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Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

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Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#461

Post by nikau »

sseagull wrote: post #93
Yuioup wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but you have talent and a lifetime of experience, plus space for a noisy 42u rack full of servers, but not everybody does...

People who have been woodworking for decades can own very expensive tools so that they can create very complicated things. People who are experts in cars can own very expensive cars and tools to tune them. People who have been working in music can have very expensive instruments and expensive headphones, microphones, sequencers, etc. We seem to be looking down on experienced "computer experts" and wanting to take the…

Not sure why you would need heaps of servers these days given everything is x86 and VM tech is robust and free

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#462

Post by Lamad123 »

unity1001 wrote: post #357
Lamad123 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How good is their 50 euro package? I wanna try it just for fun and dicking around.

Hetzner is pretty good in general. $70/month gets you a 16 vcpu VM with 2TB free egress/month. Their additional egress pricing is peanuts compared to Google. Google, AWS etc egress is so overpriced - as if we are still living in mid 2000s.

Sounds amazing, thank you guys!

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#463

Post by ayushnix »

madjam002 wrote: post #383
ayushnix wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's easy and painless It was probably the most difficult thing I tried to, unsuccessfully, use on my desktop. I imagine learning how to use Vim/Emacs as a complete beginner would probably be several magnitudes of order easier than learning the Nix DSL and the Nix way of doing things. And from what I've read about the experience of other people who do use NixOS and talk about both the good AND the bad, using it see…

I hear you, Nix definitely does feel slow and I must day over the few years I’ve been using it it has definitely slowed down even more. In terms of the DSL, I’m really surprised that people find it a problem as much as they do. When I first tried Nix I moved my first nonprod server over to it that very afternoon. It helped looking at the syntax to start with as “hmm this is a bit like JSON” and to worry about things…

> I hear you, Nix definitely does feel slow and I must day over the few years I’ve been using it it has definitely slowed down even more.

I don't know about others but once you become used to package managers like pacman and apk, it's a jarring experience to use apt and dnf, especially dnf. And Nix feels just as slow, if not slower, than all of them.

I have to install hundreds of MBs of metadata before I can install a package with dnf and the fastestmirror=true has essentially been useless in the history of my years of usage of dnf. The end result is me downloading hundreds of megs at speeds less than 1MBps.

> In terms of the DSL, I’m really surprised that people find it a problem as much as they do. When I first tried Nix I moved my first nonprod server over to it that very afternoon.

I find it much easier to use a combination Ansible, python/shell scripts, and dotfiles on multiple git forges. This setup may not be as declarative as NixOS but it is much easier to grok and use. I have no motivation to learn an obscure DSL to manage my system.

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#464

Post by exikyut »

scubbo wrote: post #277
lrvick wrote: post #61

I have over 20 years of Linux/FreeBSD sysadmin experience ranging from universities to major silicon valley companies in both cloud and on-prem. When it comes to companies I mostly support cloud these days but when it comes to me and my family I accept every downside and host as almost all of our digital lives in a 42u rack in a gutted closet in our house with static IPs and business fiber. I know where our data live…

Reading this as my home Wireguard-host has just gone mysteriously unresponsive for the second time in a month[0], rendering all my home-hosted service inaccessible - you're right about the pros _and_ the cons. I'm not shying away from this self-hosted adventure, but I'm also realistic about the downsides. [0] https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/135610/conne...

The TL;DR of [0], for visibility:

  [  150.076220] WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 0 at net/sched/sch_generic.c:468 dev_watchdog+0x308/0x30c
  [  150.076255] NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0 (bcmgenet): transmit queue 1 timed out
Essentially Ethernet chucks a wobbly until reboot and it's only possible to connect via Wi-Fi.

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#465

Post by southerntofu »

nix23 wrote: post #456
southerntofu wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought AWS was the mainframe in the parent comment?!

Please educate yourself what a mainframe is.

I've briefly encountered mainframes in the 90s. I thought it was a perfect analogy to AWS where "intelligence" is in the center and we're just piping stuff over the network for AWS to compute. I don't understand how selfhosted/self-provisioned servers is supposedly comparable to a mainframe, on the contrary.

> It's 2022 and we're about to rediscover something we know for 40 years already: mainframes are freaking expensive.

My interpretation: AWS is freaking expensive, AWS is in the center performing all computations; AWS is the mainframe we can well do without.

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#466

Post by chasil »

lamontcg wrote: post #327
chasil wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the BSDs use bash in their base. Apple recently switched from bash to zsh. OpenBSD uses a descendent of pdksh. Another major user of a pdksh descendent is Android (mksh), with a truly massive install base. Some of the bash problem, besides portability, is GPLv3. That was a major factor for Apple. I don't want my script portability linked to corporate patent issues. For this and other reasons, I don't use bash…

Yeah I've written and maintained scripts for the past 10 years that have to run on stock Solaris, AIX and *BSD. When they started out they had to work on the Solaris 9 /bin/sh, which is particularly elderly. You should feel free to continue to write portable scripts. That is horrible advice for anyone who is just starting out though and they should stick with #!/bin/bash and not worry about it until they actually wan…

As we've already covered, Ubuntu is your downfall.

Almquist is in Ubuntu for two reasons: speed and standards compliance.

These may not be important to you, but they are to a great many people, and the horrible advice in this case is to disregard these factors.

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#467

Post by BrandoElFollito »

theK wrote: post #401
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. There is, at least for me, one big serious downside: what happens when I die. My wife is quite concerned about her being left with a web of home automation, hosted emails etc. I understand her and I am trying to find a way out. My current idea is to document how to de-automatize the home and how to deal with emails and fiber access (the main things to worry about). Any ideas are very much welcome

Am at the same point. Have been thinking about a variety of options 1. bidirectional pacts with self-hosting friend 2. creating a network and culture of self hosting techies that develop the skills to assist (money and documentation required here but more resilient than no 1) 3. investing in your kids. Technically option 3 should be the best since it also engineers around generations (options 1 and 2 would roughly be…

1 and 2 are interesting but I have some doubts about the feasibility in my region. It is already quite hard to find people interested in automation with Home Assistant, so having someone who would be willing to understand the setup and scripts of someone else would be really tricky.

3 could have been a solution but my kids are not interested in development (if they would, it would have been my first solution)

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#468

Post by nix23 »

southerntofu wrote: post #465
nix23 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please educate yourself what a mainframe is.

I've briefly encountered mainframes in the 90s. I thought it was a perfect analogy to AWS where "intelligence" is in the center and we're just piping stuff over the network for AWS to compute. I don't understand how selfhosted/self-provisioned servers is supposedly comparable to a mainframe, on the contrary. > It's 2022 and we're about to rediscover something we know for 40 years already: mainframes are freaking expe…

It's a wrong analogy, but i also misunderstood you. Sorry for not understood your comment, but not-sorry for using the term mainframe wrong ;)

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#469

Post by lamontcg »

chasil wrote: post #466
lamontcg wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I've written and maintained scripts for the past 10 years that have to run on stock Solaris, AIX and *BSD. When they started out they had to work on the Solaris 9 /bin/sh, which is particularly elderly. You should feel free to continue to write portable scripts. That is horrible advice for anyone who is just starting out though and they should stick with #!/bin/bash and not worry about it until they actually wan…

As we've already covered, Ubuntu is your downfall. Almquist is in Ubuntu for two reasons: speed and standards compliance. These may not be important to you, but they are to a great many people, and the horrible advice in this case is to disregard these factors.

#!/bin/bash

People who start out with linux should use that. Most companies, particularly HNey startups, should use that and nothing bad will happen.

Most people don't have to care about portability, shouldn't use /bin/sh, and shouldn't learn about Almquist. Your advice does not favors to the bulk of people who just need to get shit done.

If they do wind up working in an environment where it is important, they can teach themselves the differences at that point, or else ask someone like us to review their code (and there's an automated linter out there).

You aren't the Main Character, most people don't need to care about the same things that you do.

Re: Reclaiming the lost art of Linux server administration

#470

Post by CRConrad »

denton-scratch wrote: post #409
lrvick wrote: post #61

I have over 20 years of Linux/FreeBSD sysadmin experience ranging from universities to major silicon valley companies in both cloud and on-prem. When it comes to companies I mostly support cloud these days but when it comes to me and my family I accept every downside and host as almost all of our digital lives in a 42u rack in a gutted closet in our house with static IPs and business fiber. I know where our data live…

You have a 42U rack to accomodate your family's home-computing needs? How large is your family?

The lower half of it houses a kitchenette.
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