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For years the go-to source for consistent container images has been Bitnami. Bitnami is owned by Broadcom via its acquisition of VMware in 2023.

With over 200 different containers covering every part of the container infrastructure, developers and system administrators have gone to Bitnami images for consistent interfaces and methods.

Until last month, these container images were offered free of charge to the world.

Starting on the 1st of this month, only development containers are offered free of charge. This means that if you want tagged versions of WordPress, you need to buy a subscription for the Secure Containers from Bitnami.

I looked into this. Does anybody think paying $62,000/year is a good deal? I don’t.

This is not a long-term issue; it is a pain because I have to reconfigure all my WordPress clients to use a new source for images with different mounting points.

Wire Runs

There are times when it is so simple that you can’t find instructions.

When running redundant cable or fiber, you want to make sure that there are no single points of failure. I remember the great Internet outage of the early 90s. Some good old boys in a swamp down in the south took some potshots at something hanging on telephone poles.

They managed to sever a fiber optic bundle. This cut the US Internet in half because all the redundant fibers were in that same optic bundle.

The contracts for those fiber circuits had been let to different long-haul fiber networks. Those long-haul networks were picked because they had north, south, and mid-Atlantic routes heading west. When a new dark fiber vendor came on the market, offering better service with better prices, these long-haul networks purchased their dark fiber from the same vendor.

And all the circuits ended up in a single bundle, down south.

I currently have a star configuration for my network. I’m going to be adding a ring around the outside of the star. This allows better throughput between adjacent data closets. Instead of going to the hub then out to the data closet, we will be routing closet to closet.

While the “cost” of that extra hop isn’t really measurable, it does put some limits on the total cluster bandwidth.

Say you have to move 10 Gigabytes from Node 101 to Node 102 in the same closet. We move that at 10 gigabits, so around 15 seconds to move the data.

But say you want to move the same 10 Gigabytes from Node 101 to Node 103 in a different closet. It still takes around 15 seconds to move the data.

But what if you need to move 10 gigabytes from Node 101 in closet 3 to Node 103 in closet 2, plus 10 Gigabytes from Node 101 to Node 105 in closet 1, and 10 Gigabytes from Node 101 to Node 129 in closet 0? Each movement would only take 15 seconds, but the total time to move would be 3*15, or 45 seconds.

With the extra links in place, we can go directly from Closet 3 to Closets 1 and 2. This will reduce our total time to 30 seconds.

I have the hardware to do this ring. What I don’t have is the conduit. If I use the existing conduit, it is easy. But that means if that conduit is compromised, I lose access to that closet.

I figured out that I can run some conduit along the outside of the building with much shorter runs, much easier access, and with the level of redundancy I’m looking for.

When I finish pulling fiber, I will have three paths to every node.

OSPF/Multicast

In networking, we use broadcast packets when we want to reach every node on a network segment. In the old days there was a single IPv4 address for that, which was the host portion of the IPv4 address was all ones.

It turns out that there are other reasons to want to use a broadcast packet. Often for discovery purposes. OSPF uses this method to find other routers on the network segment.

Which leads to the issue of L3 managed switches. These things are not advertised as full routers, though they can act like them. In particular, each of these switches can run an OSPF process.

This means that the network topology is quickly updated when things change.

And these low cost managed switches don’t understand how to forward OSPF packets when they are running an OSPF process.

Another thing to figure out and fix.

Government Shutdown!!!

The world is wonderful. With the government shutdown, they are less likely to FA with me.

The reality is that the government barely notices when it is “shut down.”

It looks like the Democrats played into Trump’s agenda. J.D. Vance has stated that they will start firing people very shortly if the government isn’t started back up.

The government is shut down because the Democrats and the Republicans could not reach an agreement on a continuing funding resolution.

The Republicans have put forth a CR that funds the government at current levels but for VA housing, security for federal law enforcement, and security for the Supreme Court.

There is nothing in the CR that the Democrats object to.

The Democrats have put forth a proposal that adds more than 1 trillion dollars to the budget. They want to restore funding for healthcare for people that are unwilling to meet Medicaid work requirements. They also want to provide funding to states that are showing healthcare budget shortages because the state spent state money on providing healthcare to criminal illegal aliens.

The big word is “fungible.” Let’s say you want to buy a fancy dinner for your wife. You have $1,000 in the bank. You owe $700 for the mortgage, you owe $100 for Internet, and you owe $100 for water. This leaves you only $100 for food and other things. This means you can’t afford to take your wife out for a $100 dinner. There is no money in the budget.

You reach out to your parents and ask for help with the Mortgage. They agree to pay $500 for the mortgage but tell you that it can’t be used for “fun” things.

To make sure they send the $500 directly to the mortgage holder. You send your $200, the mortgage is paid for the month. None of your parents money went to fun things like dinner out with your wife.

You now have $600 for food and other things. You allocate $250 for food, spend $100 on other things. You have $150 of your money to take your wife to dinner.

Where did the money come from for that dinner? From you or your parents.

Fungible means that you can’t send any money to states that are spending money on criminal illegal aliens. You can’t send any money to organizations that spend money on abortions.

Question of the Week

What is your opinion of this government shutdown?

Pistol Optics

I have red dots on some of my AR-15s. For my wife, this is great. Put the dot where she wants the hole to be, and press the trigger. A hole appears near where the little red dot was.

All of my AR-15 red dots are co-witnessed. The little red dot shows up at the same place where my iron sight points. If the optic is off, I can see my iron sights through the glass. This means that if I have issues with the red dot being “dead,” I still have functional sights.

With the peep sight of the AR-15 platform, I have a rear sight that flips down. Some of my ARs have fixed front sights, and some have flip-up front sights. Even if they are flip-up, I leave them up.

Some pistol optics are set up so that when the optics are mounted, the rear sight is removed. This means that if your optic fails, you have no sights.

I looked into a P365-RS; this is a Sig P365 with a Romeo Sierra already mounted. The sights are co-witnessed. And the sights are the standard great Sig sights.

Holsters

I have been a fan of Alien Gear holsters for several years. I like how they fit and the positive retention they provide for my firearms.

I particularly like their Shape Shift system. This system consists of different shells, which are specific to a firearm; parts to mount to the shell for different types of retention; and a backer.

For example, you can use a positive retention where you have to use your thumb to release the firearm, or it can be retained by a spring loaded catch. Pull, and the firearm comes out of the holster. The tension on that catch can be set as you want.

The tool needed to adjust the different tensions and positions is the retaining nut, which retains the mounting system.

The shell can be used as a half shell with some backers or as a full shell with others.

For me, I like being able to move the holster to different backers: an IWB, an OWB, an appendix backer (which I haven’t used), and a shoulder rig. They have drop rigs and MOLLE rigs as well. There are many options. Those backers that attach to a belt can adjust cant easily. The belt clips are solid loops, J-Hooks or C-hooks. You choose which you want.

The C-hooks fit between your belt and your pants, so the only thing that is visible are two small black lines at the top and bottom of your belt. With the solid loop and J-hooks, you can see the “strap” of black plastic, which is the clip.

I’m looking for another holster for a P365X-Macro. They aren’t selling a shell for the Shape Shift system.

Yesterday I spoke to a rep and found out why. They are phasing the Shape Shift system out. Because the shells mount to the backers at the top of the slide, there isn’t enough room for many of the pistol mounted optics. In addition, pistols with weapon lights don’t fit well either.

According to this rep, they are working on a new system.

Is It Lawfare?

The big news yesterday was that the DoJ is attacking Trump’s political enemies, attempting to jail them.

It appears that the DoJ has found that James Comey is likely guilty of multiple crimes, so he has been indicted. We can tell this is lawfare because they are using laws that have existed for many years; they presented evidence to a grand jury, and the grand jury returned the indictment.

This is totally different from charging a political enemy with fraud for putting up collateral for a loan and then paying back the loan with interest but having a difference in opinion on the value of the collateral. It is also totally different from calling the secretary of state for a state and telling him that you need 200K votes to win the state. AND it is totally different from entering into an NDA agreement with a bimbo who is attempting to blackmail you, and then paying that bill through your lawyer.

You see, this crime is real, 18 U.S.C. § 1001 making false statements to Congress. James messed up and answered directly when asked if he authorized a leak. He should have gone with that old favorite, “I don’t recall.”

While not all the grand jury agreed that he violated 18 U.S.C. § 1001, a majority did.

All the members of the grand jury did agree that he violated 18 U.S.C. 1505, obstruction. Corruptly endeavored to influence, obstruct, and impede the Senate Judiciary Committee’s inquiry by making false and misleading statements.

The case was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, 25-cr-00272

Networking Almost Working

The wonderful thing about Unix configuration is that you can do anything you want to a configuration file. With a GUI, you can only do what the GUI allows you to do.

My internal network uses OSPF for internal networking with a bit of BGP magic for the OVN networks. Whenever a router is presented with two choices for a route, it chooses the one with the lowest cost.

It is a little more complicated than that because a router can also adjust its priority. Priority adjustments might be used when you have links that have different dollar costs but the same bandwidth.

There are three parameters that are used to calculate the cost of a link. The algorithm calculates the sum of the costs of all the links between two nodes and takes the lowest cost.

The first method and parameter is to set the cost of the link. This is a value that ranges from 1 to 65535. No calculations are done; this is the cost of using this link.

This means that you could assign different values to different link speeds: 1 for 100G, 2 for 40G, 3 for 20G, 4 for 10G, 5 for 5G, 6 for 2.5G, 7 for 1G, and so forth. This works, but it is painful.

A faster method is to assign a reference bandwidth to use within the router. For me, I set the reference bandwidth to 10G. Since the router knows the bandwidth of each interface, it takes that reference bandwidth and divides it by the interface bandwidth.

If my interface is a 10G fiber link, that is 10G/10G, or 1. But if that particular interface is a 1G Ethernet port, then we have 10G/1G equals 10.

This is a quick way to get the correct costs assigned to every interface. I only have to specify a bandwidth for an interface if that interface is a bridge.

Nice stuff.

Because I have a link that is acting up, I was able to describe that link to the protocol. That link is 10G down and 1G up. So it gets direct traffic down, but when it is sending upstream, that takes two hops.

The only issue I still need to solve is that I have an L3 Switch that is not passing OSPF multicast packets.

Question of The Week

Who else do you want to see indicted, and Why?

Is it Trolling?

18 U.S.C. §922(g)4 says, who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution is a prohibited person.

Trump went there. He suggested that people suffering from gender dysphoria are mentally ill.

If they are mentally ill then does 18 U.S.C. §922(g)4 apply?

Using the DSM-IV we see

There were situations where people with Gender Identity Disorder were classified as “mentally defective” under §922(g), but with the release of DSM-5, that is no longer possible, and it still requires an adjudication.

The trolling is because we now have Trump taking guns away from somebody, good from the left’s point of view while at the same time doing something to a member of a victim class, which is bad.

What’s a good leftist to do?

Noem v. Vasquez

In another win for the Trump Administration, the Supreme Court decided that the Constitution really does say that the President oversees the executive branch, not judges.

In —Marbury V. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803) the Supreme Court defined who they were and what their job is. The gist of that decision is that the Supreme Court decides if a government action violates the Constitution. They gave themselves the power as the final arbitrator of what the law means.

Since that time there have been ongoing skirmishes between the branches as each branch attempts to wrest power from the other branches. In some cases it was one branch taking it from another branch to give to the third. Thus we have judges who think they can oversee immigration policy.

The left is playing one of their favorite games: redefining words. As I’ve said in the past, we can easily tell if the plain text of the Second Amendment covers the proposed conduct by looking to see if any of the usual suspects speaks up. If Giffords, Brady, or Everytown is involved, the plain text of the Second Amendment is implicated.

When an unmarked vehicle pulls up and 3 or 4 men jump out in full police gear wearing vests that say “POLICE” or “I.C.E.”, they know who it is. They aren’t unknown people. They are law enforcement officials.

They know damn well that it isn’t a kidnapping; it is an arrest. They know damn well that the officers are wearing face coverings because the left are violent. The left is willing to kill people to get their way.

The Court found that briefly detaining a person with reasonable suspicion is good enough. An I.C.E. agent can briefly detain a person they suspect of being a criminal illegal alien for reasonable suspicion. They must then release that person if they are not a criminal.

A person is not arrested if they are detained. They are not kidnapped. And they are not at any particular risk, unless they do something stupid..

I’m tired of reading about a “pastor” or “father” or “youth coach” that has been “kidnapped” by “masked men.” Reading just a few paragraphs in, it becomes obvious that the person in question was a criminal alien being arrested for deportation.

Freedom From Association

It has been pointed out that medical professionals making any statement suggesting they will discriminate in how they care for a patient is cause for dismissal.

The legal ramifications are so high that a medical facility can’t risk it. If some nurse says they are intentionally causing pain to a patient, that nurse must be fired. If they are not fired, the medical facility is ripe for a lawsuit, which they are likely to lose.

At this point many people who thought they were talking to like-minded people or who thought they were in the majority have reached the FO stage of the equation.

Businesses are finding that they have no customers. Employees are being shown the door and then finding out that they do not qualify for unemployment. FA and FO is happening all over the world.

In addition, people are speaking up in opposition to the vile, evil devils and finding that they are suddenly “Right wing extremists.”

They are being welcomed with milk and cookies and don’t understand how they got here.

Where is the violence coming from?

It is all in the definitions.

While there are multiple outlets reporting that there is more right-wing violence than left-wing violence, the singleton source leads back to the ADL.

Just a few observations. If the violence is anti-government, that is labeled as right-wing. Countless antifa thugs throwing firebombs at government buildings is “right-wing violence.” If charges are dropped, it wasn’t violence. Walking through the capitol is violence; burning cars is not.

The data is so corrupted that you can’t take it at face value.

Question Of The Week

Have you decided to go to red dots on your EDC?

The Most Terrifying Force of Death

Please don’t wake the man who wants to be left alone.

Charlie

As of Thursday night, they still do not have the shooter in custody. They have confirmed they have good video of the shooter. They believe they have his firearm. A Mauser in 30-06. They have released an image of a person of interest.

There are statements being presented as fact that the cartridges had things written in them indicating a trans or antifa motivation. This has not been confirmed by official sources. The different media reporting this might very well be circle sourcing.

Iryna

It has been 20 days since she was murdered. The look of stark fear in her face after she was stabbed is burned in my mind. I am waiting for the trial to end to find him sentenced to death.

Networking

It’s working. Shhh, don’t spook it.

Race Conditions

In computer science, a race condition is when two threads act on the same value at the same time, with the results of one thread being overwritten by the other.

Consider a database with a value in it; call it the number of visitors to the site. Simplistic code would read the data from the database, increment it by one, then write it back to the database.

This works if there is only a single thread. But if there are two threads, between the time one thread reads the value and writes it back to the database, another thread reads the same value. The value will be incremented in the database by one, when it was supposed to be incremented by two.

In this simple case, we can use a monoatomic action to do the operation: UPDATE options SET value=value+1 WHERE key='site-counter'

This SQL statement reads, increments, and writes the results back in a single operation.

The other method is by using a transaction. db_start(); $row = db_query("SELECT * FROM options WHERE key='site-counter'"); $value = $row['value']; $value += 1; db_query("UPDATE options SET value=$value WHERE key='site-counter'"); db_commit();

The framework I am using uses a crass and simplistic ORM (object relationship model). You don’t normally access the database directly. There is no method to start a transaction using the ORM. This would not be an issue except the framework actually has a critical section where a race condition can exist and is being hit on a semiregular basis.

And my last explanation to the client, this being the fifth time she’s asked what this thing is happening, was met with “I don’t speak your language. When will it be fixed?”

Question of the Week

What is the most touching thing you’ve seen since Charlie was assassinated?

Tenth Circuit Finds that Machine Guns Are Not Arms

As discussed yesterday, the tenth circuit decided that the first step in the Bruin methodology is to determine if the arm is in common use for self-defense before it can be considered an arm under the Second Amendment.

The reasoning behind the opinion is bad, to say the least, but we are not ready for this fight.

The criminal case involves a Glock Switch and other bad facts that would make bad law.

It Is Never Easy

I attempted an OpenStack install. The process never got to a working cloud. I want to be using OVN but the documentation is lacking, and I couldn’t make it work.

I learned something new: the concept of “cloud-init.” This might be interesting.

The problem I was having was that when using OVN I could sometimes get instances to come up and run, but sometimes the network wouldn’t work correctly. Breaking things.

The OVN implementation says that it has a metadata agent, but I could never get it to bind nor to answer queries. In the end, I decided to go back to using OpenvSwitch. Which then borked the OVN networks.

I’m in the process of removing the network part of OpenStack from that node.  I’ll try again once I have a baremetal machine ready to go.

Cloud-Init Looks Cool

Cloud-init is a set of processes that run during first boot, which pulls metadata from a “well-known” server.

The metadata can be scripts, configuration instructions, or a host of other things.

After the network is up and running, cloud-init makes a request to http://169.254.169.254. The server that answers at that IP will reply with the metadata for that particular server/instance. It would be nice to have a local server that provided an SSH key on first boot.

This should work for bare-metal installs if I set up a server at the above address to serve the metadata based on the IP of the request. An interesting reason to learn more about “Flask.”

Woodworking

Thursday I got my foreplane up and running. This was an eBay purchase of a narrow iron, high-chamber, medium-length plane. It is used for the rapid removal of stock.

If you are thinning a board or doing other bulk removal, a well-tuned foreplane will cut chips instead of shavings. You then smooth with a smoothing plane to get to the final dimension.

The plane looked good in the images, and what was delivered matched. What wasn’t obvious is that this plane had been made into a wall hanger.

Like a firearm that has been repaired but is no longer safe to use, this plane is no longer usable.

A former owner had applied a finish to the plane. Likely a polyurethane. I spotted this when I noticed a couple of drops that had not leveled out.

For the sole of the plane, this just meant it took a little longer on the lapping board. What I found Thursday was that there is more to a plane than a sharp iron and a flat sole.

That finish got into the throat and mouth of the plane. When it cuts a shaving, that shaving flows through the mouth and into the throat before it is pulled out and tossed or is otherwise disposed of.

What happens with that polyurethane is that the mouth is not only a little smaller, it also has a different coefficient of friction. This caused the shavings to jam so tight that I had to use an awl to free the shavings.

In the process I damaged the iron, which would require a few hours of sharpening to repair. Those old irons have very brittle cutting edges.

I’ve decided that this plane is now a wall hanger. I might be able to save the iron and tote, but I’m not sure anything else can be salvaged.

Furniture Plans

When I am using plans, I expect them to have instructions that tell me how to lay out my lines and to build the furniture. I don’t expect lifesize templates.

The plans for the trestle table I purchased don’t have radii or points of reference; you just tape the paper to the wood and cut it out.

I’m sure it works, but it is not how I like to work.

Scottish Girl

I’ve read some reporting that our ax and knife girl might get a little justice.

According to the original press stories, this was just a privileged white girl threatening an immigrant. Those stories did not mention what happened before the filming started.

The Scottish police originally claimed that the CCTV footage had gone missing, but they have now found the footage.

The muslim and his wife have been arrested. There are hospital reports of physical harm done to the 12-year-old that Ax Girl was defending.

The police are still insisting that the knife possession was a worse crime than being assaulted, but it is the UK.

Speaking Of Stupid Police

Some muckity-muck in the Canadian police is telling Canadians that if there is an intruder in their home, the best thing to do is to cooperate.

He strongly discourages anybody from taking the law into their hands.

Question of the Week

Have you ever set out to learn something, learned it, and then decided it was a total waste of your time?

Church Shooting

Miggy nailed it, again. This was a church shooting, not a school shooting.

If I recall correctly, many or most Catholic churches are anti-gun and mark their churches as “gun-free zones.”

This may or may not have the force of law.

But if you have a school attached to the church, then you are suddenly covered under the gun-free schools regulations.

Favorite Anti-Gunner Stupid of the Day

The mayor of the city where the shooting took place got on national TV to explain that guns are bad.

In one paragraph he told us, “Don’t paint all trans as evil because of this incident; the problem is all gun owners who refuse…”

It really was one single breath.

Network Stuff

I know you guys are tired of this. Yesterday I got my virtual network put back together. I finally found the magic document that told me what to do where.

The really cool thing is that once I had that magic, it was trivial to copy it to the different nodes to bring them into the “cloud.”

Ironic

This is a component of OpenStack. It is the tool I was expecting to use to get my network functional again. I haven’t figured it out yet.

The issue is that Ironic is too much. It requires a Baseboard Management Controller (BMC). A BMC is an embedded computer and OS in a server. You connect the BMC to a network, generally referred to as the management network, to gain access to the server hardware.

From the BMC, you can change BIOS settings, initiate power down and reset functions, and access the hardware for configuration purposes. Some even include KVM capabilities.

This is such a useful feature that most “real” servers come with them. Ironic has a couple of dozen drivers designed to work with them.

What it doesn’t have is any way to work with a computer without a BMC. There is an SNMP driver, but it is just for UPSs. I might play with it to get new boxes provisioned.

Maybe somebody has a fake IPMI implementation that runs under the actual OS.

Ceph is up?

I have 3 nodes that are not back up, plus the one node that was taken out of service. I’ll work on those two nodes today, but I also have to do honey-do jobs.

Question of the Week

This latest church shooting feels different. I can find the shooter’s name, but his name isn’t being dropped every other breath by news people.

Normally we are so cowed that we just “offer thoughts and prayers.” but this time we are still praying for those that were killed and injured as well as for those emotionally hurt by the shooter. Parents and such. The difference is that when there is that push for gun bans, there has been pushback at higher levels.

It also feels like we are getting more support from the top of the political party.

Does this terroristic act feel the same as the last shootings?

DC Clean Up

X has been melting down over the federal government using the Constitution to take control of local law enforcement in D.C.

Wolf Blitzer stepped in it by posting a picture of a HUMVEE at Union Station. He implied it was an affront.

He got ratioed badly. There were many personal comments about how people were feeling safe to be outside at night. One woman talked about how this was the first time in years she’d been able to walk through Union Station without being verbally and sometimes physically harassed.

Another reporter visited a homeless encampment, expecting the standard anti-Trump screeching. Instead, they were told how much better it was now that the criminal element, drug users, and those in need of mental help are gone. One homeless person’s statement was to the effect, “It is the first good sleep I’ve had in months.”

Pushing Back

I do remember Ronald Reagan as our President. He was one of the most skillful orators I’ve had the pleasure to listen to. He was quick-witted and used that skill to zing the media. He did it so well that most of the media laughed at themselves for being zinged.

Trump is not as articulate. He speaks at a 6th grade level, if I recall correctly. I don’t like listening to him speak. What he does is connect with The People.

What is a greater strength is his ability to troll the media and Democrats. He trolls, whereas Reagan cast zingers.

What is most noticeable is just how hard he pushes back on the media and narrative.

What is the massive win, in my opinion, is that his administration uses the same method of pushing back. They don’t get upset with the lies and narratives; they just call it out. And many times make fun of those who have idiotic stances.

According to Reddit, I Live in a Racist State

I don’t engage on Reddit. I have more than enough on my plate as it is. Today’s joy was an “ICE” warning. The top comments all misrepresented facts. “Immigrants,” “neighbors,” “friends” were used to describe the criminal aliens that ICE was looking for.

The kicker for me: “My daily reminder of just how racist this state is.” I live in New Hampshire. There are blacks in this state. There are people of color in the state. The blacks seem to gather in the cities, as per normal. But I can’t find racists anywhere except within the black community.

But they have defined “racist” to mean anybody who doesn’t accept every third world alien that comes into our country.

For them, it is racist that people are upset about the Indian who killed a family of three by making an illegal U-turn. The Florida cops administered a simple test: English proficiency and road signs. He got 2 out of 12 right on the English portion and 1 or none of the road signs.

This monster with a CDL from California killed a family of three, and I’m racist for being upset that he entered my country illegally and was given, given, not earned, a CDL.

OpenStack

I like doing things the old-fashioned way. I like knowing what the hell is going on inside my network. Having software magically do things bothers me.

Unfortunately, none of the documentation for Open Virtual Network (OVN) talks about manually configuring OVN. It all uses OpenStack. In addition, I’ve become unhappy with my Docker Swarm solution. Since I’m not hosting anything locally anymore, it is time to “upgrade” to OpenStack.

What the heck will I break? I’ll know next week.

AI Code Generation

I’ve started using Grok for code generation. There are issues, but I’m working through it.

First, Grok is not a programmer. It is a piece of software that does a particular task. You have to spend the time to define the task.

In this particular case, I’m interested in creating network maps in a cleaner way. Grok gave me that starting point.

No matter how smart it appears, it is stupid. My latest example is that there is an input field for interfaces. There is a example prompt, provided by Grok.

That example prompt leaves out an entire part of the syntax using a different set of symbols.

This reminds me of the discussion about secretaries back when word processors became a thing.

The director of the lab and the directors of the lab divisions all had secretaries. The secretaries did most of the writing. They typed out letters to be sent by snail mail, and they often wrote the email sent over their boss’s signature.

When word processors came out, the directors were expected to write their correspondence. The result was substandard grammar and English. Not because these guys were dumb, but because their skillset didn’t include touch typing at 80 WPM and all the rest that a secretary brings to the mix.

Can the average person use AI to write programs? Maybe. In a year, yes.

Will it be good? No.

Just like we went from having electrical engineering to computer science to information technology, I expect to see classes in creating AI prompts showing up in colleges in the next couple of years.

Until AI makes the next leap, it will take real programmers, coders, and systems people to create fully functional software.

On the plus side, Grok has shown me several patterns that I’m copying.

What Happens When You Use 78% of Your 100 TB of storage?

Alarms start going off. I had a Ceph node die on me. I have the parts to replace it. I haven’t had the time nor incentives to do so.

The nice part was that I was able to physically move most of the drives to different nodes. This led to the great rebalancing.

Ceph uses a layout called a “CRUSH tree” or “CRUSH map.” The idea is to define a set of rules for how data blocks should be distributed to different drives (OSDs).

Ceph provides resilience with two methods: one is via redundancy, and the other is by error codes.

Using redundancy, you specify how many copies of each block of data you want. Three is the smallest safe number. This means that every byte written is duplicated twice. When you retrieve the block, it is pulled from the “closest” node.

A redundancy of 3 means three copies. With error codes, the cost is better. Something closer to 1.6 instead of 3 at the expense of more work calculating the error codes.

If you had all 3 copies of the block on the same drive, if that drive (OSD) fails, you’ve lost that block of data. The CRUSH map tells Ceph how to protect duplicate blocks from single points of failure.

In the simplist configuration, you do OSD isolation. No two copies of the same block are ever stored on the same OSD.

You can expand this to the node/host. You can make the same rule that no one host can hold two copies of the same block.

My CRUSH configuration is attempting data closet isolation. No two copies of the same block can exist in the same data closet.

If I had moved the physical drives to a host in the same data closet, then some rebalancing would happen. I moved the drives to hosts in different closets.

Ceph then proceeded to rebalance 70 TB. Which is why networks had to be reworked. I managed to eliminate most of the bottlenecks.

Unfortunately, it also meant that I had OSDs and Placement Groups go “near full,” slowing down the rebalancing. More drives to the rescue.

Question of the week?

For years, if a Democrat or leftist started yapping about this or that, regurgitating CNN talking points, I kept my mouth shut and just moved on.

Except if it was gun-related, then I spoke up.

Today, I’m much more likely to speak up. To attempt to bring facts and logic to the discussion. I no longer sit silently for their lies.

Do you feel it is safer to speak up about your political stance today?

Can I call Network Support, Please?

I’m in network hell again. The internal network keeps getting better, but I’m a cheap SOB, so I don’t buy Cisco $50 SFP modules. I buy 4 for $50.

This has downsides, one of which is when it breaks, I’m responsible.

So here’s the story in short. Node 3 <=> SW1, Node 4 <-> SW1, S1 <=> R1, R1 <=> N129, R1 <=> N5, R1 <-> GW, GW <-> THE WORLD.

I have measured bandwidth between N3 and N5 at nearly 10G, as expected, both directions. I have measured bandwidth of nearly 2G between N129 and N3 and N5, as expected in both directions. I have measured bandwidth between N4 and N3, N5 and N129 at 1G, bi-directional.

The measured speed from the WORLD to the ONT is 1 Gbit, bi-directional. The measured speed between GW and WORLD is 480 Mbit bi-directional. This is because the GW is CPU starved at that point. It is a router, not a compute engine.

The measured throughput from the GW to N129 and N5 is 1 Gbit, as expected.

The measured throughput from N129 and N5 to the GW is < 30 Mbit. This is messed up. I'm working backwards. ONT to GW replaced ethernet cable. GW to R1 I've replaced the fiber modules on both ends, next step is to replace the fiber itself. That's where I'm stuck. I've even power cycled R1.

Techs vs Tech Support

The Fidium/Consolidated Communications tech was on site yesterday. He quickly found the ONT. Measured its performance, declared it needed to be replaced. Took a look at the equipment he could see and the fiber runs, went and moved the house to a different splitter. We are now on the primary splitter instead of one a few steps down. There are only 4 drops on this splitter instead of 10+.

When he was finished, I ran my speed tests again. 1G down, 0.040G Up. A major improvement, still not good.

Here are some observations. English was his primary and likely his only language. He understood that he was speaking with somebody who knew networks.

After we decided that something else was wrong, we decided to test with his laptop. Before he did any testing, he tested his dongle. He made sure his laptop was capable of 1G testing. That dongle was not. He went back to his truck to get one that did support 1G.

We tested, and he was getting the same numbers I was.

I’ve ordered a USB-C to Ethernet dongle for the laptop so I can connect directly to the GW to do testing. That’s a different question.

He called tech support. Those people, tech support for the techs, could not handle him just plugging in his laptop to test.

I introduced the tech to 8.8.8.8 and showed him how to verify he was online.

Because Tech Support couldn’t figure it out, he had to install a company router for them to be able to test. Tech Support then tried to force me to use their router. Their router has no SFP ports. No, thank you.

New Client

The new client project is winding down. After their people said it couldn’t be done for over a month, I do have the new server running. Management and their customers are happy. Most of the people using the new server are happy.

Their IT people are not happy with me. He managed to make enough visible mistakes that management noticed. Not that they hadn’t noticed before, they just didn’t know what they didn’t know.

Now comes the difficult task for me: turning a one-time project into long-term client support.

TDS

I look at the world of today versus the world of 12 months ago, and my life is better. I might not be pulling as much money as I want, but the economy is moving in the correct direction.

If I see a headline with “Trump!” in it, I know another TDS sufferer is about to tell me why their life is horrible because of Trump.

People being told to buy soda and snacks with their money and not mine? That’s evil.

The federal government not paying for people’s solar systems with my money? That’s evil too.

Removing criminal aliens from our country? Think of the children!

There was a thread on Reddit complaining that solar is going to die in Vermont because the solar subsidy is being stopped.

I’m sorry, solar in the Northeast is not as viable as solar in Florida or other sunny places. If you think it is such a great deal, buy it with your money, not mine.

Go read Dive Medic’s blog over at https://areaocho.com for his personal experience with solar power. It is a win for him. It is a nice concept for me. But it requires doing the math. And using your money.

The National Guard Can Be Used for Law Enforcement IF

It is for a good cause, like protecting President Biden from those horrible, evil, red-hatted people. They should have been called in to stop the most horrific, violent, attack on the government of the United States ever. January 6th, when 10s of thousands of the most heavily armed people in the world, left all their guns at home.

Activating the National Guard to help law enforcement officials in the District of Columbia? That’s forbidden. That’s misuse of the military.

Remember, the Second Amendment only protects the rights of the Militia, which is the National Guard, until Trump uses them, in which case they are the Military and it is a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. (End sarcasm).

There is nothing that the Trump administration can do that the left won’t cry about.

It’s Not Sharp

I think I’ve mastered the art of woodworking with hand tools. All cutting implements are dull, by definition. Sharpen them before you start.

Seriously, almost every time I’ve had issues, it is because I have not done enough sharpening or flattening.

That includes such things as flattening your planes. I have a Stanley #4 that needs more work to make its sole flat. It is almost there, but I got tired of trying to make it flat. I’m in a position to work on it again.

I picked up a wooden fore plane. This is really a jack plane, but it works.

The first step was to examine it. The sole looked ok, until I realized that there were little drips from whatever was used to finish it.

It took a good 30 minutes on 320 grit sandpaper to make the sole flat. It took longer than that to grind a good edge on the iron. It was so bad that the iron got to hot to hold, even with my slow speed grinder.

I need to spend a bit more time, but I believe this will be a real workhorse.

Now all I need is a day that isn’t so hot and muggy.

The same with the 26″ handsaw I found. Once it is properly sharpened, its 8 TPI will just rip through wood. The long length of the panel will make it another workhorse.

All I need to do is finish my Jointer’s Box. OH, I realized I had been staring at a Jointer’s box at the Fort without seeing it. I have to spend the time to examine it more closely.

Question of the week

My standard in interacting with the police is “I don’t answer questions.” Which I fail at, so I work harder at succeeding.

If police were to roll up in my yard, I would be telling them to leave.

With the advent of federal law enforcement hitting the streets of DC, there are reports coming out that LEOs are walking up on people sitting on their stoops to demand ID and justification.

Where do you stand on the idea of the cops demanding ID of people sitting on the steps of their own homes?

Ceph For The Win?

One of my Ceph nodes had started acting up. It would stop responding, and I could get no network traffic to it.

It is a truly headless server. My only input was the power button. Which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t.

After the third time the node went offline, I put a monitor on the node and got to see it die.

It limped along for a few more days before I remembered I had hot-swappable cabinets and moved the large drives to a different node.

Ceph is now rebalancing the cluster by moving 24+ terabytes around. It should finish in a couple more days. The cool factor is that nothing that depends on the Ceph cluster noticed. It all just works.

I would be replacing the dead node, but other work is interfering.

New Work

I’m in the process of bringing on a new client. It has been an interesting 48 hours. My first task has me busy for the next 4 days, if their networking team can get their network configured correctly.

They depend on Linux for several servers but have had nobody with Linux skills in their IT department for many years. Troglodite to the rescue.

I love this stuff. Doing emergency fixes faster than most other people can even evaluate the problem is where I shine.

Democrats AWOL

In a move that reminds me of pickup baseball games of my youth, the Dems of Texas were losing, so they kicked sand on the plate, grabbed the ball and bat, and took off for the hills.

Being Dems, this wasn’t “I’m taking my ball and bat and going home.” No, it was “I’m stealing your ball and bat and taking off with them.”

The governors of New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, and other Democratic strongholds are threatening to redistrict to remove Republican districts.

This would be a real threat, except that these states already did it. There are no Republican representatives from Massachusetts.

Ebay is an illness

So there are three or four planes you need for hand processing wood.

You require a smoothing plane, a Stanley #4. You require a jack plane, a Stanley #5. You require a jointer, a Stanley #7. And you should have a fore plane, a Stanley #5 with a wide mouth and specially shaped iron.

• Veritas #4: $290.00
• Veritas #5: $389.00
• Veritas #7: $459.00
• Veritas #6 Fore plan: $346

I’m not about to add those up. I’m lucky in that I already owned the #5 and #7.

eBay has Stanley #4s for around $50 plus shipping. Stanley #5s are going for $25 to $50. #7s are a bit more, in the $70 to $125 range.

Wooden planes are even cheaper.

I need to stop spending any time on eBay.

Diets

The weight is slowly coming off. It working for me. I just need to keep up the exercise part of the diet.

Question of the Week

What incident sticks out in your mind where you were told that there was a difficult problem and you gave the simple solution?

To give an example. I once interviewed with one of the big three automakers. My friend had gotten me the interview.

The interview went well. They explained the project I would be working on. They explained how hard the problem was that I would be working on.

I received permission to use the whiteboard and sketched out my proposed solution.

A few days later I received an apologetic phone call from the project manager. Seems that my 15-minute whiteboard session had provided them with the solution they needed. They had completed the project and the project was being shut down. The position they were going to hire me to fill was gone.

I moved the site to a new server. It appears to be more responsive.

On the downside, I don’t know if the citeserver is still working, and I have a server that has decided to kick the bucket.