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The sad state of sysadmin in the age of containers (2015)

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Re: The sad state of sysadmin in the age of containers (2015)

#221

Post by oblio »

pjc50 wrote: post #208
xchaotic wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think these are noble but naive approaches - we have been developing software for a few decades now and sometimes the software is not compatible without the developer knowing it. You should be able to use whichever version of the software you need.

> sometimes the software is not compatible without the developer knowing it Sure, but this should be considered either a defect or something highlighted by a major version number jump.

Yeah, but who decides if it's a defect? Maybe the defect is subtle and only manifests in rare cases and the upstream rightfully decides that after a risk/payoff analysis, it's not worth fixing it.

Or maybe he agrees and fixes it and it's included in distributions 7 years later.

I've changed 5 jobs in 7 years (because of life circumstances) and I'm not even a job hopper... How is any commercial shop going to plan around 7 year time frames?

Re: The sad state of sysadmin in the age of containers (2015)

#222

Post by ryandrake »

jeltz wrote: post #189
phaedrus wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 36 and recently was assigned to mentor a new employee in his 20s. We had a moment of miscommunication when I asked him to use git to clone a local repository. He was confused when he couldn't find it on github.com (what I'd sent him was a path to our private network share). I had to explain that, yes you can use the github.com client if you want, but "git" is different from "github". I honestly couldn't tell if h…

I am the same age as you, but I do not think this is about age, at least not mainly about age. My father who is almost 70 has no issue understanding what git and github are and I have worked with people under 25 who have not had an issues with this distinction either. And there are plenty of open source developers I have met who are pushing 70 who keep up with technology just fine. Sure, I notice that younger develop…

Yea this seems like more of a competence-related problem than age-rated. I never even considered that I might have to ask candidates if they knew the difference between git and github but now I wonder....

Re: The sad state of sysadmin in the age of containers (2015)

#223

Post by organsnyder »

xchaotic wrote: post #184
HorstG wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Installing multiple versions is possible, given proper semver and good arguments for it: There are quite a few libfoo5, libfoo6, libfoo7 packages. What isn't and shouldn't be possible is installing libfoo 6.6.5 and 6.6.6 at the same time, because those should be compatible. And not being easy to replace (i.e. ABI- and API-compatible) means that security and bug fixes will be missed. Of course this is work for applica…

I think these are noble but naive approaches - we have been developing software for a few decades now and sometimes the software is not compatible without the developer knowing it. You should be able to use whichever version of the software you need.

This was my experience as a developer on a SOA team that provided APIs for the rest of the organization (a large regional healthcare system). Even changes that didn't officially break the API could break our customers in ways we didn't anticipate.

When I left that position, we were in the middle of an OpenShift (k8s) deployment, and one of the things motivating the change was the ability to more easily run separate versions of services for different customers if the need arose. Yes, this would put a lot more burden on us as the service provider, but it would also allow us to iterate faster while maintaining stability.

Re: The sad state of sysadmin in the age of containers (2015)

#224

Post by oblio »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #103
lmm wrote: post #77

You've got to look at this in a context where platform package managers like apt are simultaneously 1) platform-specific 2) jealous, insisting that every language has to conform to their way of doing things and 3) fundamentally not very good, having very limited ability to do things like install packages for a single user or install multiple versions of the same package. Platform package managers like maven have been…

> jealous, insisting that every language has to conform to their way of doing things Not at all. The large majority of packaging systems have reasonable and similar requirements for upstreams, like not bundling dependencies or not hardcoding paths. > fundamentally not very good, having very limited ability to do things like install packages for a single user or install multiple versions of the same package That's com…

While you could argue about:

> install packages for a single user

because of the security angle, Not allowing this:

> install multiple versions of the same package

is completely indefensible.

Who are you, package manager, to decide that I shouldn't be able to use different versions of the same package? Do you know more about my context than I do?

Re: The sad state of sysadmin in the age of containers (2015)

#225

Post by maple3142 »

celticmusic wrote: post #135
pojntfx wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

18yo JS/Ruby/Go dev here. `make` is certainly known to us; it's just that platform-specific build systems (`mage` for Go, `rake` for Ruby, `gulp` for JS etc.) are simply more sane to set up per languages than using `make` for all languages and allows for efficient code reuse.

You have make call the platform specific build systems.

Wouldn't it just be like a build.sh? And makefile is not cross platform enough, especially on Windows.

Re: The sad state of sysadmin in the age of containers (2015)

#226

Post by peterwwillis »

tomtomtom777 wrote: post #33
pram wrote: post #6

Terrible article IMO. Hadoop is an awful mess, but it has nothing to do with Docker, which is simplistic in comparison. "Ever tried to security update a container?" Yes, I have! In fact you can maintain patch compliance in a container pretty much the same way you'd maintain a VM or bare metal Linux installation!

The article focuses on Hadoop, but the generalization to containers is spot on. Containers have become the first stop method to hide overly complicated build processes. When you've noticed your wiring has become a complete mess of knots, just put it in a box so no one will trip. It seems to me that containers are useful for deploying final setups, but should be a no go for packaging tools.

Containers are fantastic for packaging tools. What problems do you see with it?

Re: The sad state of sysadmin in the age of containers (2015)

#227

Post by spion »

oblio wrote: post #224
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> jealous, insisting that every language has to conform to their way of doing things Not at all. The large majority of packaging systems have reasonable and similar requirements for upstreams, like not bundling dependencies or not hardcoding paths. > fundamentally not very good, having very limited ability to do things like install packages for a single user or install multiple versions of the same package That's com…

While you could argue about: > install packages for a single user because of the security angle, Not allowing this: > install multiple versions of the same package is completely indefensible. Who are you, package manager, to decide that I shouldn't be able to use different versions of the same package? Do you know more about my context than I do?

I don't see the security angle either. You could design the system in a way that makes it able to force updates into the individual user's broken packages. Heck, it shouldn't even be connected to a user - it's just that every user should be able to install a package, and what install might mean is

  * compartmentalized side-effects (not per-user even -
    users might decide they want multiple compartments for 
    different apps) and 

  * a shared storage area for all the packages and their
    versions (i.e. Nix)

Re: The sad state of sysadmin in the age of containers (2015)

#228

Post by smarx007 »

notacoward wrote: post #166
lmm wrote: post #77

You've got to look at this in a context where platform package managers like apt are simultaneously 1) platform-specific 2) jealous, insisting that every language has to conform to their way of doing things and 3) fundamentally not very good, having very limited ability to do things like install packages for a single user or install multiple versions of the same package. Platform package managers like maven have been…

Language-specific package managers are also "jealous" as you put it. They insist that every platform conform to their way of doing things. They're also promiscuous, in the sense that most have really poor dependency management ("let's build the internet today just in case") and practically no security. The computing world would be a better place if the people forcing their language-specific idioms on the rest of the…

So, what would 'pip install s3cmd' look on Windows or macOS?

Re: The sad state of sysadmin in the age of containers (2015)

#229

Post by dcolkitt »

buzzkillington wrote: post #48
alfozan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who still uses Hadoop anyway? https://spark.apache.org/ https://www.iguazio.com/data-science-post-hadoop/

Spark is worse because you need Scala as well as regular Java. I've tried building it for my day job, I would rather have a colonoscopy without sedation. It's more pleasant and dignified.

FWIW, the below linked Dockerfile will download, build and install Spark in a single step.

https://gist.github.com/Mister-Meeseeks/1ebf875b6e1262449cbc...

Re: The sad state of sysadmin in the age of containers (2015)

#230

Post by peterwwillis »

rb808 wrote: post #157

I agree the last decade has been really tough for sysadmins, but the payoff is developers have had a great time and I dont have to rely on those guys any more.

This is a weird mentality that I think comes from being disconnected from ops. It's like you're a mechanical engineer building a truck, and now that you have a 3D Printer that can make any part, you think you don't have to rely on or communicate with the people driving the trucks on the road.
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