Jim's blogorama

Which ZFS to use to after the death of OpenSolaris?

2011-02-08T21:57:00.000-08:00

Why ZFS You probably are not reading this to discover what ZFS is (short story: its a file system), so I'll skip that. You probably also understand the benefits, but I'll summarize them anyway, briefly: Currently not available (arguably) in any mainstream modern filesystem: End-to-end data integrity, through on-disk checksumming and automatic healing (if redundancy exists). With

Nexenta != "Ubuntu on OpenSolaris"

2011-02-08T15:27:00.000-08:00

To read the many glowing reviews of Nexenta, would lead one to believe that they took Ubuntu, and slapped in the good essentials of OpenSolaris (namely the amazing ZFS). First let me disclaim that I mean no harm to the good folks at Nexenta; or even the misinformation-spreaders who almost certainly meant no harm or confusion. Although Nexenta themselves don't go to great lengths to technically

OpenSolaris: Common administrative reference and troubleshooting guide

2010-03-17T14:39:00.000-07:00

Table of contents System file and folder locations Common admin commands ZFS ZFS overview ZFS and disk-related commands ZFS troubleshooting VNC server Network file sharing Why Samba rather than CIFS/SMB Samba reference Samba troubleshooting Miscellaneous System file and folder locations Section contents Network

OpenSolaris: Ready for Prime-Time?

2010-03-12T19:48:00.000-08:00

Table of contents Introduction In a nutshell Upshot Background Hardware specs Server and administrative use case The Good ZFS pool redundancy magic RAID-Z Mirroring Other ZFS benefits The Bad The Ugly Conclusion and next steps Introduction I've been running an OpenSolaris server for about a year now, in a live "production"

OpenSolaris: Two options for Windows file and print sharing

2010-03-09T21:00:00.000-08:00

Table of contents A quick primer on cross-platform Windows file-sharing Samba.org's Samba service OpenSolaris' native ZFS CIFS/SMB service ZFS CIFS/SMB vs. Samba Conclusions and recommendation A quick primer on cross-platform Windows file-sharing SMB ("Server Message Block") was the original Microsoft Windows file and printer sharing protocol. (Actually a collection of

A technological argument for the existence of God

2009-12-15T21:51:00.000-08:00

According to estimates from many industry experts (as well as historical trend extension), in roughly 30 years the average home computer will surpass the computational power of all human brains that ever lived, with just a few seconds of work. (Saying nothing necessarily of the value produced.) Even if the best thinkers and technologists are off by factors of a thousand in the variables assumed

Death to the Megabyte. Long live the Mebibit.

2009-01-28T20:57:00.000-08:00

Let's just get to it. You'll figure out real quick if you give two hoots for the subject of this post. Two facts: A "Megabyte" is 8 million bits of something. (In this case, information.) Also expressible as (8 * 10^6). A "Mebibit", rather than the being word "Megabyte" spoken with a pie hole stuffed full of saltine crackers, is actually 1,048,576 bits. Also expressible as (2^20). When

log of all things Peanut

2008-10-07T23:50:00.000-07:00

Like the log for X-9, this log is for Peanut. Since she is still technically an infant and is just starting to do funny things, we may have started just in time for her!categorydatewhatloggeddevelopment2008-09-24Suddenly, Peanut is crawling like Mario Andretti. (Assuming Mario Adretti crawls really fast.) One day she was content just to sit around and smile and laugh and giggle...then suddenly

log of all things X-9

2008-10-06T23:30:00.000-07:00

Kathy and I keep talking about how we need to log things X-9 does—both for a retrospective log of fun development milestones, and for all the funny things she inevitably says (which we tend to forget over time). So this is as good a format as any. It may be "too late" to log many priceless moments from, say, toddlerhood, but better late than never.categorydatewhatloggedfunny2008-10-05X-9 has

Funny X-9 stories

2008-06-14T00:44:00.001-07:00

X-9 has really begun to grasp subtleties of language, and the use of not just new words, but existing words in new contexts and combinations. (As people learning how to speak tend to do...) Which of course leads to all sorts of entertaining situations, for example:Earlier this week (second week of June 2008), X-9 started doing the "punishing" sort of crying, one time when she didn't get her way

The reality of the blogging phenomenon

2008-06-14T00:05:00.000-07:00

How many blogs have you read that start out, "I haven't written in a while, sorry". (As if millions were concerned.) And then they write a few sentences, and it is the last post on the blog, dated 18 months ago. Well I haven't written in a while, but I'm distinctly aware of a few things:No one cares.Odds are high I'm not going to write again after this for a while. (Or more likely there may

poor, middle-class, and wealthy

2007-04-24T01:35:00.001-07:00

I've worked on this table off and on for a few years. I've been trying to capture the essential meaning of the [stereo]typical three stratifications of economic class, without it being a commentary on "class warfare". And without it being too characaturish. If anything, it is an indictment on the excess of the modern middle-class, which there just aren't too many ways of getting around. I've

X-9 talks

2007-01-03T00:00:00.000-08:00

We captured X-9 on video during one of her early-language jabbering sessions. So cute and funny. (Of course I think so.) It was a conversation, even if she was the only one who knew what she was saying.[I should point out that Kathy actually does understand that Tai is not the language of Taiwan...just not at that moment :-)]Copyright © 2006 James R. "Jim" Collier, all rights reserved.

blog tool deathmatch update Aug 7 '06

2006-08-07T22:56:00.000-07:00

The blog tool deathmatch has resulted in some interesting twists. If you recall (or not), I was digging Windows Live Spaces. And I really hated MySpace. I liked Blogger, and was undecided on Yahoo! 360.Well now that I'm halfway through the comparison, some things are becoming clear:Yahoo! 360 is a big DNF. It's nice and pretty, but it has one fatal (if otherwise minor) flaw: it doesn't let

this is not a toy, etc.

2006-08-07T20:22:00.000-07:00

I'm running the Windows Vista beta. I'd have to say this is the most significant Windows UI change since Windows 3.x to 95. Wait a minute…actually you hear that alot and it's not completely true, so let me tell you what (I think) is true and what's not true about that statement. Many things about the UI actually carry over all the way from Windows 95: the Start Menu, the Task Bar, the Task

blog tool deathmatch

2006-08-04T03:54:00.000-07:00

Out of my own curiosity and eventually my desire to help the world become a better place, I've decided to make myself a human guinea pig and test out the major blog players. Actually it's not going to be that hard, other than signing up--the actual content is going to be an exact copy of this blog site, at least as far as the actual blog text goes.So far my only experience with blogging has been

how to: take pictures of lightning

2006-08-01T20:41:00.000-07:00

From my just invented series, "How To Do Slightly Difficult Things"…Capturing lightning was really difficult with 35mm film. I know because I spent many years trying to do it, only rarely successfully. That's because film had one major disadvantage compared to modern digital cams: a severely constrained number of shots. Relatively speaking. (I used to think going through 10 rolls of film was

example of a healthy relationship discussion

2006-07-20T20:28:00.000-07:00

True story. There's a certain woman who shall remain nameless for the protection of her character (she is the "significant other" in my life and the mother of my child). Let's just call her, oh, I don't know—how about "Klathpy". OK so a few months ago we visited a dog park. Or more specifically, we transported and supervised the visit of our dog Costa at a dog park.Oh he ran around and had a

fond memories of a giant filthy mouse

2006-07-13T02:13:00.000-07:00

My first “real” job at 15 was at Chuck-E-Cheese. How fun was that. I got to dress up as a mouse with a big creepy pink foam tail. (I could have sworn the popular girls my age gave me mysteriously indelicate glances, which to this day I’ve never experienced out of costume. Hmm...maybe I should think about spicing things up with Kathy by finding a used Chuck-E-Cheese costume on ebay!)Whenever I

infrared photography - myths and facts

2006-07-10T21:41:00.000-07:00

Common myths and misconceptions about infrared photography:Myth: Infrared photography is "night-vision". Not any more than regular photography is. This quasi-myth probably comes from the fact that several Sony cameras and video cams have a feature called "NightShot". But it isn't--it's just a registered marketing phrase. What happens is that in this mode, the IR-block filter over the imaging