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Charm shutting down because of unfixable kernel panics with Rails on Ubuntu

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Re: Charm shutting down because of unfixable kernel panics with Rails on Ubuntu

#61

Post by bibinou »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #49
electic wrote: post #32

We run a lot of webservers, our own hardware, on Ubuntu and we do not have this issue at all. Rails doesn't cause Kernel panics. It sounds like they have a bad install or honestly, just don't know what their are doing. Probably a bad idea to advertise you can't keep a simple webserver up. Probably won't get funded ever.

>Probably won't get funded ever. Amy Hoy is in the same bootstrapper camp that DHH and Jason Fried are in. Regardless of the situation, I imagine "won't get funded ever" is ranks pretty close to the top of her "don't give a shit list".

Except 37Signals took VC money from Jeff Bezos.

Re: Charm shutting down because of unfixable kernel panics with Rails on Ubuntu

#62

Post by meaty »

tedivm wrote: post #60
meaty wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is normal for Ubuntu kernels from experience. They are shitty. Various server releases have given us hell. They're fudging them somehow. We moved to debian after numerous problems and have had no issues since.

Yeah, when I see people running Ubuntu for their production servers I always assume it's developers with minimal system admin experience who just want to use the same distro for their server as their desktop. I've got nothing against Ubuntu, and have even used it to convert a few windows users over, but if you're going to run a production server then install Debian on it.

Well it was our operations guys who refused anything but Ubuntu because "they had installed it at home". We now no longer have operations guys and the development team own the infrastructure :)

Re: Charm shutting down because of unfixable kernel panics with Rails on Ubuntu

#63

Post by blrgeek »

Let me see

1. Open Source OS

2. Open Source web server

3. Open Source programming language

4. Open Source web framework

5. Some (relatively) simple customer support ticketing app [not likely to be a system pounding Gorilla]

And they claim that they've not been able to root-cause a Kernel panic and a framework slowdown?

And they've spent $100K on that with no results to show for it?

That sounds really strange to me.

[I've debugged Linux kernel panics on custom stacks, with no disk/logs, only console, 32MB of RAM, PPC cross-compiled - and never run into a dead-end like this]

Re: Charm shutting down because of unfixable kernel panics with Rails on Ubuntu

#64

Post by jbigelow76 »

bibinou wrote: post #61
jbigelow76 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Probably won't get funded ever. Amy Hoy is in the same bootstrapper camp that DHH and Jason Fried are in. Regardless of the situation, I imagine "won't get funded ever" is ranks pretty close to the top of her "don't give a shit list".

Except 37Signals took VC money from Jeff Bezos.

Not in the sense that most HN readers view VC money, as a necessity to launch or continue operations. 37signals was 2 and a half years into existence with multiple products and a few hundred thousand paying users. They didn't give up control and don't have to sweat out how to exit so their investor gets an acceptable ROI. 37signals would have been able to continue operations without the investment.

The investment looks like a way to formalize a long term relationship both sides desired. It doesn't resemble anything like 95% of VC deals that are associated with SV or the types of starts ups associated with HN's readership.

http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/bezos_expeditions_invests...

Re: Charm shutting down because of unfixable kernel panics with Rails on Ubuntu

#65

Post by facorreia »

blrgeek wrote: post #63

Let me see 1. Open Source OS 2. Open Source web server 3. Open Source programming language 4. Open Source web framework 5. Some (relatively) simple customer support ticketing app [not likely to be a system pounding Gorilla] And they claim that they've not been able to root-cause a Kernel panic and a framework slowdown? And they've spent $100K on that with no results to show for it? That sounds really strange to me. […

"When Qurve got involved with the Charm project the site was being alpha tested by a handful of early adopters, but a months away from being ready for public consumption. Qurve was brought on in a Ruby on Rails development role to help fix bugs, complete the necessary functionality and ensure the necessary code quality for a public launch.

Over the next few months our role expanded to include a complete rewrite of the user interface, a reimplementation of the credit card billing processor and a few more major changes."

http://www.qurve.com/clients/charm/

Re: Charm shutting down because of unfixable kernel panics with Rails on Ubuntu

#66

Post by taylodl »

dazzawazza wrote: post #10

If rails causes a kernel panic then this is really a bug in the kernel. No user land app should ever do this. Why not try to scale on *BSD or Windows all of whom have different kernel and scale just fine? $100,000 and no one said "hey what about running it on "?

Exactly. There's loads of Unixen they could have tried. There's also tons of people running Rails. Though I'm not a big fan of Rails I can't deny there's a lot of it running successfully. There's got to be more to this story!

Re: Charm shutting down because of unfixable kernel panics with Rails on Ubuntu

#67

Post by taylodl »

dazzawazza wrote: post #10

If rails causes a kernel panic then this is really a bug in the kernel. No user land app should ever do this. Why not try to scale on *BSD or Windows all of whom have different kernel and scale just fine? $100,000 and no one said "hey what about running it on "?

Exactly. There's loads of Unixen they could have tried. There's also tons of people running Rails. Though I'm not a big fan of Rails I can't deny there's a lot of it running successfully. There's got to be more to this story!

Re: Charm shutting down because of unfixable kernel panics with Rails on Ubuntu

#68

Post by taylodl »

dazzawazza wrote: post #10

If rails causes a kernel panic then this is really a bug in the kernel. No user land app should ever do this. Why not try to scale on *BSD or Windows all of whom have different kernel and scale just fine? $100,000 and no one said "hey what about running it on "?

Exactly. There's loads of Unixen they could have tried. There's also tons of people running Rails. Though I'm not a big fan of Rails I can't deny there's a lot of it running successfully. There's got to be more to this story!

Re: Charm shutting down because of unfixable kernel panics with Rails on Ubuntu

#69

Post by npsimons »

cheald wrote: post #46

Wow, this is unprofessional. Lots and lots of people run Rails apps on Ubuntu. Many more run them on non-Ubuntu distros. There is not an epidemic of "welp, Rails magically crashes the kernel, time to pack up and go home", and citing that as the reason to close down after spending over $100k on infrastructure smells really, really funny. "A poor workman blames his tools."

"A poor workman blames his tools."

. . . but even a master carpenter can't build a house out of rotten wood. Of course, to me, rotten wood is OSX and Windows (why anyone would build servers on those instead of one of the BSDs or Linux, I'll never know; to me, development is also incredibly painful on Windows and OSX), but Ubuntu is not without issues. The rallying cry of "usability first!" is all well and good, until things like taking shortcuts by way of binary drivers causes crashes. Still, one has to wonder why they didn't just try another distro. If you think your tools (or your "lumber") are the problem, try different ones.

Re: Charm shutting down because of unfixable kernel panics with Rails on Ubuntu

#70

Post by jcastro »

meaty wrote: post #29
dazzawazza wrote: post #10

If rails causes a kernel panic then this is really a bug in the kernel. No user land app should ever do this. Why not try to scale on *BSD or Windows all of whom have different kernel and scale just fine? $100,000 and no one said "hey what about running it on "?

This is normal for Ubuntu kernels from experience. They are shitty. Various server releases have given us hell. They're fudging them somehow. We moved to debian after numerous problems and have had no issues since.

Do you have links to bugreports to your problems by any chance? Or more detail on what problems you ran into so I could have the Ubuntu kernel team check them out?
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