password for the web interface.

So I called Silicon Mechanics support at the number that was included on the fridge magnet (!) that came with the shipment. Phone rang once. Then a live, capable American answered. No menus, no fuss. I asked my question. He apologized, saying, “I should know that, but I’ll have to look it up… hold on just a bit.” I had my answer about 90 seconds later. He offered to send me the full docs for the IPMI card if I wanted as well.

So I’ve been very impressed with them so far. From what I’ve heard, their iSCSI enclosure ought to be quite something as well. They even helped us spec out a switch that supports trunking for use with it.

I’ll give them a “highly recommended”.

Looking back at WordPress

Software

I’ve hosted this blog on three different platforms: Drupal, WordPress, and at present, Serendipity.

Back in 2006, I rejected WordPress, noting that most of its plugins were incompatible with the current version, its main anti-spam software wasn’t Free, there was no central plugin directory. And, while WordPress supported PostgreSQL, many plugins didn’t.

Serendipity, at the time, had none of those problems.

However, I’ve been having other problems with Serendipity since then. People have repeatedly had trouble with captchas. The RSS feeds have long had subtle incompatibilities with certain aggregators, leading to duplicate posts.

I’m looking back at WordPress now. It looks like it is a lot more mature than it was 2.5 years ago. Perhaps it’s time to switch back.

I hope it will support PostgreSQL better now, but I note that its website seems to list MySQL only these days. Ah well, can’t have it all, I guess.

Search for Backup Tools

Software

Since the last time I went looking for backup software, I’ve still be using rdiff-backup.

It’s nice, except for one thing: it always keeps an uncompressed copy of your current state on the disk. This is becoming increasingly annoying.

I did some tests with dar and BackupPC, and both saved considerable disk space over rdiff-backup. The problem with dar, or compressed full/incrementals with tar, is that eventually you have to make a new full backup. You have to do that, *then* delete all your old fulls and incrementals, so there will be times when you have to store a full backup twice.

The hardlinking approach sounds good. It’s got a few problems, too. One is that it can lose metadata about, ironically enough, hard links. Another is that few of the hard linking programs offer a compressed on-disk format. Here’s what I’ve been looking at:

BackupPC

Nice on the service. I’m a bit annoyed that it’s web-driven rather than commandline-driven, but I can look past that. I can also look past that it won’t let me clamp down on ssh access as much as I’d like.

BackupPC writes metadata to disk alongside files, so it can restore hard links, symlinks, device entries, and the like. It also has the nice feature of being able to hard link identical files across machines, so if you’re backing up /usr on a bunch of machines and have the same files installed, you save space. Nice.

BackupPC also can compress the files on your disk. It uses pre-compression md5sums for identifying files to hard link, which is nice.

Here’s where I get nervous.

BackupPC doesn’t just use regular compression, from say gzip or bzip2. It uses its own low-level algorithm centered around the Perl deflate library. And it does it in a nonstandard way owing to a supposed memory issue with zlib. Why they don’t just pipe it through gzip or equivalent is beyond me.

This means that, first off, it’s using a nonstandard compression format, which makes me nervous to begin with. If that weren’t annoying enough, you have to install Perl plus a bunch of modules to extract the thing. This makes me nervous too.

Dirvish

Doesn’t support compression.

faubackup

Doesn’t support compression.

rdup

Supports compression and encryption. Does not preserve ownership of things unless the destination filesystem does (meaning you must run as root to store your backups.)

Killer lack of feature: it does not preserve knowledge about what was hardlinked on the source system, so when you restore your backup, all hardlinks are lost. Epic fail.

rsnapshot

Doesn’t support compression.

StoreBackup

Does support compression, appears to restore metadata in a sane way. Supports backing up to a different machine on the LAN, but only if you set up NFS. Looks inappropriate for doing backups over VPN. Comprehensive, though confusing, manual. Looks like an oddball design with an oddball manual.

So, any suggestions?

Wow

Politics

People often talk about “memorable moments” — times where pretty much everybody in the country remembers where they were at that exact time.

There are probably only two of those moments I can remember: the 1989 earthquake during the World Series and the time 9/11 happened. My car was in for service that day, and I was sitting in the lobby of the mechanics watching it on TV.

So now I have a third: watching Barack Obama win the presidency.

We were installing some new blinds in the kitchen while listening to the coverage on NPR, periodically going over to the office to watch the TV coverage on the computer. (Our TV is upstairs right now, so that was more convenient.)

A few minutes before the election was called, I remember Brian Williams saying something like “We’re going to go to local stations now, but you better not walk away. We’ll have some amazing news at the top of the hour.”

We watched that announcement, then saw McCain’s speech, and finally Obama’s speech (missed the first minute or two of it actually). What an amazing evening.

Then seeing the stories of people celebrating all around the country and around the world: the impromptu party in front of the White House Tuesday night, the small gathering at the Lincoln Memorial Wednesday morning, the Obama parties all around the world. And we watched it on TV in our house while Jacob slept. I feel like I missed out somehow.

Why I Hope

Politics

And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright, tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

For that is the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected.

— Barack Obama, Nov. 4, 2008

What magazine to subscribe to?

General

A few years ago, I — yes — subscribed to a paper magazine (US News). I didn’t continue my subscription because I stopped reading it. I stopped reading it because, frankly, there wasn’t that much worth reading a week after I heard it on NPR.

I find I spend entirely too much time reading at a computer and far too little time reading elsewhere. I want to subscribe to a magazine that will actually be interesting. Thought-provoking. Challenging, even.

So here’s what I’m considering, just looking at their websites:

The New Yorker

Seems to have articles with a lot of depth, some interesting fiction in each issue. I guess I’d call it literary. I like what they have to say and the intelligence behind it.

It seems I’ve got to love it for its use of diaeresis marks in print.

The others I’m looking at include The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and The Nation. Of these, The Nation perhaps looks the most interesting. But I’m leaning towards The New Yorker right now.

Suggestions?

Politics and the Church

Politics,

My church is one in which politics are checked at the door. Some church members wear their politics on their yard, or on their blog — and just about every opinion is represented in the church. But you rarely hear politics mentioned in church. When it is mentioned, it’s issue-oriented rather than candidate-oriented or policy-oriented — we’ll hear updates on efforts to create a peace tax fund, for instance.

But today, hearing about politics is just about unavoidable.

The relationship between Christianity and government has been uneasy and troubled all the way back to the religion’s founding. Many Christians, and I count myself in this, believe that our first loyalty is to Jesus, and on those grounds, refuse to say the pledge of allegiance. What, we wonder, would our word be worth if we were forced to disobey our government because of a law that was unjust or immoral? How could we even say the words “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all” when those words were written at a time when the KKK was active, lynchings were common, and are said today at a time when people treat Muslims and immigrants with modern disdain?

In short, we believe we are called to be citizens of a different kingdom first.

So, today, our pastor deliberately picked a difficult scripture passage for us: Romans 13:1-7, which reads, in part:

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities. . . The authorities that exist have been established by God. . . Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. . . Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience.

What an extraordinary set of statements. This was written during the time of the Roman Empire, which could hardly be said to have been a just and benign government. It’s hard for me to imagine the Roman Legion being established by God.

In more modern times, it would seem to denounce the American revolution as a rebellion against authority and therefore a rebellion against God. It would also seem to denounce the protests that we see all over the world — striking workers in France, human rights seekers in Burma, war protesters in the United States. Would it even have condemned the protests in the 1960s over civil rights in this country, or the protests against war today?

One commentator notes that “Paul is not stating that this will always be true but is describing the proper, ideal function of rulers. When civil rulers overstep their proper function, the Christian is to obey God rather than human authorities” — a theme Paul mentioned more than once in Acts.

What relevance does this have for us today? It seems that we are to help our rulers act in a just way, even if we disagree with them — no matter who wins the election. It is also a reminder that a superficial reading of the Bible, taken out of context and without a deep understanding to understand the author’s point, can potentially lead to very strange conclusions.

The American National Council of Churches has issued a non-partisan voting guide, which we found in our bulletin today. It is an interesting read, and probably not what you think; it begins with, “War is contrary to the will of God.” Thought-provoking stuff.

I find it interesting that there are a lot of people out there that say that religion is responsible for a lot of ill in this country, then proceed to hold pretty much the same opinions I do for pretty much the same reasons. I just point out that the Bible is deeper than intolerance and submission.