Monitoring systems utilize agents running on the monitored system in order to provide a consistent access mechanism to get at host and application data. Hypric has an agent, Zabbix has an agent, Nagios has NRPE as an agent option, collectd has an agent. Maybe its just my flawed perception but when I think of agent based monitoring SNMP isn’t one of the first things that comes to mind. Apparently I am not alone, in his blog on it.
April 1st. I had a fairly eventful day, first I found that the phone system at $work has been mis-configured since it was installed. Second I got a call from someone I had worked with a few years back about a system that did not have backups that had a raid hiccup tanking the system a few days ago needing help with a restore. The phone system Several months back a new phone system was installed at my office.
Yes folks, its that time of year to start thinking about the Large Installation System Administration Conference (LISA), this marks the 25th Large anniversary of the event. The Theme for LISA ’11 is “DevOps: New Challenges, Proven Values.”. I have seen many different definitions for DevOps [1], in general I am not a fan of the term but the core ideas I think are common sense for anyone who has been herding cats for very long.
http://news.morningstar.com/all/market-wire/11710743/free-pool-of-ipv4-address-space-depleted.aspx Mostly I am looking forward to the sensational stories. A week or so ago I heard a guy on NPR claim that ISPs might try to make people “share” Ips and you might end up with a “party line” situation.
Looks like my article on right sizing RAID subsystems made it into the Feb 2011 Sys Admin issue of Linux Pro Magazine. Go grab a copy and flame me ;).
I know I have been pretty silent for a while, what can I say it has been busy. I did want to drop this little tip though. I use vim and gnome-terminal a LOT, so I hit ESC quite frequently. Being so close to the F1 key can be hazardous as I tend to mash the ESC key several times. I have no idea where I picked up the habbit of hitting ESC multiple times but its something I have done for a long time and I don’t see me retraining myself any time soon.
Singing with the stars is a reality show where the famous and not so famous SysAdmins strut their stuff and show off their skillz. Guest appearances by: Brian Atkisson, Brandi-Jvonne Mortimer, Matt Simmons, Joseph Kern, Ian Paredes, and Nick Anderson These are clips from the pilot show:
An odyssey of a typical email thread using the top posting style that most email clients default to these days. What was it that I was supposed to have an idea on? Obviously there are several things from this fictitious email that are bothersome. long signatures with superfluous information credentials sent in email reply all on personal notes just to name a few. Things can get even more frustrating as threads diverge (when multiple people reply to the same email and people reply to those emails).
At $work we are in the process of migrating to Google Apps. Of course I am an early adopter to work out bugs and be a resource for others as they make the migration. One of the issues identified is mailto links pointing to google apps. Its not hard to make the change in firefox. First you need to set gecko.handlerService.allowRegisterFromDifferentHost to true in about:config (type about:config into your address bar).
When you get started as a SysAdmin you typically fall into one of 10 categories. You either had a mentor to show you the ropes, or you dredged through it on your on. It seems more and more the group that had or has a mentor is shrinking. I never had a mentor for the things I was most interested in, but my first boss did give good advice, and his words seem to ring in my head often.