Orb Designs Graffiti, a Daily Blog - November 23, 2009 thru November 29, 2009

GRAFFITI -- November 23, 2009 thru November 29, 2009

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Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. About eMail - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message.

MONDAY Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
November 23, 2009

No Post.

Top / Email Brian

Mon TUESDAY Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
November 24, 2009

0922 - Okay, okay. Not dead yet, just staying busy as usual. Today, aside from work and school, I may try to figure out a multiboot USB stick scenario. I'll let you know how/if that turns out. Ciao!

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Mon Tues WEDNESDAY Thu Fri Sat Sun
November 25, 2009

1000 - Argh. No USB drive OS as yet. I was toying with the idea of a bootable USB install of Haiku Alpha R1, but decided to just plunk that in a VM instead. I did get my first pass through the CMIS assignment that's due next Monday. His questions are tricky enough that it's worth doing the work, then setting it aside for a couple of days, then redoing it to see if my answer's different. I really do need a set-aside bootable USB for use in rescue situations ... any recommendations besides the obvious Debian? Ciao!

Top / Email Brian

Mon Tues Wed THURSDAY Fri Sat Sun
November 26, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving....

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Mon Tues Wed Thu FRIDAY Sat Sun
November 27, 2009

1113 - Happy Thanksgiving, again, if you so celebrate. I'm not "working" today, although I'm continuing to putz about with OpenSolaris. I finally got a clean and updated version of build 127 installed and booting yesterday. This morning, I've used the BFU process to move up to build 128, which includes ZFS deduplication capabilities. Yes, yes, I've got absolutely shedloads that I need to learn about Solaris. But why not start with the very latest features first, eh? I setup a new zpool mirror pair, turned on dedup, and copied into three different subdirectories the bzipped tarball of the BFU update I installed. Here's the results:

root@spike:~# df -h /ddpool Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on ddpool 8.1G 436M 7.7G 6% /ddpool root@spike:~# zpool list ddpool NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT ddpool 7.94G 146M 7.79G 1% 3.00x ONLINE -

You can see that according to the tool df, I have used 436M (rounded) of space in /ddpool. However, when I use the zpool utility to examine the pool, you can see that I've only got 146M actually allocated. Shiny. Now, it turns out there's a bug in the faster (fletcher4, non-default) hashing algorithm for ZFS dedup, so don't use fletcher4. So, time for another experiment. Let's load more data into the pool than there's "room" for, and see what's reported...

root@spike:/# tar cf /ddpool/one/usr.tar usr root@spike:/# tar cf /ddpool/two/usr.tar usr root@spike:/# ls -al /ddpool/one total 4328882 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4 2009-11-27 10:15 . drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 5 2009-11-27 09:44 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 152087422 2009-11-27 09:45 on-bfu-nightly-osol-nd.i386.tar.bz2 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4277463040 2009-11-27 10:34 usr.tar root@spike:/# df -h ddpool/ Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on ddpool 13G 8.4G 4.1G 68% /ddpool root@spike:/# zpool list ddpool NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT ddpool 7.94G 3.73G 4.21G 47% 2.26x ONLINE -

Cool. That "increased" the reported pool size so that the amount of available free space reported continues to be accurate. Observe that the pool allocated size is smaller than even the size of the tarball less the size of the on-bfu... file. I say that because the on-bfu... file was copied from /usr/local/src, so that's part of the tarball. But there are clearly other block-level duplications within the /usr tree, so that the total allocated space in the zpool is 3.73G. Double shiny.

I suppose I ought to finish up the assignment I've got hanging for Monday's due date in the CMIS class. And I should check in on WRTG, too. Ciao!

Top / Email Brian

Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri SATURDAY Sun
November 28, 2009

2135 - Progress is. And all of that progress happened in Winston-Salem. We drove down Sunday last, and visited with Bob, Barbara and Malcolm for the last week. It was a quiet, filling Thanksgiving, since Barbara's family was up DC way. Much relaxation, a bit of work here and there on my part (and Bob's), while much the same was true for Barbara and Marcia (s/work/shopping/). Lots of driving today, as it is always a slow drive back to/through DC on turkey day weekend. Then we had to return the rental to BWI. Yeah, small cars, so we rented a small SUV for the trip. Now, after supper and a bit of feet-up, I want to check in on my classes, and get some rest. There's a bit of catch-up to do around the house, so that'll fill tomorrow. Ciao!

Top / Email Brian

Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat SUNDAY
November 29, 2009

1416 - Nothing much newer to report - I've acquired another 'A', this one on the third "paper" (actually a letter) for WRTG101. The shopping's done, as is the sorting of the mail. I've finished formatting and posting Jerry's CMR mailbag for November, and before I go on to the next task...

There are many things I gave thanks for this past Thanksgiving. Not least by a long shot is the commitment and service of all our Armed Forces members - all the hard, dangerous work they do on our behalf. And some, like Cleaver, Frazier, Hand, Williams, Nolen, Tynes, Pucino, and McLeod, make the ultimate sacrifice, giving their lives for this country of ours. I am saddened and honored by their sacrifice. Our condolences to the families and units of the fallen.

Staff Sgt. John J. Cleaver, 36, of Marysville, Washington, died Nov. 19 in Zabul province, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when a suicide car-bomber attacked his unit.
Sgt. Daniel A. Frazier, 25, of Saint Joseph, Michigan, died Nov. 19 in Zabul province, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when a suicide car-bomber attacked his unit.
Lance Cpl. Nicholas J. Hand, 20, of Kansas City, Missouri, died Nov. 22 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
Sgt. Briand T. Williams, 25, of Sparks, Georgia, died Nov. 22, in Numaniyah, Iraq, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit using small arms fire.
Sgt. James M. Nolen, 25, of Alvin, Texas, died Nov. 21 in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device.
Pfc. Marcus A. Tynes, 19, of Moreno Valley, California, died Nov. 21 in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device.
Staff Sgt. Matthew A. Pucino, 34, of Cockeysville, Maryland, died Nov. 23 in Pashay Kala, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.
Sgt. Jason A. McLeod, 22, of Crystal Lake, Illinois, died Nov. 23, west of Pashmul, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit with mortar fire.

Top / Email Brian

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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.

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GRAFFITI -- November 23, 2009 thru November 29, 2009

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