Older blog entries for Adrian (starting at number 23)

Been a while. Oh well.

Anyway, looks like a lot of people have expressed interest in how we do xml-rpc over (under?) ssl, and a lot of speculation. Of course, the answers are in the source code ;->

Basically, there is a https class hacked into the python package based on the M2Crypto openssl bindings (in the openssl-python package). Then some mods to python-xmlprc to allow the use of https and to do CA checking. This is what the client apps use to do ssl

Server side is apache and mod_ssl/openssl.

Seems to work well.

As far as the question of "who needs more than 4gig of ram", the answer is apparently "lots of people".

It was a pretty common request while I was working in tech support. As often as not, it was people looking for >4gig support per process, and at least with 2.2, x86, and linux, that wasnt really an option. But it wasnt uncommon for someone to want/need to be able to malloc a half a dozen gigs of ram. And not just malloc it, but use it as well.

But very often, people just needed more memory available because of huge numbers of proccess running. Web servers running on big hardware with long lasting cgi/asp/*let proccesses were a common theme. Ie, a few thousand perl processes taking a couple of megs each on a single machine. Yes, people really do that.

Or perhaps, you just need to serve up several thousand hits a second with a single machine. TUX and 32gigs of ram to the rescue... Okay, so I dont know anyone actually doing that in production. But one thing I learned in tech support, is if there is a limit on something in linux, someone will run into it.

Discovery of the day: Andy Goldsworthy

Just picked up a copy of A Collaboration with Nature today. An incredibly impressive collection of photos. Very nice.

All his artwork is made from natural materials, in natural settings, and usually extremely temporarily. The books are collections of photographs of the pieces. Very very cool.

I had seen a couple pics of some of his work in a few of the earthworks books I have, but didnt realize everything he does is that good. I am impressed.

The tiny little pictures on the Smithsonian site do not do the images justice, but it's about the best url I could find. Anyone have a better link, preferably with high res pictures and maybe the inscriptions/explanations? justice.

Didn't do anything related to free/open software today. Though I do find it humourous that one of the other companies in the same field as my employer seem to be making the same mistakes we did.

Now, off to the LUG at NCSU meeting.

Updated my Linux System Tuning page a bit. Added some info about increasing thread limits, shm segments and sizes, and some info about benchmarks and system monitoring utils. That page is almost starting to become useful.

Just to reiterate a few points other folks have made.

Go buy King Crimson cds. Go to The DGM Diaries. An interesting perspective on the whole "stealing somebody elses music is or is not part of my human rights" debate.

However, I dont think pointing to King Crimson's "Club" releases as a model of an alternative business model for musicians is particularly realistic. King Crimson have an extremely loyal "cult" following. Not everybody can have half a dozen top notch world class virtuosos and 30 years of recording and touring before they expect to be able to survive.

Todays cd recomendation: "Audio" by Blue Man Group. Nice cd. Lots of invented instruments, included some detail on what the instruments look like and how they are constructed. See About the music for some online info about the cd.

The Scott McCloud books are extremely good. Just recently purchases and read "Understanding Comics" again. The first time I read it I just happened to pick up a friends copy, and continued to skip two classes to finish it in one sitting on first read. Good book. "Reinventing Comics" seems to be equally as good. And this from someone who does not read comics or anime.

Oh my. Worlds colliding. What fun.

Been using xml-rpc alot in some projects recently, so I've been trying to make a habit of checking out Scripting.com on occasion. I check today, and what do I see but a article about advogato.

It was only a matter of time before the advogato's, the webloggers, and the wiki bunch met head on.

I suspect very interesting things to come out of this. Neat.

Oh well, nothing interesting to say. Some projects at work are finally starting to come together, and should be quite cool when ready.

So raph, when do we get the xml-rpc interface to advogato? Time for me to check out mod_virgule again I suppose.

So, one thing I learned after doing tech support for a while is that not many people know how to tune linux based servers. The info out there on the net is hard to find (though there are some excellent resources once you find them...). And people tend to result to repeating random bits of info that may or may not be useful.

So, I finally got around to writing up some of the info I've picked up over the years. Much of it has come from picking the brains of ThoseThatMakeThingsFast (hey zab).

Hopefully, this Linux System Tuning will prove useful to someone.

It's not complete, there are probably errors in it, it has a painful lack of real numbers to back up the claims, and some of it is soon to be outdated. But then, whats new?

And note, most of this is geared towards getting good benchmark numbers, or for helping the occasional ExtremeNetworking case you encounter in the real world. A lot of it isnt really geared for your run of the mill overpowered underbandwidth'ed webserver serving up a few thousand measly hits a day.

btw: Doom on my camera now has sound support as well.Whee!

I do not have a cell phone.
I do not have a pager.
I do not have a palm pilot.

I do however, have a digital camera I can play Doom on.

So who wants to write a mp3 decoder for it?

I'm not at OLS. I suck.

Ho hum. Nothing exciting going on.

Hit the used book store over the weekend. Picked up Messaging and Queuing Using the MQI Hi Keith. As well as a copy of Complete Book of Underground Houses, The Evolution of Useful Things, and the new King Crimson cd "The Construkction of Light". Nice cd. Good music to build a underground bunker to.