$200 per machine.. If you'll try things before you implement them, you'll find that IDE's work great for servers, run cooler (except the IBM's, hehe), and are easier to acquire. If you do have a drive failure (it happens), you can get one from your wholesale vendor, or after hours pick one up from anywhere like CompUSA (BestBuy, Fry's, or even WalMart or Sam's Club). The boss doesn't question having a small stack of drives just as spares or for future expansion, but leave a few $200+ drives laying around, and most bosses will freak..
This has been true for years. I've run server farms with both SCSI and IDE. When the SCSI drive fails, you gotta go find one, probably order one. Those machines run hotter, are noiser, and usually the drives don't last as long, even in a nice climate controlled environment with fans. I remember buying 9Gig SCSI drives for $2000 each, and trying to find replacements when they fail.. I still have two here that we use as paperweights.
No one cares if we burn up a few IDE drives, especially since our failure rate is like 1% (Western Digital drives) per year. We buy 'em by the dozen so we'll have some laying around for new servers or expansion.
IDE's are just as fast, and honestly faster than any practical application that we've managed to have.. Serving web pages, mail server, or databases, IDE's are never our bottleneck. The biggest problem we have is other people's bandwidth (it's hard to use up multiple 1000baseFX).
So, identified as a "moron", hi.
I do kind of miss hearing 12 SCSI drives spin up simultaniously, or hearing the synchronized reads and writes that the RAID 5's did. The IDE RAID 5's are too quiet to hear from more than a foot away.
I know, you're just a stupid anonymous troll, I shouldn't have even replied to you. Have a nice day.
Western Union offers Mastercard, but they are not the *BANK* that *ISSUES* the credit card. The *BANK* is "Direct Merchants Bank, N.A., Arizona" Any organization can have credit cards issued, but they have to get a bank to back them..
Here in America, we've grown used to thinking that anyone who acts like a bank is a bank. That's mostly because the feds kick around anyone who tries to be a bank and isn't. I strongly suspect that the feds aren't just letting PayPal go. They have something bigger on them.
I paid my subscription, I wanna see porn! Oh wait, that's our customers... (Psst,/. is free..)
This is actually the perfect technology toy for my office. Our tension breakers are rubber-band wars.. We've been using a yard stick to stretch out large strong rubber bands.. We get some good distance with those, but with 144 shots, I'd definately dominate.. I need to be able to carry it though, these are moving battles! I wonder how long til ThinkGeek start carrying 'em.:)
(BTW, anyone wondering what to buy me for xmas, this is it!)
One of Level 3 Communications Manhatten colocation rooms has something like 15 rows with something on the order of 100 racks per row..
They have 2 colocation rooms in the building I'm refering to, but they have colocation facilities in two more buildings in Manhatten alone. If anyone ever told me to find rack "moocow", I'm afraid I'd have to stare at them blindly, and wonder which train their brain missed...
L3 uses CO##.## to identify it's racks. CO being "Colocation", the first pair of numbers to be the row, and second to be the rack.. Seems pretty sensible.. They even name their routers pretty well. ipcolo1.NewYork1.Level3.net . Pretty clear which facility and router, eh?
On the other hand, I do know a company that uses your system.. Of course, "moocow" may refer to several places in their facility, as they reuse names frequently (they're not all that creative). They also have a room for non-rackmountable servers.. They're sitting on a vast array of shelves.. I watched them search for a machine for 1/2 hour, which was mis-marked. It was identified by unplugging network cables until it stopped pinging. Well, everyone has to have their own level of quality.. I wonder if any of those other customers minded being unplugged.
>>The article said up to 4000, not "we're going to deploy 4000 today". Honestly.
That's what I thought with voyeurweb.com.. They had 3 servers, and just added #4 before we took over. We went wild and deployed 10 servers (wow).. That was 4 years ago, I belive.. We have over 90 now.. That doesn't include special function machines, or legacy sites, which maintain their own naming conventions. I'm very happy with numbered naming..
I don't want to spoil everyone's fun, but we use pretty boring hostnames.. You'd think porn sites would be more interesting..
[company][id].[basedomain].[tld] Voyeurweb, and it's associated sites are all voy##.voyeurweb.com
When you have a bunch of machines, it makes it a lot easier.. There are some exceptions on our network, which make it difficult. When you're going through *EVERY* server on thet network making a change, it makes it a lot easier to delegate parts. For example, we upgraded every Unix server's sshd not too terribly long ago. It's easy enough to say "I'm doing 1 through 20, you do 21-40.". Imagine doing that by odd hostnames. Every element, famous comedians, pop rock groups?
There is a mistake in our planning though, but it's too late to fix it. We gave blocks of numbers to each city's colocation. So: New York has 01-19 Tampa has 20-49 Frankfurt has 50-59 San Diego has 60-79 Los Angles has 80-99
But, what happens after we use up the 19 in NY or 29 in TPA. What seemed like an impossibility at the time has come pretty close to happening. We'll delegate another block,probably 1xx, 2xx, following the pattern of the previous block, so Tampa would gain 129-149 229-249, etc, etc..
What would have probably been better is [company][city][id] voyNY01 voyTP01 voySD01
There are other companies that we host, which have their own short company delegation. We have more familiar hostnames that go with some of the machines, like ns, ns2, mail, etc, etc..
A company I used to work for had hostnames such as
gen gen2 smart stupid free ns nic noc mail alpha Steak KFC
At 3am, if you need to check every server for something, do you want to be trying to remember all the servers, or wonder which one you missed? If I don't remember what voy39 does, it's easy enough to look it up (intranets are your friend).
Numerical patterns can help too. If you have an APC masterswitch, you know it handles 8 machines. So, 1-8 are on the first, 9-16 on the second, 17-24 on the third, etc, etc.. Or even your network switches, if you were good about assinging ports. 1-48 on the first, 49-56 on the second..:)
If you have a small operation, names are cute. I've helped out friends who had all their machines named by function, pet-name, or person's name.. Not much help to me trying to figure out what's there. "Web, SQL, Laura, and Flower need x software upgraded, Rock, Stupid, and Mail need this, and check the rest for..." Well, what are the rest? Luckly most of them are only offices of like 10 workstations and POS machines.
Of course, nice numerically assigned machines give remote people a better understanding of your network too. if you want to break into a network, you find they have exactly four machines (server01-server04), you don't bother with all the other IP's, because you know they're just virtual hosts on the those machines.:)
Hehe. His SMTP server has been slashdotted.. It's pathetically slow to accept the commands I typed to it.. My message will probably be queued for a few hours..:)
I wonder how long it'd take him to close his relay, when his machine is constantly relayed through..
Put what you said in different context. In '91, you bought a new computer, you had the choice of [PC/MS/DR]Dos or Windows, from small stores, or MSDos & Win3.1 from a large retail store.. Microsoft took the monopoly position. People only know how to work Win[3.x/95/98/NT/2k/XP] because it was given to them, and they didn't have a choice. Either learn it, or don't use your computer. If Linux was anywhere near what it is today, the users could have been using it just as easily..
As I recall, some retail stores were using other Windowing managers in '91, but MS got the sweet contracts, and managed to beg and buy their way into the majority share.. Good business for that. That's why you see Compaq, Dell, and HP in all the big retail stores. They do the same thing.. But MS had the stragity of saying to the big OEM's, "If you sell MS, you can't give the option of anything else." That's why we haven't seen OS/2, BeOS, *nix on any of those systems..
Most end users don't know shit about installing an OS. They can point and click. I worked retail computer stores for years.. If they get a DOS prompt, they're lost. They couldn't install a driver for Win9x to save their lives.. That's why they bring it back to the store..
If there were Compaq, Dell, and HP machines in the store, with a Windows, OS/2, BeOS, and Linux, with identical hardware, and proper pricing for the OS's (assuming OS/2 and BeOS were even still available), people would be buying Linux machines with the OS preinstalled..
"You can have this computer with Linux for $300, or with Window for $400". Consumers are cheap bastards, and would jump at the Linux machine, with a current interface and well put together package.. Even office environments would thrive with a nice copy of StarOffice, or something of that sort on it..
It'll be years and years before we see Linux even coming close to that age. Maybe if it had been this well developed in 1995, it would have 50% market share, but not yet today..
Today, I point to various computers in my office and home, and tell people, "That's Linux". My girlfriend sat down, knowing nothing about *nix, and clicked the Netscape icon, and started browsing.. That's all most people do. Browse, and read Email.. It doesn't take a rocket scientist, just someone capable of moving a mouse.
Wether it's Windows or Linux, they'll still take it to a store for new hardware. Most end users have never even considered opening the case of the computer themselves.. It's like opening the hood of your car to check the oil. They leave it to "professionals".
spam is a serious waste of energy. We're filtering roughly 3000 messages per week. It's unfortunate that you've ended up on those lists. It seems any successful hosting company will end up being fingered as a spammer at some point. In the case of the companies I've worked for, we've been innocent. One, a mainstream hosting company, was stuck on a blackhole list, which we never managed to get removed from. One customers ISP used that blackhole list, and he was very upset that he couldn't have his domains Email forwarded from us.
There are better solutions than using the "blackhole" lists to block someone, like yourself. Recently, we've stared using MailScanner, which uses SpamAssassin for spam identification by pattern recognition, blackhole lists, and Razor for spam identification through cataloging. MailScanner and SpamAssassin are very nice in that they don't just "black hole" you, they simply tag the message as possible spam. That's what any responsible ISP should do, rather than blocking all transactions based on a 3rd parties list. We get the occasional Email sent through a mail server which would have been black holed, and it is a legitimate Email which should be delivered.
Running a mail server, it's not my job to block mail based on where it came from. I can provide the service to my users by adding flags for potential unsolicited bulk messages, but it's up to them to decide if they did or didn't want it. You never know, they might have been interested in going to a hardcord teenage beastality site. Who am I to say that's wrong.:)
Personally, this sounds like they're trying to criple their children..
<RANT>
I was in a lucky class, to get the first computer in the district when I was in 1st grade. It was a TRS 80 Model III. No one else took an interest in it, and the teacher couldn't even figure out how to work it, so I started playing with it. A few years later, the school invested in 10 Apple IIe's for their "computer lab". The teacher there once again had no clue.. I learned everything I could about it.. I'd read the manuals til I knew the in's and out's of it. I'd read through any available code til it was a second language to me.
Then on to the BBS's.. Want to see creative, look at the ASCII/ANSI graphics.. That's taking what you have available and being creative.
Tell me that hackers, phreakers, and crackers aren't creative. Not only could they think of things that shouldn't be possible, they'd make some of the most unique things possible and single-handedly reverse engineer what would take a team of "professional" programmers years to put together.
I'm sure quite a few of you can relate..
If I didn't have access to a computer from 1st grade, I probably wouldn't be able to do what I do now.. I could be a manager at a McDonalds, or grocery store. Maybe I'd be a low-level accountant or used car sales man.. With that little step forward, I've managed to be a SysAdmin, making decent money, living a good life..
My path probably isn't right for everyone, but tell me that the person who knows how to work their computer doesn't have a distinct advantage over the person who stares at the blue screen asking "what should I do now?". I'm one of those people who firmly believes that you should understand everything around you. It's important. You know how to check the oil in your car, change a lightbulb, and make toast in the morning, you should be able to work this relatively simple piece of office equipment.
Keep your children away from technology, and you will be ruining them for the rest of their lives. I saw one comment by someone who's a teacher, and all their students returned virtually identical powerpoint presentations.. Discourage duplication. Reward uniqueness. You need to *TEACH* them that copying the masses isn't going to get them by in life.
I think the title of this was correct. Is Comcast intercepting packets?.
If you nmap the box, it's just a Linux 2.2.x machine, which is their proxy server. They have SSH (OpenSSH) on 22, and proxies on 8080->8082 (most likely). I won't try to guess what's on 9090, that's up to a local user to investigate. Every cable provider has a proxy server, which they run to save themselves bandwidth. It probably does cache content. I can't connect from outside, probably due to an access list which doesn't recognize my IP as being one of their legitimate users. Good for the, one less open proxy server out there.
I think this needs much more evidence to be a credible report. Do you want to hear my list of gripes about TimeWarner/RoadRunner? They had my upload bandwidth limited to 1Kb/s and it took me 3 days (and 8 technicians) to get it fixed. Am I screaming gov't conspiracy? No.
If you don't like it, I'd bet you can just change your browser settings away from the defaults that their little install program set.. Or if you're that paranoid, tunnel everything you have to a "known safe" network..
If they're anything like TimeWarner/RoadRunner, they're doing their best just to keep the network running, they're not logging every packet. They can barely keep up with normal services, like keeping their SMTP, POP3, NNTP, and DNS servers functioning, do you think they could pull a psuedo-CIA move and watch all your packets and dynamically rewrite banners based on your browsing history? How many Comcast users do you suspect they have in your local area? Remember, we're talking about the same people that couldn't keep up with their billing enough to keep @Home from going backrupt..
Post some firm evidence, and I'm sure more people would be convinced. As for now, I'm saddened that/. even posted the story..
Hmmm.. Looks like an interesting concept. If you have an admin with a little time on his hands, which would probably cost you a *LOT* less than $20k, you could set up something else.
We've been using Namazu to make all of our documents searchable. It's shareware, and does a pretty decent job of it. If we make it public or private is just a matter of who you allow access.:)
I guess the days of `grep "searchstring" *` are pretty much gone..:(
Next thing they're going to tell me is that I should start using something more modern than Pine to read my mail..
You're exactly right. In my Win98 scenerio that Windowsupdate installed a newer network driver that didn't work, most end users would wonder why their cablemodem didn't work any more.. Now there's all the "What if's" What if it was something more dramatic than the network driver (IDE driver? Video driver?)..
From the good point of view, they're taking responsibility to fix things. The end user with 1 XP machine that coudn't even figure out how to spell "windowsupdate.microsoft.com" is saved from potential problems. Never more will we have to ask/tell the customer, "Go update your software."
Now think about the admin with 400 XP servers on his network. Once a week, he doesn't have to install patches on each and every one. I've had fun before watching a team of 3 guys updating software on 150 NT4 servers. I didn't even ask what the problem was, but I know that we completely reinstalled and reconfigured 16 Linux machines (fresh OS installs, replaced some hardware, set up the sites, and had them running again) before they were anywhere close to done.
The XP admin will love this, assuming they do implement it. The EULA is just saying right now that they have permission to do it.
There is a downside. NT4 SP6 (not SP6a). Anyone remember that one? I believe it was the one that when you installed and rebooted on a Compaq built server, it would fail to boot. The only fix (from Microsoft) was to reinstall Windows.. How many companies use those nice expensive Compaq servers, which would be automatically killed off.
I have a computer at my home, with an i810 chipset, and an Intel Pro10/100 NIC. Windowsupdate insists that there is an update for it. I installed it (point, click, let it run). When it came back up, no more network. The new network driver doesn't recognize my network card. But, Windows automatically identified it as the new and updated driver..
The scenerio of the XP admin with 400 machines under his control. Now he has to go to each and every one, and try to fix the network driver. How long would you think it would take to fix 400 machines? How long if the update happened to come on Friday at 5:30pm, 30 minutes after he left for a weekend vacation.
We have a policy at my office, no changes on Friday. Maintaince stuff is fine, but no changes that will potentially make people work over the weekend. If Microsoft is calling the shots on updates, it's on their timetable. Maybe the day they call to update my network driver is the same day that all the Admins from my office are at a conference, meeting, or something..
We all know stuff never happens at the right time, but we don't really need an extra variable of random events.
I'm all for the updates. Maybe if they have it the way the WindowsUpdate notification works now, it would be very good. it says "There's an update available", they click the button, and it does them.. I'll be interested to see how they implement it, if they do..
Of course, we don't run XP for damned good reasons (We're a 90% Unix shop). NT survives for our legacy sites. I'll watch the comments fly when M$ kills off a few hundred thousand users with a flawed update.:)
My girl was getting all jealous of my work (or more like my paychecks), so she almost got Linux installed. I gave her a copy of O'Reilly's "Learning the Unix Operating System" (a cute book for beginners), and free roam of my home Linux machine. She got as far as "Login", and gave up..
If only I could get her trained in Linux ("installed on her" hehe), she'd be so much more efficent.
I'm very displeased with the BSA's tactics.. I've known several business owners who were threatened by them.. One completely freaked out. He asked me to come to his business and look everything over. Everything that was installed on his computers were OEM installs by the manufacturer (Dell, Compaq, and HP), and licensed Point Of Sale software.
Why did the BSA send him a threatening letter? Because he's a business owner.
This has been discussed on here before, where some private individuals have received the same letters at their homes.
<Rant>
I know companies with OEM installed everything. They don't have the "proof of purchase" for Windows, that came as an OEM install in 1998.. 5 years after the purchase don't even know where the stack of sales papers are for my car. I just keep track of my title and registration, just like Windows users usually have that stupid book with the hologram on it... My $35k car is worth a lot more than a Win98 install. The DMV will reprint my lost title for $15 . Why does the BSA think they are entitled to collect $150,000 for a missing "proof of purchase"!?
I hope the BSA comes after my home based business. I'll refuse them entry to my property. When the Federal Marshals come, I'll refuse them too. When they bust down my door and arrest me, they'll be very upset to find that I have a Win98 book w/ hologram, but it's not installed (I lost the CD years ago), and my machines have Linux on them.
I read and reread the available materials on Terrarium. I want to play too, but it really looks like a cheap way to get Joe-Admin to install the.NET framework on his system. They say you need to have your Terrarium on a high-availability machine, if you plan to win. For most people, their home machine isn't going to do, it's going to be a server. Look, now they have.NET installed on x-million web servers.:)
I tried to submit the Terrarium project as news, but aparently my karma isn't good enough to be considered yet.:)
I'm putting up an old back-end server just to play.. Something that I don't mind formatting afterwards, just to get rid of.NET . Our networks are Linux based, we only have a few legacy NT servers left (and lots of licenses to reinstall! Yippie!), so I won't be using.NET for future development.
You're missing some essential information, such as how many users is your web server going to serve (the 20 office people, or 100k customers), is DHCP for the 20 workstations, or 1000 dialup users, and is your company Email intensive? Are the 20 people working there doing support Email for Microsoft, or just normal idle chatter?
I'll assume it's a small company, with small company needs, with a little room for growth. If there are different needs, you'd probably need an additional server or two for whatever your loads are.
I'll also have to assume you have a working knowlege of NT/W2K and Unix (Linux specifically). If not, this won't work very well for you. If I was hired at your place today, and told to do it, this is the way it would be done.
First off, build the servers yourself, if you know how. I would build two servers, usage to be outlined below. This would be the order to my hardware vendor. They'll work within these specs, and have the parts to me the same day.
-Fastest and most cost efficent CPU. Probably just over 1Ghz of either AMD or Intel
-*GOOD* CPU Fan (you don't want to worry about it in a year)
-Asus motherboard w/ integrated LAN & video
-Crucial memory 512Mb. is a good start.
-2 Western Digital IDE Hard drives. One smaller one (~16G) for the OS, one larger one (~100G)for any stored data.
-Case. CalPC 1U Rackmount (for rack use), or Enlight midtower if you don't have a rack. ($300 cheaper for the midtower).
Your cost should be betwen $800-$1000 per machine, depending on how bad your hardware vendor rips you off.
You probably also want to buy a CD burner for your workstation. Tapes are cool and big and the bosses like having the tapes safely tucked away in the office vault, but it sucks waiting 8 hours for a restore to roll through, just to find out it didn't store even though everything looked like it did. Have a nice little stack of CD's with all the important stuff on it, and burn new ones occasionally (monthly?). CD's are a *LOT* cheaper than tapes anyways. (less than 50 cents each in bulk).
You could save more money, buying a cheaper motherboard, or cheaper hard drives, but you'll find out it's really not worth it. Which would you prefer, having hardware that never fails, or getting a call every morning at 8am when the staff comes in and can't log in because the PDC is dead.
Now you have two nice stable affordable servers, which will never cause you hardware problems or have mysterious crashes. We build out similiar machines for workstations, since they're cheap.
If you're only doing a little file sharing, that's fine. If you're doing serious file storage, you should consider getting a RAID 5. I personally like the external IDE RAID's. It attaches to a SCSI card in the server, and has 5-6 IDE hard drives in it. There are quite a few companies that build them. IDE is a good choice, they run cool and are cheap if one fails. Because it's RAID 5, you just yank the broken one out, and stick in a new one, without doing anything (ours auto-rebuilds).
On the first machine, set up WinNT/Win2k (forgive me).. Make this your PDC (for login auth), and Print server. That's it. Nothing else. Not a workstation or anything. You *could* let it be a workstation, but the gods of security will laugh at you.
On the second machine, install Linux. I like Slackware (slackware.com). Configure dhcpd, httpd, samba, sendmail, pop3, and possibly imapd. To give you a hint of how easy it is, sendmail pop3 and imapd are already done. dhcpd takes all of about 5 lines in a conf file. httpd is already done, but you'll want to eventually customize. samba isn't all that hard, especially if you've done it before. I copy the same smb.conf around all over the place, just changing the machine's name and share specs.
I've never set up samba to be a PDC or BDC, but it is very possible. It's documented, I've just never done it. You can make the Linux machine BDC, or use a low-end spare (Pentium 166 or so), or volunteer a NT4/W2k workstation.
Honestly, you could have the slackware machine completely done in an hour.
This way is probably a better choice in the long run. Those other companies may be out of business or not supporting your box in a year, and if something needs done, you could be screwed (buy a new box from us). With this solution, you're wide open to being able to fix things yourself. Do windowsupdates on the NT server, install the patches from TechNet. Fix whatever needs fixed on the Linux box (it's easy, honest)..
Here's what it takes to do upgrades on the Linux machine.
cd/usr/src/
wget http://[whateverpackage]
tar xvpzf [package].tar.gz
cd [packagedir]
./configure
make
make install
You won't even have to reboot.:)
I apologize to anyone who thinks this is an unpopular approach, but it's worked very well in several businesses that either I've worked with or simply know someone working at. Little pieces change depending on use. Like, if you're trying to be a hosting company, you'd have multiple independent web servers.
I worked in a computer store for years. Thank god I got out of there and into SysAdmin positions.:)
One of the guys in the store, from before I started there, had an IDE hard drive, which he had unscrewed the top. He'd pull the lid off occasionally and point out parts to explain to customers why their hard drives would go "thunk".. For some reason, it was easier for him to sell them new drives after he pointed out the mutilation he did to his.
I freaked the first time I saw it. "You can't do that! It won't work." He had Windows (3.1, I believe) installed, and it actually worked. That drive ran almost constantly until he left the company about a year later. It was opened almost daily. He took it with him, so I don't know its true fate.
Now back to the window project. He wasn't cutting on the part of the drive with the platter, he was cutting on the lid. The part with the platters was wrapped in plastic and probably left in another room, so it wouldn't get dirty. I'm strongly suspecting that he did the drive surgery in one room, and hacked the lid in another. So, after he cleaned the lid, he brought it back into his relatively clean room, and reassembled it. Sure, there's potential for bad things to happen, but I'm strongly suspecting his drive has a good chance of living for a long time. Putting the "window" in took less than an hour, I'm sure.
Would you consider a hard drive opened for less than an hour, and covered by plastic most of the time it was open, to be in any worse shape than the drive that was opened every day to have stupid customers look at it?
One of my hobbies is automotive mechanics. People who don't know any better look and say "You can't do that!" about automobile mechanics too. Sure, I can rip half of your engine apart with hand tools, and put it back together in an afternoon. I've known people to run engines without air cleaners for 200,000 miles in dusty environments, or not change their oil for 20k miles at a time. Would I recommend it? No. Is it very possible that it won't destroy anything or drastically shorten the lifespan of the equipment? Yes.
Slashdot Mirror
Consider the cost difference:
60Gig IDE - $80
controller- $0
50G SCSI - $229
controller- $50+
$200 per machine.. If you'll try things before you implement them, you'll find that IDE's work great for servers, run cooler (except the IBM's, hehe), and are easier to acquire. If you do have a drive failure (it happens), you can get one from your wholesale vendor, or after hours pick one up from anywhere like CompUSA (BestBuy, Fry's, or even WalMart or Sam's Club). The boss doesn't question having a small stack of drives just as spares or for future expansion, but leave a few $200+ drives laying around, and most bosses will freak..
This has been true for years. I've run server farms with both SCSI and IDE. When the SCSI drive fails, you gotta go find one, probably order one. Those machines run hotter, are noiser, and usually the drives don't last as long, even in a nice climate controlled environment with fans. I remember buying 9Gig SCSI drives for $2000 each, and trying to find replacements when they fail.. I still have two here that we use as paperweights.
No one cares if we burn up a few IDE drives, especially since our failure rate is like 1% (Western Digital drives) per year. We buy 'em by the dozen so we'll have some laying around for new servers or expansion.
IDE's are just as fast, and honestly faster than any practical application that we've managed to have.. Serving web pages, mail server, or databases, IDE's are never our bottleneck. The biggest problem we have is other people's bandwidth (it's hard to use up multiple 1000baseFX).
So, identified as a "moron", hi.
I do kind of miss hearing 12 SCSI drives spin up simultaniously, or hearing the synchronized reads and writes that the RAID 5's did. The IDE RAID 5's are too quiet to hear from more than a foot away.
I know, you're just a stupid anonymous troll, I shouldn't have even replied to you. Have a nice day.
Western Union offers Mastercard, but they are not the *BANK* that *ISSUES* the credit card. The *BANK* is "Direct Merchants Bank, N.A., Arizona" Any organization can have credit cards issued, but they have to get a bank to back them..
Western Union Mastercard has the details.
The VISA site explains how to get your company name on a VISA card.. How'd you like a VISA with "Joe's Bar" emblazen across the front.. :)
VISA CoBranding
Here in America, we've grown used to thinking that anyone who acts like a bank is a bank. That's mostly because the feds kick around anyone who tries to be a bank and isn't. I strongly suspect that the feds aren't just letting PayPal go. They have something bigger on them.
You know, the loudest complainers in our members-only message boards and chat rooms are the ones that find passwords on "passwordz" sites..
Yup, definately makes you wonder...
I paid my subscription, I wanna see porn! /. is free..)
:)
Oh wait, that's our customers...
(Psst,
This is actually the perfect technology toy for my office. Our tension breakers are rubber-band wars.. We've been using a yard stick to stretch out large strong rubber bands.. We get some good distance with those, but with 144 shots, I'd definately dominate.. I need to be able to carry it though, these are moving battles! I wonder how long til ThinkGeek start carrying 'em.
(BTW, anyone wondering what to buy me for xmas, this is it!)
One of Level 3 Communications Manhatten colocation rooms has something like 15 rows with something on the order of 100 racks per row..
They have 2 colocation rooms in the building I'm refering to, but they have colocation facilities in two more buildings in Manhatten alone. If anyone ever told me to find rack "moocow", I'm afraid I'd have to stare at them blindly, and wonder which train their brain missed...
L3 uses CO##.## to identify it's racks. CO being "Colocation", the first pair of numbers to be the row, and second to be the rack.. Seems pretty sensible.. They even name their routers pretty well. ipcolo1.NewYork1.Level3.net . Pretty clear which facility and router, eh?
On the other hand, I do know a company that uses your system.. Of course, "moocow" may refer to several places in their facility, as they reuse names frequently (they're not all that creative). They also have a room for non-rackmountable servers.. They're sitting on a vast array of shelves.. I watched them search for a machine for 1/2 hour, which was mis-marked. It was identified by unplugging network cables until it stopped pinging. Well, everyone has to have their own level of quality.. I wonder if any of those other customers minded being unplugged.
Ah, who cares, they're only customers.
>>The article said up to 4000, not "we're going to deploy 4000 today". Honestly.
That's what I thought with voyeurweb.com.. They had 3 servers, and just added #4 before we took over. We went wild and deployed 10 servers (wow).. That was 4 years ago, I belive.. We have over 90 now.. That doesn't include special function machines, or legacy sites, which maintain their own naming conventions. I'm very happy with numbered naming..
I don't want to spoil everyone's fun, but we use pretty boring hostnames.. You'd think porn sites would be more interesting..
[company][id].[basedomain].[tld]
Voyeurweb, and it's associated sites are all
voy##.voyeurweb.com
When you have a bunch of machines, it makes it a lot easier.. There are some exceptions on our network, which make it difficult. When you're going through *EVERY* server on thet network making a change, it makes it a lot easier to delegate parts. For example, we upgraded every Unix server's sshd not too terribly long ago. It's easy enough to say "I'm doing 1 through 20, you do 21-40.". Imagine doing that by odd hostnames. Every element, famous comedians, pop rock groups?
There is a mistake in our planning though, but it's too late to fix it. We gave blocks of numbers to each city's colocation. So:
New York has 01-19
Tampa has 20-49
Frankfurt has 50-59
San Diego has 60-79
Los Angles has 80-99
But, what happens after we use up the 19 in NY or 29 in TPA. What seemed like an impossibility at the time has come pretty close to happening. We'll delegate another block,probably 1xx, 2xx, following the pattern of the previous block, so Tampa would gain 129-149 229-249, etc, etc..
What would have probably been better is [company][city][id]
voyNY01
voyTP01
voySD01
There are other companies that we host, which have their own short company delegation. We have more familiar hostnames that go with some of the machines, like ns, ns2, mail, etc, etc..
A company I used to work for had hostnames such as
gen
gen2
smart
stupid
free
ns
nic
noc
mail
alpha
Steak
KFC
At 3am, if you need to check every server for something, do you want to be trying to remember all the servers, or wonder which one you missed? If I don't remember what voy39 does, it's easy enough to look it up (intranets are your friend).
Numerical patterns can help too. If you have an APC masterswitch, you know it handles 8 machines. So, 1-8 are on the first, 9-16 on the second, 17-24 on the third, etc, etc.. Or even your network switches, if you were good about assinging ports. 1-48 on the first, 49-56 on the second..
If you have a small operation, names are cute. I've helped out friends who had all their machines named by function, pet-name, or person's name.. Not much help to me trying to figure out what's there. "Web, SQL, Laura, and Flower need x software upgraded, Rock, Stupid, and Mail need this, and check the rest for
Of course, nice numerically assigned machines give remote people a better understanding of your network too. if you want to break into a network, you find they have exactly four machines (server01-server04), you don't bother with all the other IP's, because you know they're just virtual hosts on the those machines.
Hehe. His SMTP server has been slashdotted.. It's pathetically slow to accept the commands I typed to it.. My message will probably be queued for a few hours..
I wonder how long it'd take him to close his relay, when his machine is constantly relayed through..
Tom,
Put what you said in different context. In '91, you bought a new computer, you had the choice of [PC/MS/DR]Dos or Windows, from small stores, or MSDos & Win3.1 from a large retail store.. Microsoft took the monopoly position. People only know how to work Win[3.x/95/98/NT/2k/XP] because it was given to them, and they didn't have a choice. Either learn it, or don't use your computer. If Linux was anywhere near what it is today, the users could have been using it just as easily..
As I recall, some retail stores were using other Windowing managers in '91, but MS got the sweet contracts, and managed to beg and buy their way into the majority share.. Good business for that. That's why you see Compaq, Dell, and HP in all the big retail stores. They do the same thing.. But MS had the stragity of saying to the big OEM's, "If you sell MS, you can't give the option of anything else." That's why we haven't seen OS/2, BeOS, *nix on any of those systems..
Most end users don't know shit about installing an OS. They can point and click. I worked retail computer stores for years.. If they get a DOS prompt, they're lost. They couldn't install a driver for Win9x to save their lives.. That's why they bring it back to the store..
If there were Compaq, Dell, and HP machines in the store, with a Windows, OS/2, BeOS, and Linux, with identical hardware, and proper pricing for the OS's (assuming OS/2 and BeOS were even still available), people would be buying Linux machines with the OS preinstalled..
"You can have this computer with Linux for $300, or with Window for $400". Consumers are cheap bastards, and would jump at the Linux machine, with a current interface and well put together package.. Even office environments would thrive with a nice copy of StarOffice, or something of that sort on it..
It'll be years and years before we see Linux even coming close to that age. Maybe if it had been this well developed in 1995, it would have 50% market share, but not yet today..
Today, I point to various computers in my office and home, and tell people, "That's Linux". My girlfriend sat down, knowing nothing about *nix, and clicked the Netscape icon, and started browsing.. That's all most people do. Browse, and read Email.. It doesn't take a rocket scientist, just someone capable of moving a mouse.
Wether it's Windows or Linux, they'll still take it to a store for new hardware. Most end users have never even considered opening the case of the computer themselves.. It's like opening the hood of your car to check the oil. They leave it to "professionals".
spam is a serious waste of energy. We're filtering roughly 3000 messages per week. It's unfortunate that you've ended up on those lists. It seems any successful hosting company will end up being fingered as a spammer at some point. In the case of the companies I've worked for, we've been innocent. One, a mainstream hosting company, was stuck on a blackhole list, which we never managed to get removed from. One customers ISP used that blackhole list, and he was very upset that he couldn't have his domains Email forwarded from us.
:)
There are better solutions than using the "blackhole" lists to block someone, like yourself. Recently, we've stared using MailScanner, which uses SpamAssassin for spam identification by pattern recognition, blackhole lists, and Razor for spam identification through cataloging. MailScanner and SpamAssassin are very nice in that they don't just "black hole" you, they simply tag the message as possible spam. That's what any responsible ISP should do, rather than blocking all transactions based on a 3rd parties list. We get the occasional Email sent through a mail server which would have been black holed, and it is a legitimate Email which should be delivered.
Running a mail server, it's not my job to block mail based on where it came from. I can provide the service to my users by adding flags for potential unsolicited bulk messages, but it's up to them to decide if they did or didn't want it. You never know, they might have been interested in going to a hardcord teenage beastality site. Who am I to say that's wrong.
Personally, this sounds like they're trying to criple their children..
<RANT>
I was in a lucky class, to get the first computer in the district when I was in 1st grade. It was a TRS 80 Model III. No one else took an interest in it, and the teacher couldn't even figure out how to work it, so I started playing with it. A few years later, the school invested in 10 Apple IIe's for their "computer lab". The teacher there once again had no clue.. I learned everything I could about it.. I'd read the manuals til I knew the in's and out's of it. I'd read through any available code til it was a second language to me.
Then on to the BBS's.. Want to see creative, look at the ASCII/ANSI graphics.. That's taking what you have available and being creative.
Tell me that hackers, phreakers, and crackers aren't creative. Not only could they think of things that shouldn't be possible, they'd make some of the most unique things possible and single-handedly reverse engineer what would take a team of "professional" programmers years to put together.
I'm sure quite a few of you can relate..
If I didn't have access to a computer from 1st grade, I probably wouldn't be able to do what I do now.. I could be a manager at a McDonalds, or grocery store. Maybe I'd be a low-level accountant or used car sales man.. With that little step forward, I've managed to be a SysAdmin, making decent money, living a good life..
My path probably isn't right for everyone, but tell me that the person who knows how to work their computer doesn't have a distinct advantage over the person who stares at the blue screen asking "what should I do now?". I'm one of those people who firmly believes that you should understand everything around you. It's important. You know how to check the oil in your car, change a lightbulb, and make toast in the morning, you should be able to work this relatively simple piece of office equipment.
Keep your children away from technology, and you will be ruining them for the rest of their lives. I saw one comment by someone who's a teacher, and all their students returned virtually identical powerpoint presentations.. Discourage duplication. Reward uniqueness. You need to *TEACH* them that copying the masses isn't going to get them by in life.
</RANT>
I think the title of this was correct. Is Comcast intercepting packets?.
/. even posted the story..
If you nmap the box, it's just a Linux 2.2.x machine, which is their proxy server. They have SSH (OpenSSH) on 22, and proxies on 8080->8082 (most likely). I won't try to guess what's on 9090, that's up to a local user to investigate. Every cable provider has a proxy server, which they run to save themselves bandwidth. It probably does cache content. I can't connect from outside, probably due to an access list which doesn't recognize my IP as being one of their legitimate users. Good for the, one less open proxy server out there.
I think this needs much more evidence to be a credible report. Do you want to hear my list of gripes about TimeWarner/RoadRunner? They had my upload bandwidth limited to 1Kb/s and it took me 3 days (and 8 technicians) to get it fixed. Am I screaming gov't conspiracy? No.
If you don't like it, I'd bet you can just change your browser settings away from the defaults that their little install program set.. Or if you're that paranoid, tunnel everything you have to a "known safe" network..
If they're anything like TimeWarner/RoadRunner, they're doing their best just to keep the network running, they're not logging every packet. They can barely keep up with normal services, like keeping their SMTP, POP3, NNTP, and DNS servers functioning, do you think they could pull a psuedo-CIA move and watch all your packets and dynamically rewrite banners based on your browsing history? How many Comcast users do you suspect they have in your local area? Remember, we're talking about the same people that couldn't keep up with their billing enough to keep @Home from going backrupt..
Post some firm evidence, and I'm sure more people would be convinced. As for now, I'm saddened that
Hmmm.. Looks like an interesting concept. If you have an admin with a little time on his hands, which would probably cost you a *LOT* less than $20k, you could set up something else.
:)
:(
We've been using Namazu to make all of our documents searchable. It's shareware, and does a pretty decent job of it. If we make it public or private is just a matter of who you allow access.
I guess the days of `grep "searchstring" *` are pretty much gone..
Next thing they're going to tell me is that I should start using something more modern than Pine to read my mail..
You're exactly right. In my Win98 scenerio that Windowsupdate installed a newer network driver that didn't work, most end users would wonder why their cablemodem didn't work any more.. Now there's all the "What if's" What if it was something more dramatic than the network driver (IDE driver? Video driver?)..
Praise Microsoft.. hehe
Well, this could be a very good, or bad thing..
:)
From the good point of view, they're taking responsibility to fix things. The end user with 1 XP machine that coudn't even figure out how to spell "windowsupdate.microsoft.com" is saved from potential problems. Never more will we have to ask/tell the customer, "Go update your software."
Now think about the admin with 400 XP servers on his network. Once a week, he doesn't have to install patches on each and every one. I've had fun before watching a team of 3 guys updating software on 150 NT4 servers. I didn't even ask what the problem was, but I know that we completely reinstalled and reconfigured 16 Linux machines (fresh OS installs, replaced some hardware, set up the sites, and had them running again) before they were anywhere close to done.
The XP admin will love this, assuming they do implement it. The EULA is just saying right now that they have permission to do it.
There is a downside. NT4 SP6 (not SP6a). Anyone remember that one? I believe it was the one that when you installed and rebooted on a Compaq built server, it would fail to boot. The only fix (from Microsoft) was to reinstall Windows.. How many companies use those nice expensive Compaq servers, which would be automatically killed off.
I have a computer at my home, with an i810 chipset, and an Intel Pro10/100 NIC. Windowsupdate insists that there is an update for it. I installed it (point, click, let it run). When it came back up, no more network. The new network driver doesn't recognize my network card. But, Windows automatically identified it as the new and updated driver..
The scenerio of the XP admin with 400 machines under his control. Now he has to go to each and every one, and try to fix the network driver. How long would you think it would take to fix 400 machines? How long if the update happened to come on Friday at 5:30pm, 30 minutes after he left for a weekend vacation.
We have a policy at my office, no changes on Friday. Maintaince stuff is fine, but no changes that will potentially make people work over the weekend. If Microsoft is calling the shots on updates, it's on their timetable. Maybe the day they call to update my network driver is the same day that all the Admins from my office are at a conference, meeting, or something..
We all know stuff never happens at the right time, but we don't really need an extra variable of random events.
I'm all for the updates. Maybe if they have it the way the WindowsUpdate notification works now, it would be very good. it says "There's an update available", they click the button, and it does them.. I'll be interested to see how they implement it, if they do..
Of course, we don't run XP for damned good reasons (We're a 90% Unix shop). NT survives for our legacy sites. I'll watch the comments fly when M$ kills off a few hundred thousand users with a flawed update.
hehe.
My girl was getting all jealous of my work (or more like my paychecks), so she almost got Linux installed. I gave her a copy of O'Reilly's "Learning the Unix Operating System" (a cute book for beginners), and free roam of my home Linux machine. She got as far as "Login", and gave up..
If only I could get her trained in Linux ("installed on her" hehe), she'd be so much more efficent.
I'm very displeased with the BSA's tactics.. I've known several business owners who were threatened by them.. One completely freaked out. He asked me to come to his business and look everything over. Everything that was installed on his computers were OEM installs by the manufacturer (Dell, Compaq, and HP), and licensed Point Of Sale software.
Why did the BSA send him a threatening letter? Because he's a business owner.
This has been discussed on here before, where some private individuals have received the same letters at their homes.
<Rant>
I know companies with OEM installed everything. They don't have the "proof of purchase" for Windows, that came as an OEM install in 1998.. 5 years after the purchase don't even know where the stack of sales papers are for my car. I just keep track of my title and registration, just like Windows users usually have that stupid book with the hologram on it... My $35k car is worth a lot more than a Win98 install. The DMV will reprint my lost title for $15 . Why does the BSA think they are entitled to collect $150,000 for a missing "proof of purchase"!?
I hope the BSA comes after my home based business. I'll refuse them entry to my property. When the Federal Marshals come, I'll refuse them too. When they bust down my door and arrest me, they'll be very upset to find that I have a Win98 book w/ hologram, but it's not installed (I lost the CD years ago), and my machines have Linux on them.
</Rant>
I read and reread the available materials on Terrarium. I want to play too, but it really looks like a cheap way to get Joe-Admin to install the .NET framework on his system. They say you need to have your Terrarium on a high-availability machine, if you plan to win. For most people, their home machine isn't going to do, it's going to be a server. Look, now they have .NET installed on x-million web servers. :)
:)
.NET . Our networks are Linux based, we only have a few legacy NT servers left (and lots of licenses to reinstall! Yippie!), so I won't be using .NET for future development.
I tried to submit the Terrarium project as news, but aparently my karma isn't good enough to be considered yet.
I'm putting up an old back-end server just to play.. Something that I don't mind formatting afterwards, just to get rid of
You're missing some essential information, such as how many users is your web server going to serve (the 20 office people, or 100k customers), is DHCP for the 20 workstations, or 1000 dialup users, and is your company Email intensive? Are the 20 people working there doing support Email for Microsoft, or just normal idle chatter?
/usr/src/
:)
I'll assume it's a small company, with small company needs, with a little room for growth. If there are different needs, you'd probably need an additional server or two for whatever your loads are.
I'll also have to assume you have a working knowlege of NT/W2K and Unix (Linux specifically). If not, this won't work very well for you. If I was hired at your place today, and told to do it, this is the way it would be done.
First off, build the servers yourself, if you know how. I would build two servers, usage to be outlined below. This would be the order to my hardware vendor. They'll work within these specs, and have the parts to me the same day.
-Fastest and most cost efficent CPU. Probably just over 1Ghz of either AMD or Intel
-*GOOD* CPU Fan (you don't want to worry about it in a year)
-Asus motherboard w/ integrated LAN & video
-Crucial memory 512Mb. is a good start.
-2 Western Digital IDE Hard drives. One smaller one (~16G) for the OS, one larger one (~100G)for any stored data.
-Case. CalPC 1U Rackmount (for rack use), or Enlight midtower if you don't have a rack. ($300 cheaper for the midtower).
Your cost should be betwen $800-$1000 per machine, depending on how bad your hardware vendor rips you off.
You probably also want to buy a CD burner for your workstation. Tapes are cool and big and the bosses like having the tapes safely tucked away in the office vault, but it sucks waiting 8 hours for a restore to roll through, just to find out it didn't store even though everything looked like it did. Have a nice little stack of CD's with all the important stuff on it, and burn new ones occasionally (monthly?). CD's are a *LOT* cheaper than tapes anyways. (less than 50 cents each in bulk).
You could save more money, buying a cheaper motherboard, or cheaper hard drives, but you'll find out it's really not worth it. Which would you prefer, having hardware that never fails, or getting a call every morning at 8am when the staff comes in and can't log in because the PDC is dead.
Now you have two nice stable affordable servers, which will never cause you hardware problems or have mysterious crashes. We build out similiar machines for workstations, since they're cheap.
If you're only doing a little file sharing, that's fine. If you're doing serious file storage, you should consider getting a RAID 5. I personally like the external IDE RAID's. It attaches to a SCSI card in the server, and has 5-6 IDE hard drives in it. There are quite a few companies that build them. IDE is a good choice, they run cool and are cheap if one fails. Because it's RAID 5, you just yank the broken one out, and stick in a new one, without doing anything (ours auto-rebuilds).
On the first machine, set up WinNT/Win2k (forgive me).. Make this your PDC (for login auth), and Print server. That's it. Nothing else. Not a workstation or anything. You *could* let it be a workstation, but the gods of security will laugh at you.
On the second machine, install Linux. I like Slackware (slackware.com). Configure dhcpd, httpd, samba, sendmail, pop3, and possibly imapd. To give you a hint of how easy it is, sendmail pop3 and imapd are already done. dhcpd takes all of about 5 lines in a conf file. httpd is already done, but you'll want to eventually customize. samba isn't all that hard, especially if you've done it before. I copy the same smb.conf around all over the place, just changing the machine's name and share specs.
I've never set up samba to be a PDC or BDC, but it is very possible. It's documented, I've just never done it. You can make the Linux machine BDC, or use a low-end spare (Pentium 166 or so), or volunteer a NT4/W2k workstation.
Honestly, you could have the slackware machine completely done in an hour.
This way is probably a better choice in the long run. Those other companies may be out of business or not supporting your box in a year, and if something needs done, you could be screwed (buy a new box from us). With this solution, you're wide open to being able to fix things yourself. Do windowsupdates on the NT server, install the patches from TechNet. Fix whatever needs fixed on the Linux box (it's easy, honest)..
Here's what it takes to do upgrades on the Linux machine.
cd
wget http://[whateverpackage]
tar xvpzf [package].tar.gz
cd [packagedir]
./configure
make
make install
You won't even have to reboot.
I apologize to anyone who thinks this is an unpopular approach, but it's worked very well in several businesses that either I've worked with or simply know someone working at. Little pieces change depending on use. Like, if you're trying to be a hosting company, you'd have multiple independent web servers.
This is for all the "You can't do that" people.
:)
I worked in a computer store for years. Thank god I got out of there and into SysAdmin positions.
One of the guys in the store, from before I started there, had an IDE hard drive, which he had unscrewed the top. He'd pull the lid off occasionally and point out parts to explain to customers why their hard drives would go "thunk".. For some reason, it was easier for him to sell them new drives after he pointed out the mutilation he did to his.
I freaked the first time I saw it. "You can't do that! It won't work." He had Windows (3.1, I believe) installed, and it actually worked. That drive ran almost constantly until he left the company about a year later. It was opened almost daily. He took it with him, so I don't know its true fate.
Now back to the window project. He wasn't cutting on the part of the drive with the platter, he was cutting on the lid. The part with the platters was wrapped in plastic and probably left in another room, so it wouldn't get dirty. I'm strongly suspecting that he did the drive surgery in one room, and hacked the lid in another. So, after he cleaned the lid, he brought it back into his relatively clean room, and reassembled it. Sure, there's potential for bad things to happen, but I'm strongly suspecting his drive has a good chance of living for a long time. Putting the "window" in took less than an hour, I'm sure.
Would you consider a hard drive opened for less than an hour, and covered by plastic most of the time it was open, to be in any worse shape than the drive that was opened every day to have stupid customers look at it?
One of my hobbies is automotive mechanics. People who don't know any better look and say "You can't do that!" about automobile mechanics too. Sure, I can rip half of your engine apart with hand tools, and put it back together in an afternoon. I've known people to run engines without air cleaners for 200,000 miles in dusty environments, or not change their oil for 20k miles at a time. Would I recommend it? No. Is it very possible that it won't destroy anything or drastically shorten the lifespan of the equipment? Yes.