LinuxTag – part 2

Christian Leave a comment

I’m sitting in the S8 to Frankfurt Airport where I’ll switch to the ICE to Stuttgart to visit my cousins and my aunt. Linux Tag was quite amazing, I finally met some of the people behind OpenVZ (Kir and Kirill), saw a bit of Andrew Morton’s Kernel FAQ (Kir told us that) and met some people including Bertl, doener, derjohn, zeng, foo, … of the linux-vserver community. Both workshops were quite interesting and I learned a lot of things about openvz and it’s userland tools and linux-vserver (finally I understood the CPU Tokenbucket system).

Even if I didn’t arrive in time to watch Kir and Kirill’s presentation of openvz and its features completely, I managed to watch Kir demonstrating the live migration between two different nodes. Even if Kirill needed to reboot his system due to a readonly filesystem (it was / that was the whole bugger) I have to admit it really impressed me (since that’s a feature we had to pay 3000€ for VMware ESX and no I don’t want do hear a single word about it). Sadly the OpenVZ stuff isn’t ported yet to SPARC so I’ll keep vServer running on the U1 (Ultra1). I also met Hollow in person, which really was the highlight of all days. He was my mentor when I joined Gentoo and is the person that I’m doing most of my work on Gentoo / Linux vServer / OpenVZ related things. Bertl’s talk nearly took four hours but those four hours were quite informative and interesting. He held a general introduction into virtualization theory (which took him two hours). After a small fifth teen minute break he demonstrated most of the things possible with linux-vserver (including resource limits to kill kill certain memory/cpu hogs).

Demonstration ended at 18:10 and we got back up to the Linux vServer booth were I finally managed to ask Bertl about his patch name versioning scheme. And I finally understood it!

We also stopped by at the SWsoft booth to say goodbye to Kir and Kirill and to talk about the SRPMS but they already had left. We did some group photos of all present at the Linux vServer booth. Afterwards Hollow and I grabbed our backpacks and took of to the station. On the way we had a little discussion about problems and stuff that we recently noticed. First was the /dev/console virtualization effort, since we switched from init-style Gentoo (which we removed from the utils) to plain. The virtualization would show some effect if you’re wanna be able to see what’s happening on the startup phase of a vServer. Second thing was the reintroduction of the fastboot bug (that’s what I call it). The util-vserver package leaves a plain and empty file in the guests root filesystem, which really annoys me. The third thing is the vserver-init.$( mktemp )´ file that is placed in /tmp but isn’t deleted after startup is complete. Another thing we talked about was the vserver stop´ which only waits for the vkill timeout to kick in but isn’t going to stop the vServer by itself.

LinuxTag – part 1

Christian Leave a comment

Boy, that day started great (irony). I was supposed to get my lazy ass up at 04:20 am to be at the station at 05:27 am, taking the train to Wiesbaden (together with Hollow).

But someone in this odd world doesn’t like me. I somehow managed to turn off the damn cell (that was supposed to wake me up) and slept till 05:10 am, till Paula came in and woke me up. She told me she was awake since half an hour and she waited on me to step into her bedroom.

She also told me that we have to go now otherwise I’m not going to catch that train (for which I had a reservation!). We got into the cat and drove over to the station (damn, you can’t imagine how I hate red traffic lights!). She parked in the non-parking area and we ran through half the station, till we noticed the train is supposed to be on platform 15. We were already at platform 22!! So we got back running through the station with my heavy backpack (carrying my notebook and some stuff I had to put into it earlier in my morning rush) and my heavy trolli.

As we arrived at platform 15, the ICE was already beeping, indicating the doors are getting closed / locked. I asked the conductor if there was a way left to get on that damn train. She told me, there is one only way three wagons ahead, and it was the only possible way to get on that train (each wagon is approx. 30m long), so I started shouting at the conductor standing in the door to let me in. But it seems he hasn’t heard me. Damn you, fscking conductor.

I was standing in front of that damn train and saw it leaving the station. You probably can’t imagine how I felt in that moment. I was pretty much wasted, completely out of breath, standing there.

After the train left the station Paula asked me, why I stopped running, there were only three or four wagons left. I told there, that I’m completely wasted and that damn conductor I shouted at, hasn’t heard me.

Standing there on the empty platform, I was completely clueless. She told me I should look for the next available train that would take me to Wiesbaden. I thought for a second, to skip the trip but decided to search for an alternative. I looked around and saw an ICE Sprinter (which needs an extra reservation) to Frankfurt a. Main. So I called the information (was Paula’s idea) and asked for the number of DB-Ticket Service. The lady messaged me, since she couldn’t put me through, the number and I took another call to a service hotline. It was a 0900 number (at 1,49€ per minute).

Another lady answered my call and I asked her for a reservation for the ICE Sprinter (leaving at 06:25). That damn reservation cost another 10,00€. I booked that, as I really intended to show up in Wiesbaden. He service-lady asked me a couple of questions (personal, for their system to get the 10€) and it was finished. I only had to catch my reservation at the next service terminal.

After searching such a terminal for a minute or so, I collected my reservation and felt much better. Now I’m sitting in the train (Hollow tried to call me a couple of times) being around Mannheim and writing my blog post on paper (still need to hammer it into the keyboard).

My mood lifted pretty much and I’m looking forward to meet Hollow, kir, team leader of the openvz team, Bertl, the guy behind the linux-vserver kernel.

I’m still tired, tried already to sleep but the moving train makes that nearly impossible. My stomach is hurting, my head is a bit dizzy but it should be ok later (I hope so). The damn pressure on the ears drives me nearly mad (I’m not used to switch heights in that speed, Northern Germany is nearly flat and there isn’t that altitude difference that I’m experiencing right now).

I’m still impressed of Munich (who knows, maybe I’m getting a job there in the near future), my head is full of information of those various locations I visited in the past 1½ days. Also full of great memories that I’ll not forget so fast (I’m hoping at least).

I’m already thinking about my summer holidays. Maybe I’ll spend them also in Munich and not in Stuttgart where all my relatives are. But those holidays should be a bit longer than two days, it really hurts to leave again so fast.

So far from my little adventure, more as it happens.

Munich – part 2

Christian 1 Comment

Today we got up bit later (07:40 am) to do some sight-seeing and shopping. We took the car “Candidplatz”, that’s where Paula is working currently and got into the subway to “Sendlinger Tor”. The day was starting sunny featuring 23°C at 9:00 am. Certainly I was wearing short pants and a tank top, as I’m used to have a weak till moderate wind blowing around me. We finally stopped at SportScheck to get something for Paula. She badly needed short pants and polo shirts for her physic therapy lessons she is giving at physico.

We found some shorts for her, but I was really impressed after I saw the price. 132€ for two short pants and three polo shirts is really expensive. For those tiny cotton rags it sucks majorly even it’s stamped by “adidas”.

SportScheck is having a special offer, they are giving away sun lounger for free if you shop for over 90€. So she got a nice sun lounger. It was already 11:10, so she freaked a bit out “Sandy I’m not going to get to work in time”, but Sandy told her she’ll only need ten or fifth teen minutes back to work. She relaxed. We brought her back to the subway at “Sendlinger Tor” where she forgot to stamp her subway ticket. She freaked again.
“I don’t gonna make it two levels up, stamp my ticket and make it back down here in time!”. Sandy told her she had eight minutes left to do so, and that it’s more than enough time. And in fact she made it back within four minutes till the subway arrived.

She got onto it and we got back up. Now we started the sight-seeing tour. We walked through half the inner city of Munich (at least that’s what my feet felt like), past the old and new town hall, past the cathedral and stopped at the “Hofbräuhaus”. I had some meat loaf (Leberkäs) with bavarian potato salad after I had a meat loaf roll (Leberkässemmel) an hour or so before. I started noticing there were only tourists around us (English, American, French and Japanese). After that little snack we continued our sight-seeing to Munich’s Königsstraße (the Königsstraße is in Stuttgart and is the longest shopping mile in the whole city), where we went into Saturn (on my behalf) since I’m starting to become a DVD collector. I brought myself “Spawn”, “Total Recall” and “Jarhead”. I also purchased some DVD+R DL to some of my recorded movies (I had a Premiere Abo till there months ago).

The sales man at the cash point saw the DVD’s and the blankets and noticed me that “it’s illegal to copy any copyright protected material for personal use” (thanks to Mrs. Zypries, our justice minister which will also be at the LinuxTag tomorrow, and the lobbyism of the german copyright holders). That pissed me of a bit, but only for a few seconds.

After we left the Saturn (you can’t imagine how I hate Saturn and MediaMarkt, both belonging to the Metro Group) we continued the sight-seeing. We walked Munich’s “Königsstraße” (I really can’t remember the name, sorry) through another part of Munich’s historic district till we got to the “Königssaal” where another platoon awaited us. Above us was a helicopter keeping altitude with a huge search beam and down the street we saw some people wearing ver.di flags and jackets. Seems like there had been an demonstration earlier including ver.di president Psierske, who was talking to the local media in a corner. Seems like the public service protested again in favor of the 38,5 hour week for the same money. We turned right in the “English Garden” (where even more police awaited us, watching over the few demonstrators left, ratio was something like 30 demonstrators and 80 – 90 police man.

We searched for a nice little spot with a bank, which we found after a short search. We settled down for half an hour or so (and it seems like I managed to get a small sun burn, which is really small only a bit red on my nose and my shoulders) and enjoyed the really warm spring day.

We got up (I tell you, after that half an hour I was really lazy) and continued our way through the English garden. We went past the building of the Bavarian prime minister (which is called Strauß-oleum after the guy who planned that temple of glass) and through a heavenly park. That garden seems to be really huge, at least if you trust the maps and Sandy. Somewhere in the garden we searched for another sunny place and settled down again.

The garden was crowding with mad city slickers, some of them naked, others playing soccer, Frisbee, Volleyball or even badminton with squash rackets. Another city slicker spanned a hammock between two trees and was reading in there.

After another half an hour we got up again and walked through the southern part of the English garden till “Schwabingen” where most of the businessmen are lawyers.

Afterwards we went to a street (whose name I can’t remember) where Sandy told me in the summer the road is completely closed and approx. 1.000 inline skaters were participating on a race.

We settled down again (as we did four times before) and enjoyed the sun again. Sandy took a smoke and that was finally the end of the sight-seeing tour. We took the subway back to “Candidplatz” and fetched the car keys from Paula. We even managed to find a store where they had so much water in bottles that they were selling it!

We arrived back home to relax our feet a bit. Sandy did some googling, shared some pictures that I made with his digicam and I finished writing my first blog post and started this one on paper.

Later on we picked Paula up from the gym and went to another “Biergarten”. That one was also quite nice, its located on a small isle in the middle of the Isar. When we got back we finally managed to watch “Jarhead”, which is really a great movie about the first gulf war (better known as Desert Strom) while we were looking over my resumee and my letter of application. I finally got to bed at 01:30 am knowing that my cell phones alarm clock would try to wake me up at 04:30 am.

Munich

Christian Leave a comment

I just woke up and thought I really should blog about that.

The trip was quite interesting so far, saw some things that really looked odd.

At first the was some kind of Police protection (30 or so with shield visor) for only 5 people at Pasewalk Hbf.

Pasewalk Hbf - Lots, and lots of policemen!
Pasewalk Hbf - Lots, and lots of policemen!

A friend of mine picked me up at Berlin Ostbahnhof and we drove all the way to Munich. While we stopped for gas (1,44€ per liter super unleaded)

Somewhere on the Autobahn - Shitass expensive gasoline
Somewhere on the Autobahn - Shitass expensive gasoline

I saw something that driven past us. I saw it later again and took a picture. The thing I saw were two German transport/reconnaissance tanks “Fuchs” on low-loaders (since the tanks aren’t allowed to drive upon the motorway in peacetime).

Somewhere on the Autobahn - transport/reconnaissance tank 'Fuchs'
Somewhere on the Autobahn - transport/reconnaissance tank 'Fuchs'

Another thing I saw was a badly deformed BMW on a tow truck.

Somewhere on the Autobahn - totaled BMW
Somewhere on the Autobahn - totaled BMW

While driving to the city I saw some pretty nice and also some odd things. At first, we driven past the Allianz Arena which is pretty amazing. The whole outside of the stadium consists of air cussions which are differently illuminated, depending on which team is playing there. White is for the national team, red for the F.C. Bayern München and blue for the TSV 1860 München.

Entering Munich - Allianz Arena
Entering Munich - Allianz Arena

The odd thing I noticed was an old man (with a really nice beard) driving a really odd bike.

In Munich - Old guy, riding a <b>*really*</b> weird bike
In Munich - Old guy, riding a *really* weird bike

As we arrived in Munich, we took a trip to the Isar (which is a really nice place to be), setteled down for an hour and enjoyed the beautiful view at the Isar and St. Maximilian.

In Munich - View at St. Maximilian from the riverside
In Munich - View at St. Maximilian from the riverside
In Munich - Looking at the Isar
In Munich - Looking at the Isar

Later we went to the Augustiner Brewery, where they serve also in the Bräustüberl. For the first day in Munich I have to admit, Munich seems like a great place to live.

Birthday

Christian 1 Comment

Today being my Birthday pretty much started my day. Somehow I managed to accept a call at 00:12 (while I was asleep) but I don’t even remember taking it. Somehow my real live is getting better and better (as in finding some friends as I pretty much was a hermit for the last couple of years).

Also I found someone to share my toughts with, someone who understands it, how to really get to me (read it as a very good friend :P)

Gentoo stuff is living on. vserver-sources/linux-vserver is approaching it’s next stable release (hopefully in this week), openvz-sources finally on something newer than 2.6.8.1 (ok, they’re there quite a while) and baselayout-vserver finally working on both openvz and linux-vserver.

And my little experiment also continues (the WRAP experiment). I’m currently trying to get a minimal Gentoo running on that (well sort of). I’m currently trying to get some replacement for/a way to strip down GCC (I really don’t need a compiler on the WRAP, and since the whole GCC takes 79M it’s pretty much a candidate for removal).

solar yesterday mentioned something like this:

Well that would be a pretty nifty feature (and I already tried my luck and wisdom *cough*), but hopefully we’ll se something like that pretty soon 🙂

It’s almost a year since I joined Gentoo and I have to admit that it was a pretty good time so far (well except some random things, like me screwing some releases).

Bitching

Christian Leave a comment

Once again, I’m compelled to play (other call it administering :P) with our TYPO3 cluster (which is sadly running SLES).

One thing I just learned about SLES (for the ones curious, its Novell’s SuSE Linux Enterprise Server and yes, it suffers the same pain as SuSE/openSuSE). They split one single config file (at least the apache2 one) into 9 (or more) different files.

Another thing is, for what the hell does a simple LAMP need a full blown Xorg w/ KDE installed ?

Good lord! Praise the USE-flags (f.e. -X or -kde)

Work sometimes sucks (#2)

Christian Leave a comment

Today they finally let me fiddle around on an AIX 5.3 system. Well AIX ain’t bad, but misses (by default installation) some features and comfort.

The first thing I noticed, they only! install telnet and don’t even give an option to install sshd .. That sucks, especially if you’re supposed to log in via the internet (yay! an telnet open to the internet :eek:)

So I googled a bit around and found out, that we should have some Bonus CD’s (from IBM of course) featuring openssl/openssh, looked into the cubicle behind the rack and look what I’ve found … Go, go … 😛

Put in the CD into the drive, fire up smitty (thats a really nifty tool they invented there) and installed openssh with all it’s dependencies (despite it’s pretty old v3.6.0) but now I got openssh running instead of a weaky telnet 🙂

What do I need also ? Yeah, bash … ksh really sucks (heh, and I love to scroll back in my command history). Fired smitty up again, and also installed bash …

That was pretty much work for the first day on AIX 😉