It should never, ever be enabled by a default install on a server. Ever. Under any circumstances. For any reason. I’d even argue it should never be installed by default for any reason on a server. Just fixed another NetworkManager-caused problem (TM). Modifying /etc/resolv.conf on a server after I changed the NICs as indicated. I mean … seriously folks?

I won’t mention vendor by name here. Needless to say, I am unhappy with the failure rate on their NICs. We had a number of units we bought for internal use as well as for customer use. The NICs would throw various driver exceptions, and kernel panic the machines. It was doing this to our central server this past week, while I had been lighting up kvm’s on an app server, specifically kernel panicking under even moderate load.

Config now comes from some nice and simple json, and it handles multiple machines with aplomb. See the git repository for the latest. The config file example is in there, and you can replicate the n01-ipmi section with more nodes trivially. Coming next is getting config from a trusted web server, along with registering the client to the trusted web server. This prevents things like passwords from showing up in the clear, though you can always create a lower privileged user to access the console for monitoring.

at the $day job. See it here.

So there you are, sitting at your desk trying to do your work. A call comes in, you pick it up. Me: $day_job, Landman speaking Them: I would like to speak to (garbled) about (garbled) meta-Me: [start 15 second BS detector clock filter] Me: I’m sorry, I can’t hear you … who are you and what is this call about? Them: (barely audible) I am XYZ PDQ representing ABC DEF, and how is your day going?

Suffice it to say that much hot air was blown over the sequester in the media. Really, there was much tearing of clothes over this. Much righteous indignation that someone in government, somewhere, would have to make (not so very hard) decisions about where to trim budgets. We needed this, as the US government is so completely broken as to no be able to propose a reasonable budget, pass a reasonable budget, nor listen to and work with ideas from other portions of the legislative branch which want to work on reasonable budgets.

I had pointed out recently that large platform as a service, or pretty much any *aaS type model, where you present your value atop someone elses platform, leveraging their technologies, is ripe for having the *aaS provider decide they want to move into your space. Once you’ve done the hard work of proving there is a space in the first place. Well, the Register has an article on this now. I gave a number of specific examples, and pointed out that Amazon isn’t the first to do this, Microsoft had previously done this to the level of an art form.

… and anyone promising you one is selling you something. This is true everywhere, though especially so in massively overhyped markets. There are no secret incantations that will tease actionable insights out of gargantuan bolus of data. Yet, from all the “company X now has a hyper optimized, purple colored Hadoop distro, with a pony” announcements, one might think that it was a panacea … a panopticon with infinite ability to extract the most profound and profitable nuggets from mountains of steaming piles of bits.

Its a Dilbert cartoon, located here. Originally seen on Mu Sigma blog.

Her old Dell Inspiron died, again. First it was a motherboard. Then a hard disk. And a cracked bezel. Now it looks like its a motherboard again. The power supply bits are, IMO, completely unforgivable. Until Dell lets us use a replacement supply that is not manufactured by Dell, we won’t be buying Dell laptops. I suspect this will be a while. But this laptop, and my wife’s version, have lots of problems.