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Another Amazon Post Mortem
Amazon has posted an analysis of the recent EBS outage. Here’s what I would consider to be the root cause this inability to contact a data collection server triggered a latent memory leak bug in the...
View ArticleRackspace Block Storage
A while ago, Rackspace announced their own block storage. I hesitate to say it’s equivalent to Amazon’s EBS, them being competitors and all, but that’s the quickest way to explain what it is/does. I...
View ArticleStackable Exit Hooks for Bash
I’m just going to leave this here and then quietly back away before the flames start. #!/bin/bash # Stackable atexit functionality for bash. # # Bash's "trap ... EXIT" is somewhat similar to libc's...
View ArticleUse Big Data For Good
There seems to be a growing awareness that there’s something odd about the recent election. “How did Obama win the presidential race but Republicans get control of the House?” seems to be a common...
View ArticleThe “Gather, Prepare, Cook, Eat” Design Pattern
This post is actually about an anti-pattern, which I’ll call the “grazing” pattern. Code wanders around, consuming new bits of information here and there, occasionally excreting new bits likewise. This...
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This Is Competition?
As I’m sure you’ve all noticed by now, I’ve become a bit sensitive about people bashing GlusterFS performance. It’s really hard to make even common workloads run well when everything has to go over a...
View ArticleLimiting Bash Script Run Time
Another self-explanatory bash hack. This one was developed to limit the total run time of a test script, where one of the commands was hanging but I was trying to chase down a different bug....
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Be a Better Raindrop
The computing industry is already awash in condescension and negativity, and it’s getting worse. Yes, I know it’s not a new phenomenon, but I’ve been around long enough to be sure of the trend. I’ve...
View ArticleIs Eventual Consistency Useful?
Every once in a while, somebody comes up with the “new” idea that eventually consistent systems (or AP in CAP terminology) are useless. Of course, it’s not really new at all; the SQL RDBMS neanderthals...
View ArticleHow (Not) To Collaborate
Collaboration is one of the most essential human skills, not just in work but in life generally, and yet it’s poorly taught (if at all) and a lot of people are bad at it. Programmers are especially bad...
View ArticleServer Design in Serbo-Croatian
Ten and a half years ago, I wrote an article on server design. Considering that I probably worked harder on that than on anything I’ve posted since, I’m pleased that it has continued to be one of the...
View ArticleStatic Site Update
As I mentioned too long ago, I’ve been planning to migrate this site to a different method of operation, for both performance and security reasons. Specifically, my approach allows me to add posts,...
View ArticleRackspace Block Storage
A while ago, Rackspace announced their own block storage. I hesitate to say it’s equivalent to Amazon’s EBS, them being competitors and all, but that’s the quickest way to explain what it is/does. I...
View ArticleIs Eventual Consistency Useful?
Every once in a while, somebody comes up with the “new” idea that eventually consistent systems (or AP in CAP terminology) are useless. Of course, it’s not really new at all; the SQL RDBMS neanderthals...
View ArticleHow (Not) To Collaborate
Collaboration is one of the most essential human skills, not just in work but in life generally, and yet it’s poorly taught (if at all) and a lot of people are bad at it. Programmers are especially bad...
View ArticleServer Design in Serbo-Croatian
Ten and a half years ago, I wrote an article on server design. Considering that I probably worked harder on that than on anything I’ve posted since, I’m pleased that it has continued to be one of the...
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