These Things Matter To Me

Right now I’m working on a project that involves FreeBSD, a UNIX flavor I’m not so familiar with. I’m finding many of my fave Linux commands… completely useless.

Let’s start with looking for memory usage. On Linux, I’d try the ol’:

# cat /proc/meminfo

On FreeBSD? Not so much. (note: there are some compatibility packages that can get you pretty close, but let’s assume we don’t have those, and we want to do it like the natives do it)

What about…. THIS!?!?

#sysctl -a | grep -i memory
Virtual Memory: (Total: 53359K, Active 12614616K)
Real Memory: (Total: 3993828K Active 3084828K)
Shared Virtual Memory: (Total: 228120K Active: 72076K)
Shared Real Memory: (Total: 107012K Active: 32160K)
Free Memory Pages: 265452K

Booyah!…
And that’s one way to check memory usage on FreeBSD.

Webinars about web-based sysadmin tool Webmin, (I have a love-late relationship with webmin, btw.)

Redhat Magazine article on understanding virtual memory.

Make for nonprogrammers (on Oreilly’s ONlamp site).

Tim Oreilly and Flickr’s Cal Henderson talk about how new kinds of web applications challenge traditional database design, at Oreilly’s MySQL user conference.

Even though we are like elite Navy Seals with highly specialized skills, as sysadmins, we often get called upon to help civilians with mortal tasks. Like troubleshooting Firefox. Sometimes people get too crazy with the Firefox extensions and themes, and wonder why everything looks funny. To separate what’s what, have them start Firefox up in “safe mode.”

Windows

Use the Mozilla Firefox (Safe Mode) … shortcut in the Mozilla Firefox program folder on the Windows Start Menu. If you have accidentally deleted this shortcut, you can access Safe Mode by going to “Start -> Run” and entering (using Firefox as an example):

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -safe-mode

Linux

On Linux, you can go to your Terminal and run:

/path/to/firefox/firefox -safe-mode

Mac OS X

On Mac OS X, it will be in:

/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -safe-mode

All via the Mozilla Zine SafeMode page.

TECHNORATI TAGS: firefox, browser, extensions, mozilla, sysadmin

In your home directory, .addressbook is the file that stores your nicknames (aliases) and distribution lists for pine.

~/.addressbook

The more you know!

TECHNORATI TAGS: aliases, sysadmin, mail, email, pine

Just Sayin.

I was innocently reading Newsforge, when this Flash-y ad started moving, and then I found out Tommy was into Windows.

TECHNORATI TAGS: sysadmin, humor, tommy, hilfiger, windows server, Microsoft

I talked about how Xensource announced that it will be able to “import” .vhd virtual machines (a Microsoft standard). But as somebody who’s made a lot of .vmdk virtual machines with VMware, I’m totally itching for VMware/ Xen to announce that Xen will be able to work with .vmdk machines, too. It’d be great to just throw a machine around to use with as many different virtualization packages as possible.

I’m really hoping an arrangement is in the works. Sure, they’re competitors, but so’s Microsoft, and they made the deal. VMware has pretty much said their .vmdk standard is available for anybody to use. One would think it’s all on Xen, at this point.

TECHNORATI TAGS: vmdk, VMware, virtualization, sysadmin, Xen, Xensource, standards, vhd, Microsoft

VMware totally revamps their virtual appliance directory, makes it sortable.

You can get Ubuntu certified.

A taggable/ tagged (duh) list of web 2.0 applications (subjective). But it’s great for when your friends are like “What was that link thing you showed me?”…

The Yahoo User Interface Library… free javascripts…

Documentation of Microsoft’s Mix06 conference: Videos, podcasts, blog… I talked about this earlier, this is the event where Tim O’reilly and Bill Gates shared the stage. But there’s lots of other interesting stuff there, too. This event was not just Microsoft stuff. Full sessions to come later.

TECHNORATI TAGS: vmdk, VMware, virtualization, sysadmin, Xen, Xensource, standards, vhd, Microsoft

Here’s a story about virtualization software, told mostly through links.

Xensource has licensed the Microsoft virtual machine format. Don’t flip out. This doesn’t mean that VHD, the Microsoft format will be the default format, just that some XenSource product, should it see the light of day, will be able to legally run the VHD format… once it’s released. Probably in the summer. (that’s me being snarky about how long Xen and XenSource are taking to go prime-time)

This has been referred to as a “deal” between the two companies, but I can’t find any reference to any money actually changing hands.

I don’t know if it was in direct response to this deal, but then VMware was all, “Fine, we’ll give away our virtual machine format, vmdk, with no license restriction.” That’s cool and all, but when you go to the VMware vmdk format site, it says, “if you want a spec, email us.” Just like Microsoft does.

Summary.
So the open source company will be able to run the licensed Microsoft format, the proprietary company is giving away their standard, the open source company’s most meaningful products still aren’t even really available for consumption, and the world’s biggest, most aggressive software company is kind of following and struggling to co-exist with both of them in their space.

And I guess I’m officially admitting that maybe virtualization is going to be something I talk about all the time on this blog.

TECHNORATI TAGS: vmdk, VMware, virtualization, sysadmin, Xen, Xensource, standards, vhd, Microsoft

Panic’s Cabel blogs, videos, and photographs his Mac OS X Bootcamp experience in his usual fun way.

Redhat Virtualization Center. Very Xen-centric. But it’s not called Redhat Xen Center, so that’s sayin’ something.

VMware can be picky about MAC addresses. Here’s how to generate a friendly one.

Should Fedora include Java, Flash, and mp3 codecs? Two opposing viewpoints. Apparently people have strong feelings on the subject

Microsoft’s Open Source Software Lab. Blogs from the lab.

headlines grab you

• Fact (every time you read “Fact,” you kinda have to imagine the Law&Order gavel-gong, warning, .wav file): The main Apache configuration file in Ubuntu 5.10’s (Breezy Badger) provided version of Apache/ httpd, is not httpd.conf, but /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
• Fact: There is a deprecated, but empty file, httpd.conf in /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
• Fact: Apache’s DocumentRoot, the default place where accessible content can be found, is at /var/www, a location not referenced at all in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
• Fact: There is no DocumentRoot mentioned anywhere in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
• Fact: /var/www is referenced in two configuration files: 1.) /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default, and 2.) /etc/apache2/sites-available/default. These files seem to have more a VirtualHost setup
• Once again, not knowing Debian is kinda hurting me. I’m on the case, and starting to read this helpful document that seems to be about Apache’s configuration in Debian (and Ubuntu).