From michael at halligan.org Thu May 6 19:27:24 2004 From: michael at halligan.org (Michael T. Halligan) Date: Thu, 6 May 2004 19:27:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Need to rent a DLT 8000 tape library for a week? Message-ID: My company has a need to rent a DLT 8000 tape library for a week.. One with at least 20 slots, that works with solaris netbackup for a restore project.. We need it ASAP, and will have a need to rent it for a week again in 3 months, and then again 3 months after that. if it has 2-4 drives, even better... Any thoughts on a place that might rent something like this? -- ------------------- Michael T. Halligan Chief Geek Halligan Infrastructure Designs. http://www.halligan.org/ 3158 Mission St. #3 San Francisco, CA 94110 (415) 724.7998 - Mobile From extasia at extasia.org Mon May 10 17:49:29 2004 From: extasia at extasia.org (David Alban) Date: Mon, 10 May 2004 17:49:29 -0700 Subject: [baylisa] SIG-BEER-WEST this Saturday 5/15 in San Francisco Message-ID: <20040510174929.A21087@gerasimov.net> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 SIG-beer-west Saturday, April 17, 2004 at 6:00pm San Francisco, CA Beer. Mental stimulation. This event: Saturday, 04/17/2004, 6:00pm, at the Zeitgeist Bar and Guest Haus, San Francisco Coming events (third Saturdays): Saturday, 05/15/2004, 6:00pm, location to be determined Saturday, 06/19/2004, 6:00pm, location to be determined Saturday, 07/17/2004, 6:00pm, location to be determined Saturday, 08/21/2004, 6:00pm, location to be determined San Francisco's next social event for techies and their friends, sig-beer-west, will take place at 6:00pm on Saturday, April 17, 2004 at Zeitgeist Bar and Guest Haus[3] located at 199 Valencia at Duboce[4] in San Francisco, CA. [3] http://www.sonic.net/~wwpints/zeitgeist/ [4] http://tinyurl.com/2hacx According to their website, Zeitgeist has: plenty of drafts, mostly micro-brewed beers,[5] a good selection of call liquors, a beer garden, and hotel accomodation [5] http://www.sonic.net/~wwpints/zeitgeist/#Beers Concerning food, they say: the grill opens around 6.00 p.m. each day and closes when everyone's fed (or Aundre's fed up) Festivities will start at 6:00pm and continue until we've all left. Zeitgeist is on the corner of Valencia and Duboce[6] and looks like this.[7] It's three blocks from the 16th St BART station[8] (16th St and Mission). [6] http://tinyurl.com/2hacx [7] http://www.sonic.net/~wwpints/zeitgeist/exterior.html [8] http://tinyurl.com/3f8mp When you show up, you should look for some kind of home made sig-beer-west sign. We will try to make it obvious who we are. :-) Note: Please look for the sig-beer-west sign, not for a particular person. sig-beer-west may have different hosts from month to month. Everyone is welcome at this event. We mean it! Please feel free to forward this information and to invite friends, co-workers, and others (all of legal drinking age) who might enjoy lifting a glass with interesting folks from all over the place. Can't come this month? Mark your calendar for next month. (Do it now before you forget!) sig-beer-west occurs on the third Saturday of each month. Any questions, comments, suggestions of things to do later on that evening, or new venue suggestions ... email the current sig-beer-west Instigator. The Instigator's Username is extasia. The Instigator's email address is *the Username* at *the Username* dot *org*. sig-beer-west FAQ 1. Q: Your announcement says "techies and their friends". How do I know if I'm a techie, or a friend of one? A: Well, actually, you don't have to be a techie to attend. You just have to be able to find the sig-beer-west sign at this month's event. That's it. Simple, huh? 2. Q: I'm not really a beer person. In fact I'm interested in hanging out, but not in drinking. Would I be welcome? A: Absolutely! The point is to hang out with fun, interesting folks. Please do join us. 3. Q: Is parking difficult in the city, like maybe I should factor this into my travel time? A: Yes. Note for April 2004: Zeitgeist is three blocks from 16th St BART.[9] You may want to consider BARTing[10] and not worrying at all about parking. [9] http://tinyurl.com/3f8mp [10] http://www.bart.gov/ __________________________________________________________________ sig-beer-west was started in February 2002 when a couple Washington, D.C. based systems administrators who moved to the San Francisco Bay area wanted to continue a dc-sage[11] tradition, sig-beer, which is described in dc-sage web space as: SIG-beer, as in "Special Interest Group - Beer" ala ACM, or as in "send the BEER signal to that process". [11] http://www.dc-sage.org/ The original SIG-beer gathering takes place in Washington DC, usually on the first Saturday night of the month. __________________________________________________________________ Last modified: $Date: 2004/04/13 00:12:43 $ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAfUqDPh0M9c/OpdARAjuJAKCdcO52hzkUyOq+4kq/MHt92a5FlQCgjebL zL/CLHO2viS5VRoVhl88Oqw= =D3Ue -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From extasia at extasia.org Tue May 11 06:14:19 2004 From: extasia at extasia.org (David Alban) Date: Tue, 11 May 2004 06:14:19 -0700 Subject: [baylisa] Corrected info: SIG-BEER-WEST this Saturday 5/15 in San Francisco Message-ID: <20040511061419.A30164@gerasimov.net> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 [Note: The information sent yesterday was not correct. This month's venue is 21st Amendment. We'll probably go back to Zeitgeist next month.] SIG-beer-west Saturday, May 15, 2004 at 6:00pm San Francisco, CA Beer. Mental stimulation. This event: Saturday, 05/15/2004, 6:00pm, at the 21st Amendment Brew Pub[1], San Francisco directions[2] * beer[3] * food[4] [1] http://www.21st-amendment.com/21A.html [2] http://www.21st-amendment.com/location/index.html [3] http://www.21st-amendment.com/beer/index.html [4] http://www.21st-amendment.com/food/food2.html#dinner Coming events (third Saturdays): Saturday, 06/19/2004, 6:00pm, location to be determined Saturday, 07/17/2004, 6:00pm, location to be determined Saturday, 08/21/2004, 6:00pm, location to be determined Saturday, 09/18/2004, 6:00pm, location to be determined San Francisco's next social event for techies and their friends, sig-beer-west, will take place at 6:00pm on Saturday, May 15, 2004 at 21st Amendment Brew Pub[5] in San Francisco, CA. [5] http://www.21st-amendment.com/21A.html 21st Amendment's selection of beer[6] includes their own delightful brews, and a fair selection of guest brews. They have a full food menu[7] and I can personally recommend the sweet potato straws and the grilled Monterey Bay squid. Festivities will start at 6:00pm and continue until we've all left. [6] http://www.21st-amendment.com/beer/index.html [7] http://www.21st-amendment.com/food/food2.html#dinner Directions to 21st Amendment can be found on their directions page.[8] They're about a fifteen minute walk down 2nd St. from the Montgomery BART station. [8] http://www.21st-amendment.com/location/index.html When you show up, you should look for some kind of home made sig-beer-west sign. We will try to make it obvious who we are. :-) Note: Please look for the sig-beer-west sign, not for a particular person. sig-beer-west may have different hosts from month to month. Everyone is welcome at this event. We mean it! Please feel free to forward this information and to invite friends, co-workers, and others (all of legal drinking age) who might enjoy lifting a glass with interesting folks from all over the place. Can't come this month? Mark your calendar for next month. (Do it now before you forget!) sig-beer-west occurs on the third Saturday of the month. Any questions, comments, suggestions of things to do later on that evening, or new venue suggestions ... email the current sig-beer-west Instigator. The Instigator's Username is extasia. The Instigator's email address is *the Username* at *the Username* dot *org*. sig-beer-west FAQ 1. Q: Your announcement says "techies and their friends". How do I know if I'm a techie, or a friend of one? A: Well, actually, you don't have to be a techie to attend. You just have to be able to find the sig-beer-west sign at this month's event. That's it. Simple, huh? 2. Q: I'm not really a beer person. In fact I'm interested in hanging out, but not in drinking. Would I be welcome? A: Absolutely! The point is to hang out with fun, interesting folks. Please do join us. 3. Q: Is parking difficult in the city, like maybe I should factor this into my travel time? A: Yes. Note for May 2004: 21st Amendment is a fifteen minute walk from Montgomery BART. You may want to consider BARTing[9] and not worrying at all about parking. [9] http://www.bart.gov/ ______________________________________________________________________ sig-beer-west was started in February 2002 when a couple Washington, D.C. based systems administrators who moved to the San Francisco Bay area wanted to continue a dc-sage[10] tradition, sig-beer, which is described in dc-sage web space as: SIG-beer, as in "Special Interest Group - Beer" ala ACM, or as in "send the BEER signal to that process". The original SIG-beer gathering takes place in Washington DC, usually on the first Saturday night of the month. [10] http://www.dc-sage.org/ ______________________________________________________________________ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAoNGKPh0M9c/OpdARAqfvAJ4hZDgx1u2pC0FOuPoz4nGCNbZMdgCghG3K kX/DyFRpXhOHGmy8iZ/g5zo= =3GWV -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From dannyman at toldme.com Tue May 11 12:17:07 2004 From: dannyman at toldme.com (Danny Howard) Date: Tue, 11 May 2004 12:17:07 -0700 Subject: How to Learn Veritas? Message-ID: <20040511191707.GI82228@ratchet.nebcorp.com> So, I have inherited something Ugly. It is a Veritas Backup Exec system running on a Windows box. I have half a dozen hosts, I think, with some sort of backup failures. One of the jobs that has many failures has a box I can expand to list errors. It highlights two lines that start with the string "Backup -" but it lists half a dozen cryptic errors. Most are of the form "Unable to attach to foo.." but a few are "Unable to attach to C:." I admin by going through Windows TS on my Windows laptop. My primary workstation is FreeBSD. :) Just talking to the Backup Exec gives me a headache. The guy who used to work here gave me a quick tour of how things are done, explaining that yeah, a lot of the time, say, the password to log in to a Windows remote host doesn't work, or the backup agent needs to be rebooted, or the backup system needs to be rebooted. I've only ever been the junior admin to other Veritas gurus. So ... what does anyone suggest? Or whatever input: If I want to learn the system, where's the best spot to jump in? What's the best book to read? Or ... Is a more Windows-friendly non-SA (Sr. NOC tech, or Tech Support) perhaps better qualified? I can try to hand this off to someone who might be better capable of earning a clue. Or ... Hire a consultant to do a system audit / overhaul / give us documentation for day-to-day administration? From samlb at samlb.ws Tue May 11 13:01:34 2004 From: samlb at samlb.ws (Sam'l Bassett) Date: Tue, 11 May 2004 13:01:34 -0700 Subject: How to Learn Veritas? In-Reply-To: <20040511191707.GI82228@ratchet.nebcorp.com> References: <20040511191707.GI82228@ratchet.nebcorp.com> Message-ID: <40A1311E.30208@samlb.ws> Danny Howard wrote: >So, I have inherited something Ugly. > >It is a Veritas Backup Exec system running on a Windows box. > > (Expletive delted) Windows (Expletive deleted) -- which is not helpful, I know. Does the company you are working for have a support agreement with Veritas? >I have half a dozen hosts, I think, with some sort of backup failures. > >One of the jobs that has many failures has a box I can expand to list >errors. It highlights two lines that start with the string "Backup -" >but it lists half a dozen cryptic errors. Most are of the form "Unable >to attach to foo.." but a few are "Unable to attach to C:." > > Do you have a copy of the Fine Manual? Paper or electronic? Are there lists of Error codes? Veritas may have an on-line Knowledge Base that can help. (I work for NetApp, and we certainly do.) >I admin by going through Windows TS on my Windows laptop. My primary >workstation is FreeBSD. :) > >Just talking to the Backup Exec gives me a headache. > >The guy who used to work here gave me a quick tour of how things are >done, explaining that yeah, a lot of the time, say, the password to log >in to a Windows remote host doesn't work, or the backup agent needs to >be rebooted, or the backup system needs to be rebooted. > >I've only ever been the junior admin to other Veritas gurus. > >So ... what does anyone suggest? Or whatever input: > >If I want to learn the system, where's the best spot to jump in? What's >the best book to read? > > Check with Veritas if they have courses available for SAs. >Or ... > >Is a more Windows-friendly non-SA (Sr. NOC tech, or Tech Support) >perhaps better qualified? I can try to hand this off to someone who >might be better capable of earning a clue. > >Or ... > >Hire a consultant to do a system audit / overhaul / give us >documentation for day-to-day administration? > > In the long run, this might be a VERY good idea -- if the consultant can map things out, and knows what you need to study and where to get it, it can be a whole lot faster and easier than trying to figure it out from scratch. Sam Bassett (As a responsible computer professional, I cannot, in good conscience, recommend any Microsoft software product to anyone for any reason other than personal amusement.) From gwen at reptiles.org Tue May 11 19:16:12 2004 From: gwen at reptiles.org (Gwendolynn ferch Elydyr) Date: Tue, 11 May 2004 22:16:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: How to Learn Veritas? In-Reply-To: <20040511191707.GI82228@ratchet.nebcorp.com> Message-ID: <20040511221427.E17210-100000@iguana.reptiles.org> On Tue, 11 May 2004, Danny Howard wrote: > If I want to learn the system, where's the best spot to jump in? What's > the best book to read? I'd suggest that you subscribe to the Veritas backup products list, and ask your question there, after checking the archives: http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu cheers! ========================================================================== "A cat spends her life conflicted between a deep, passionate and profound desire for fish and an equally deep, passionate and profound desire to avoid getting wet. This is the defining metaphor of my life right now." From kolstad at usenix.org Thu May 13 14:10:20 2004 From: kolstad at usenix.org (Rob Kolstad) Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 14:10:20 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [SAGE] 2003 SAGE Salary Survey is ready Message-ID: <200405132110.i4DLAKsc022098@voyager.usenix.org> [Rob writes to "...publicize this as widely as possible...", so I think I'm well within the intent here. And I think it might be useful to quantify just how badly those of us in BayLISA have been hurt by the change in the economy.... :-( -- postmaster@] The salary survey for money made in 2003 is ready to go! Thanks to the beta testers for helping us make it the best ever. The survey takes less than 20 minutes to complete and is located at: http://newweb.sage.org/salsur The survey has two branches: one for those employed > 6 months in 2003 and one for those who were 'more unemployed than employed'. I think this will be the first (if not one of the first) 'unemployment survey' in the tech industry for those who are unfortunate enough to be stuck in that situation. Please publicize this as widely as possible! We had almost 10,000 responses last year. Results will be available to all those who participate in a time frame that should be shortly after the USENIX technical conference (i.e., mid-July). RK ====================================================================== * /\ Rob Kolstad Executive Director, SAGE * /\ / \ kolstad at sage.org FAX: +1 719-481-6551 /\/ \/ \ +1 719-481-6542 15235 Roller Coaster Road / \ / \ http://www.sage.org Colorado Springs, CO 80921 ====================================================================== From strata at virtual.net Mon May 17 12:54:23 2004 From: strata at virtual.net (Strata R Chalup) Date: Mon, 17 May 2004 12:54:23 -0700 Subject: BayLISA Monthly: 5/20/04: Xelerance WaveSEC: Using Open Source VPN technology to Secure TPC/IP Over Wireless, Hugh Daniel Message-ID: <40A9186F.9060708@virtual.net> BayLISA Monthly Technical Talk & General Meeting Please RSVP to rsvp at baylisa.org so that we can get an idea of how many will be attending. This event is open to the general public. You do not need to be a member to attend. -------- Where: Apple Computer, Town Hall Auditorium Addr: Four Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA http://www.baylisa.org/locations/current.html -------- Date: Thursday, 20 May 2004 Time: 7:30pm - 9:30pm PST Xelerance WaveSEC: Using Open Source VPN technology to Secure TPC/IP Over Wireless Hugh Daniel t's time to get VPN technology out of the router closet and out in the field where it will be useful to hosts needing to securely use an ever more hostile Internet. WaveSEC(TM) is a patent free, back door free, low (but non-zero) sysadmin overhead wireless security system based on strong cryptography. The structure of WaveSEC and a demo will be presented. [Note: While WaveSEC is technically a commercially available 'product', all of the code is currently GPL'd.] -------- BayLISA meets every month on the 3rd Thursday of the month. A short period of announcements of general interest to the sysadmin community is presented, followed by a technical talk. Anyone may make an announcement; typical are upcoming presentations, user group meetings, employment offers, etc. For further information on BayLISA, check out our web site: http://www.baylisa.org/ Directions and details about the current meeting and future events: http://www.baylisa.org/events/ BayLISA makes video tapes of the meetings available to members. Tape library is often available at the general meeting, or for more information on available videos, please send email to "video at baylisa.org". If you have suggestions for speakers, or would like to volunteer to present a talk at one of our meetings, please email the Board and Working Group at "blw at baylisa.org". Thanks! -------- From michael at halligan.org Mon May 17 19:22:52 2004 From: michael at halligan.org (Michael T. Halligan) Date: Mon, 17 May 2004 19:22:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Top-notch mysql dbas? Message-ID: Could somebody refer me to a (or several) very senior mysql dbas? I mean very senior, not just somebody who's tinkered with them, and not somebody who has used it, but specializes in oracle or sqlserver? The company I work for is trying to hire two reliable, senior dbas, or at least find one really good mysql consultant who is reliable.. I'll spell it out: We pay very well. ------------------- Michael T. Halligan Chief Geek Halligan Infrastructure Designs. http://www.halligan.org/ 3158 Mission St. #3 San Francisco, CA 94110 (415) 724.7998 - Mobile From fscked at pacbell.net Tue May 18 14:49:32 2004 From: fscked at pacbell.net (richard childers / kg6hac) Date: Tue, 18 May 2004 14:49:32 -0700 Subject: Top-notch mysql dbas? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <40AA84EC.5020508@pacbell.net> > > >Could somebody refer me to a (or several) very senior mysql dbas? I mean >very senior, not just somebody who's tinkered with them, and not >somebody who has used it, but specializes in oracle or sqlserver? > Michael, If they have that much money, why doesn't your customer -create- the expertise they need? I don't mean this in a pejorative manner. Where does expertise come from? Where did we all get our start? Many of us were UNIX administrators back when there were no courses on UNIX, or even C. Did we need Microsoft to teach us TCP/IP, or certify us as competent to calculate bitmasks? Of course not. We taught ourselves. What has changed? Only the industry has ossified; knowledge is still freely available, and people are still learning. Where do hackers come from? Because that's what you want; a MySQL hacker. Someone who will eat, breathe, and live MySQL. I think if you achieve some clarity on exactly what you want, this will enable you to better leverage your considerable assets towards locating the appropriate individual(s). Why not find some young bright kids and turn them loose to become the experts you need, with a salary scaled to well-defined benchmarks - that correspond to your organizational needs - so that they stay around to reap the benefits of their training? Take the money you have earmarked for paying your highly paid consultants and, instead, recruit some bright young people whose total focus is MySQL, and whose habits have not been shaped by other vendors' products? That's what you want, right? I mean, look. Where do you go to get MySQL training? Europe, that's where, because that's where it - MySQL - comes from. I've never met a quote-unquote 'trained MySQL DBA' in my life. Most MySQL DBAs seem to drift into it as a result of being the web administrator ... or the systems administrator ... but they are rarely adequate to their responsibilities, because their primary training, and primary area of interest, is not SQL ... it's HTML, or Javascript, or Perl, or shell, or C, or ... and their heart just isn't into it. Few web administrators have any appreciation for the beauty, or importance, of entity relationship diagrams ... and, you know what, not too many DBAs appreciate them, either, if the hundreds of poorly-designed databases I've seen over the past decade are any indication - it's always "add another disk controller", or "we need a RAID array" - kind of the whole dot-com phenomenon, in miniature. 'We're too busy to think.' In fact, there is a sharp divide between DBAs and systems administrators that is requires special training to bridge. They speak different languages ... and they exist on different levels. DBAs live in a world of abstractions, where the entire application is designed to insulate them, the DBAs, from the question of where, exactly, the data is ... and most of them prefer not to think about it. Systems administrators, on the other hand, live in a world of cables and devices, with software like a layer of frosting, to cover the ugliness beneath. This divide is aggravated by the disdain with which systems administrators are viewed, by DBAs - in fact, at Sybase, the RDBMS administrative login is, by default, "system", and DBAs are referred to, and refer to themselves as, systems administrators - leading to considerable tension and confusion, a state of affairs that , I sometimes think, must have been cultivated deliberately. Look, I've worked for a lot of different database vendors. Oracle, yes, but also Sybase, and also Ingres, and /rdb ... and I've also worked with MySQL. I know what I speak of. I'm not a trained DBA, by any means, although I have been trained in database administration. But, you know, databases are moving targets, and they differ enough from one another that keeping up with all the variations available with just one vendor is a full-time task. Just installing MySQL, a few months ago, I was struck by all the changes that had occurred in MySQL between when I had worked with it last, and the present version. But Oracle's no different. Triggers, table, row, cell locking, replication and a slew of other new technologies exist to differentiate each of the products from one another - and it is these extended behaviors that DBAs spend most of their time administering - not the core functionality. I've found it useful to consider a RDBMS as analogous to an operating system. As applications go, it is monolithic, and requires that the operating system be specially configured - as well as the hardware - to leverage maximum performance. It has its own logging, and its own user security, and its own filesystem, and its own superuser. Truly, it is like an OS within an OS. You're not going to find anyone who has training in MySQL amongst the systems administration community. This is not only because the training does not exist, but because hardened SAs tend to hate databases and prefer flat files - it is a cultural divide, 'K.I.S.S. versus Rube Goldberg' kind of thing. You're not going to find anyone who has training in MySQL amongst DBAs, either, by and large, because there are few DBAs whose expertise spans more than one database vendor - there's just too much difference. I've never seen a customer that maintained their data on multiple RDBMS products, either, so there's no opportunity for heterogeneous DBAs to evolve, generally speaking. If you'd like some help recruiting such people or if you'd like some assistance in resolving some very specific problems you may be having with MySQL, I'd be happy to help. One free tip: invite your candidates - not in the ad, but when you contact them - to select one book which they believe should be important to a DBA, from their bookshelf, bring it in, and explain why. This is a great way to separate the kernels of wheat that you are seeking, from the chaff. Regards, -- richard -- Richard Childers / Senior Engineer Daemonized Networking Services 945 Taraval Street, #105 San Francisco, CA 94116 USA [011.]1.415.759.5571 http://www.daemonized.com -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (FreeBSD) mQGiBECGpfsRBACoPJJfIIrWAqjlW92TtYCtY//e7OW8alWylr/1ygtSQzjCCdvC Ysa0fCcx01UenlWV+5YY/zC7KPsX2rQUKAs20fqs9et74dmgMGOj0vMjTzWEs29G FyAsIRSpFioa8zzrjXEUVnU6OFaD9a9eaC+LSTCiKgXjbQySDKM5T1c+vwCg8W3Y RZ83LRIUULGMPlY6zS4fQwUEAIIiTHDdWpbE+HeREJwH+4eDpGVf76XtNlOMXrt9 tJ3ExL+9ezLulg1nCrOYodOB7TEZqzV40R7emDZSX0hI9QEBCv6nW5aDVpw/bf+q UEHwxrUvE2LBi35hoqR2QwqNlagOauSorWj8Qm/31luxJVeLVy1A1czp6B/mvG1T co03A/9a5kzEAebJ5TzWXQC2/4gu/osXQnrw9B9FFpYOtLc0MNQuAFt8VLn5yO5Q 8T58w+FQvFI5FqzI5URmjQeEyWWuyIechknk4RnwIO1UPVjgRTuNgf9/TvNNfqpa aVlbNp+AG21D6VqsFN2zJFFJeUqiYdXw6i+ESL3SZRymIhwYWrQ8UmljaGFyZCBB IENoaWxkZXJzICh3d3cuZGFlbW9uaXplZC5jb20pIDxmc2NrZWRAcGFjYmVsbC5u ZXQ+iF4EExECAB4FAkCGpfsCGwMGCwkIBwMCAxUCAwMWAgECHgECF4AACgkQjGqW TlNTP66KzQCgjf0SQbiK1rgu7hRsmLPSSaGF7X8AoL7Qw/E9kTZr0fntP0XXEnk/ q6nRuQINBECGpvkQCADFzFq+kYbk+KTIhcVBTjTWDbBnjGgmuGR3LGp9hOd6W9SJ i4GD5184ZnMbEgvDZcDEGDNgMcU+f1girwYI2v/o7QA7VQ5bpUbnfOBytzO+bvd7 uCOyJltg8AG5MFLxfhAMHofpNxGlFTEXdVp4M9xyBB+hdLHbJNJqkMGPf+iCUf1W Q86KncU2AK4Sf9I+WYBZwkjaIhi9dQzeEX1c0Um6LxXSBtkjZprIk1M13gVaIJ6E dDN6hrSMbXZL+7yURw38vHXCtRJAKEOyW178rI8MzJzvVNhobvC62uEWD9Idz8sH 5A06fqb2fKJYLQ1keGUpb/qpny7oTmAe0Hx9jOM7AAMGCACdTe1M4U++/7/OVGip 1gnWEtMhHeQQbS7KPh1w8/1kvs5Mml6uGYQI44lKTDP7OHJQ9hIT/+5tfKPHIPhU M/7Mqa8y81c/AK+WUOyY9+uZ0zUxFGMqeU9z5iqJFWSi9QR/f5q/khfmqi5RFVyQ nnVhxBMB8pY1vZHV1CoL7NLK4c/N8mpwCiZ57LTsP8pLfDMWF/OopmM2ulzlfWTr anAdxQohenq/zTgSySX/VGZYSYvyAoXTRuU4USAVGWcUQPnVooA1N7lZP3pawjNP QMSukx9jI1673BPsPXxyQZ1PmmPt9eHKI0G0hNJG+FCmSRLNT/R7hqTzTUmpgMWM yyWPiEkEGBECAAkFAkCGpvkCGwwACgkQjGqWTlNTP642KACeITHq0b42P3oMX7Nj F5U3EaqCgYoAn3HxUB7ELB6vMUugW4aSmZpBJOR6 =ZaJO -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Michael T. Halligan wrote: >Could somebody refer me to a (or several) very senior mysql dbas? I mean >very senior, not just somebody who's tinkered with them, and not >somebody who has used it, but specializes in oracle or sqlserver? > >The company I work for is trying to hire two reliable, senior dbas, or at least >find one really good mysql consultant who is reliable.. I'll spell it >out: We pay very well. > > >------------------- >Michael T. Halligan >Chief Geek >Halligan Infrastructure Designs. >http://www.halligan.org/ >3158 Mission St. #3 >San Francisco, CA 94110 >(415) 724.7998 - Mobile > > > From michael at halligan.org Tue May 18 16:37:51 2004 From: michael at halligan.org (Michael T. Halligan) Date: Tue, 18 May 2004 16:37:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Top-notch mysql dbas? In-Reply-To: <40AA84EC.5020508@pacbell.net> Message-ID: Hackers create themselves. Deadlines don't delay themselves just for silly notions of idealism. That's the way it is. If you've got a year to develop an architecture, you have a year to develop a system, not a year to create talent, then a year to create a system. This entire subject is silly. > If they have that much money, why doesn't your customer -create- the > expertise they need? > > I don't mean this in a pejorative manner. Where does expertise come > from? Where did we all get our start? Many of us were UNIX > administrators back when there were no courses on UNIX, or even C. > > Did we need Microsoft to teach us TCP/IP, or certify us as competent to > calculate bitmasks? Of course not. We taught ourselves. > > What has changed? Only the industry has ossified; knowledge is still > freely available, and people are still learning. > > Where do hackers come from? > > Because that's what you want; a MySQL hacker. Someone who will eat, > breathe, and live MySQL. > > I think if you achieve some clarity on exactly what you want, this will > enable you to better leverage your considerable assets towards locating > the appropriate individual(s). > > Why not find some young bright kids and turn them loose to become the > experts you need, with a salary scaled to well-defined benchmarks - that > correspond to your organizational needs - so that they stay around to > reap the benefits of their training? Take the money you have earmarked > for paying your highly paid consultants and, instead, recruit some > bright young people whose total focus is MySQL, and whose habits have > not been shaped by other vendors' products? That's what you want, right? > > > I mean, look. Where do you go to get MySQL training? Europe, that's > where, because that's where it - MySQL - comes from. I've never met a > quote-unquote 'trained MySQL DBA' in my life. > > Most MySQL DBAs seem to drift into it as a result of being the web > administrator ... or the systems administrator ... but they are rarely > adequate to their responsibilities, because their primary training, and > primary area of interest, is not SQL ... it's HTML, or Javascript, or > Perl, or shell, or C, or ... and their heart just isn't into it. > > Few web administrators have any appreciation for the beauty, or > importance, of entity relationship diagrams ... and, you know what, not > too many DBAs appreciate them, either, if the hundreds of > poorly-designed databases I've seen over the past decade are any > indication - it's always "add another disk controller", or "we need a > RAID array" - kind of the whole dot-com phenomenon, in miniature. 'We're > too busy to think.' > > > In fact, there is a sharp divide between DBAs and systems administrators > that is requires special training to bridge. They speak different > languages ... and they exist on different levels. DBAs live in a world > of abstractions, where the entire application is designed to insulate > them, the DBAs, from the question of where, exactly, the data is ... and > most of them prefer not to think about it. Systems administrators, on > the other hand, live in a world of cables and devices, with software > like a layer of frosting, to cover the ugliness beneath. > > This divide is aggravated by the disdain with which systems > administrators are viewed, by DBAs - in fact, at Sybase, the RDBMS > administrative login is, by default, "system", and DBAs are referred to, > and refer to themselves as, systems administrators - leading to > considerable tension and confusion, a state of affairs that , I > sometimes think, must have been cultivated deliberately. > > > Look, I've worked for a lot of different database vendors. Oracle, yes, > but also Sybase, and also Ingres, and /rdb ... and I've also worked with > MySQL. I know what I speak of. > > I'm not a trained DBA, by any means, although I have been trained in > database administration. But, you know, databases are moving targets, > and they differ enough from one another that keeping up with all the > variations available with just one vendor is a full-time task. Just > installing MySQL, a few months ago, I was struck by all the changes that > had occurred in MySQL between when I had worked with it last, and the > present version. But Oracle's no different. Triggers, table, row, cell > locking, replication and a slew of other new technologies exist to > differentiate each of the products from one another - and it is these > extended behaviors that DBAs spend most of their time administering - > not the core functionality. > > I've found it useful to consider a RDBMS as analogous to an operating > system. As applications go, it is monolithic, and requires that the > operating system be specially configured - as well as the hardware - to > leverage maximum performance. It has its own logging, and its own user > security, and its own filesystem, and its own superuser. Truly, it is > like an OS within an OS. > > You're not going to find anyone who has training in MySQL amongst the > systems administration community. This is not only because the training > does not exist, but because hardened SAs tend to hate databases and > prefer flat files - it is a cultural divide, 'K.I.S.S. versus Rube > Goldberg' kind of thing. > > You're not going to find anyone who has training in MySQL amongst DBAs, > either, by and large, because there are few DBAs whose expertise spans > more than one database vendor - there's just too much difference. I've > never seen a customer that maintained their data on multiple RDBMS > products, either, so there's no opportunity for heterogeneous DBAs to > evolve, generally speaking. > > > If you'd like some help recruiting such people or if you'd like some > assistance in resolving some very specific problems you may be having > with MySQL, I'd be happy to help. > > One free tip: invite your candidates - not in the ad, but when you > contact them - to select one book which they believe should be important > to a DBA, from their bookshelf, bring it in, and explain why. This is a > great way to separate the kernels of wheat that you are seeking, from > the chaff. > > > Regards, > > -- richard > > > -- ------------------- Michael T. Halligan Chief Geek Halligan Infrastructure Designs. http://www.halligan.org/ 3158 Mission St. #3 San Francisco, CA 94110 (415) 724.7998 - Mobile From dannyman at toldme.com Tue May 18 18:41:16 2004 From: dannyman at toldme.com (Danny Howard) Date: Tue, 18 May 2004 18:41:16 -0700 Subject: Top-notch mysql dbas? In-Reply-To: References: <40AA84EC.5020508@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <20040519014116.GW82228@ratchet.nebcorp.com> On Tue, May 18, 2004 at 04:37:51PM -0700, Michael T. Halligan wrote: > Hackers create themselves. Deadlines don't delay themselves just for > silly notions of idealism. That's the way it is. If you've got a year > to develop an architecture, you have a year to develop a system, not a > year to create talent, then a year to create a system. I believe Richard was using this as a pretext to expound on a more general belief, and while long-winded, his advice may actually be applicable to the problem at hand. I appreciated that he "took the long view" suggesting that developing ones own talent may be better in the long run. If you need an expert THIS WEEK, then training a talented young person with modest salary expectations is a waste of your time. But if you do the "planning ahead" thing, you hopefully wont find yourself in a situation where you all of a sudden need a MySQL God to bail you out. I also liked the subtext that SysAdmins learn what they NEED to learn. I think that very few on this list are "trained" so much as "self-taught" and necessity is the mother of ... > This entire subject is silly. If you need to do DBA stuff right now, I agree. For those of us cleaning out our mailboxes after a stressful day, this "silliness" is soothing. Silly, perhaps, but I appreciate the babble. Thanks, -danny -- http://dannyman.toldme.com/ From strata at virtual.net Wed May 19 12:15:34 2004 From: strata at virtual.net (Strata R Chalup) Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 12:15:34 -0700 Subject: panel on women in CS, Mt View, June 2nd Message-ID: <40ABB256.80300@virtual.net> (via Dave Farber's IP list:) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Ellen R. Spertus Date: Sun, 16 May 2004 20:35:08 -0700 Subject: Panel on women entering computer science (Google, June 2) Could you help me spread the word about a panel to be held at Google on nontraditional routes into computer science, especially (but not exclusively) for women? I'd be very grateful if you'd forward this to appropriate individuals or lists or give me suggestions of where to publicize it. Ellen http://anitaborg.org/events/careers_in_cs.htm The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology and Google are pleased to co-sponsor an all-star female panel on education options for entering and re-entering Computer Science and IT on Wednesday, June 2 at 6:00pm at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, CA. Attendance is free but space is limited and you must pre-register. One of the many myths about the computer industry is that you must be young to enter the field. To the contrary, many highly successful women and men study Computer Science when well past traditional college age. Several innovative programs exist in the Bay Area for older students, with or without a diploma, who wish to study Computer Science. It's Never Too Late: Careers in Computer Science panelists include a mix of successful women who have followed this path and educators from a number of local programs. They will discuss the challenges, opportunities and strategies to entering or re-entering this field. Moderator: Nancy Ramsey, a futurist, author and entrepreneur. Panelists: * Dr. Barbara Simons, former President of the ACM, co-chair of ACM's US Public Policy Committee and retired IBM researcher. * Ms. Constance Conner, Instructor of Computer Science at City College of San Francisco and a graduate of the Mills College re-entry program. * Dr. Lizbeth Martin, Dean of Sciences at Notre Dame de Namur University (Belmont). * Ms. Radhika Malpani, Software Engineer at Google and graduate of the Berkeley re-entry program. * Dr. Ellen Spertus, Director of the Interdisciplinary Computer Science Program at Mills College (Oakland), and visiting Scientist at Google. -- ======================================================================== Strata Rose Chalup [KF6NBZ] strata "@" virtual.net VirtualNet Consulting http://www.virtual.net/ ** Project Management & Architecture for ISP/ASP Systems Integration ** ========================================================================= From bill at wards.net Tue May 25 13:15:18 2004 From: bill at wards.net (William R Ward) Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 13:15:18 -0700 Subject: Peninsula Linux Users' Group, Thursday, 27-May-2004 Message-ID: <16563.43350.605002.186254@komodo.home.wards.net> We have a meeting of the Peninsula Linux Users' Group (PenLUG) this week! Here are the details about this meeting. For more information or directions go to http://www.penlug.org/ Please join our "members" mailing list, or the "announce" list if you just want announcements of upcoming events. Follow the links from our home page. Our website is a TWiki; please feel free to create a user account and modify the website if you have something to contribute. Thanks! Date: Thursday, May 27, 2004 Time: 7:00 - 9:00 PM Location: 100 Oracle Parkway, Redwood Shores, CA 94065 Room 1op104 Conference Call: If you cannot attend in person, but would like to dial in and listen, please send mail to conferencecall at penlug.org and we will try to accomodate you. Agenda: ======= 7:00 - 8:30 PM: Presentation by Akkana Peck 8:30 - 9:00 PM: Members' Minutes 9:00 PM: Adjourn to IHOP (Belmont) for social & food time Presentation by Akkana Peck =========================== Title: "How to fix a bug in open source software (even if you're not a programmer)" One of the often mentioned benefits of open source is the ability for users to fix bugs themselves, which may leave people who aren't programmers feeling left out. But with standard linux tools, tracking down a bug in common Linux programs may be easier than you think. Mozilla developer Akkana Peck will discuss the process of describing a bug, searching the source code to pinpoint the problem, then either fixing the bug, or filing a detailed report which will help developers in finding a fix. Members' Minutes ================ Members will have an opportunity to take a few minutes to... * Describe their latest Linux discovery * Ask questions and get help from other members * Discuss Linux projects You can just stand up and talk, or give a short demo or presentation. If you need audio/visual support for your Members' Minute, please contact Bill in advance to arrange for your needs. Although it is NOT required, we like to have an idea of how many people to expect, so if possible please email rsvp at penlug.org if you are planning to attend. -- William R Ward bill at wards.net http://www.wards.net/~bill/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Movies are like life with all the dull parts left out." - Alfred Hitchcock From david at catwhisker.org Thu May 27 09:05:10 2004 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Thu, 27 May 2004 09:05:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Hints/pointers on MRTG for non-traffic SNMP data? Message-ID: <200405271605.i4RG5AJb061388@bunrab.catwhisker.org> MRTG is something I've not had occasion to deal with much before, and I have a requirement to add some graphs of data extracted via SNMP, but that are not actually "traffic counters" (if that makes any sense) to some existing MRTG graphs (that do show traffic counters). I like to think I'm fairly good at operating Web search engines, but I'm a bit stuck here, and keep getting either "nothing" or a lot of not-obviously-relevant hits. Hints or clues? (Yes, I did look at www.mrtg.org.) Oh, in case it matters, this is in a FreeBSD environment. (And yes, I'll summarize private responses. There is no need to send the same message both to the list and to me.) Thanks, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org I do not "unsubscribe" from email "services" to which I have not explicitly subscribed. Rather, I block spammers' access to SMTP servers I control, and encourage others who are in a position to do so to do likewise. From michael at halligan.org Thu May 27 10:15:39 2004 From: michael at halligan.org (Michael T. Halligan) Date: Thu, 27 May 2004 10:15:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Hints/pointers on MRTG for non-traffic SNMP data? In-Reply-To: <200405271605.i4RG5AJb061388@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: David, Check out this rrd tool tutorial : http://www.cuddletech.com/articles/rrd/ On Thu, 27 May 2004, David Wolfskill wrote: > MRTG is something I've not had occasion to deal with much before, and I > have a requirement to add some graphs of data extracted via SNMP, but that > are not actually "traffic counters" (if that makes any sense) to some > existing MRTG graphs (that do show traffic counters). > > I like to think I'm fairly good at operating Web search engines, but I'm > a bit stuck here, and keep getting either "nothing" or a lot of > not-obviously-relevant hits. > > Hints or clues? (Yes, I did look at www.mrtg.org.) > > Oh, in case it matters, this is in a FreeBSD environment. > > (And yes, I'll summarize private responses. There is no need to send > the same message both to the list and to me.) > > Thanks, > david > -- ------------------- Michael T. Halligan Chief Geek Halligan Infrastructure Designs. http://www.halligan.org/ 3158 Mission St. #3 San Francisco, CA 94110 (415) 724.7998 - Mobile From rsr at inorganic.org Thu May 27 10:59:20 2004 From: rsr at inorganic.org (Roy S. Rapoport) Date: Thu, 27 May 2004 10:59:20 -0700 Subject: Hints/pointers on MRTG for non-traffic SNMP data? In-Reply-To: References: <200405271605.i4RG5AJb061388@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <20040527175920.GA22606@puppy.inorganic.org> On Thu, May 27, 2004 at 10:15:39AM -0700, Michael T. Halligan wrote: > Check out this rrd tool tutorial : http://www.cuddletech.com/articles/rrd/ Also look into the 'gauge' option in the MRTG config file. Also look at my http://stats.inorganic.org site, where I use MRTG with RRDTOOL (and Routers2 and some gathering instrumentation I wrote myself) to track, in addition to SNMP data, things like temperature and humidity next to my server, DNS and HTTP requests, and overall mail traffic. It's not a tutorial site (you don't get to see how I do it, but I'll answer questions if you have them), but it's at least a proof of concept :) -roy From chuck+baylisa at snew.com Thu May 27 13:53:37 2004 From: chuck+baylisa at snew.com (Chuck Yerkes) Date: Thu, 27 May 2004 16:53:37 -0400 Subject: Hints/pointers on MRTG for non-traffic SNMP data? In-Reply-To: <200405271605.i4RG5AJb061388@bunrab.catwhisker.org> References: <200405271605.i4RG5AJb061388@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <20040527205337.GA19105@2004.snew.com> Quoting David Wolfskill (david at catwhisker.org): > MRTG is something I've not had occasion to deal with much before, and I > have a requirement to add some graphs of data extracted via SNMP, but that > are not actually "traffic counters" (if that makes any sense) to some > existing MRTG graphs (that do show traffic counters). > > I like to think I'm fairly good at operating Web search engines, but I'm > a bit stuck here, and keep getting either "nothing" or a lot of > not-obviously-relevant hits. > > Hints or clues? (Yes, I did look at www.mrtg.org.) > > Oh, in case it matters, this is in a FreeBSD environment. I've been using SNMP as a transport protocol for data for years. Basically, net-snmp can watch mail, count users, give me memory use information, etc. With V3, it's secure enough to allow an snmp-set to reboot the machine (strong auth/encryption). perl/php/shell can get SNMP data and feed it to rrdtool quite nicely. For reasons of experimentation, I've been using a PHP command line for several scripts. It speaks XML, LDAP, SNMP and GD quite nicely with one binary (a bitch to build, but once built, more portable than perl and 500 libs. And "a bitch to build" is moot with /usr/ports/). Some for loops and I read memory use data from 30 machines and throw it into RRDTool. I can then graph per machine or in agreggate (show me the 15 web servers mem use on one picture). As I said, I used php, but had it in perl and shell before this last little test. rrdtool is the successor to the graphing/storage part of MRTG (same author), and FAR FAR more efficient. From david at catwhisker.org Fri May 28 09:48:57 2004 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Fri, 28 May 2004 09:48:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Hints/pointers on MRTG for non-traffic SNMP data? In-Reply-To: <200405271605.i4RG5AJb061388@bunrab.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <200405281648.i4SGmueO065481@bunrab.catwhisker.org> >Date: Thu, 27 May 2004 09:05:10 -0700 (PDT) >From: David Wolfskill >To: baylisa at baylisa.org >Subject: Hints/pointers on MRTG for non-traffic SNMP data? >Reply-To: david at catwhisker.org >Sender: owner-baylisa at baylisa.org >MRTG is something I've not had occasion to deal with much before... >Hints or clues? (Yes, I did look at www.mrtg.org.) Thank you all for the pointers -- in particular, to RRDtool, which appears to be far better-suited to the task at hand. And I'm ashamed to confess that I had failed to take sufficient advantage of local resources before bothering the list. From my laptop: g1-15(4.10-S)[1] apropos rrd RRDp(1) - Attach rrdtool from within a perl script via a set of pipes; RRDs(1) - Access rrdtool as a shared module mrtg-rrd(1) - How to use RRDtool with MRTG rpntutorial(1) - Reading RRDTool RPN Expressions by Steve Rader rrd-beginners(1) - Beginners guide rrdcgi(1) - create web pages containing RRD graphs based on templates rrdcreate(1) - Set up a new Round Robin Database rrddump(1) - dump the contents of an RRD to XML format rrdfetch(1) - fetch data from an RRD rrdgraph(1) - Create a graph based on data from one or several RRD rrdinfo(1) - extract header information from an RRD rrdlast(1) - Return the date of the last data sample in an RRD rrdresize(1) - alters the size of an RRA and creates new .rrd file rrdrestore(1) - restore the contents of an RRD from its XML dump format rrdtool(1) - round robin database tool rrdtune(1) - Modify some basic properties of a Round Robin Database rrdtutorial(1) - Alex van den Bogaerdt's RRDTool tutorial rrdtutorial(1) - Tutorial sobre RRDtool por Alex van den Bogaerdt (Traducido al castellano por Jes?s Couto Fandi?o) rrdupdate(1) - Store a new set of values into the RRD rrdxport(1) - Export data in XML format based on data from one or several RRD RRDp(3) - Attach rrdtool from within a perl script via a set of pipes; RRDs(3) - Access rrdtool as a shared module g1-15(4.10-S)[2] Note, in particular, "rrd-beginners(1)". :-} And the rrdtool tutorial at http://www.cuddletech.com/articles/rrd/ appears to be put together reasonably well. Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org I do not "unsubscribe" from email "services" to which I have not explicitly subscribed. Rather, I block spammers' access to SMTP servers I control, and encourage others who are in a position to do so to do likewise.