From secretary at baylisa.org Mon Apr 18 16:05:10 2011 From: secretary at baylisa.org (Robert Novak) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:05:10 -0700 Subject: Reminder: BayLISA meeting: THURSDAY April 21, 7:30pm, package management Message-ID: Hi all, === GENERAL MEETING === I'm pleased to announce that Philip Hollenback and Jordan Sissel will be speaking at this month's BayLISA general meeting. It's THIS THURSDAY, April 21, at 7:30pm. We're actually not changing buldings after all; we have a different space in the 2029 Stierlin building (same one as we've met in for a while now). * Phil Hollenback: In-Flight Mechanics Phil Hollenback will be reprising his Practice And Experience Report from LISA '11, In-Flight Mechanics: A Software Package Management Conversion Project. Phil works for Yahoo! and is also actively helping the sysadmin community by participating in the 10k Serverfault Challenge for which he's passed the halfway mark. * Jordan Sissel: fpm (Effing Package Management) Jordan Sissel will be talking about why you should build your own packages, and presenting his software for doing so, fpm. Jordan is a hacker in San Jose who spends weekdays coding on his front porch for Loggly. Spare coding cycles are spent on varied open source projects. (We will also be welcoming Jordan back in June for a live demo of his Logstash software) Loggly (www.loggly.com), Jordan's employer, will be supporting the pizza and beer efforts for this meeting. There will be a small raffle with some interesting prizes, and of course you must be present to win. Please RSVP at http://bit.ly/hyszfA so we can plan for seating and refreshments. Alternately, you can email rsvp at baylisa.org if you can't access Meetup. === BAYLISA BOARD MEETING === The board of BayLISA will meet before the general meeting on Thursday. If you're interested in getting involved with the board of directors or otherwise getting closer to the operations of BayLISA, you're invited to attend. Contact me personally to RSVP for the board meeting so we can make sure you can get in (the board sometimes meets in a different space from the general meeting, as there are fewer attendees for that part). === ANNOUNCE LIST === We have a baylisa-announce list for, well, announcements. It's been a bit idle lately, but I'll be starting to use it again for meeting announcements, and other infrequent announcements of events of interest to BayLISA members. Feel free to send announcements of interest to the membership to me and I will post/aggregate them. We also should have a space on the website for these announcements soon. If you are already on baylisa-announce or baylisa@, you will get baylisa-announce messages and need do nothing more. Volume should not exceed 1-2 messages a week, on average. If you are not, and have had this message forwarded to you... or if you want to get low-volume announcements on an alternate address, feel free to subscribe to baylisa-announce through majordomo. === UPCOMING MEETINGS === We have Brendan Gregg, author of the upcoming DTrace book, speaking at the May 19 meeting. Details/RSVP at http://bit.ly/gHIyFy The June 16 meeting will feature short-but-cool presentations by Doug Gourlay, Jason Dearborn, and Jordan Sissel. We will also be welcoming James T Nixon III who will demonstrate FreeNAS 8 and talk about Django under FreeBSD. Refreshments courtesy of iXsystems. ?Details/RSVP at http://bit.ly/hU6zKq === THAT'S IT FOR NOW === If you have any questions, comments, suggestions... feel free to drop me a note directly or email blw at baylisa.org Thanks, and happy April. Robert Novak BayLISA Secretary/Cheerleader From david at catwhisker.org Tue Apr 19 21:42:48 2011 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 21:42:48 -0700 Subject: Opinions sought on information presentation Message-ID: <20110420044248.GM1553@albert.catwhisker.org> While I'm not actually a sysadmin per se any more, there's a fair amount of overlap between what I'm doing and what I did as a sysadmin. And it's possible that some of y;all might find some of it of interest, so.... I recently was able to actually get some hardware that I'm allowed to reconfigure, so I've been performing series of as-identical-as-I-can-make-them runs of a sample workload that is of "significant" interest to my employer. In the process, I've been gathering information during the workload in question: I cobbled up a Perl script that runs a command under the auspices of "/usr/bin/time -lp", parses the resulting output, then spits out that information, together with just about anything else I was able to think of that might be interesting, all in a simple "tagged" format that's fairly easy to parse while remaining flexible (so I can change the mix of stuff reported -- or the sequence of things -- with impunity). But before it does that, it forks a little shell script (and when the command under examination terminates, the Perl script kills the shell script). The shell script sits mostly in the background, and periodically (default: every 10 seconds) grabs a handful of readily-available information (mostly from sysctl(8); stuff from "netstat -nibf inet" is included by default) and re-formats that to the same "tagged" format (but appends it to a different file) byeans of awk(1). Among the data thus retrieved are the 1-, 5-, and 15-minute load averages; another set that can be interesting is an ordered quintuple: CPU utilization counters for each of the states "system", "interrupt", "user", "nice", and "idle" (in that sequence). These latter are what is used to determine CPU utilization (e.g., by top(1) or vmstat(8)). [It turns out that I actually can (and do) also get the per-core versions of these counters.] In any case, in an attempt to gain a bit more understanding of the behavior of the system, I cobbled up a bit of code: * Some Perl, to split the multivariate reported values (such as the CPU counters) into separate univariate values. * Some Perl, to read the "tagged" data & spit out a "delimited" file with headers. * Some R, to accept a "data frame" (result of having read output of that last) and generate a graph showing the distribution of CPU states over time during the execution of the command being examined. Over the last couple of days, I hacked this last to also (optionally) overlay the load averages on the same graph. So I'm interested in opinions on the result. I've placed a couple of lightly-sanitized graphs up at , and solicit comments. (I'm aware that the legends are a bit truncated. I also gather that some folks may not readily distinguish between the read & the green colors I used: the code I wrote permits those colors to be overridden, but if more generally useful defaults make sense, I'd like to know. I don't pretend to be an expert in data presentation.) Mostly, I'm interested in knowing if other folks perceive the way the information is presented as (arguably) useful and fairly clear. I haven't generated any of the per-core graphs for this exercise; if there's interest, I could probably be persuaded to do so. Thanks! [Oh: all of this is done in a FreeBSD environment. Each of the tools used is open source. I've indicated to my manager that I'd like to be able to release what I've done so others might improve it. She hasn't actually raised any objection so far....] Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Depriving a girl or boy of an opportunity for education is evil. See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 196 bytes Desc: not available URL: From satch at cisco.com Wed Apr 20 11:57:40 2011 From: satch at cisco.com (Steve Acheson) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 11:57:40 -0700 Subject: Opinions sought on information presentation In-Reply-To: <20110420044248.GM1553@albert.catwhisker.org> References: <20110420044248.GM1553@albert.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <4DAF2CA4.2070009@cisco.com> HI David, Nice work. I like the graph and I think it's pretty obvious to anyone that does this kind of work what it represents. But, I think that if this is for non-technical audiences you might want to choose a different style of graph. I'm actually interested in your solution, and I have a question for you around it. Did you look into gathering the information via SNMP and found that it wasn't adequate resolution for your needs or was there some other reason for going the on-box perl/shell route? Overall looks good tho, I can see where it would be useful for gathering performance metrics for a workload run. satch On 4/19/11 9:42 PM, David Wolfskill wrote: > While I'm not actually a sysadmin per se any more, there's a fair amount > of overlap between what I'm doing and what I did as a sysadmin. And > it's possible that some of y;all might find some of it of interest, > so.... > > I recently was able to actually get some hardware that I'm allowed to > reconfigure, so I've been performing series of > as-identical-as-I-can-make-them runs of a sample workload that is of > "significant" interest to my employer. > > In the process, I've been gathering information during the workload in > question: I cobbled up a Perl script that runs a command under the > auspices of "/usr/bin/time -lp", parses the resulting output, then spits > out that information, together with just about anything else I was able > to think of that might be interesting, all in a simple "tagged" format > that's fairly easy to parse while remaining flexible (so I can change > the mix of stuff reported -- or the sequence of things -- with > impunity). > > But before it does that, it forks a little shell script (and when the > command under examination terminates, the Perl script kills the shell > script). The shell script sits mostly in the background, and > periodically (default: every 10 seconds) grabs a handful of > readily-available information (mostly from sysctl(8); stuff from > "netstat -nibf inet" is included by default) and re-formats that to the > same "tagged" format (but appends it to a different file) byeans of > awk(1). > > Among the data thus retrieved are the 1-, 5-, and 15-minute load > averages; another set that can be interesting is an ordered quintuple: > CPU utilization counters for each of the states "system", "interrupt", > "user", "nice", and "idle" (in that sequence). > > These latter are what is used to determine CPU utilization (e.g., by > top(1) or vmstat(8)). > > [It turns out that I actually can (and do) also get the per-core versions > of these counters.] > > In any case, in an attempt to gain a bit more understanding of the > behavior of the system, I cobbled up a bit of code: > > * Some Perl, to split the multivariate reported values (such as the CPU > counters) into separate univariate values. > > * Some Perl, to read the "tagged" data & spit out a "delimited" file > with headers. > > * Some R, to accept a "data frame" (result of having read output of that > last) and generate a graph showing the distribution of CPU states over > time during the execution of the command being examined. > > Over the last couple of days, I hacked this last to also (optionally) > overlay the load averages on the same graph. > > So I'm interested in opinions on the result. I've placed a couple of > lightly-sanitized graphs up at , > and solicit comments. > > (I'm aware that the legends are a bit truncated. I also gather that > some folks may not readily distinguish between the read & the green > colors I used: the code I wrote permits those colors to be overridden, > but if more generally useful defaults make sense, I'd like to know. I > don't pretend to be an expert in data presentation.) > > Mostly, I'm interested in knowing if other folks perceive the way the > information is presented as (arguably) useful and fairly clear. > > I haven't generated any of the per-core graphs for this exercise; if > there's interest, I could probably be persuaded to do so. > > Thanks! > > [Oh: all of this is done in a FreeBSD environment. Each of the tools > used is open source. I've indicated to my manager that I'd like to be > able to release what I've done so others might improve it. She hasn't > actually raised any objection so far....] > > Peace, > david From david at catwhisker.org Wed Apr 20 12:28:46 2011 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 12:28:46 -0700 Subject: Opinions sought on information presentation In-Reply-To: <4DAF2CA4.2070009@cisco.com> References: <20110420044248.GM1553@albert.catwhisker.org> <4DAF2CA4.2070009@cisco.com> Message-ID: <20110420192846.GQ1553@albert.catwhisker.org> On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 11:57:40AM -0700, Steve Acheson wrote: > HI David, > > Nice work. I like the graph and I think it's pretty obvious to anyone > that does this kind of work what it represents. But, I think that if > this is for non-technical audiences you might want to choose a different > style of graph. Thanks. This is strictly for technical folks. :-} > I'm actually interested in your solution, and I have a question for you > around it. Did you look into gathering the information via SNMP and > found that it wasn't adequate resolution for your needs or was there > some other reason for going the on-box perl/shell route? I wanted the basic "information gathering" to be able to work on a stock FreeBSD system, without requiring any changes to its current configuration -- even if it had no ports installed at all. (In FreeBSD terminology, a "port" is a 3rd-party application, not part of FreeBSD, and thus, not in /usr/src. Examples include Perl, X11, and Web-related programs.) While I bent things a bit to use a Perl script to "shepherd" the workload under test, in our environment, any system capable of running that workload would have Perl installed. It is not (necessarily) the case that any such system would have an SNMP agent configured in any particular way. So you could say that I was trying to reduce external dependencies. I also have used something very similar for ongoing system resource usage measurement, and in that role, the output is directed back through an SSH tunnel -- which I trust a fair amount more than SNMP if any of the data traverses a network component over which I do not have control. Further, using this approach, I can capture just about any sysctl(8) output for which the result is restricted to a single line. (I haven't figured out a reasonable way to parse the output of, say, "sysctl vm.vmtotal": d130(8.2-S)[7] sysctl vm.vmtotal vm.vmtotal: System wide totals computed every five seconds: (values in kilobytes) =============================================== Processes: (RUNQ: 1 Disk Wait: 0 Page Wait: 0 Sleep: 129) Virtual Memory: (Total: 3858892K Active: 1678116K) Real Memory: (Total: 958340K Active: 438576K) Shared Virtual Memory: (Total: 85196K Active: 53540K) Shared Real Memory: (Total: 48420K Active: 24296K) Free Memory Pages: 2500324K d130(8.2-S)[8] within the constraints I've imposed. (The original version only coped with univariate OIDs; I needed to be more flexible to get the CPU utilization. Extracting the per-core CPU utilization was a little trickier, but not too bad.) About the constraints: when the shell script starts up, it constructs a string. It then sits in a loop, alternately feeding the string to "eval", then determining how long to sleep, then sleeping. Lather, rinse, repeat.... The programs the shell script uses are: * awk * date * kill * netstat * ps * sleep * sysctl * unlink Of those, ps and unlink are only (potentially) used in the initial phase. Also, the shell script make no attempt to interpret anything: it merely gathers information, re-formats it to a uniform syntax, and reports it. (Well, and sleeps a lot. Reminds me of certain resident felines.) I have found some ... oddities -- such as OIDs that I thought ought to be treated as COUNTERs (RRDtool terminology), but yet, they are actually treated as signed -- so when they wrap around, <0 values can be reported. I rather suspect that's a bug; on the other hand, it's plausible that fixing it would break some things.... :-{ > Overall looks good tho, I can see where it would be useful for gathering > performance metrics for a workload run. Seeing what happens to the individual cores (over time) can be ... fascinating. Thanks again. Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Depriving a girl or boy of an opportunity for education is evil. See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 196 bytes Desc: not available URL: From ramin-list at badapple.net Wed Apr 20 13:43:26 2011 From: ramin-list at badapple.net (Ramin K) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 13:43:26 -0700 Subject: Opinions sought on information presentation In-Reply-To: <20110420044248.GM1553@albert.catwhisker.org> References: <20110420044248.GM1553@albert.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <4DAF456E.8060507@badapple.net> On 4/19/2011 9:42 PM, David Wolfskill wrote: > While I'm not actually a sysadmin per se any more, there's a fair amount > of overlap between what I'm doing and what I did as a sysadmin. And > it's possible that some of y;all might find some of it of interest, > so.... Have you looked at Collectd? It does quite a bit out of the box and is pulling in the same stats you are though I do like the looks of your graphs. What I enjoy about Collectd is that stats collection happens locally and is periodically pushed upstream where it is eventually flushed out to rrd files. Makes it easy to automate installation of graphing in most environments. http://collectd.org/ Here are a few graphs from one of my systems generated with the included cgi script. I believe you can make nicer graphs from the source rrd files, but I haven't had time to look at that yet. http://badapple.net/images/cpu0.png http://badapple.net/images/cpu1.png http://badapple.net/images/load.png Ramin From rayw at rayw.net Wed Apr 20 14:14:40 2011 From: rayw at rayw.net (Ray Wong) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 14:14:40 -0700 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? Message-ID: Hi all, found myself wondering: Seems like Macs have become a lot more common, mostly on the corporate IT side but I guess a few are using them for internet operations too. Haven't really been keeping track about what options and resources are out there for managing them... Been seeing more claims of malware, intrusions, et al., and wondering if any professionals are actually dealing with them in some systematic way with useful management and recovery tools, or is it largely still the same "so and so head of wanted em so we're living with them" approach? -R> From bigmac at milestonepowered.com Wed Apr 20 14:31:51 2011 From: bigmac at milestonepowered.com (Bryan McDonald) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 21:31:51 +0000 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7614A68433759940B998D1A2D5068DF75E1546CA@mti-exch2010.milestn.com> On top of whomever was out there doing this already, Apple has started spinning up channel partners to systematically deal with apple deployments in large scale. Full disclosure, Milestone is one of them. There are a number of companies and tools spinning up to manage them systematically, the one our Apple practice is settling in on is from JAMF, along with a number of other supplemental tools, but this one seems to do the job. Bryan --- Bryan McDonald (510) 360-5180 Milestone Technologies, Inc. Business Solutions. Powered By IT Innovation. TM -----Original Message----- From: owner-baylisa at baylisa.org [mailto:owner-baylisa at baylisa.org] On Behalf Of Ray Wong Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2011 2:15 PM To: baylisa at baylisa.org Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? Hi all, found myself wondering: Seems like Macs have become a lot more common, mostly on the corporate IT side but I guess a few are using them for internet operations too. Haven't really been keeping track about what options and resources are out there for managing them... Been seeing more claims of malware, intrusions, et al., and wondering if any professionals are actually dealing with them in some systematic way with useful management and recovery tools, or is it largely still the same "so and so head of wanted em so we're living with them" approach? -R> From greg at kulosa.org Wed Apr 20 14:46:36 2011 From: greg at kulosa.org (Greg Kulosa) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 14:46:36 -0700 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110420214636.GD26130@lafmore.com> We are mostly a Windows shop for desktops. Servers are FreeBSD. I asked for a Mac when I started, because I spend all my time in a terminal anyway, so I love having a native xterm and shell. Plus I get regular Microsoft Office, which everyone knows how to deal with. We have now grown to a few more Mac's for people who request them. I was recently promoted to essentially the Director of IT, but I just can't justify the hardware cost of converting everyone to a Mac, although I'd really like to. So we are sticking with Windows, mostly. But to answer your question, yes the Mac population does seem to be growing, and getting more acceptable in the corporate world. I don't have any widespread management tools for them, although I am considering getting a Time Machine compatible backup server for them. We don't have any Apple servers, though, if that is what you are asking about managing. -Greg On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 02:14:40PM -0700, Ray Wong wrote: > Hi all, found myself wondering: > > Seems like Macs have become a lot more common, mostly on the corporate > IT side but I guess a few are using them for internet operations too. > Haven't really been keeping track about what options and resources are > out there for managing them... Been seeing more claims of malware, > intrusions, et al., and wondering if any professionals are actually > dealing with them in some systematic way with useful management and > recovery tools, or is it largely still the same "so and so head of > discretionary budget> wanted em so we're living with them" approach? > > -R> From adrian.cockcroft at gmail.com Wed Apr 20 16:47:15 2011 From: adrian.cockcroft at gmail.com (Adrian Cockcroft) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 16:47:15 -0700 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: <20110420214636.GD26130@lafmore.com> References: <20110420214636.GD26130@lafmore.com> Message-ID: Over the last four years Netflix has moved to be mostly Mac and iPhone with a few holdout areas and individuals. that includes development, operations and management. Groups like legal and finance are mostly windows based and we are on windows 7 everywhere now. The macs all have parallels installed but I never need to use it. Adrian On Wednesday, April 20, 2011, Greg Kulosa wrote: > > > We are mostly a Windows shop for desktops. ?Servers are FreeBSD. ?I asked > for a Mac when I started, because I spend all my time in a terminal > anyway, so I love having a native xterm and shell. ?Plus I get regular > Microsoft Office, which everyone knows how to deal with. > > We have now grown to a few more Mac's for people who request them. > > I was recently promoted to essentially the Director of IT, but I just > can't justify the hardware cost of converting everyone to a Mac, although > I'd really like to. > > So we are sticking with Windows, mostly. > > > But to answer your question, yes the Mac population does seem to be > growing, and getting more acceptable in the corporate world. > > I don't have any widespread management tools for them, although I am > considering getting a Time Machine compatible backup server for them. > > We don't have any Apple servers, though, if that is what you are asking > about managing. > > > -Greg > > On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 02:14:40PM -0700, Ray Wong wrote: >> Hi all, found myself wondering: >> >> Seems like Macs have become a lot more common, mostly on the corporate >> IT side but I guess a few are using them for internet operations too. >> Haven't really been keeping track about what options and resources are >> out there for managing them... Been seeing more claims of malware, >> intrusions, et al., and wondering if any professionals are actually >> dealing with them in some systematic way with useful management and >> recovery tools, or is it largely still the same "so and so head of >> > discretionary budget> wanted em so we're living with them" approach? >> >> -R> > From jxh at jxh.com Wed Apr 20 18:02:16 2011 From: jxh at jxh.com (Jim Hickstein) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 20:02:16 -0500 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4DAF8218.8030801@jxh.com> A friend who works at Google told me (sotto voce) that since the China incident one has to get special permission to install a Windows machine there. Macs are standard. And this was on the East coast! Sounds incredible, but he's well placed to know. It's not true everywhere, of course. (Not yet.) My current employer is rife with people who think computer means Windows, and only a west-coast developer group (recently acquired) was permitted to keep their Macs, and then only when they threatened to quit in a bloc. Yet even at HQ (in New Jersey) there is an "iPhone project", albeit in a pilot phase. The executives are bringing their iPhones and iPads to work and telling the IT people to shut up and get on with it. It was ever thus, it just wasn't Apple before. When Steve Jobs does eventually ... have a successor, I intend to buy heavily on the panic. Just by regression to the mean his successor is bound not to hate "enterprise" per se nearly so much, and there is a lot of room to grow in terms of market share. There always was, but now they have shown how it might happen. From rob.markovic at gmail.com Thu Apr 21 10:02:16 2011 From: rob.markovic at gmail.com (Rob Markovic) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2011 10:02:16 -0700 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: <4DAF8218.8030801@jxh.com> References: <4DAF8218.8030801@jxh.com> Message-ID: I find the standard issue Mac (new) more appealing than an corporate issue (Dell / HP / Lenovo) laptop (usually not new). Another plus, is like Adrian said, they usually come with a Hypervisor, VMware Fusion or other, so you get a PC to use if you need it. One way this works well is if you have a restrictive VPN configuration, you can choose to initiate the VPN connection from within the virtual machine for corporate work, and still use the unrestricted connection on the Mac side. The Mac trackpad is multi-touch awesomeness, and, once I learned the keyboard combo commands, life is good in whichever OS I find myself. If you are ever presented with a choice in your existing or newfound organization, I recommend you pick the Mac option. -- Rob From david at catwhisker.org Thu Apr 21 15:57:50 2011 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:57:50 -0700 Subject: Opinions sought on information presentation In-Reply-To: <4DAF456E.8060507@badapple.net> References: <20110420044248.GM1553@albert.catwhisker.org> <4DAF456E.8060507@badapple.net> Message-ID: <20110421225750.GX1553@albert.catwhisker.org> On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 01:43:26PM -0700, Ramin K wrote: > ... > Have you looked at Collectd? It does quite a bit out of the box and > is pulling in the same stats you are though I do like the looks of your > graphs. What I enjoy about Collectd is that stats collection happens > locally and is periodically pushed upstream where it is eventually > flushed out to rrd files. Makes it easy to automate installation of > graphing in most environments. http://collectd.org/ No, as one of my requirements was to be able to do this on an unmodified FreeBSD system. Further, while I have used RRDtool with earlier variations on this theme, I found that my (admittedly naive) approach of dumping all of the captured data for a given machine (for example) into a single RRD proved singularly awkward, as RRD data source names have some peculiar restrictions ("A ds-name must be 1 to 19 characters long in the characters [a-zA-Z0-9_].") which I circumvented by mapping the "real" names (of the sysctl OIDs) to some names that RRD could accept -- but that adds another layer of obfuscation. In addition, one of the more critical things I was doing with some of the gathered data is doing a small amount of statistical analysis on metrcis of critical importance; in the cases in point, elapsed time for the workload to complete (successfully -- comparing the elapsed time of incomplete or otherwise unsuccessful runs is worse than useless). By using R to generate the graphs, it's very easy to generate (for example) a set of boxplots to show the relationships between configuration and performance (as measured by elapsed time). Of course, one needs to run sufficient tests of the same workload in the same configuration to be able to have any basis for a statistical treatment: an isolated measurement may be useful as a reality check, but it is not, by itself, statistically significant. (I was also using phk's ministat(1) to advantage, but it is intended for a relatively small number of distinct configurations being measured, and really isn't designed to scale beyond that.) > Here are a few graphs from one of my systems generated with the > included cgi script. I believe you can make nicer graphs from the source > rrd files, but I haven't had time to look at that yet. > > http://badapple.net/images/cpu0.png > http://badapple.net/images/cpu1.png > http://badapple.net/images/load.png Interesting. One difference in intent between those and what I provided earlier is that the latter are intended to show (selected) resource usage of the system only during the time the workload under test was being tested. While this tends to be less informative if the workload under test is competing with significant other workloads, that was not the situation in the tests that I was running. Also, I find it generally (though not always) more useful to "scale" the load averages by dividing them by the number of CPUs the scheduler sees. I note, too, that I'm actually capturing >120 other metrics (in addition to the CPU utilization & load averages); I haven't figured out how to depict them necessarily, but I figured that if I captured the information, I'd at least be able to depict them at some later point (after I figured out what to do with them). In theory, at least, I should be able to generate graphs showing (e.g.) how the memory usage (as reported by top(1)) changes during the course of the workload. Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Depriving a girl or boy of an opportunity for education is evil. See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 196 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dtm at smuckola.org Fri Apr 22 10:43:07 2011 From: dtm at smuckola.org (Daniel Bethe) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2011 10:43:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: References: <4DAF8218.8030801@jxh.com> Message-ID: <410827.79943.qm@web39324.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hi guys. Thanks for the cool thread. As a long time Mac user, I was just looking up this issue. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/apple-in-the-enterprise-living-without-xserve/9399?tag=nl.e539 There are other companion articles on the subject. Now, I'm not sure who's stockpiling or clustering of Mac Minis in the data center, or why they're wanting that many instances of Mac OS. ;-) But I guess for someone, somewhere it's cost effective! I guess! I'd really like to know. Also, I was surprised to find that a multiuser Mac OS terminal service exists ( http://www.aquaconnect.net/ ). Speaking of which, I read an article that Mac OS 10.7 beta ships with a multiuser VNC service. Anyway, it is said that Apple is accidentally seeding the enterprise -- brought in backpacks, pockets, and briefcases -- and succeeding despite themselves. Sometimes it's due to hardheaded VPs who coerce IT to support a given one-off cool product. It was cool to hear from the person at Netflix about their widespread Mac deployments. I've always heard that Netflix has a positive culture, and I'm a huge fan, so thanks for being candid. Personally, in my humble opinion, I think we're fortunate that Steve was effectively sent out to start NeXT in the enterprise market, and bring back such a high-caliber product in the form of OPENSTEP. Or else Mac OS might have become a one-trick pony for consumers, and Macs might be basically giant iPods... instead of iPods being tiny Macs. ;-) And on a final note for the future of all computing, I'll say thank God for ZFS. ( http://code.google.com/p/maczfs/ ) My personal system at home has an 8x2TB raidz1 on Mac OS. Hopefully, Ten's Complement will revitalize the community soon with their port of the latest Solaris ZFS code, and bring in the new era of Mac OS's storage strategy. Mac OS needs enterprise technology, because the platform fosters such large workstations with the same kind of intensity and scale as has been associated by the likes of SGI. From rsr at inorganic.org Fri Apr 22 12:35:40 2011 From: rsr at inorganic.org (Greg Kulosa) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2011 12:35:40 -0700 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: References: <20110420214636.GD26130@lafmore.com> Message-ID: <4DB1D88C.2050905@kulosa.org> On 4/20/11 4:47 PM, Adrian Cockcroft wrote: > Over the last four years Netflix has moved to be mostly Mac and iPhone > with a few holdout areas and individuals. that includes development, > operations and management. Groups like legal and finance are mostly > windows based and we are on windows 7 everywhere now. IT's particularly funny; if I look at ITOps Engineering management (the group I'm in), the balance has shifted drastically in the 662 days I've been here. When I joined, 3/5 of us, including our Director, were on PCs (including me); today, 6/7 of us use a Mac. -roy From dannyman at toldme.com Fri Apr 22 13:56:02 2011 From: dannyman at toldme.com (Daniel Howard) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2011 13:56:02 -0700 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: <4DB1D88C.2050905@kulosa.org> References: <20110420214636.GD26130@lafmore.com> <4DB1D88C.2050905@kulosa.org> Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 12:35 PM, Greg Kulosa wrote: > IT's particularly funny; if I look at ITOps Engineering management (the > group I'm in), the balance has shifted drastically in the 662 days I've been > here. When I joined, 3/5 of us, including our Director, were on PCs > (including me); today, 6/7 of us use a Mac. > So, ah, how many of us got tired of Mac's weird limitations and subsequently embraced Linux desktops? :> *raises hand* Okay, you guys can get back to your tent revival. -- http://dannyman.toldme.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From david at catwhisker.org Fri Apr 22 15:20:38 2011 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2011 15:20:38 -0700 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: References: <20110420214636.GD26130@lafmore.com> <4DB1D88C.2050905@kulosa.org> Message-ID: <20110422222038.GK1553@albert.catwhisker.org> On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 01:56:02PM -0700, Daniel Howard wrote: > On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 12:35 PM, Greg Kulosa wrote: > > > IT's particularly funny; if I look at ITOps Engineering management (the > > group I'm in), the balance has shifted drastically in the 662 days I've been > > here. When I joined, 3/5 of us, including our Director, were on PCs > > (including me); today, 6/7 of us use a Mac. > > > > So, ah, how many of us got tired of Mac's weird limitations and subsequently > embraced Linux desktops? :> > > *raises hand* > > Okay, you guys can get back to your tent revival. Well, I had an opportunity to get a Mac at work, so I did. I tried to use it, but found it incredibly frustrating -- in fairness, much of that was likely because most of the time I actually *needed* to use it was because my (then-)manager wanted me to do something with a Microsoft application. (My relationship with Microsoft might charitably be characterized as "very hostile.") And I find the various Linux distributions to which I've been exposed annoying (though mostly in other ways). So I do all of my real work on my FreeBSD desktop or FreeBSD laptop. (And no, I don't pretend to be representative of any population.) Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Depriving a girl or boy of an opportunity for education is evil. See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 196 bytes Desc: not available URL: From harker at harker.com Fri Apr 22 18:11:25 2011 From: harker at harker.com (Robert Harker) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2011 21:11:25 -0400 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? Message-ID: <201104230111.p3N1BPlu012982@firewall.harker.com> Ahh, if Macs only had "pick and stuff" and "focus follows mouse". I was given a Mac when I joined Yahoo. Nice hardware, but I hate it. What was two clicks under X-windows, pick (highlit) the text. Move mouse to second window and click to stuff the text move the mouse to the first window and do simething useful. Becomes 3 or more clicks and two keyboard strokes. High light the text, apple C to copy the text, click to select second window (Which pops to the top), apple V to paste the text, and then click on the original window to go back. I know about highlighting text and dragging it, but it does not always work. And it doesn't work if you touch anything between highlighting the text and trying to drag. I just found myself clicking the mouse all the time and about half the time typing in a different window unexpectedly. More than once I typed my password into the IRC. Oops... If I had never used pick and stuff, I would be happy. But I am an old gray beard. "When I was a lad we used Suntools". I now mostly work at my RHEL desktop at work and do not enjoy working remotely. RLH From claw at kanga.nu Fri Apr 22 19:11:11 2011 From: claw at kanga.nu (JC Lawrence) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2011 19:11:11 -0700 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: <201104230111.p3N1BPlu012982@firewall.harker.com> References: <201104230111.p3N1BPlu012982@firewall.harker.com> Message-ID: <046B2954-65D8-4E9D-B56F-314C7F90951A@kanga.nu> On 22Apr 2011, at 18:11, Robert Harker wrote: > Ahh, if Macs only had "pick and stuff" and "focus follows mouse". I was given a Mac when I joined Yahoo. Nice hardware, but I hate it. FWLIW the technical term for this behaviour is "Copy on Select". I also miss it. I've asked people inside Apple if it might be possible via arcane unpublished configuration, but it is not. For various reasons it violates assorted usability guidelines and principles (eg CUA and its children) and is thus unsupported by (MS)Windows or OS X. -- JCL From ulf at Alameda.net Fri Apr 22 19:41:16 2011 From: ulf at Alameda.net (Ulf Zimmermann) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2011 19:41:16 -0700 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: <046B2954-65D8-4E9D-B56F-314C7F90951A@kanga.nu> References: <201104230111.p3N1BPlu012982@firewall.harker.com> <046B2954-65D8-4E9D-B56F-314C7F90951A@kanga.nu> Message-ID: <20110423024116.GO94296@evil.alameda.net> On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 07:11:11PM -0700, JC Lawrence wrote: > > On 22Apr 2011, at 18:11, Robert Harker wrote: > > > Ahh, if Macs only had "pick and stuff" and "focus follows mouse". I was given a Mac when I joined Yahoo. Nice hardware, but I hate it. > > FWLIW the technical term for this behaviour is "Copy on Select". I also miss it. I've asked people inside Apple if it might be possible via arcane unpublished configuration, but it is not. For various reasons it violates assorted usability guidelines and principles (eg CUA and its children) and is thus unsupported by (MS)Windows or OS X. > > -- JCL I use it via SecureCRT on Windows and OSX. -- Regards, Ulf. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Ulf Zimmermann, 1525 Pacific Ave., Alameda, CA-94501, #: 510-865-0204 You can find my resume at: http://www.Alameda.net/~ulf/resume.html From rick at linuxmafia.com Sat Apr 23 15:33:25 2011 From: rick at linuxmafia.com (Rick Moen) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2011 15:33:25 -0700 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: <20110422222038.GK1553@albert.catwhisker.org> References: <20110420214636.GD26130@lafmore.com> <4DB1D88C.2050905@kulosa.org> <20110422222038.GK1553@albert.catwhisker.org> Message-ID: <20110423223325.GQ2398@linuxmafia.com> Quoting David Wolfskill (david at catwhisker.org): > Well, I had an opportunity to get a Mac at work, so I did. I tried to > use it, but found it incredibly frustrating -- in fairness, much of that > was likely because most of the time I actually *needed* to use it was > because my (then-)manager wanted me to do something with a Microsoft > application. (My relationship with Microsoft might charitably be > characterized as "very hostile.") Fortunately, one can run FreeBSD on them quite well. Nothing wrong with a Mac that provisioning it with an operating system can't fix. ;-> -- Cheers, "On American pronunciation: You say erbs and we Rick Moen say herbs. Because, you know, there's an H in it." rick at linuxmafia.com -- Eddie Izzard McQ! (4x80) From cat at reptiles.org Sat Apr 23 16:12:38 2011 From: cat at reptiles.org (Cat Okita) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2011 19:12:38 -0400 (EDT) Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: References: <20110420214636.GD26130@lafmore.com> <4DB1D88C.2050905@kulosa.org> Message-ID: On Fri, 22 Apr 2011, Daniel Howard wrote: > So, ah, how many of us got tired of Mac's weird limitations and subsequently > embraced Linux desktops? :> > *raises hand* Not me. Given the choice between a Linux desktop and a Windows desktop, I'll take the Linux desktop -- but I'm spending my personal money with Apple. I'm not going to claim that I don't run into frustrations with OS X, but I run into fewer of them, and I'm more routinely able to do what I need to do (tools, develop, 'office productivity', graphics) without spending agonizing and irritating amounts of time futzing[0] under OS X. cheers! [0] Next on the list, sorting out samba 4 + dependencies, so I can sort out Evolution + dependencies, so I can talk to exchange... ========================================================================== "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 satch at cisco.com Sun Apr 24 12:44:05 2011 From: satch at cisco.com (Steve Acheson) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2011 12:44:05 -0700 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: <20110423024116.GO94296@evil.alameda.net> References: <201104230111.p3N1BPlu012982@firewall.harker.com> <046B2954-65D8-4E9D-B56F-314C7F90951A@kanga.nu> <20110423024116.GO94296@evil.alameda.net> Message-ID: <4DB47D85.6040202@cisco.com> yeah, and iTerm on OSX does it too. The problem is that those of us multi-button mouse X11 weaned users understand efficiency in the UI. Select in one app, move the mouse, paste. I constantly forget that FF doesn't do copy-on-select and end up pasting something else in my target window. Even on Windows you can set the Focus-Follows-Mouse option. I haven't found a way to do it on OSX, which seems strange to me, but I guess Apple needs to keep all App's inputs simplified for the developer space or something. While I love tinkering with Linux on servers and even playing with settings on a desktop, for me OSX is still a better corporate compatible desktop than linux. Most things I need to do my job are already there or just an App install. Having said that, I was able to get Windows to do 90% of what I needed with the UI tweaks and cigwin+rxvt installed. Linux just takes too much time to administer over the long run (for the desktop UI only) for me. I still fondly remember tweaking out my fvwm and fvwm2 setups for hours into the night to get it just right... But these days, I just don't have the time or patience to do that for my main desktop. satch On 4/22/11 7:41 PM, Ulf Zimmermann wrote: > On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 07:11:11PM -0700, JC Lawrence wrote: >> On 22Apr 2011, at 18:11, Robert Harker wrote: >> >>> Ahh, if Macs only had "pick and stuff" and "focus follows mouse". I was given a Mac when I joined Yahoo. Nice hardware, but I hate it. >> FWLIW the technical term for this behaviour is "Copy on Select". I also miss it. I've asked people inside Apple if it might be possible via arcane unpublished configuration, but it is not. For various reasons it violates assorted usability guidelines and principles (eg CUA and its children) and is thus unsupported by (MS)Windows or OS X. >> >> -- JCL > I use it via SecureCRT on Windows and OSX. > > From dannyman at toldme.com Sun Apr 24 13:57:56 2011 From: dannyman at toldme.com (Daniel Howard) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2011 13:57:56 -0700 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: <4DB47D85.6040202@cisco.com> References: <201104230111.p3N1BPlu012982@firewall.harker.com> <046B2954-65D8-4E9D-B56F-314C7F90951A@kanga.nu> <20110423024116.GO94296@evil.alameda.net> <4DB47D85.6040202@cisco.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 12:44 PM, Steve Acheson wrote: > > Linux just takes too much time to administer over the long run (for the > desktop UI only) for me. I still fondly remember tweaking out my fvwm > and fvwm2 setups for hours into the night to get it just right... But > these days, I just don't have the time or patience to do that for my > main desktop. A decade ago I would agree with this sort of conclusion, but nowadays I just use Gnome or whatever is the default GUI, and now I find a Linux workstation takes less effort: - Need to install new software? Do it right there in the GUI or with one-two commands in the terminal. No need to surf to some unfamiliar web site and figure out their installer. - Installation of third-party stuff not in the central repository often comes with the configs to keep that software updated. - Updating software is a command line or two, or just clicking Yes in the GUI and entering your password. For my personal needs, Google Docs is an excellent "office" application that covers the basic needs of a word processor or spreadsheet, with effortless, real-time collaboration, which can not be said for Microsoft Office. Maybe once a month or so when I need to run a native Windows App I just boot one in VMWare Workstation -- just like a Mac user would run Parallels. Occasionally, the Ubuntu way will irritate me, but it isn't the same level of irritation I tended to feel at OS X. When I am irritated at Ubuntu I'm just getting what I paid for. When OS X expects me to only do it their way I get really irritated because hey, I'm paying a premium for this and the customer is always right, so why is the customer denied their convenience? (Why _can't_ the user enable FocusFollowsMouse? Seriously!) I know I am the exception to the rule, but I gotta say, getting along with Ubuntu hasn't been any more difficult--generally easier than--other OSes, including Mac. I suspect that if others are having this experience, Linux desktop market share may be set to start gaining. -danny -- http://dannyman.toldme.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hso at nosneros.net Sun Apr 24 14:26:22 2011 From: hso at nosneros.net (Holt Sorenson) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2011 21:26:22 +0000 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: <4DB47D85.6040202@cisco.com> References: <201104230111.p3N1BPlu012982@firewall.harker.com> <046B2954-65D8-4E9D-B56F-314C7F90951A@kanga.nu> <20110423024116.GO94296@evil.alameda.net> <4DB47D85.6040202@cisco.com> Message-ID: <20110424212621.GB4982@nosneros.net> Still running FVWM2 here. On Mac OS X, iterm's copy on select is good enough for me. I really only want focus follows mouse with iTerm. I use quicksilver and expose/spaces to make up for hot keys and focus follows mouse in other apps. Some of the metaphors are a bit different for all this, but after some of adjustment, I'm functional, if still slightly more biased towards linux/fvwm2 for coding/sysadmin. I'm happy enough with either though that I go back and forth as needed depending on what my physical environment is at any given time. On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 12:44:05PM -0700, Steve Acheson wrote: >Linux just takes too much time to administer over the long run (for the >desktop UI only) for me. this. >I still fondly remember tweaking out my fvwm >and fvwm2 setups for hours into the night to get it just right... But >these days, I just don't have the time or patience to do that for my >main desktop. yep, it's a lot less work with Mac OS X for all but coding/sysadmin. I have my fvwm config with some set up scripts in subversion, so I set up debian (which is tending towards being puppet driven nowadays) and check my home directory out, run make, and I'm back in business. -- Holt Sorenson hso at nosneros.net www.nosneros.net/hso From david at catwhisker.org Sun Apr 24 15:15:10 2011 From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2011 15:15:10 -0700 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: <4DB49DDA.9060900@cisco.com> References: <201104230111.p3N1BPlu012982@firewall.harker.com> <046B2954-65D8-4E9D-B56F-314C7F90951A@kanga.nu> <20110423024116.GO94296@evil.alameda.net> <4DB47D85.6040202@cisco.com> <4DB49DDA.9060900@cisco.com> Message-ID: <20110424221510.GC1515@albert.catwhisker.org> On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 03:02:02PM -0700, Steve Acheson wrote: > ... > P.S. I'd probably look at FreeBSD as a desktop next... I came from the > NetBSD camp, via BSD386, via SunOS4. Never really liked SysV or > (shudder) AIX. I suggest that folks who might consider this should probably at least consider PC-BSD. (I've considered it, but elected to just use plain FreeBSD for my own use. But then, I use a window manager based on twm, and generally prefer to avoid applications that have UIs that I consider "excessively flashy," as well as those that have a lot of dependencies or take a long time to build. And I actually "track" a couple of development branches of FreeBSD daily on my laptop.) Peace, david -- David H. Wolfskill david at catwhisker.org Depriving a girl or boy of an opportunity for education is evil. See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 196 bytes Desc: not available URL: From satch at cisco.com Sun Apr 24 15:02:02 2011 From: satch at cisco.com (Steve Acheson) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2011 15:02:02 -0700 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: References: <201104230111.p3N1BPlu012982@firewall.harker.com> <046B2954-65D8-4E9D-B56F-314C7F90951A@kanga.nu> <20110423024116.GO94296@evil.alameda.net> <4DB47D85.6040202@cisco.com> Message-ID: <4DB49DDA.9060900@cisco.com> > I know I am the exception to the rule, but I gotta say, getting along > with Ubuntu hasn't been any more difficult--generally easier > than--other OSes, including Mac. I suspect that if others are having > this experience, Linux desktop market share may be set to start gaining. I do agree that Linux desktops are getting much closer, and that I would probably be able to find one that would just work more or less for me easily enough if I bothered to try. Mostly I just want it to to work out of the box and not have to learn yet another UI/WM, etc. And, speaking from the non-developer, IT like support role, I need something that works with the rest of the executive chosen applications and corp IT imposed tools/rules/etc. Linux is getting there too, crossover, etc, but it's still just that extra bit to get it working. And I spend just as much time trying to find apps for Linux as I do for OSX. Not every distro has every app in it's port/apt/portage tree/system. And, as I said, it's been a while since I have tried a linux desktop. Right now, OSX works for me and it's marginally better than Windows7. (hell of a lot stabler and I don't have near as much corporate security resource sucking mandatory apps as I would on windows). I just need something that's stable and consistent. Apple provides that better than any Windows Vendor, and I'm satisfied with that I guess. satch P.S. I'd probably look at FreeBSD as a desktop next... I came from the NetBSD camp, via BSD386, via SunOS4. Never really liked SysV or (shudder) AIX. On 4/24/11 1:57 PM, Daniel Howard wrote: > On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 12:44 PM, Steve Acheson > wrote: > > > Linux just takes too much time to administer over the long run > (for the > desktop UI only) for me. I still fondly remember tweaking out my fvwm > and fvwm2 setups for hours into the night to get it just right... But > these days, I just don't have the time or patience to do that for my > main desktop. > > > A decade ago I would agree with this sort of conclusion, but nowadays > I just use Gnome or whatever is the default GUI, and now I find a > Linux workstation takes less effort: > > - Need to install new software? Do it right there in the GUI or with > one-two commands in the terminal. No need to surf to some unfamiliar > web site and figure out their installer. > > - Installation of third-party stuff not in the central repository > often comes with the configs to keep that software updated. > > - Updating software is a command line or two, or just clicking Yes in > the GUI and entering your password. > > For my personal needs, Google Docs is an excellent "office" > application that covers the basic needs of a word processor or > spreadsheet, with effortless, real-time collaboration, which can not > be said for Microsoft Office. Maybe once a month or so when I need to > run a native Windows App I just boot one in VMWare Workstation -- just > like a Mac user would run Parallels. > > Occasionally, the Ubuntu way will irritate me, but it isn't the same > level of irritation I tended to feel at OS X. When I am irritated at > Ubuntu I'm just getting what I paid for. When OS X expects me to only > do it their way I get really irritated because hey, I'm paying a > premium for this and the customer is always right, so why is the > customer denied their convenience? (Why _can't_ the user enable > FocusFollowsMouse? Seriously!) > > I know I am the exception to the rule, but I gotta say, getting along > with Ubuntu hasn't been any more difficult--generally easier > than--other OSes, including Mac. I suspect that if others are having > this experience, Linux desktop market share may be set to start gaining. > > -danny > > -- > http://dannyman.toldme.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jxh at jxh.com Sun Apr 24 17:42:50 2011 From: jxh at jxh.com (Jim Hickstein) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2011 20:42:50 -0400 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: <4DB47D85.6040202@cisco.com> References: <201104230111.p3N1BPlu012982@firewall.harker.com> <046B2954-65D8-4E9D-B56F-314C7F90951A@kanga.nu> <20110423024116.GO94296@evil.alameda.net> <4DB47D85.6040202@cisco.com> Message-ID: <4DB4C38A.4050507@jxh.com> On 2011/04/24 15:44, Steve Acheson wrote: > yeah, and iTerm on OSX does it too. The problem is that those of us > multi-button mouse X11 weaned users understand efficiency in the UI. > Select in one app, move the mouse, paste. I constantly forget that FF > doesn't do copy-on-select and end up pasting something else in my target > window. I was astounded when I first plugged a 3-button mouse into my Mac, and it just worked. (xterm) That made it possible for me to live there -- and OS X was a huge improvement over dual-booting OS 9 and LinuxPPC. But you wouldn't know the 3-button mouse thing if you walked into an Apple store, so Apple gets only partial credit for this. Even on Win7, I find that Putty can be told to behave this way (xterm selection), and one can save that back as the default. And I absentmindedly ran "tail -f" on some Windows server or other (IIRC Server 2003) and _that_ just worked! So some of the good ideas do get recycled eventually, if under the official radar. I got over focus-follows-mouse on Mac OS X during Public Beta -- though this thread did remind me of the mental struggle involved; the OP has a point about that. And drag-and-drop really is harder, in physiological terms, than click, move, click (for the same accuracy). It's only "too hard" for those who know a better way[1]. But both are still way easier than trying to get XFree86 to work at all. What I still miss are two GUI inventions from exmh, that I call z-axis nesting and spatial refile (coupled with the folder cache). Both relied on a 3-button mouse, but could probably be done with 2. The Outlook-look that every mail client now parrots wastes an entire third of the ever-bigger screen with a 2d view of a folder hierarchy, totally unnecessarily if you've seen how exmh represented this. Perhaps I'll patent them, just to call attention to them again. :-) [1] P.S. Buy my t-shirt: http://www.cafepress.com/jxh From jeff at drinktomi.com Wed Apr 27 14:34:30 2011 From: jeff at drinktomi.com (Jeff Younker) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:34:30 -0700 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: <4DB4C38A.4050507@jxh.com> References: <201104230111.p3N1BPlu012982@firewall.harker.com> <046B2954-65D8-4E9D-B56F-314C7F90951A@kanga.nu> <20110423024116.GO94296@evil.alameda.net> <4DB47D85.6040202@cisco.com> <4DB4C38A.4050507@jxh.com> Message-ID: <1F54303A-D287-4FD8-80C4-3BA035BDC77E@drinktomi.com> On Apr 24, 2011, at 5:42 PM, Jim Hickstein wrote: > On 2011/04/24 15:44, Steve Acheson wrote: >> yeah, and iTerm on OSX does it too. The problem is that those of us >> multi-button mouse X11 weaned users understand efficiency in the UI. >> Select in one app, move the mouse, paste. I constantly forget that FF >> doesn't do copy-on-select and end up pasting something else in my target >> window. > I got over focus-follows-mouse on Mac OS X during Public Beta -- though this thread did remind me of the mental struggle involved; the OP has a point about that. Everyone here talks about focus-follows-mouse as an all-or-nothing interface feature. OSX is a combination of focus-follows-mouse and click-to-focus. Actions that modify the contents of a window are click-to-focus, and actions that are non-destructive (e.g. scrolling) are focus-follows-mouse, but the focus-follows-mouse operations don't alter window layering. I'm actually quite partial to this approach as it lets me read from multiple reference windows while maintaing my primary focus. It works really well for writing. I'm also very happy with with usage of the multi-touch trackpad as the primary input device. While I found single touch trackpads annoying, you'll have to pry my magic trackpad out of my cold dead hands. -jeff From jeff at drinktomi.com Wed Apr 27 14:34:30 2011 From: jeff at drinktomi.com (Jeff Younker) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:34:30 -0700 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: <4DB4C38A.4050507@jxh.com> References: <201104230111.p3N1BPlu012982@firewall.harker.com> <046B2954-65D= Message-ID: <1F54303A-D287-4FD8-80C4-3BA035BDC77E@drinktomi.com> 8-4E9D-B56F-314C7F90951A at kanga.nu> <20110423024116.GO94296 at evil.alameda.net> <4DB47D85.6040202 at cisco.com> <4DB4C38A.4050507 at jxh.com> To: Jim Hickstein X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1084) Sender: owner-baylisa at baylisa.org Precedence: bulk On Apr 24, 2011, at 5:42 PM, Jim Hickstein wrote: > On 2011/04/24 15:44, Steve Acheson wrote: >> yeah, and iTerm on OSX does it too. The problem is that those of us >> multi-button mouse X11 weaned users understand efficiency in the UI. >> Select in one app, move the mouse, paste. I constantly forget that = FF >> doesn't do copy-on-select and end up pasting something else in my = target >> window. > I got over focus-follows-mouse on Mac OS X during Public Beta -- = though this thread did remind me of the mental struggle involved; the OP = has a point about that.=20 Everyone here talks about focus-follows-mouse as an all-or-nothing = interface feature. OSX is a combination of focus-follows-mouse and = click-to-focus. Actions that modify the contents of a window are = click-to-focus, and actions that are non-destructive (e.g. scrolling) = are focus-follows-mouse, but the focus-follows-mouse operations don't = alter window layering. I'm actually quite partial to this approach as it lets me read from = multiple reference windows while maintaing my primary focus. It works = really well for writing. I'm also very happy with with usage of the multi-touch trackpad as the = primary input device. While I found single touch trackpads annoying, = you'll have to pry my magic trackpad out of my cold dead hands. -jeff= From satch at cisco.com Wed Apr 27 16:39:04 2011 From: satch at cisco.com (Steve Acheson) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 16:39:04 -0700 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: <1F54303A-D287-4FD8-80C4-3BA035BDC77E@drinktomi.com> References: <201104230111.p3N1BPlu012982@firewall.harker.com> <046B2954-65D8-4E9D-B56F-314C7F90951A@kanga.nu> <20110423024116.GO94296@evil.alameda.net> <4DB47D85.6040202@cisco.com> <4DB4C38A.4050507@jxh.com> <1F54303A-D287-4FD8-80C4-3BA035BDC77E@drinktomi.com> Message-ID: <4DB8A918.1000401@cisco.com> On 4/27/11 2:34 PM, Jeff Younker wrote: > On Apr 24, 2011, at 5:42 PM, Jim Hickstein wrote: >> On 2011/04/24 15:44, Steve Acheson wrote: >>> yeah, and iTerm on OSX does it too. The problem is that those of us >>> multi-button mouse X11 weaned users understand efficiency in the UI. >>> Select in one app, move the mouse, paste. I constantly forget that FF >>> doesn't do copy-on-select and end up pasting something else in my target >>> window. >> I got over focus-follows-mouse on Mac OS X during Public Beta -- though this thread did remind me of the mental struggle involved; the OP has a point about that. > Everyone here talks about focus-follows-mouse as an all-or-nothing interface feature. OSX is a combination of focus-follows-mouse and click-to-focus. Actions that modify the contents of a window are click-to-focus, and actions that are non-destructive (e.g. scrolling) are focus-follows-mouse, but the focus-follows-mouse operations don't alter window layering. > I guess I'm just used to being able to have my windows layered such that I can select/copy in one window and move the mouse and paste into another window without having to click the mouse and force the window to front. If you need to cut/paste several lines, it gets annoying have to bring the windows to the front just to select and then copy and then find the window you want and then paste, etc. Especially if I have multiple windows of a single app open, then sometimes having to pick the right one (yeah, I know about expose, but that to me is a workaround for having my windows have to be at the top of the stack to be able to interact, other than scrolling). And lets not even bring MS apps on apple into the discussion (where you have to click on the header bar to bring it to focus, or it's inability to follow spaces locations, etc). > I'm actually quite partial to this approach as it lets me read from multiple reference windows while maintaing my primary focus. It works really well for writing. > Yep, I can see that. If I mostly only needed to type into a single app/window, it would probably be okay for me. But I have multiple emails, multiple browsers with multiple windows with multiple tabs, multiple iTerm sessions, Previews, CoRD windows, etc. Perhaps I'm multi-tasking too much (and as all studies have shown, multi-tasking in humans is actually just doing a bad job at switching between single-tasks). > I'm also very happy with with usage of the multi-touch trackpad as the primary input device. While I found single touch trackpads annoying, you'll have to pry my magic trackpad out of my cold dead hands. > Agreed, multi-touch trackpads have almost made up for the lack of 3 buttons, but I'm WAY more efficient with a real 3 button mouse than I am with the trackpad... Especially in WoW or Lotro! :-) > -jeff From rob.markovic at gmail.com Wed Apr 27 17:12:05 2011 From: rob.markovic at gmail.com (Rob Markovic) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:12:05 -0700 Subject: how far have mac's made it into large installations? In-Reply-To: <1F54303A-D287-4FD8-80C4-3BA035BDC77E@drinktomi.com> References: <201104230111.p3N1BPlu012982@firewall.harker.com> <046B2954-65D8-4E9D-B56F-314C7F90951A@kanga.nu> <20110423024116.GO94296@evil.alameda.net> <4DB47D85.6040202@cisco.com> <4DB4C38A.4050507@jxh.com> <1F54303A-D287-4FD8-80C4-3BA035BDC77E@drinktomi.com> Message-ID: It is generally faster to switch focus using the keyboard than using a pointing device. No time consumed moving the hand to & from the device. Some of the keyboard shortcuts that I find very useful are: Command-Tab - for switching the active application window Command-` - for switching the active window within an application (ie 2 FF windows open with tabs in each) Nice thing is if using RDP or VDI apps, Alt-Tab works nicely without affecting the local host session. Then there's spaces if you use it: Ctrl-arrows - for navigating to the different spaces Ctrl-number - also works for jumping directly to space 1,2 or 3, etc If using just the laptop keyb, there is no backspace key, but using the delete key with the fn key gets the job done. Command-arrows do some nice things with the cursor position in most apps, like home/end keys would, since the laptop keyboard doesn't have those keys. Alt-arrows jump the cursor a word at a time. -- Rob -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lgj at usenix.org Fri Apr 29 13:10:06 2011 From: lgj at usenix.org (Lionel Garth Jones) Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2011 13:10:06 -0700 Subject: 2011 USENIX Federated Conferences Week Registration Now Open Message-ID: <9544CCC1-25DD-41B6-9ACE-BC309786CBC8@usenix.org> Join us in Portland, OR, June 14-17, 2011, for the 2011 USENIX Federated Conferences Week. http://www.usenix.org/fcw11/proga We know that keeping up with technology can be costly and time-consuming. USENIX Federated Conferences Week makes it easier than ever to stay ahead of the game. By attending FCW '11, you'll get: - Cost-Effective Learning FCW '11 offers the unique opportunity to meet and learn from top researchers, practitioners, and authors all in one place, at one time. It's the most cost-effective and timely way to gain insight into the latest trends, rather than spending months reading books and articles, or browsing Web sites. - Information and Connections to Keep Your Career on Track Maintaining your career path is especially challenging when facing today's IT realities. Attending FCW '11 can make this daunting task easier by offering an in-depth look into many of the hottest topics comprising the industry today. Your access to leading researchers and industry experts will not only provide answers to your most difficult questions, but also will help you build lasting connections across multiple disciplines. Don't miss out on this opportunity to create the conference experience that meets your unique needs. USENIX Federated Conferences Week includes: - HotCloud '11: 3rd USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Cloud Computing Tuesday-Wednesday, June 14-15, 2011 http://www.usenix.org/events/hotcloud11 HotCloud '11 will discuss challenges in the design, implementation, and deployment of cloud computing. It will be a forum for academics and practitioners to share their experiences and identify emerging trends. - HotStorage '11: 3rd USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Storage and File Systems Tuesday, June 14, 2011 http://www.usenix.org/events/hotstorage11 HotStorage '11 will discuss the new opportunities presented by the increase in the volume and variety of digital data, "big data," the proliferation of consumer-electronics storage devices, and more. - WIOV '11: 3rd Workshop on I/O Virtualization Tuesday, June 14, 2011 http://www.usenix.org/events/wiov11 The focus of WIOV '11 is on the interplay of I/O with virtualization and cloud technologies. Our goal is to provide a forum to discuss the impact and challenges of I/O virtualization along multiple dimensions. - Tutorial: Securing Linux Servers Tuesday, June 14, 2011 http://www.usenix.org/events/fcw11/training/tutonefile.html#t1 This class for Linux sysadmins and security managers shows you how to maintain a strong security posture by minimizing risks through careful configuration and proper use of Linux tools and services. - USENIX ATC '11: 2011 USENIX Annual Technical Conference Wednesday-Friday, June 15-17, 2011 http://www.usenix.org/events/atc11 USENIX ATC '11 offers you cutting-edge systems research and insights into a variety of topics--virtualization, cloud computing, storage, security, distributed systems, personal devices, scheduling, and more. - WebApps '11: 2nd USENIX Conference on Web Application Development Wednesday-Thursday, June 15-16, 2011 http://www.usenix.org/events/webapps11 WebApps '11 is designed to bring together experts in all aspects of developing and deploying Web applications. The program includes refereed papers, posters, invited talks, and a panel. - Tutorial: SELinux (Security-Enhanced Linux) Wednesday, June 15, 2011 http://www.usenix.org/events/fcw11/training/tutonefile.html#w1 Learn to work with SELinux: how to determine if SELinux is blocking an application and how to adjust policy to move beyond problems. This class is intended for Linux sysadmins and security managers. - Tutorial: VMware vCloud Overview and Design Considerations Wednesday, June 15, 2011 http://www.usenix.org/events/fcw11/training/tutonefile.html#w2 Sysadmins and architects, get the knowledge you need to deploy a VMware cloud for use as an enterprise private cloud by learning how to implement and manage VMware vCloud technologies. - Tutorial: Linux Performance Tuning Thursday, June 16, 2011 http://www.usenix.org/events/fcw11/training/tutonefile.html#r1 Intended for intermediate and advanced sysadmins, this class will cover the tools that can be used to monitor and analyze a Linux system, plus key tuning parameters to optimize Linux for server applications. - Tutorial: SANS Security 464: Hacker Detection for Systems Administrators Thursday-Friday, June 16-17, 2011 http://www.usenix.org/events/fcw11/training/tutonefile.html#r2 This 2-day course is designed to help sysadmins better understand what is required by security teams and auditors and to turn into the human sensors for malicious activity. - Tutorial: Introduction to Automating System Administration with Cfengine 3 Friday, June 17, 2011 http://www.usenix.org/events/fcw11/training/tutonefile.html#f1 This is your opportunity to get a thorough grounding in automated system administration and configuration using Cfengine v3, and the ability to implement configuration policies on your systems. Whether you are interested in the latest systems computing breakthroughs or want to get the low-down on Web application development, this week in June will have everything you need to stay ahead of the curve. See you in Portland!