1/4     I want to test how my servers behave during a disk failure and
        a RAID reconstruction so I want to simulate a hardware failure.
        How can I do this in Linux without having to physically pull
        a drive? These disks are behind a RAID card and run Linux. -ausman
        \_ According to the Linux RAID wiki, you might be able to use mdadm
           to do this with something like the following:
	...

3/24    Soda is not allowed to connect to agae for Usenet. Which server
        should we use?
        \_ The campus no longer runs a Usenet server.  For class newsgroups,
           use news.csua (aka <DEAD>news.berkeley.edu<DEAD>); for others, there's a good
           list of public servers at http://newzbot.com.  --mconst
	...

12/7    How many TCP retransmits are too many? Here is what I get:
            3594143433 segments received
            3760174421 segments send out
            3801829561 segments retransmited
        \_ rephrase. you can never have too much money. or too little.
           what is, is.
	...

7/27    I have an actual technical question here. My MySQL DBA tells me
        that I can't expect a MySQL port to be able to run effectively
        on more than a two CPU box, he says that the extra CPUs will
        sit there unused. Is this true? I have a bunch of new quad core
        servers that I would like to use as Database machines. -ausman
   \_ It's not that simple.  If you stress test your new fancy multi core
	...

7/2     Is imaps working?  What are the hostnames of the "incoming and
        outgoing mail servers" for CSUA email, and what kind of options
        should one set?
        I also noticed that we seem
        \_ Setup yer .forward or .procmailrc for now. I'm at a loss, too.
        \_ <DEAD>mail.csua.berkeley.edu<DEAD>. Using SSH (on default port 993) like before.
	...

12/31   SOMEONE PLEASE FIX KEG!  Why does it keep crashing?
        \_ It's hard to tell. The risk of crashing seems to increase with
           disk activity, or so it seems, but debugging the kernel doesn't
           seem to yield much info. Email root for detailed info; I don't
           have a deep understanding of the problem --t
           \_ How about a backup LDAP server? I don't need files as much
	...

12/18   Campus USENET service will be terminated on 12/31.
        http://ls.berkeley.edu/mail/micronet/2008/1608.html
        \_ I emailed RobR to tell him. -ausman
        \_ The CSUA is considering asking campus to allow us to run NNTP for
           ucb.class.*, as bSpace sucks major major ass. Thoughts? --t
           \_ That's noble, but maybe the effort would be better spent
	...

12/15   ausman, maybe this can help form your views on net neutrality:
        http://lessig.org/blog/2008/12/the_madeup_dramas_of_the_wall.html
        if you're bored, skip down to the iFilm example.
        \_ jim: consider the case of a private electrical utility:
           do you believe in "current neurality"? i agree if say GOOG
           were to put in a giant server complex creating a sudden local
	...

12/4    A question to you old crufy alumni: So lately we've suggested
        VMs, and been asked why it's necessary. We've suggested top-of-the-line
        hardware and been told we don't need that much power. So I'd like to
        ask -- what exactly do you think the CSUA is supposed to _be_?
        \_ Noone said VMs weren't needed.  They suggested you use the
        \_ No one said VMs weren't needed.  They suggested you use the
	...

12/5    What would you guys think of this?
        TYAN Tank barebone
        http://tyan.com/product_barebones_detail.aspx?pid=353
        2x Intel Quad Xeon E5420
        http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117147
        16GB ram
	...

12/5    I suggest CSUA buy a Mac and run MacOS on it. Maybe run Linux in
        a VM, too. I think students will get more bang for their buck
        trying to run services on MacOS than with "Just Another Linux Box".
        \_ On what basis? We do have an AppleTV, which we've yet to hack
           so it runs full OS X, but as a OS X user myself, I don't see the
           OS being useful for useful services except if we get OS X server
	...

9/13    Thanks to Jordan, our disk server is no longer virtualized. Our long
        nightmare of poor IO performance should hopefully be over. Prepare for
        another long nightmare of poor hardware reliability!
        ...
        Just kidding! (I hope)
        In any case, this means that cooler was taken out back and shot, and
	...

2/14    You sure soda isn't running windows in disguise?  It would explain the
        uptimes.
        \_ hardly, My winbox stays up longer.
        \_ Nobody cares about uptime anymore brother, that's what web2.0 has
           taught us.  Everything is "stateless".
           \_ You;d think gamers would care more about uptime.
	...

7/22    Playing with dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/<disk> on linux and bsd:
        2 questions, on linux when <disk>==hda it always gives me this off
        by one report i.e. Records out == records in-1 and says there is an
        error. Has anyone else seen this?  Second, when trying to repeat this
        on bsd, <disk>==rwd0 now, to my surprise, using the install disk and
        selecting (S)hell, when I try to dd a 40 gig disk it says "409 records
	...

10/27   I just read an article that Facebook had moved their database
        to all SSD to speed throughput, but now I can't find it. Has
        anyone else seen this? Any experience with doing this? -ausman
        \_ I hope you're not running mission critical data:
           http://ask.slashdot.org/story/09/10/27/1559248/Reliability-of-PC-Flash-SSDs?from=rss
        \_ Do you have any idea how much storage space is used by Facebook,
	...

8/3     VMWare + Windows XP + Validation question. I need to test stuff with
        Service Pack 3 installed. I have a valid key that I own (yeah yeah I
        actually *bought* a copy, please don't flame me for supporting evil
        M$). Is it possible to register the key once, and then duplicate it
        for testing purposes?  Will Windows or Microsoft detect copies and
        disable the rest the copies?
	...

7/28    Does it make sense to defragment disks on VMWare? My 80GB disk
        on VMWare isn't really using 80GB, it just uses what it needs.
        Will defragment do anything to it?
        \_ If you want to speed up disk operation in your VM, it's best to
           defragment the disks in your VM, then defragment the disk on your
           host machine where the VM files are.
	...

7/24    Firefox 3.5.1 on MacOS is a piece of crap. It crashes ALL THE TIME.
        It has crashed 3 or 4 times on me in the last hour, and not on
        the same pages either. The new Yahoo! home page also sucks ass.
        \_ os x keeps trashing my raid disk: '11 hours to rebuild. have fun
           with the kernel IO subsystem running like shit until then".
           Worthless piece of shit.
	...

7/17    -rw-r--r--@
        What does the "at sign" mean? This is on Mac OS. VMWare disk file.
        \_ The file has metadata attributes
           \_ How do I add/delete attributes to files? What about
              -rw-r--r--+ <-- what is the "+" sign? Also how do you make
              tar preserve these attributes?
	...