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Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

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641–650 of 666 posts

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#641
post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need just the floating IP address, keepalived is fine. I'm mostly bitter from spending days tracking down a race condition stemming from its notification scripts, which wasn't really keepaliveds fault per se. But if you need to start/move/constraint/notify anything along with the IP, or require sub-second failover, Corosync/Pacemaker is a far better choice. However due to their complexity, for just a floating…

Thanks for the explanation. Out of sheer curiosity (and because I run BSD-based pfSense and FreeNAS at home), how do you handle floating IPs and that sort of thing on OpenBSD?

OpenBSD invented a similar protocol to VRRP called CARP back when VRRP was patent-encumbered[0].

Configuring it is deceptively simple: just create an interface with ifconfig called "carpN", specifying VID, password and IP address[1].

You can also make it load-balance traffic between your carp hosts if desired[2].

Give it a go for your next firewall/server build :)

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Address_Redundancy_Prot...

1: https://www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/carp.html

2: http://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-current/man4/carp.4

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#642
post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We poked RabbitMQ, Gearman, SQS, a few others, and never got the reliability we demanded. To be fair, we're handling in the order of 50 million messages a day. Ended up just writing a simple file system based queue in Golang and it's working spectacularly. Just let the SSD do the work. Couple hundred loc all told. We rarely crack 10-15% cpu and memory use sits statically at around 30mb.

I've gone through a few things too, eventually settled on Redis. Would be interested in seeing your queue, if it were public?

I'd love to make it public, might be a while with company politics being what they are. We have a bad habit of not even sharing with other parts of the company.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#643
post #554

On Windows: Everything - simple and quick file search tool Ditto - clipboard history Nokia PC Suite - I still use Nokia 808 PW as my primary device, and the PC Suite is one of the reasons Puush - quick screenshot/file sharing tool KVIrc - IRC client Pidgin - multi-protocol IM client Opera 12 - living with this thing is becoming increasingly difficult, but I don't want to imagine living without it WinDirStat - storage…

Can you integrate Pidgin with Google Hangouts?

As far as I know you can, but some features may be limited/nonexistent.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#644
post #242

Windows: "Everything" (that's the name). A lightweight, fast and advanced (if you want it) file search engine. Linux: Most tools of course, as they are made with the Unix philosophy, but these days I'm most surprised by print drivers for Linux. Where in Windows the printer is always magically offline or slow, from Linux I can print and scan very reliably. Vim is also worth learning, it makes editing much more... rela…

Thanks for the tip about "Everything". Tried it for the first time now and, oh boy my life just changed. This is incredible! I'd like to see that quick ASCII search implemented into Windows. The included webserver is also fantastic.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this program come up a few times in the last couple of years - but every time I look at it I can't see a use case that sticks out. I've looked through the FAQ and installed it and I just can't seem to get why I'd use that opposed to Windows Explorer, 7Zip, and WinSCP. Can you share why you find it useful? Thanks!

I guess it only becomes a real power tool if you learn to navigate and harness the power of the 2 side-by-side panels by keyboard. Long story short, let me sum up some of my favorite features: - Tab to switch between panels - Navigate with arrow keys through the files list (very handy if you have it on 'brief' view, especially since you can walk through whole directories with left/right arrow until you hit the '..')…

Absolutely a must-use software. Been using it since 2006, never went back to Windows Explorer.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#646

PuTTY Saved my ass a lot of times when I wasn't around a linux machine.

Putty has some pretty strange design choices. They coupled the terminal emulator and the SSH client, and (at least used to have) really bad default configuration (blue color was unreadable, windows codepage instead of utf-8, etc. etc.). Now that Mintty exists, I prefer to use it + openssh on Windows.

Yes, I completely hate some of their decisions on UX/UI

But even with it's flaws, it was always reliably there when I needed it. Had to administer some linux servers with windows machines back on my internship days, and man... that was horrible.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#647
post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Everything" really is that simple. Point it at some folders and go.

Folders? It's extremely quick to index whole drives, so I'd just let it do just that.

True. That is what is does by default, and does it well.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#648
post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

use a decent OS. I can do it with middle click.

In what way is a middle click dependent on the OS? And in what way is moving your hand away from the keyboard to click a mouse better than simply hitting a key combo?

The OS does decide what to do upon middle-click. In X11 (which handles input events and actions on most desktop Linuxes), middle-click pastes text selection.

Shift+Insert is the keyboad equivalent of middle-click, BTW. Apple (or the ecosystem) doesn't have a monopoly on keyboard shortcuts; in fact, it has been my experience that Apple UIs focus on touchpad usage too much, to the point of completely ignoring and skipping keyboard shortcut support.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#649
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, maybe it's gotten better since the last time I used it, but I found it to be pretty unreliable.

Agreed. I started using it recently, after previously using x2x, and I keep hitting https://github.com/symless/synergy/issues/9 :(

Interestingly, I switched from synergy to a self-made ssh+x2x wrapper. Two reasons:

1. Ease of install; and 2. Backwards compatibility (Ubuntu 14.04's synergy just couldn't work with Arch's)

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#650

Total Commander. I've been using it since the first versions that came out for Windows 3.1 and it provided a smooth Windows transition from Norton Commander for DOS. The changelog goes back all the way to 2002, but it's been there for waaay longer. ( http://ghisler.com/whatsnew.htm ) I hope he continues to make a healthy income from it. It's litterally the best piece of shareware in the world in my eyes, that i've ha…

Clover is a simple tabbed file explorer that I use daily. It's great for easy access to frequently used folders, and makes it a breeze to move/copy files. Found at http://ejie.me/.
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