LISA14 pico-bloggity

This year I'm blogging for the USENIX blog, so we'll see how much I actually put up here...but the thought of going w/o updating my own just makes me sad, so here we go.

Took the bus down, which was completely uneventful and pleasant. Walked from King St station to the conference hotel, which was a bit of a hike but welcome exercise. I'm on the 25th floor and have a pretty skookum view of local neon and such. Got supper and some groceries, then went out for drinks w/Matt and his wife Amy, Pat Cable (who I'm meeting in person now for the first time), Bob and Alf, and Ken Schumacher. Good times, with lots of good teasings of Matt in as well. Missing Ben Cotton, which is a shame; the two of us could pretty much get Matt to cry if we tried hard enough.

First tutorial this AM was "Stats for Ops", and it was amazing. Discovered that using a spreadsheet is a really good skill to have. I have to learn that at some point...

And now off for next tutorial.

Tags: lisa sysadmin scarvikingsysadmins

And also

I'd just like to point out Matt Simmon's blog post on what's gonna happen when NASA launches Orion on its first flight. I'm pretty damn jealous he's been invited to attend, but I can't think of a better writer to cover it. Word up, Mr. Simmons.

Tags: space astronomy

Is that what happened?

• So my latest blog post for LISA just got posted -- and that's the last long(ish) one; next week BeerOps, Mark Lamourine and I will be posting daily updates as we're there. Also, I've volunteered to help Julie Miller, the Marketing Communications Manager for USENIX, with the opening orientation on Saturday night. I seem to remember taking that the first year I went, though I don't seem to have written it down...

• By the way, shouts out to BeerOps, Mark Lamourine, Matt Simmons and Noah Meyerhans for all the help during LISA Bloggity Sprint 2014. There are beers/chocolate/what-you-owed in plentitude.

• On another note: I'm auditioning a Chromebook, an Acer C720, to see how it works out. Right now I'm using Debian Jessie (testing) via Crouton, which lets you install Linux to a chroot within Chrome. So far: the keyboard is smaller than I'm used to, and the Canadian keyboard in particular is annoying -- they've crammed in tons of extra keys and split the Enter and Shift keys to do so. But overall it's okay; I can run tests for Yogurty in 3 seconds (cf. 12 on my old P3 laptop/server), and even Stellarium seems to run just fine. I've got a refurbished 4GB model on order w/Walmart in the states, and I can pick that up while I'm at LISA. So, you know, looking good.

• Bridget Kromhout's latest post, The First Rule of DevOps Club, is awesome. Quote:

But when the open space opening the next day had an anecdote featuring "ops guys", I'd had enough. I went up, took the mic, and told the audience of several hundred people (of whom perhaps 98% were guys) how erased I feel when I hear that.

I said what I always think (and sometimes say) when this comes up. If you are a guy, and you like to date women, would you place a personal ad that says this? "I'd like to meet a wonderful guy to fall in love and spend my life with. This guy must like long walks on the beach and holding hands, and must also be female." If that sounds ludicrous to you, then you don't actually think "guy" is gender-neutral.

That's a small part of a much longer post; go read the rest.

• Much at $WORK; I've got a new team mate from Belgium who's awesome, I'm starting to find a sense of rhythm, and organizing time is as challenging as ever. There are lots, LOTS of fun things to do, and it's damn hard sometimes to say "I'm just gonna put that on the TODO list and walk away."

• This week my youngest son has switched from "The Wizard of Oz" to "Treasure Island" for story time. He got bored of TWOO and we didn't finish it; I'm curious to see how long he'll stick with TI. Still so much fun to read to them both.

Tags: lisa dadops sysadmin

\"Circular dependency detected\" error in ServerSpec

I've tripped over this error a few times; time to write it down.

A few times now, I've run serverspec-init, added a couple tests, then had the first Rake fail like so:

Circular dependency detected: TOP => default => spec => spec:all =>
spec:default => spec:all

Tasks: TOP => default => spec => spec:all => spec:default
(See full trace by running task with --trace)
Circular dependency detected:

Turns out that this is a known problem in Serverspec, but it's not exactly a bug. The problem appears to be that some part of the Vagrantfile I'm using is named "default". The original reporter said it was the hostname, but I'm not sure I have that in mine. In any case, this causes problems with the Rakefile: the target is default, but that also matches the hostname, and so it's circular and Baby Jesus cries.

(Side rant: I really wish the Serverspec project would use a proper bug tracker, rather than just having everything in pull requests. Grrr.)

One way around this is to change the Rakefile itself. Open it up and look for this part:

namespace :spec do
  targets = []
  Dir.glob('./spec/*').each do |dir|

next unless File.directory?(dir)
targets << File.basename(dir)

  end

  task :all     => targets
  task :default => :all

Comment out that last line, task :default => :all:

namespace :spec do
  targets = []
  Dir.glob('./spec/*').each do |dir|

next unless File.directory?(dir)
targets << File.basename(dir)

  end

  task :all     => targets
  # task :default => :all

Problem solved (though probably in a fairly hacky way...)

Tags: serverspec vagrant sysadmin testing

Reading, Writing and Running

Man, it's been busy since I started at OpenDNS. I've been down to San Francisco twice (once when I was hired, and again for a planning meeting w/the rest of my team), I've been writing a post for the company blog (coming RSN), and I've been leading a team of bloggers for the USENIX blog (along with the excellent @beerops, @noahm (who had to bow out after one article, sadly, but hey, guy's probably a father already!) and @markllama). The kids now know to say to me, "Daddy, you've got blogging to do!" :-) It's been a lot, and I'll be glad when the conference is over and I can get back to slacking.

The last week or so I've been reading to the kids at night. That's not a new thing -- we did this since they were infants -- but I sort of changed it up a little. Most of the time they pick the books, but I was getting tired of Garfield and one night I announced I was going to read part of "The Wizard of Oz" before we got to their choices. They've displayed occasional interest in longer books (like the time I had to read a bit from "The Lord of the Rings" for a few days), but this seems different: I was asked to keep going. We're up to chapter 7 now, and Eli in particular seems to like it. We'll sit downstairs; I'll sit on the couch, and he'll stretch out in the recliner. "Ah," he says, "it's so relaxing to sit here and have you read to me."

Arlo, meanwhile, is taking to drawing. He's practicing his faces, which are noticeably different from his usual style: wide eyes and big open mouths, usually with "AAAAAAAAHH!" coming out of them. It's all fine, really. :-) He's also written a couple of comic books, including one about Godzilla terrorizing people in their apartments that, sadly, he hasn't finished.

And Clara is, on Saturday, going to run her first half-marathon. She's been training for this through the summer, and can now run more than two hours straight. This is awesome. We'll be out there cheering for her, but she isn't promising to share the beer she gets for completing the race. That's fair.

Finally, a miracle occurred yesterday: in spite of rain and winds and I don't know what-all, the clouds cleared for 15 minutes in the afternoon, and we were all able to see the partial eclipse of the sun. AR 2192 was clearly visible, and it was incredibly cool to see the moon (partly) covering the sun.

Concluding paragraphs are for the weak.

Tags: geekdad astronomy

To the beat of the rhythm of the night

Busy, yo:

• This was my first week on call at $WORK, and naturally a few things came up -- nothing really huge, but enough that the rhythm I'd been slowly developing (and coming to relish) was pretty much lost. And then Friday night/Saturday morning I was paged three times (11pm, 1am and 5.30am) -- mostly minor things, but enough that I was pretty much a wreck yesterday. I'm coming to dread the sad trombone.

• Besides that, I've also been blogging about the LISA14 conferencefor USENIX, along with Katherine Daniels (@beerops) and Mark Lamourine (@markllama). They've got some excellent articles up; Mark wrote about LISA workshops, and Katherine described why she's going to LISA. Awesome stuff and worth your time.

• I managed to brew last week for the first time since thrice-blessed February; it's a saison (yeast, wheat malt, acidulated malt) with a crapton of homegrown hops (roughly a pound). I'm looking forward to this one.

• Going to San Francisco again week after next for $WORK. (Prospective busyness.)

• Kids are back to school! Youngest is in grade 1 and oldest in grade 3. Wow.

Tags: work sysadmin flow lisa

Observing report -- September 6, 2014

A couple of weeks ago, I gathered up (nearly) all my eyepieces, Barlows and diagnonals, and took them to the local scope shop to trade in. I came out an hour later with a 2" diagonal, a 2" adapter for the Meade, a 2" adapter for the Skywatcher Dob, and two new eyepieces: a 17mm Speers-Waler (1.25", 82 deg FOV) and a 30mm Erfle (2", 74 deg FOV). (I kept the 12mm Vixen and a 7.5mm Plossl.) Tonight I went out with the Dob (the Meade had a little accident when I tried to upgrade the focuser...sigh) to the local park, and had a grand old time.

First off, I showed my Dad some stuff: the Moon, the Double-Double (couldn't split with the 12mm), the Double Cluster and M31. We took pictures of the moon with our phones, and I think they turned out pretty well. The Double Cluster was framed nicely in the 30mm, but looked even better in the 17mm -- that 82 deg FOV is incredible. After that, he headed home and I stayed out to geek out.

M11: Beautiful as always. Nice in the 12mm, almost lost in the 17mm.

Moon: Saw a few craterlets in Plato with the 7.5mm Plossl. Neat to think that I was seeing features only two kilometres across!

M29: Sparse but a Messier.

NGC 6910: OC in Cygnus. Small but pretty -- I imagined it as a prancing horse with silver horseshoes, which has to be the single most Baroque and precious description I've ever come up with but what's a brother gonna do?

NGC 6886: Another OC in Cygnus. Fainter, more scattered cloud of 25 stars or so. Nearby 30 (or 31?) Cygni was a lovely double: yellow and blue, like the sun and earth.

NGC 6884: PN in Cygnu. Okay through O3 filter. No detail about 7.5mm.

NGC 6997: loose cluster, faint, couple of dozen stars. Vaguely pentagonal shape.

Pelican Nebula: Long shot, but why not? No sign, even through O3 filter.

M57: Beautiful and bright tonight!

M73: New Messier! Responded well to O3 but no sign of shape.

Home at 1am or so. Happy with new eyepieces.

Tags: astronomy geekdad

Wha' happened?

• Got SSL set up for both my web and email servers; created pull request for Duraconf in the process.

• Traded in a crapton of telescope eyepieces for a couple nice upgrades: 2" 31mm Antares modified Erfle (74 deg FOV), and 1.25" 17mm Antares Speers-Waler (82 deg FOV). I also got a 2" diagonal and connector for the Meade; the Dob had a 2" focuser already. I kept my 12mm Vixen (50 deg FOV) and a random 7.5mm Plossl. All this was done at Vancouver Telescope, who are an incredibly awesome bunch of people.

• Ordered flocking paper for the Meade (I think the focuser tube needs it) and the Peterson EZ focus kit (satisfied customers).

• Went with the family to the PNE. Pics to come!

• Visited brother and his wife in Kelowna with my parents.

• First LISA blog post up at the USENIX blog. (Gotta write more about that too...)

Tags: astronomy lisa

Meteor Shower Part IV

This year, for the third (youngest son) and fourth time (oldest son), I took my kids to Aldergrove Regional Park for the RASC-organized Perseid Meteor Shower Star Party Extravaganzaria. We went last year, though I neglected to blog about it; we went two years ago, and there were cute pictures.

Last year clouds showed up about eight minutes after sunset (really), but this year it was clear as a bell. There was also a full moon; for meteor-watching it was sub-optimal (as was the weekend falling three days or so before max), but the kids were even more excited. "There's gonna be a FULL MOON!" they kept saying. How can you argue with that? You can't.

We showed up about 6.30, only slightly delayed by missing the Tim Horton's ("Dad, you forgot the HOT CHOCOLATE!") and got set up: tent, sleeping bags, lounge chairs and all. After that, the kids ran up the big hill, then down, then back up again. "I was a little tired the second time," said Arlo, "but then I found a trick: just fun faster!" His athleticism continues to amaze and impress me.

After that it was time for the activities. Eli decided he didn't want his face painted this year; we looked at the telescopes a bit but skipped the presentations; but the Lantern Walk was a huge hit. It's this path that loops through the park, maybe a kilometer in length, with little coloured lanterns outlining the path. There was story-telling, which they both liked, and quotes on signs along the way, which Arlo kept reading. I got him to read this one from Carl Sagan aloud:

All of the rocky and metallic material we stand on, the iron in our blood, the calcium in our teeth, the carbon in our genes were produced billions of years ago in the interior of a red giant star. We are made of star-stuff.

Perhaps misquoted -- I don't think the sign said exactly that, and I'm too lazy to go look up a reliable citation -- but I dearly love the idea behind it. Eli looked up at me and said, "I didn't know that!" He was quite taken with it.

It's neat to see how much they've changed over the last couple of years. Before it was face painting, hot chocolate and staying up late. Now, it's the story-telling, hot chocolate and staying up late. :-) Treats are treats, no matter what; but their understanding is broadening and their tastes are changing.

We set up the little Galileoscope to see the full moon, and showed a couple other people too. And then...sleep. They were bagged. They stayed on the lounge chairs for a while, then went inside the tent. Eli was keeping Arlo awake, so I brought him out to sit beside me; then back inside the tent once Arlo was asleep, with a story to get Eli to sleep as well.

I stayed out on the lounge chair 'til 12.30 or so. I saw exactly one Perseid -- it's amazing how bright the full moon really is! I would have stayed out longer, but I was getting very, very cold even in the sleeping bag and under a big wool blanket. FIXME: Next year bring more blankets.

Next morning we packed up and went to Cora's in Langley for breakfast, then home again to unpack, dry out, shower and get ready for a Vancouver Canadians baseball game. Because why do one thing in a weekend when you can do two? (This is living large where I come from.) Our seats were right in the solar furnace, so we skipped out after the fourth inning. Next time, though, we'll get better seats that have actual shade. FIXME: Avoid section 7; go for section four, row 20 or higher.

Tags: astronomy geekdad sportsball

Observing Report -- August 2, 2014

It's been a while since I've gone out; I was going to go observing last Saturday -- same great weather -- but I was just too damn tired. Tonight, though, I had a coffee. I think that's a weapon I'm gonna keep in my back pocket from now on...

Tonight, like most nights, I had a plan. This time, though, I mostly stuck to it. I think it worked well, too. There were easy bits and hard bits scattered throughout, which helped keep everything from getting depressing ("Why, WHY can't I find this 19 magnitude galaxy?"). Also, though, I stuck to one region of the sky, and that helped too -- not just for keeping everything close, but because I think alignment worked better. Not perfectly, mind you, but better.

Anyway -- out at Queen's Park (after filling up the air in the astronomy wagon tires) with Neptune, the Meade 8".

• Got the briefest of looks at Saturn right before it disappeared behind a tree; nothing of the moon or Mars tonight.

• I took a look at Albireo while waiting for the twilight to go away, and man, that never gets old. The colours are so much more vivid when the sky's bright like that, too; I came back to it later in the night and they weren't nearly so distinct.

• Aligned and dialed in M57; took a bit of searching, but found it.

• After that, M13 -- beautiful as always. Found where NGC 6207 should be but again, no luck.

• Tried splitting the Double-Double both earlier in the night, and again when my scope was/might have been cooled down; no luck with the Vixen 12mm or the 10mm Meade Plossl. Not sure what to make of that; like a lot of other things, I lack experience to know if this is bad seeing, not enough cool-down time, need for flocking (that's rank speculation), or just to be expected.

• Looked for NGC 6210 and found it -- hurrah! It looked nothing at all like this Hubble photo, but was still pretty. It's on the RASC "Best of the NGC" list; blue and starlike, just like it says on the tin.

• Found NGC 6826, the Blinking Planetary, and 16 Cygni which has an exoplanet.

• Found 61 Cygni. Did not sketch (fail)

• Star test on Vega; didn't blow up so must be fine, right?

• M11 is absolutely gorgeous as always.

• Looked for NGC 6781, NGC 6755/6756. No sign of either one.

• Looked at M31 and the Double Cluster briefly before coming home.

[3]: 61 Cygni

Tags: astronomy

So finally

Today I complete my (scurries to check calendar) third week of work at OpenDNS. There is a lot to take in.

I flew in to San Francisco without problems; like previous times, there was no having to opt out of scanners at YVR (the airport, not the office). I got moderately tangled up in the BART because I'd become convinced it was Saturday instead of Monday, but once I figured that out I got to the office without problems. The corporate apartment is right around the corner, which is definitely handy, and close to the 21st Amendment Brewpub which was even more handy. Went there for supper:

The #goldenpony made it to the @21stAmendment brewpub. But if it tries to drink my b33r there will be trouble. pic.twitter.com/2WowiC1c62

— Saint Aardvark (@saintaardvark) July 15, 2014

I stayed for a while, listening to the startups happening around me (not even kidding), then went back to the apartment and slept fitfully.

Next day was first day. There were 7 of us starting that week, including one other YVRite. The onboarding (and now I'm using that word) was very, very well organized: we've had talks from HR, from the CFO, from the VP of Sales and from actual sales people, from Security, from the IT guy (and it is strange not to be the IT guy) and from the...oh god, I'd have to look it up. There was a lot, but it was interesting to get such a broad overview of the company.

The second meeting of the day, right after HR got us to fill out the necessary forms, was to get our laptops. Mine is a 15" MacBook Pro AirPony CloudTastic or some such; 16 GB of RAM, Retina display, SSD. What it works out to be is wicked fast and pretty. It has not been nearly as hard to get used to it as I thought it would be -- not just because I'm adaptable and like computers, but because even though it's not Linux it's not getting in my way any (which in turn is because, much more than anywere I've worked previously, so very very much of what we do is done through a browser, using apps/services which have been designed within the last five years).

Natch this makes me question my ideological purity. But I can also see, really see the point of having things be easy, particularly at scale. Which is kind of a ridiculous thing to say for a sysadmin, whose job is supposedly making things easy for other people. But there you go. I love Linux, but there's no question that (modulo the fact that I'm seeing the end product, not the work that went into it) making everything that seamless would probably be a lot more work.

Speaking of which, I'd just like to give shoutouts to the IT people at OpenDNS. They are incredibly well organized, efficient, friendly and helpful. I need to take notes. Oh, and: it is strange not being the IT person -- at one point my laptop was misbehaving, and I had to/got to ask someone else for help fixing it. Wah.

Oh, and: the HR department is well-organized too. Everyone shows up to their new desk which is clearly marked with a) balloons and b) swag:

Onboarding the #goldenpony. pic.twitter.com/hbdywOedKk

— Saint Aardvark (@saintaardvark) July 15, 2014

In the midst of this week full of meetings, I got to meet my coworkers. Some I'd interviewed with, some were new to me (like Keith, who a has degree in accounting: "I learned two things: don't screw with the IRS, and I hate accounting!"). They are all friendly and smart. There were knowledge drops and trips to the lunch wagons and finding different meeting rooms (".cn is booked." "What about .gr?") and whiteboarding and I don't know what-all. Oh, and one of the new people starting that week is Levi, another systems engineer, who came over after 7 years at Facebook. Wonderful guy; I was intimidated, but it turned out I knew a few things he didn't (and of course vice-versa), so that restored my confidence.

Things are organized. There is agile and kanban boards and managers who actually help -- not that they wouldn't, I guess, but I'm so used either being on my own or wishing my manager would just go away. This is nice. There are coworkers (have I mentioned them?) who help -- it's not just me anymore. This means not only that I don't have to do anything, but that I can't just go rabbiting off in all directions when something cool comes up.

Oh, and: there are these wonderful sit/stand desks from GeekDesk.com -- they're MOTORIZED! They're all over the SFO office, and will soon be coming to the YVR office. They're wonderful; if I ever work from home on a regular basis, I will really really want one.

There wasn't a lot of time for wandering around -- mostly, by the end of the day I was pretty exhausted -- but Thursday night I walked across town, from King Street BART station to 39th pier. It was ~ 9km all told, and it was a wonderful walk. I ended up going past City Lights Bookstore and Washington Square park; back in 1999, my wife and I spent an afternoon in that park, where a homeless guy insisted that I remove my sunglasses so he could see if I was an alien (I wasn't). It was cool to see it again. The touristy stuff was great in its schlocky, touristy way, and I hunted around for sportsball tshirts for my kids.

Friday we had the weekly OpenDNS all-hands meeting, where (among other things) new hires tell three fun facts about themselves. Mine were:

1. I counted moose from a helicopter when I participated in a moose population survey. And when I say "participated" I mean "was ballast". I worked one summer for the Ministry of Natural Resources in Ontario. A helicopter was flying out with one pilot and two biologists, so it was unbalanced. I came along so the helicopter could stay level. Saved a lot of lives that day.

2. I'm an early investor in David Ulevitch, OpenDNS' CEO. Back when he was running EveryDNS, which provided free DNS service for domains, I sent in $35 as a donation. When Dyn.com bought EveryDNS, they grandfathered in all the people who'd donated, and I've now got free DNS for my domains for life. Woot!

3. And of course, the story of the golden pony.

Friday afternoon I flew back; opted out of the scanner (and forgot to tell my coworker flying back with me that I'd be half an hour getting through security; apologized later), had supper and a beer at the airport, and just generally had an unventful flight home. The beers I brought home for my wife made it through everything intact, there were stickers for the kids, and everyone was happy to see me (aw!).

Tags: sysadmin work

Yeah but then

I was gonna write up the first two weeks at OpenDNS, but then my youngest son couldn't get to sleep. That doesn't happen often, and he's always upset when it does, so it was my job to tell him a long, rambling story about his day and try to get him to relax. So there went my writing time.

Quickly, then: the people are great; there's a lot to take in; we move to a new office tomorrow (temp space for two months, then our final digs); overall, it's a big, big challenge and it's pretty wonderful. My head is still swimming. Pix still needed.

Tags: geekdad work

San Francisco

First day completed. There is a lot of stuff to learn. People at OpenDNS are wonderful. San Francisco is fascinating, and it's really neat listening to the American Music CLub album of the same name while here.

I will put in pictures later. Time to read more.

Tags: work

Last day at UBC, flying off to San Francisco

I'm late doing this, but last Friday July 11th was my last day at UBC. And what did my wonderful coworkers do for me? They got me a going-away present:

I had to show the new pony the picture of the pony I put up in my office:

And c/o Steve MacDonald, Serious pony is serious:

From the WayBac Machine comes the last time I celebrated ponies with such gusto:

That was a going-away present (seems to be a pattern...) from coworkers when I left to start at UBC -- nine days after my oldest son was born. I was at UBC for eight years and one day, and had worked for CHiBi for just about six years.

Today I fly off to San Francisco to start work for OpenDNS; I'll be there 'til Friday getting trained and oriented and I don't know what-all. My dad wants a hoodie, my kids want stickers, my wife wants beer and I want to see it all.

Tags: work goldenpony

Exporting from dia on the command line

I use dia for network maps. Turns out you can export to PNG directly from the command line like so:

dia --export foo.png --filter=png foo.dia

However, if you do that the resolution is terrible. The undocumented way around this is to install libart and then use "--filter=png-libart" for exporting. On Ubuntu, that's:

sudo apt-get install libart
dia --export foo.png --filter=png-png foo.dia

Much better!

Tags: toptip

A change and a challenge

For a while now, I've been wanting to work in a different environment. UBC is a lovely place to work, and the people at CHiBi are wonderful...but I've been there more than five years now, and I was getting itchy feet.

Last year I wrote down what exactly I wanted out of a new job:

• Larger scale: I took my current job because it was a chance to work with so much that I hadn't before: dozens of servers, an actual server room, HPC, and so on. I want that same feeling of "I've never done that before!" (See also: "Holy crap, what have I got myself into?")

• Linux/Unix focused: It's no secret that Linux makes the sun shine and the grass grow, and BSDs make the planets go in their orbits. Why would I ever want anything else?

• Actual coworkers: For most of my time as a sysadmin, I've worked on my own. I had a junior for a while (Hi Paul!) and that was wonderful, but other than that I've been alone. I really, really wanted to change that. Andy Seely, a damn good friend of mine, likes to say "If I find myself the smartest person in the room, I know I need to find a new room." That was exactly how I was feeling.

• Friendly. I work in a friendly, open place, and I've no desire to give that up.

I kept my eye out. And back in April I saw that OpenDNS was hiring. So I sent in a resume. They got back to me. There were lots of interviews (I think I talked with five different people), a coding test (two, actually, and they made me sweat) and a technical test. And then, finally, I was sitting in their offices in Gastown, talking to the guy who'd just offered me a job.

Larger scale: check; they've just opened their nth and n+1nth data centres in Vancouver and Toronto. Linux/Unix focused: yep; Linux and FreeBSD rule the coop. Actual coworkers: they're on it; there are two other people I'll be working with (and they've been running all, or at least a lot, of the infrastructure for the last few years). Friendly: four for four, because everyone there has been really, really...well, friendly.

So: I start July 15th as a Systems Engineer with the good folks at OpenDNS. I'm excited and a little freaked out to be working with all these good, smart people.

In the meantime: if you want a job as a Linux sysadmin, working with the excellent people at the Centre for High-Throughput Biology who do a science EVERY DAY, you can apply here. Closing date is Friday, June 20th, so hurry. Apply early and apply often!

Tags: sysadmin work

Observing Report -- May 31, 2014

My god, clear skies and a weekend? Last time I went somewhere other than the front porch with a scope was goddamn January. Asked Scott if he wanted to come along to Boundary Bay, he did, and we went. Got there about 9pm, set up, and away we went. The night was clear, and man it was nice to be out.

We showed the crescent moon (oh, so lovely) to a few people while we were waiting for the skies to get dark, then realized Jupiter was still up -- it had been so long since we'd had a clear night that we'd lost track of Jupiter entirely, and hadn't expected to see it. After that, off to Mars and Saturn. I could see (I think) Acidalia on Mars, but it was difficult to get a clear image; in Scott's, it was plain, and I think I was able to see the north polar cap as well. Saturn in Scott's Mak was really beautiful -- the Cassini division was easy to pick out, and I swear I saw cloud bands. Not so much in mine, where the focus was, again, really hard to get.

M13 -- ah, now there's something that worked well! Lovely as always, even though it still wasn't completely dark by that point.

Virgo Messiers were my target for the night, and man, I went to town. I aligned, tried going to M87 and got it the first time. Hurrah! The handset took me to M84 and M86 as well. I started to sketch, then moved around trying to orient myself with my chart and to find the rest of Markarian's Chain....but I got too far away, lost track of where I was, and the handset did not take me back. I'm not sure what happened here -- maybe my alignment wasn't as good as I thought it was? I tried re-aligning but still no luck, so I decided to try star-hopping following "Turn Right at Orion", which has wonderful charts for this.

I found NGC 4762 and NGC 4754 -- faint but there. After that I was able to galaxy-hop (!) to M60, NGC 4638 and M59. Over to M58 and M89. Found my way back to M84 and M86 gain, then found NGC 4438 and NGC 4435 -- no sign of NGC 4473, NGC 4387 or NGC 4388 -- which makes me wonder how dark it has to be, or how much more effort I need to put in, or how tired I might have been. It was a long night, and I'm sure I wasn't at my best.

So as far as Markarian's chain goes, I saw three of its 9 or 10 galaxies...not bad for the first time! And for sheer numbers, at one point I had three galaxies in my eyepiece at the same time: M60, M59 and NGC 4638. It's occurred to me to wonder about a variant of Drake's equation for amateur astronomy: what are the odds that, as you're ticking off Messiers on your checklist, someone in the eyepiece is doing the same for you and the Milky Way? :-)

I took a bit of a break and headed for Scorpius, which was rising, and got a quick look at M4 -- pretty, but I didn't take a lot of time with it.

Meanwhile, Scott was going to town imaging. He got an excellent image of M13, the great Hercules glob:

and of M57, the Ring Nebula:

There's also this picture of some weirdo and his Meade:

We pulled up stakes about 1.30am, and I got home about 2:30am. That's the latest I've been out in a long, long time.

Post-mortem:

• The dew heaters worked really well; between them and the dew shield, there was not a drop of dew on the corrector plate or the finder. By contrast, all my stuff out on the table was covered by the end of the night. I don't think my home-made battery pack went below 80% either...lots of capacity.

• Scott's setup was wonderful. The Mak and the EQ6 gave noticeably better views of Mars and Saturn, and M13/M51 both looked great in it. Part of that came from the mount: it was much steadier than mine in the (moderate) wind we had. Part of it was that mine had a lot of (I think) internal reflections; there was a lot of ghosting going on. Add in the much, MUCH smoother focus and I'm a jealous guy. I need to look at flocking this, and maybe upgrading the focuser.

• However, he took a lot longer to get set up than I did: that mount is heavy, and the alignment took a while to finish -- it was probably close to an hour before he was ready to observe. He's still getting familiar with it, so that'll all get better...but it really points out the advantage of having a smaller/more portable setup. There is no way in hell I could take a setup like that to my local park, the way I can by putting the Dob in a hand cart or the Meade in a wagon. I'm going to have to think about my ambition to get a CPC 800.

• The night was about collecting Messiers, and I did it. There was no savouring. I'll need to come back to them another time. But I've waited three years to see springtime Virgo galaxies, and I wasn't about to mess around with the feels.

• Push-to with the hand controller seemed inconsistent at times; I'm not certain if this was user error or a fault in the controller, but I'm starting to wonder if it's the controller. Sometimes it was bang on, and sometimes it seemed off entirely.

Tags: astronomy

Cfengine 3: permission denied when copying to symlink

Today at $WORK I upgraded Cfengine on a server to 3.5.3. After that, I suddenly started seeing a lot of errors like this:

2014-06-05T13:52:47-0700    error: NetCopy to destination 'cfengine.example.com:/opt/sources/foo.tar.bz2.cfnew' security - failed attempt to exploit a race? (Not copied). (open: Permission denied)
2014-06-05T13:52:47-0700    error: /test/methods/'Copy /opt/'copy_opt/files/'/opt/: Was not able to copy '/var/cfengine/files/ALL/opt/sources/foo.tar.bz2' to '/opt/sources/foo.tar.bz2'

Running in verbose mode gave a bit more info, but nothing helpful:

2014-06-05T13:44:12-0700  verbose: Destination file '/opt/sources/foo.tar.bz2' already exists
2014-06-05T13:44:12-0700     info: Cannot open file for hashing '/opt/sources/foo.tar.bz2'. (fopen: Permission denied)
2014-06-05T13:44:12-0700  verbose: Image file '/opt/sources/foo.tar.bz2' has a wrong digest/checksum, should be copy of '/var/cfengine/files/ALL/opt/sources/foo.tar.bz2'
2014-06-05T13:44:12-0700    error: NetCopy to destination 'cfengine.example.com:/opt/sources/foo.tar.bz2.cfnew' security - failed attempt to exploit a race? (Not copied). (open: Permission denied)
2014-06-05T13:44:12-0700    error: /test/methods/'Copy /opt'/copy_opt_files/'/opt': Was not able to copy '/var/cfengine/files/ALL/o\ pt/sources/foo.tar.bz2' to '/opt/sources/foo.tar.bz2'

Wasn't SELinux, wasn't secret attributes...turned out that the new(er) version of Cf3 didn't like the fact that /opt was a symlink to /usr/opt. I'd set that up long ago and it was no longer needed, so I was free to just recreate it:

rm -rf /usr/opt
mkdir /opt
cf-agent -KI        # Which populates it as needed.

Tags: cfengine

StorageTek 2530 battery replacement causes server reboot?

Today I replaced a battery on a StorageTek 2530 controller. It's one of two, and the Sun Service advisor mentioned nothing about panics or reboots...but the CentOS 5 machine (using the Sun RDAC drivers) attached to it rebooted anyhow. Don't worry, it's only in production....Fortunately it's one of two database servers, and the other one took up the load just fine. I'm not sure if I bumped a power cable (always possible), or if the machine panicked, but I was unable to find anything in the logs so I really don't know what to think.

I'm going to be replacing the battery on another one in shortly, so I'll get to see what happens then. At least I'll know to schedule downtime...

Tags: sysadmin

Ruby segfault in CentOS 5 -- just upgrade Ruby

Memo for myself: when installing a CentOS 5 Vagrant instance to use fpm, I find it crashes when running "gem install fpm". This is fixed by Ruby bugfixes available if you just run "yum install ruby".

That is all.

Tags: fpm