Wednesday, March 30, 2011

todo: try Mongo GridFS

I've been thinking about traditional file systems mkfs'd on block devices vs distributed file systems and I would like to set some time aside to play with Mongo GridFS. It looks like given a sharded mongo installation you can use the API to save a large file and it will split it across multiple servers. This looks like a nice way to store a large data set across multiple machines as opposed to having a large file system attached to one server which requires an occasional file system check.

persistent connections within cisco firewall

Our cisco firewall tears down old connections so I sometimes modify the kernel to send keep alives on tcp connections:
[root@server ~]# tail -2 /etc/sysctl.conf
# keep persistent connection (so firewall doesn't tear down)
net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time = 900
[root@server ~]#

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

prgmr.com

I like the approach that prgmr.com offers to being a hosting company. Also, their prices seem very reasonable.

Disclaimer: I am not yet a customer. All I can say so far is that this looks like the kind of hosting company that I'd like for my personal server.

Monday, March 28, 2011

at

Good old at is handy:
me@box:~> at now + 15 minutes
at> echo -e "remember that at(1) is your friend" | mail -s "at: `hostname`" me@tld.com
at> ^D
job 2 at Mon Mar 28 15:11:00 2011
me@box:~>

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Pylons

I am experimenting with pylons. Fedora made this easy:
yum install python-sqlalchemy python-pylons
paster create -t pylons HelloWorld
cd HelloWorld
paster serve --reload development.ini
firefox4 http://127.0.0.1:5000
and then I was able to directly go to the examples in Chapter 3 of Definitive Guide to Pylons.

firefox4

I am now using fedora's firefox4 package as my main browser with the following plugins:
  • firebug
  • https-everywhere
  • tree style tab
  • vimperator
  • web developer

Friday, March 25, 2011

Professional IT Community Conference

I'll be attending the Professional IT Community Sysadmin Conference

PICC '11