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Show HN: SadServers – Test your Linux troubleshooting skills

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Re: Show HN: SadServers – Test your Linux troubleshooting skills

#91

Post by bravetraveler »

shagie wrote: post #70
bravetraveler wrote: post #4

Commenting to give this a try later, I've routinely been the person to get these kinds of gremlins escalated I've long wanted for some sort of mock, "things are broken - I want to see how you think" approach for sysad

In the "tricks of hacker news" - 188 points by fduran 3 hours ago | unvote | flag | hide | past | favorite | 68 comments If you click 'favorite' it will save it to your favorites list. This is a publicly visible list - yours is https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=bravetraveler and mine is https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=shagie which makes it easy to get a bookmark type style functionality within HN. A…

Much appreciated! I'm woeful about using not using features like this, it's a character fault at this point.

The HN interface too tends to just have my eyes filter out those links... but that's no defense.

Especially good to know that it's publicly viewable!

Not that I'm particularly worried of being outed by anything I favorite here, it's just good to be mindful of the data we make and where it goes.

Re: Show HN: SadServers – Test your Linux troubleshooting skills

#94

Post by cogman10 »

freeone3000 wrote: post #88
yamtaddle wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just run them in Linux VMs with WASM, on the users' browsers. Make them all pay for it with higher utility bills and greater wear & tear on their hardware. trollface.jpg

This is actually a good idea for this -- the user wants the education, they can pay for it with their own hardware. Keep your costs low!

Probably a better experience for everyone. You just have to distribute the image (rather than running vms) and the user gets instantaneous responses.

Re: Show HN: SadServers – Test your Linux troubleshooting skills

#95

Post by cogman10 »

BossingAround wrote: post #84
apawloski wrote: post #13

Based on your architecture diagram it looks like you're spinning up an instance per-user? As you're probably finding now, you will hit AWS limits quickly. You might instead want to have a smaller pool of (larger) servers that you run co-resident VMs on with https://firecracker-microvm.github.io/ . That will avoid account limits and also keep your AWS costs more predictable.

Why not spin up containers instead of VMs? Seems to me containers would fit much better than VMs.

Bypassing container security is easier than bypassing VM security.

Re: Show HN: SadServers – Test your Linux troubleshooting skills

#97

Post by spiffytech »

BossingAround wrote: post #84
apawloski wrote: post #13

Based on your architecture diagram it looks like you're spinning up an instance per-user? As you're probably finding now, you will hit AWS limits quickly. You might instead want to have a smaller pool of (larger) servers that you run co-resident VMs on with https://firecracker-microvm.github.io/ . That will avoid account limits and also keep your AWS costs more predictable.

Why not spin up containers instead of VMs? Seems to me containers would fit much better than VMs.

Containers have a history of escape vulnerabilities, for reasons like sharing a kernel with the host and other containers.

VMs are designed from the ground up to isolate guests, rather than focusing on application deployment.

Firecracker is the modern container alternative in untrusted compute scenarios, with Fly.io even converting container images into Firecracker VMs.

Re: Show HN: SadServers – Test your Linux troubleshooting skills

#98

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

spiffytech wrote: post #97
BossingAround wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not spin up containers instead of VMs? Seems to me containers would fit much better than VMs.

Containers have a history of escape vulnerabilities, for reasons like sharing a kernel with the host and other containers. VMs are designed from the ground up to isolate guests, rather than focusing on application deployment. Firecracker is the modern container alternative in untrusted compute scenarios, with Fly.io even converting container images into Firecracker VMs.

>Containers have a history of escape vulnerabilities

Generally agreed, but for this use-case do we care?

Re: Show HN: SadServers – Test your Linux troubleshooting skills

#99

Post by tamrix »

cogman10 wrote: post #95
BossingAround wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not spin up containers instead of VMs? Seems to me containers would fit much better than VMs.

Bypassing container security is easier than bypassing VM security.

Then wouldn't that be the ultimate test ;)

Re: Show HN: SadServers – Test your Linux troubleshooting skills

#100

Post by deeblering4 »

rednerrus wrote: post #47
mathverse wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in higher up positions like yourself will rarely be subjected to testing with tools like this. You are basically trying to remove the human from equation and industrialize the whole process.

What we're trying to do is respect peoples' time. We can get more about someone's technical understanding in 30 minutes of hands on exercises than we can in a full day of panel interviews. It's better for us as we have a much better understanding of where you're at Linux wise and it's better for you because you only need to come to two hours of interviews, total. Seems like a win win to me.

Framing a question like “a system has a high load average, what commands would you use to begin diagnosing that?” and taking that conversation as deep as the candidate can go is neither time consuming nor requires a panel of people.
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