Subject: RE: Email practices (was: RE: The theory and practice ofparanoia( was: RE: [hackers-il]Anothergood article by Joel Spolsky))

From: Chen Shapira <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 16:44:02 +0200

> Indeed we do. May I be prudent enough to ask you what does 
> this system do
> and why it has to be based on NT? You usually don't see the words 100%
> uptime and NT together. (and from a very good reason)

NT is not as problematic as you think.
The machines themselves achieve 100% uptime easily.
Some services (daemons) need to be restarted. Of these, the only MS service
that has real problems is MSMQ (queue services) which reaches 100% CPU every
50 days
and needs restart.

The system is our monitoring service: "ActiveWatch",
and its based on a standalone program "Topaz".
Which was written for NT. Now Topaz supports Linux and Solaris, 
but we are very conservative, so we won't move in the near future.
 
> I found out that my devotion to Linux made me quite ignorant 
> in NT/Win2K
> administration. Win2K is a maze of GUI dialogs and applets 
> and making a
> head or a tail of it does not seem much more easier than with the
> more command-line-ish Linux. But, of course, I'm already used 
> to Linux and
> knows where to look up everything there.

See, NT is a server, not a workstation.
If I took a look at linux, saw KDE and whined about how Linux
is a maze of GUI, you'd be rightfuly angry.
NT can be fully managed from commandline, from remote.
It also comes with some very good debugging tools to examine
memory dumps (core), etc. 
I find it a good, reliable OS. Some of the services aren't as
stable as I'd like them to be though.

Last time I talked about NT, I mentioned that I never saw a blue 
screen on NT. 
That is no longer true. Recently we upgraded a kernel based driver,
apparently our two network cards and four CPU's confused that driver,
and I saw my first BSOD. 

> As a side note I should add that my partner for Computer Graphics
> routinely uses Linux to test Infiniband Network Cards. The 
> funny thing is
> that he is completely unaware of how he can tweak the system 
> and install
> new components. He never heard of the rpm command, he isn't 
> familiar with
> the "./configure ; make ; make install" procedure. He just 
> uses KDE and
> the UNIX shell, and gcc and XEmacs, and he's happy with it. 
> Some kind of a
> professional Linux non-guru.

Many programmers aren't really interested in system administrations.
Strange thing about hackers-il, is that everyone here is interested 
in it. I guess thats because we are a sub-list of linux-il.

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 17:28:58 +0300

> in it. I guess thats because we are a sub-list of linux-il.

This is an interesting point... In my experience, people who are very
good programmers also tend to be interested in system administration
(on their choice of platform, which could very well be Windows). I guess
this might be because curiosity, self-reliance and efficient working
procedures are all signs of a very good programmer. Many of them would
never say that system administration is their favorite pastime, but they
are more than adequate at it, to say the least.

Many mediocre programmers I know pretend to not care about system
administration, leaving this task to others and not showing a slight
interest in it. Of course, this means that such a person could be
programming on (say) Linux for two years and never noticing 95% of
the applications and/or libraries/functions that exist on his computer.
When this programmer could benefit from using such a program/library/
function, he would be completely and blissfully unaware of it. I have
seen *many* examples of this happening.

On the other hand, some lousy programmers know their limitations and focus
on system administration, especially on Windows. System administration on
Windows *usually* does not require programming, or even too much thinking -
it usually requires mostly moving the mouse around and the occasional
googling - and when something really complicated happens a "let's reinstall
Windows" solution is strangely acceptable to them and their users.

By the way, self-reliance and caring about all aspects of your work (and
let's face it, the system on which you're programming *is* an aspect of your
programming work) is one of the hallmarks of excellence, in my opinion.
(and I'm talking about technical excellence, not managerial excellence,
of course).
To use an example from another field, ever got curious why so many scientists
choose to use TeX to typeset articles, when the general population avoids TeX
like the plague? Why one of the most important computer scientists (Don Knuth)
was the one who invented it? Why Unix was actually written to run a typesetter
(such as troff) on it? It's all because these scientists consider the
appearence of their papers as an important aspect of their work (even though,
frankly, like the OS on which you run it is not the aspect for which you get
paid) and wouldn't think of leaving this aspect to some 20-shekel-an-hour
typist or some simplistic program that pretends to be a good word processor.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |    Thursday, Jun 20 2002, 10 Tammuz 5762
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Long periods of drought are always
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |followed by rain.

---

From: Arik Baratz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 17:33:13 +0200

> that has real problems is MSMQ (queue services) which reaches 100% CPU 
Well, how about a service that bind()s to a port, and once stopped takes 
some seconds to un-bind from the port. If you hit 'Restart', it's too 
fast for the service and it exits because the port is already bound...

> apparently our two network cards and four CPU's confused that driver,
How lucky. Machines here BSOD from time to time. It's uncommon, but it 
happens every month or so to at least one workstation here. My 2K WS 
froze (not BSOD-ed) two days ago and I had to hit the switch.

> in it. I guess thats because we are a sub-list of linux-il.
It's not that they are not interested - they just find it irrelevant to 
programming. They expect all the 'administration' problems to be handled 
by the sysadmin, because they are not related to the project at hand.

-- Arik

---

From: Gilad Ben-Yossef <[email-masked]>
Date: 20 Jun 2002 17:58:20 +0300

> > in it. I guess thats because we are a sub-list of linux-il.

Most programers I know - maybe not. A big chunk of the *good* programers
I know and/or hackers (assuming this are not the same, for some
definition of sameness? :-) have at least some practical background
themeselves in these issues. 

-- 
Gilad Ben-Yossef <[email-masked]>
Code mangler, senior coffee drinker and VP SIGSEGV
Qlusters ltd.

"You got an EMP device in the server room? That is so cool."
      -- from a hackers-il thread on paranoia

---

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2002 10:58:42 +0300 (IDT)

> but we are very conservative, so we won't move in the near future.

Ack.

> is a maze of GUI, you'd be rightfuly angry.

Frankly, I can easily get by with the KDE GUI, but found the Win2K GUI
confusing.

> apparently our two network cards and four CPU's confused that driver,

Recently in the computer networks lab there was an issue that the upper
Windows domain disappeared, and despite the fact that our own domain was
intact, printing could no longer function. The administrators said there
was absolutely nothing he could do (other than ad-hoc fixes) about it, and
that was the whole Win2K design.

I needed to print something desperately, so I became very upset.
Eventually, one of the admins let me print right on the print server.
Furthermore, we routinely have to reboot the machines simply because
something is not working, and it many times solves the problem.

> in it. I guess thats because we are a sub-list of linux-il.

I'm not particularily interested in sys-admining either, but it's
something I have to do as a power user of Linux workstations. I don't
consider installing new software as particularily system admining. Many
Windows people know how to handle InstallShield or MSI-based programs.
RPMs and ./configure, make, make install are the Linux equivalent.

I'm not sure what I said was a bad sign. If Linux can be used as a
non-dynamic stable system for developers and users, then it is a sign that
it has matured. Eventually, some people would wish to become power-users,
but the strength of the system also depends on users who are aiming to
become gurus, and just want to get their job done.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        [email-masked]
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       [email-masked]

"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"

---

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2002 11:27:04 +0300 (IDT)

Oh geeze: terribly sorry for the multiple-post, but my mailer gave me
trouble, as I'm running it on a public server.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

---

From: Tzafrir Cohen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2002 12:10:47 +0300 (IDT)

On Fri, 21 Jun 2002, Shlomi Fish wrote:

> Windows domaindisappeared, and despite the fact that our own domain was

It doesn't take a huge network to make it complicated enough so such
problems will ocour. The moment you want to start centralizing stuff (to
have better control, and not replicating data on each and every machine)
you'll have to have a potential place for failiure.

Preventing those failiures is left for the local sysadmins.

The fact htat you see more badly configured windows networks may be due to
the fact that people don't bother so much on setting them and mainning
them.

But the same thing will happen with linux (if and when linux is ever
successful)

This message is no longer about email ractices.

(Shlomi managed to slip in a different article of Joel, BTW), but
changing the subject for the third time seems pathetic ;-)

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:[email-masked]
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir