AdmiNirvana » Geeky http://www.briandowney.net/blog Technical musings of an entrepreneur. Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:53:14 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Disk problems? Your DC is too noisy… http://www.briandowney.net/blog/2009/01/02/disk-problems-your-dc-is-too-noisy/ http://www.briandowney.net/blog/2009/01/02/disk-problems-your-dc-is-too-noisy/#comments Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:32:39 +0000 Brian http://www.briandowney.net/blog/?p=118 This is one of those “no way, that can’t be true” type of events.

Using Solaris’ Dtrace functionality a systems engineer determines that noise is responsible for his intermittent disk latency problems.   Just wait for the last part of the video, it’s worth it.

http://blogs.sun.com/brendan/entry/unusual_disk_latency

Thanks to Greg for pointing that one out to me.

]]> http://www.briandowney.net/blog/2009/01/02/disk-problems-your-dc-is-too-noisy/feed/ 0 Enabling SSH on ESXi http://www.briandowney.net/blog/2008/10/16/enabling-ssh-on-esxi/ http://www.briandowney.net/blog/2008/10/16/enabling-ssh-on-esxi/#comments Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:03:29 +0000 Brian http://www.briandowney.net/blog/?p=114 So, I finally had a chance to play with VMware ESXi.   It’s pretty much what I expected, a straight-up version of ESX.  Very, very nice… I’ll start moving more servers over from VMware Server 1.x and report back on my progress.

One of the things that annoyed me out of the gate is the lack of SSH support.   It’s there in the underlying operating system, just not enabled.   Here’s how to turn it on:

  1. Get on the console of the ESXi server.
  2. Press ALT-F1 to get to the OS system console
  3. Type “unsupported”
  4. Enter the root password at the password prompt.
  5. Edit /etc/inetd.conf with vi, and uncomment the SSH line
  6. Run:  kill -1 $(cat /var/run/inetd.pid)

And viola!  SSH to your ESX box.   Enjoy!

]]> http://www.briandowney.net/blog/2008/10/16/enabling-ssh-on-esxi/feed/ 2 The Chronophage http://www.briandowney.net/blog/2008/09/22/the-chronophage/ http://www.briandowney.net/blog/2008/09/22/the-chronophage/#comments Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:15:51 +0000 Brian http://www.briandowney.net/blog/?p=113 Yet another cool-geeky thing.   Sort of wraps LoTR in with steampunk to bring you the wickedest clock I’ve ever seen:

Not only is the mechanical execution of the clock spectacular, but the thought behind it is equally awesome/creepy:

Your life is being eaten away by time, second by second, and represented by the Chronophage eating away, bit by bit.   Oh yea, when it strikes the hour it sounds like chains falling into a coffin.

I want one.

]]> http://www.briandowney.net/blog/2008/09/22/the-chronophage/feed/ 1 Rubik’s Cube Robot http://www.briandowney.net/blog/2008/07/21/rubiks-cube-robot/ http://www.briandowney.net/blog/2008/07/21/rubiks-cube-robot/#comments Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:25:32 +0000 Brian http://www.briandowney.net/blog/?p=112 Every once in a while I run across something, that even in my advanced state of uber-geekness, puts me in a state of awe.

Behold, the lego-robot that solves the Rubik’s Cube.

]]> http://www.briandowney.net/blog/2008/07/21/rubiks-cube-robot/feed/ 1 Cabling as an art http://www.briandowney.net/blog/2008/01/24/cabling-as-an-art/ http://www.briandowney.net/blog/2008/01/24/cabling-as-an-art/#comments Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:46:00 +0000 Brian http://www.briandowney.net/blog/2008/01/24/cabling-as-an-art/ Any true geek is impressed by a neat cabling job.  There’s something about the order that results from equally banded cables in conjunction with blinking lights that makes the heart warm.Here are a few snapshots of the cleanest cabling jobs I’ve seen.  Compare that with what I thought was a nice cabling job (sorry for the poor quality, cell phone shot) from one of the Linux Fix racks, and I feel like a slob!

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