If you’ve spent any time around UNIX, you’ve no doubt learned to use and appreciate cron, the ubiquitous job scheduler that comes with almost every version of UNIX that exists. Cron is simple and easy to use, and most important, it just works. It sure beats having to remember to run your backups by hand, for example.

But cron does have its limits. Today’s enterprises are larger, more interdependent, and more interconnected than ever before, and cron just hasn’t kept up. These days, virtual servers can spring into existence on demand. There are accounting jobs that have to run after billing jobs have completed, but before the backups run.

Author : Sol Lederman

What Is a Container and How Are Containers Used? A starting point for an exploration of containers and how they’re used is this simple definition: a container is a packaging format for a unit of software that ships together.

A container is a format that encapsulates a set of software and its dependencies, the minimal set of runtime resources the software needs to do its function. A container is a form of virtualization that is similar to a virtual machine (VM) in some ways and different in others. VMs encapsulate functionality in the form of the application platform and its dependencies. The key difference between VMs and containers is that each VM has its own full-sized OS, while containers typically have a more minimal OS.

Author : Greg Bledsoe

“If you build it they will come.” Are freeways built to travel between existing communities, or do communities spring up around freeways? Is this a chicken-and-egg problem, or is there a complex interaction where such things shape each other?

The use of UNIX and Linux security tools raises similar questions. Do people work the way they do because of the tools they have, or do people have the tools they have because of the way they work?

Author: Kyle Rankin

This book explores system administrator fundamentals. These days, DevOps has made even the job title “system administrator” seem a bit archaic, much like the “systems analyst” title it replaced. These DevOps positions are rather different from typical sysadmin jobs in the past in that they have a much larger emphasis on software development far beyond basic shell scripting. As a result, they often are filled with people with software development backgrounds without much prior sys- admin experience. In the past, sysadmins would enter the role at a junior level and be mentored by a senior sysadmin on the team, but in many cases currently, companies go quite a while with cloud outsourcing before their first DevOps hire. As a result, DevOps engineers might be thrust into the role at a junior level with no mentor around apart from search engines and Stack Overflow posts. In this book, I expound on some of the lessons I’ve learned through the years that might be obvious to longtime sysadmins but may be news to someone just coming into this position.

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ZFS posts

use Tarsnap for my critical data. Case in point, I use it to backup my Bacula database dump. I use Bacula to backup my hosts. The database in question keeps track of what was backed up, from what host, the file size, checksum, where that backup is now, and many other items. Losing this data is annoying but not a disaster. It can be recreated from the backup volumes, but that is time consuming. As it is, the file is dumped daily, and rsynced to multiple locations.

I also backup that database daily via tarsnap. I’ve been doing this since at least 2015-10-09.

The uncompressed dump of this PostgreSQL database is now about 117G.

Mostly because they don't know

When I give talks I am frequently asked a variation of the following question: how do we stop consumption and development to protect the planet?

My answer always draws blank faces. Stopping growth is not the solution to addressing climate change, I tell concerned environmentalists and anxious climate activists. We do need to decarbonise and move to cleaner technologies, but fighting development won’t save the planet, and nor has it been shown to reduce emissions. //

We have also repeatedly been told that we are the problem, and therefore the solution is for there to be fewer of us. But all of this is wrong.

It may seem unbelievable that continuing on our current trajectory will solve anything, but the evidence shows that environmental progress is being made in many areas and that growth is the only thing that is working in terms of lowering emissions and improving air quality.

If we want to save the planet, we need to understand what works.

We know how to reduce resource consumption without reducing growth

It’s true that for the past 200 years, economic activity has led to an increase in carbon emissions. More recently, however, since the 1980s and largely thanks to the use of nuclear energy, many countries have been able to reduce emissions while continuing to increase GDP. Investment in renewables has also driven this growth further. In 2016, 70 countries experienced a growth in GDP while also experiencing a run of at least five years in which emissions decreased.

Using historical data, researchers have calculated that nuclear energy has prevented an average of 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions. They find that:

“On the basis of global projection data that take into account the effects of the Fukushima accident, we find that nuclear power could additionally prevent an average of 420,000–7.04 million deaths and 80–240 GtCO2-eq emissions due to fossil fuels by midcentury, depending on which fuel it replaces. By contrast, we assess that large-scale expansion of unconstrained natural gas use would not mitigate the climate problem and would cause far more deaths than expansion of nuclear power.” //

As countries become richer, they become more environmentally friendly. Air quality improves, water use becomes more efficient, and fewer natural resources are required. This is true across developed countries, where the population has increased but resource consumption has fallen, including timber, water, metal, minerals, and energy. //

Although cars still carry an environmental cost, not having them would also have had a significant impact on the planet. The Horse Association of America calculated that 54 million acres of US farmland was spared by the automobile in the 1930s, as the land was not needed for meadows for grazing horses. The US population has nearly tripled since then, yet hundreds of millions of acres of forests were saved from being cut down to make room to feed horses and to store waste horse manure.

Cars are not an isolated example – consider your Smartphone. Again, the innovation of phone designs has significantly reduced material use. In the recent past, a single person would have owned a GPS device, a calculator, a camera, a landline telephone, an alarm clock, and so on. Now, you only need one device instead of all of these items. Yes, phones still require resources, but the amount required is significantly less than when multiple items are no longer needed to do the same job. Resource use often becomes significantly reduced as the technology becomes more efficient. //

Building more clean energy is also key to cleaner air, tackling emissions, and reducing resource consumption. When it is built in Britain, the nuclear power plant Sizewell C will produce 3.2 GWh of electricity. Compare this with the 2.6 GWh produced by the Drax power station by burning 27 million trees every year. The alternative to building Sizewell C would be burning 33 million trees a year. That’s more than one tree per second.

Drax, which is classed as ‘renewable’ but shouldn’t be, is the UK’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. Burning wood creates 18% more CO2 than burning coal. Instead of relying on polluting fuels that may be classified as green, we need to build nuclear power plants, which allow us all to breathe a little easier.

As a result of Germany’s nuclear power phase-out, they are now burning coal again, and a study found that the air pollution resulting from the nuclear phase-out is now killing an extra 1,100 people a year. ​Japan also shut down their nuclear power plants (although they recently reversed this decision), and a study found that if both countries had reduced fossil fuel power output instead of nuclear energy, they could have prevented 28,000 air pollution-induced deaths and 2400 MtCO2 emissions between 2011 and 2017. //

Traditional environmentalism was founded based on the myth of overpopulation. In 1798, the English economist Thomas Malthus predicted that (so-called) ‘overpopulation’ would lead to famine as there would be too many mouths to feed.

He was wrong. There was no population ‘bomb’, no famine due to increased numbers of people. Instead, life improved for many millions of people, thanks to the innovation and development that they initiated. This largely relates to agriculture and the productivity of land, where labour and capital have increased more than proportionately to the increased number of humans. Thanks to agricultural improvements and technological advances, which required the input of many people and the use of many hands, we have experienced an outcome of more food rather than less. Thanks to the mechanisation of The Green Revolution, we have seen greatly increased crop yields and agricultural production, improved food supplies, and increased economic development in underdeveloped nations. Sadly, many environmentalists are still in denial about this and see such food security as a bad thing. //

There is an argument to be made that increased population has led to more environmental progress, through greater human capital. In November 2022, the world’s population hit 8 billion. Across history, exceptional people have led us to technological and cultural masterpieces. The past 200 years have shown exponential growth in technical development and innovation. In 1823 there were just over 1 billion people in the world. We now have 8 billion people from whom pioneering new science, art, medicine, and other technologies are emerging daily. A bigger pool of human capital is therefore not inherently a bad thing, but may yield immense benefits – so long as many of these people are also freed from the chains of poverty so that they can live fulfilling lives and contribute to global progress.

I cannot make this argument more clearly than the late statistician Hans Rosling, who gave a talk on the reduction of extreme poverty, where he also goes into the difference that owning a washing machine made for his (financially poor) family:

“My mother explained the magic with this machine the very very first day. She said, ‘now Hans, we have loaded the laundry, the machine will make the work. And now we can go to the library. Because this is the magic. You load the laundry, and what do you get out of the machine? You get books out of the machines. Children’s books.’ And mother got time to read for me. She loved this. I got the ABCs, this is why I started my career as Professor, when mother had time to read for me. And she also got books for herself, she managed to study English and learn that as a foreign language… We really loved this machine. And what we said, my mother and me, ‘thank you industrialisation. Thank you steel mill. Thank you power station, and thank you chemical processing industry that gave us time to read books’!”

Imagine a world with fewer people like Hans Rosling in it. It would be a much poorer world without such invaluable contributions to human knowledge and progress. We would all be impacted by this loss. //

Let’s give people a break. For too long we have been sold the myth that we should be concerned about so-called ‘overpopulation’, but this has been proven to be nonsensical fearmongering. Instead, population decline is occurring in almost every country in the world, and it is already having negative impacts on ageing populations and the future generations who have to support them. Not only do ageing populations impose costs on society as we struggle to pay for healthcare and pensions, but in some countries like Japan there simply aren’t enough younger people to physically support older generations, which poses serious problems for the country. //

But it’s telling that underpopulation has not led to a moral panic the way that false ideas of population growth have done so for many years. Arguably, underpopulation will have a far greater and more negative impact than the old worry of having more mouths to feed. For example, China, whose economy has long benefited from the sheer number of people in its workforce, is forecast to lose almost half of this population by 2100, plunging from more than 1.4 billion to 771 million inhabitants. Many of our goods come from China – including solar panels. The Chinese One Child Policy, which was so concerned with ‘overpopulation’, has proven to be short-sighted and damaging in ways that Chinese leaders did not foresee. Unfortunately, Germany, South Korea and Russia are not far behind on the underpopulation trajectory, and Europe's population as a whole will begin to decline as early as this decade.

Population growth was never really the problem. Lack of foresight, and forming policy based on myths over data, have been the real problems for the planet. //

Evidence shows that we are capable of solving the world’s problems. The fool’s trick is to make out that predicting an apocalyptic future is somehow smarter than pointing out optimistic scenarios; when in reality, being pessimistic is simply the easier and lazier option thanks to human negativity bias. Yet many factors, some of which I have covered here, show that in many areas we are on a positive trajectory.

We are capable of decoupling growth from emissions. We are capable of improving air quality, which makes us healthier and makes our children taller, less violent, and smarter. We are capable of tackling climate change as well as eradicating poverty. We are capable of hitting net zero targets – as I wrote in a recent article, we may even be on track to keep under 1.5°C of warming. No one is going to shout any of this from the rooftops; it is not headline-grabbing news. But humans are capable of solving immense problems, including problems we have created, and we have been doing so for many years now. To place all our bets on failure does humankind a disservice; but also, no one has ever fixed a problem by fixating only on the problem. Let’s fight to implement evidence-based solutions instead so that we can build the cleaner, healthier world that we are all so keen to live in.

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Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the tulip fields, now we see that Dutch authorities are warning us of a venomous African green mamba that escaped from its owner in the town of Tilburg. //

The African green mamba has a nasty neurotoxin venom, and its bite can be extremely dangerous, but authorities--while urging caution--no doubt wish to avoid panic; it won't help for the Dutch populace to become hissterical. In the cold climate of the Dutch winter, the tropical snake is unlikely to be viperactive. In fact, it may well still be in the owner's house; it's not as though the snake could commandeer a vehicle and flee, not even an ana-Honda. And it's likewise certain that the snake won't be boarding an aircraft back to Africa, which would transform it from a Green Mamba to a Boeing Constrictor. //

Back to snakes. I could rattle off a few good snake stories myself; in the northeast Iowa hills where I grew up, venomous rattlesnakes were common, some growing up to 72 inches in length--you have to measure them in inches because they don't have feet--and while their skins made great hatbands, which one could show off at the local boa-ling alley, they weren't bad eating, either. You just had to be careful to stay away from the sharp end, and the residents of Dutch Tilburg would be well-advised to do the same.

Samuel L. Jackson was unavailable for comment. //

Anne in Rockwall Texas
6 hours ago
Dear Mr. Clark.

Thank you. I laughed so hard, I moved that d*** kidney stone. Greetings from Texas Presbyterian Hospital. I'm going to read it again and maybe I'll be out of here in the morning! You sure can write. //

Ward Clark Kenamy
7 hours ago
Are you saying I should scale it back some?

Domino Ward Clark
5 hours ago
On a sssliding ssscale, about two notchessss.

1) An HBA is a Host Bus Adapter.

This is a controller that allows SAS and SATA devices to be attached to, and communicate directly with, a server. RAID controllers typically aggregate several disks into a Virtual Disk abstraction of some sort, and even in "JBOD" or "HBA mode" generally hide the physical device. If you cannot see the type of device (such as "ST6000DX000-1H217Z" in "camcontrol devlist", you DO NOT HAVE A TRUE HBA. If you cannot get the output of "smartctl" for a device, you DO NOT HAVE A TRUE HBA. A true HBA passes communications through itself directly to a drive without further processing. No amount of marketing department wishful thinking can change that technical reality.

2) FreeBSD has incredibly robust support for the LSI HBA's.

FreeBSD's LSI HBA (mps/mpr) drivers are authored by LSI and carefully designed to work with their HBA firmware. The FreeNAS userbase has installed many thousands of these cards which have, in aggregate, BILLIONS of problem-free run-hours. Not only are they known to work very well during normal operations, but they're also known to work correctly during ABNORMAL operations, such as when a disk times out or throws an error. SMART is properly supported. Forum members are incredibly familiar with all the variations on these and can provide useful assistance. Cards such as the LSI 9240-8i, IBM ServeRAID M1015, Dell PERC H200 and H310, and others are readily available on the used market and can be converted to LSI 9211-8i equivalents.

3) You must crossflash to IT/IR firmware

If you don't crossflash, then a lot of the remainder of this ALSO applies to LSI non-IT-20.00.07.00 HBA's!! The IR firmware is also fine but is a few percent slower. It is not clear there is any value to doing this as you would never want to use an IR virtual device with FreeNAS. We used to do this in the old days for boot devices, but with ZFS boot this is probably no longer relevant.

The LSI 9240 (etc) default MFI firmware is apparently being sold on eBay as "IR" by clueless sellers. The MFI firmware is unsuitable for FreeNAS and may cause your pool to get eaten.

The LSI 9211-8i (PCIe 2.0 based on LSI 6Gbps SAS2008) and LSI 9207-8i (PCIe 3.0 based on LSI 6Gbps SAS2308) both require firmware 20.00.07.00.

TrueNAS is not as simple as videos make it look, though it is fairly easy to get a system running if you read the documentation and don't color outside the lines.

If you want to save yourself lots of money and loads of time, the top of the page has Documentation and Resources tabs which contain extremely helpful information like the TrueNAS manuals. There's also a Search tool at the upper-right that works extremely well. If you understand the system and requirements before jumping in you'll save money, time, and frustration.

As general advice, if you run TrueNAS as a NAS and don't add things to it it tends to run fine and without issue, though I suggest using an Uninterruptible Power Supply and NUT.

One of the children expected to be released is Emily Hand, the Irish-Israeli child whose father wept with relief after erroneously being told she was killed on October 7; he felt death was "a blessing" compared to what his daughter would face being held captive by Hamas terrorists. His worst fears were realized when he learned she was indeed being held hostage in Gaza.b//

One other thing to note about the list of hostages expected to be released: There are no men on that list, and many speculate that is deliberate. By leaving husbands and fathers in captivity, the women and children who are freed may not want to speak of the atrocities they endured in order to keep the men safe. In essence, they will still be hostages of Hamas.

they aren't expensive either, but I digress. All told he was missing probably a dozen or so pieces of equipment that added up to $500 to $1,000. He was being screwed over for actions he was ordered to do by his superiors and now he's paying the price for it, literally.

That ladies and gentlemen, is getting what we called in the Marines, screwed by the big green weenie. We actually have an acronym for it, BOHICA. Which stands for Bend Over, Here It Comes Again.

The sad part is that it is a common occurrence, both the green weenie and paying for losses of gear and or other equipment that was lost or destroyed in the course of our duties at no fault of our own. Some examples that I saw of these were both hilarious and infuriating at the same time. //

It is more than just an administration problem, it is a problem within the military as a whole. //

But sure, let's tack on an extra $500-$1,000 to repay the government, along with a Defense Department, that has enough resources, money, or credit, to absorb that cost for miscellaneous gear like an e-tool. That is a giant slap in the face to the very people who literally put their lives on the line in some jobs, to defend this Nation. They need to do better, much much better. //

thinkingoutloud
3 minutes ago
So, did Biden's paycheck get used to pay back the US taxpayers for the "gear" he intentionally left in Afghanistan?

The 2024 primary season is already in full swing, but it’s not too late for states to improve the security and integrity of their election process to the benefit of all voters, no matter their political preferences.

The American public wants and deserves an election system in which the candidates who get the most legitimate votes of eligible voters are declared the winners, and elections are not marred by errors, fraud, and other serious issues and misbehavior that make voters and candidates question the legitimacy of election outcomes.

Anyone who doubts the need for reform should take a look at The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database, which is constantly being updated with new cases of and convictions for fraud from across the country.

In an era of razor-thin elections, guarding against this type of illegal behavior, as well as errors made by election officials, is especially important. In 2024, it could prove critical.

No film from Angel Studios makes it to the big screen without the approval of the Angel Guild.

Over 21 films a week are submitted to the Angel Guild, “and then the guild goes through those and they’re picking their favorites and they’re greenlighting them and then Angel Studios can only pick from the list that they greenlight,” explains Jeff Harmon, chief content officer for Angel Studios. //

Neal Harmon: Once we started thinking about the media and storytelling, from perspective of our own children, we said, “We’re not happy with where the world’s headed and how are we going to solve this problem or has someone solved this problem?” When we realized no one had and that there were other parents that were interested in solving this problem, we decided to do something about it. //

Neal Harmon: The core premise of Hollywood is two things, from our perspective.

One is that if you collect a group of people and have them work together in storytelling, that you’ll create a vibrant community that can tell stories better than anyone else in the world. We think that Hollywood actually is performing well on that premise, like that they tell a story better than anyone else in the world.

The second thing is that Hollywood has consolidated the decisions of what stories to tell into very few hands.

Jeff Harmon: Gatekeeper model.

Neal Harmon: Gatekeeper model, yeah. And that’s what’s different, is Angel’s fine with the craft of Hollywood and the capability, but then the gatekeeper and the decision-making we feel like has lost its way, it’s trapped in a bubble. And we’ve flipped the power structure so that the Angel community, the Angel Guild makes the decisions, rather than a few elite decision-makers.

Jeff Harmon: We don’t make the decisions. We can’t pick a film unless it goes through the Angel Guild first and the Angel Guild is over 100,000 people—

Neal Harmon: And growing. //

You can join it by investing or you can join it by subscribing, so anybody who goes to angel.com/guild can join the guild.

They get a vote on the content that goes to theaters. They get two free movie tickets to every single movie that comes out. //

Neal Harmon: And why are we doing it this way instead of the way Netflix does it? We have learned that the community aspect of watching films creates an experience that shapes culture. It becomes part of the culture.

There’s lots of things that have come to Netflix that nobody hears about. They hear about it if they’re on Netflix, but they don’t become part of the cultural conversation the way that “Sound of Freedom” did. “Sound of Freedom” is arguably the most talked about story in this decade. And that’s what the Angel Guild wants. That’s what we all want, is we want to shape cultures.

the response from leftist actress Susan Sarandon was something else when she said "There are a lot of people afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country."

It was a disgraceful comment, dismissing anything Jewish people might have suffered before this moment as well as attacking this country in terms of how Muslims are treated. //

Asra Nomani @AsraNomani
·
Hi there @SusanSarandon, this is my mom, my dad and me on the rail trail in Morgantown, West by God Virginia. Let me tell you what it means to be Muslim in America.

First, your backstory: At an anti-Israel protest in NYC, you just said, "There are a lot of people that are… Show more
Last edited
12:31 AM · Nov 20, 2023

Let me give you “a taste” of what it “feels like” to be a Muslim in America:

✅🇺🇸 My dad didn’t have to become a second-class indentured servant to one of the many tyrants of Muslim countries that use immigrants from India, like my family, as essential slaves. //

Xi Van Fleet @XVanFleet
·
.@AsraNomani
What a beautiful and powerful testimony!! My American experience is the same as yours!

America gave me everything that the CCP had denied me, the human dignity and the freedom of defining and achieving my own dream.

I have the same message to those who hate America… Show more

8:57 PM · Nov 20, 2023

If you don’t have Western Electric transformers, you can pick up easy-to-wire isolation transformer boards from Newman-Kees RF Measurements & Engineering, as shown here:
This Audio Hum and Lightning Isolator board from Newman-Kees uses high-quality transformers to isolate lines.
This Audio Hum and Lightning Isolator board from Newman-Kees uses high-quality transformers to isolate lines.

They provide lightning isolation to 1200 Volts and can be strapped for various applications as shown in the schematic. Features include 600 Ohms in and out, primary and secondary center taps, board traces for attenuators and 1/8-inch mounting holes. Cost: $35.50. Email newman-kees-hertel-rf-eng@twc.com.

Frank selected two Electro-Voice 635A omnidirectional mics. Imagine your reporter holding the top microphone within about 2 or 3 inches of their mouth, while the bottom microphone is pointing away from the mouth. Crowd noise is picked up equally by each 635A mic, thus the crowd noise is suppressed — virtually canceled!

You can experiment with pattern types; Frank finds that it works best with identical omnidirectionals, and the 635As are inexpensive, under $150 each.

The first photo shows the parts you’ll need to construct this project. Once you’ve gathered them, follow Frank’s step-by-step instructions.

A Samba4-based Active Directory-compatible domain controller that supports printing services and centralized Netlogon authentication for Windows systems, without requiring Windows Server.

tl;dr: Non-spec DisplayPort cables were feeding back power from the monitor to the video card, causing my computer to reboot during POST. Buy this cable. //

When I got down on the floor to look inside the case, I saw something moving.

The case fan was spinning.

The freaking case fan was spinning. And I was holding the unplugged power cable in my hand. How is this even possible?!

I unplugged all of the PSU cords from my motherboard, and things shut down. The GPU light turned off, and the fan died.

The next day, I returned to Google, and for the hell of it, searched “computer is on even when unplugged.” I know, it sounds ridiculous, but it lead me to the answer I had been looking for (in addition to a funny meme of The Pope casting holy water for someone with a similar issue).

I scrolled, and scrolled, pages and pages and URL after URL of articles on something called The DisplayPort Pin 20 problem started showing up. It felt so funny to search for months with no solution and then to almost be assaulted by the number of posts on the same issue I was having.

It turns out that cable manufacturers who don’t adhere directly to the official DisplayPort spec end up connecting the 20th pin in the cable on both sides. That pin, carries – you guessed it – power!

This issue was serious. Enough power had been backflowing from my monitors into my GPU to run my case fans when the system was off.