My OpenBSD Story
blather.michaelwlucas.com
My OpenBSD Story
1–10 of 34 posts
Re: My OpenBSD Story
#2I loved this story. Anything similar out there?
Re: My OpenBSD Story
#3Love this war story. Partially because to a less dramatic extend, I solved a similar situation also with 'traffic shaping' using Linux a year ago. So that's why it resonates for me. I'm not an OpenBSD user but I do respect it's capabilities.
I wrote a blog post on how I did it:
http://louwrentius.com/how-traffic-shaping-can-dramatically-...
Re: My OpenBSD Story
#4Love this war story. Partially because to a less dramatic extend, I solved a similar situation also with 'traffic shaping' using Linux a year ago. So that's why it resonates for me. I'm not an OpenBSD user but I do respect it's capabilities. I wrote a blog post on how I did it: http://louwrentius.com/how-traffic-shaping-can-dramatically-...
Can someone how traffic shaping reduces latency rather than simply lowering the amount of load required to cause significant latency? I understand that the aim here is to prevent the router from having to queue packets, but by doing this haven't we just shifted the queue and source at which packets are dropped from the router to the Linux box?
Re: My OpenBSD Story
#5Love this war story. Partially because to a less dramatic extend, I solved a similar situation also with 'traffic shaping' using Linux a year ago. So that's why it resonates for me. I'm not an OpenBSD user but I do respect it's capabilities. I wrote a blog post on how I did it: http://louwrentius.com/how-traffic-shaping-can-dramatically-...
Can someone how traffic shaping reduces latency rather than simply lowering the amount of load required to cause significant latency? I understand that the aim here is to prevent the router from having to queue packets, but by doing this haven't we just shifted the queue and source at which packets are dropped from the router to the Linux box?
(Note: This link points to my web site, it's my story.)
You can't erase the capacity problems that cause issues like latency. Depending on your gear, however, you can shift them.
In this case, I used traffic shaping to transfer the latency to the customer that generated the traffic.
It let other customers get the normal usage that they'd paid for.
==ml
Re: My OpenBSD Story
#6I loved this story. Anything similar out there?
Michael W. Lucas has written many technical books, all useful and all with the same wry humor. His earlier books were published by No Starch Press. He has self-published more recent works at Tilted Windmill Press.
Re: My OpenBSD Story
#7That's amazingly similar to a situation I dealt with, except I had already been using openbsd for a year or two. Cisco really like to sell incredibly underpowered hardware and claim it can do anything. And then you end up replacing your $60,000 cisco with an $1200 PC because they really meant "well in theory it could do it if we sold you hardware that could take more than 256MB of RAM".
Re: My OpenBSD Story
#8I loved this story. Anything similar out there?
Years ago I worked as a developer for a company that also owned a small ISP. The sysadmin for the ISP had quit and they didn't bother to replace him, as another guy could usually keep things running. Until a huge wave of spam hit and the mail server went unresponsive. Typical for that time, the mail server was sendmail with an unholy, gnarly config including SpamAssassin with an unholy, gnarly config. The guy handling sysadmin duties was out of his depth. He gave me access, showed me around the configs, and asked me to help. Sure, I could help. But not in any kind of acceptable time frame. So I went back to my desk and thought about it a bit.
A while before I had installed OpenBSD on an old box to play with. I recalled seeing something about a transparent bridge setup, so I got the idea of putting a transparent bridge with greylisting in front of the mail server. So I grabbed a slow cast off desktop, slapped an extra NIC in it, got it configured so I thought it would work, and put it in place. A few tweaks later and the load was off the mail server and it began responding to legitimate requests and clearing out its queue.
From idea to working solution took about 4 hours, including scrounging up parts, installing, and everything. I'm sure something similar could have been done with another OS, but what level of expertise would it have required? I was pretty much an OpenBSD newbie then, doing things I'd never even played with before, and that stuff just worked.
Re: My OpenBSD Story
#9"If it didn’t work, I would either lay someone off or file for unemployment myself."" If I hadn’t already been stressed out, the prospect of choosing a minion to lay off would have done the trick. (Before any of those minions start to think I care about them personally: I work hard training minions, and swinging the Club of Correction makes my arms sore. Eventually. I don’t like to replace them.)"
This dude must be a joy to work for.
Re: My OpenBSD Story
#10"If it didn’t work, I would either lay someone off or file for unemployment myself."" If I hadn’t already been stressed out, the prospect of choosing a minion to lay off would have done the trick. (Before any of those minions start to think I care about them personally: I work hard training minions, and swinging the Club of Correction makes my arms sore. Eventually. I don’t like to replace them.)" This dude must be a…
Evidently you are not familiar with the sort of humor common to
alt.sysadmin.recovery