van Ginderachter » information technology

Looking for a Drupal free-lancer

Serge van Ginderachter — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:37:42 +0000

I got a lead for some Drupal related work. A vzw/asbl in the Brussels area is looking for a free-lance Drupal “specialist” which can help customize their site.

If interested, and you have what it takes, drop me a line via my Ginsys address, and attach your resume and a list of references of earlier work.

This is about free-lance/consultancy work, please be sure to be self-employed or working via a company. French as well as Dutch (or both) speaking persons may apply.

Linux, Windows, data, file systems, corruptie en fsck

Serge van Ginderachter — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 19:10:57 +0000

Ik las dit weekend over een probleem, de oplossing en de nadere uitleg.

Hier komen bij mij enkele vragen en opmerkingen boven water.

devil's advocate modus on
In al die jaren dat ik Windows bakken beheer(de), ben ik aldaar nooit een zuiver filesystem corruptie probleem tegengekomen. Hardware gerelateerde toestanden en zo, ja, maar dan moet je eerst die hardware vervangen dus. In Linux omgevingen komt zoiets precies vaker voor.
devil's advocate modus off (Ik spreek uiteraard enkel van Windows NTFS file systems.)
Een probleem met corrupte filesystems is op te lossen met pakweg twee denkpistes:
fsck en/of backup.
In beide gevallen is de hoeveelheid data relevant en recht evenredig met de tijd die je er in steekt. Waarom zou je dan rekenen op enkele grote dure terabyte systemen in plaats van vele kleine goedkope systemen?

ICT quotes van mijn eigen zelven

Serge van Ginderachter — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 20:59:20 +0000

Ik had deze avond met een geÃ«erde collega een interessante discussie die ertoe leidde dat ik wat praat verkocht. Hier en daar wil ik mezelf even quoten in de hoop mijn ideeÃªn even publiekelijk te toetsen. Mogelijks zit er iets interesants tussen, doch wellicht heeft de nationale drache er gewoon voor gezocht dat ik die hele fles wijn hier nu achter de pc ~~geconsommeerd~~ geconsummeerd heb en gewoon even ferm zat te lullen.

Het begon ergens bij “KMO vs. Enterprise” om over “sysadmin vs. development” te gaan, en het eindigde zoals steeds in een minder samenhangend geheel Anyway, bij deze. Ik heb enkele quotes hier gekopieerd, en soms wat geparafraseerd om er een statement uit te halen. Soms zijn die wat zwart/wit, maar ‘t is dus wel de bedoeling er een discussie uit te halen.

“Bij sysadmin heb je minder “projecten” (leuker) en meer “onderhoud” (shit oplossen omdat je snel iets moest opzetten zonder er iets deftigs van te maken).”
“Goede IT is ongoing core business, geen afzonderlijke “projecten” (dat laatste is een uitvinding van Management.)”
“Nee, ik merk te vaak dat IT te vaak in stukjes gekapt wordt die te veel afzonderlijk van mekaar bekeken worden, waardoor het niet efficient gebeurt, terwijl je GOEIE IT maar doet door op lange termijn de juiste coherente beslissingen te nemen.”
“Bah, in veel gevallen zijn de mensen het wel eens mits een minimale bandbreedte maar met de nodige foutcorrectie, prob is dat menselijke communicatie weinig foutcorrectie heeft
(men zei me: kmo en product zie ik eerder samengaan – gewoon omdat je met freelance voltijds bij een klant zit – en bij kmo zit je overal maar deeltijds – dus in de gaten zou je producten kunnen ontwikkelen ) “productontwikkeling gaat eigenlijk al te vaak niet samen met kmo support, toch niet als het gaat over sysadmin. In die gaten moet je net vaak meer gewoon support doen, omdat die te vaak heel wat reactiever moet zijn dan proactief. Waarom? Vaak is het probleem om efficient te werken in een KMO gewoon te weinig standaardisatie. En dat gaat nu net wel een heel stuk verder dan standaardiseren op een stuursysteem, een groupware oplossing en een antivirus systeem – het kiezen van steeds dezelfde software oplossingen noem ik geen standaardisering.”

Nota bene. Dit gaat wel over mijn ervaring inzake systeembeheer bij KMO‘s. Wie ervaring heeft met development zal sowieso een andere invalshoek hebben en enterprizzy toestanden zijn ook nog helemaal iets anders.

Developers onder u hebben hier allemaal misschien minder boodschap aan, doch Ã©Ã©n van mijn punten is nu net dat diensten leveren inzake systeembeheer een bepaalde aanpak nodig heeft die imho moeilijker in stukjes (projecten) te kappen vallen, terwijl alle IT projecten meestal wel net in losse IT projecten ingedeeld worden. Vaak worden software implementaties gewoon bovenop de bestaande IT infrastructuur gebouwd, zonder de gehele coherentie en onderliggende cohesie van die infrastructuur volledig in te schatten.

MSFT Support

Serge van Ginderachter — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 14:18:13 +0000

Real world example from enterprise grade support.

Customer: “I have a support ticket running. Are you handling my problem?”
Supplier: “yeah but we can’t reproduce it”
Customer: “that’s what I said months ago, we cannot reproduce it, it’s on one machine only”
Supplier: “then we won’t do anything”
Customer: “what do you want me to do then? ”
Supplier: “send me a virtual pc image of the pc”
Customer: “how?”
Supplier: “hmm, I will have to contact internal engineering”
(And of course, the support system only allows uploading files of two GB max.)

I doubt any small business will be happy with this type of “support”. I can’t imagine it helps large companies either, but maybe it helps as both sides talk the same talk?

Microsoft SQL Server 2008

Serge van Ginderachter — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 20:49:29 +0000

Het gaat hier vandaag als een lopend vuurtje rond. Microsoft gaat binnen een maand of 8 (dagprijs) onder meer de nieuwste versie van hun database server uitbrengen. Over die database server op zich nu geen kwaad woord, SQL Server is sinds pakweg versie 7 toch wel een van de betere en aangenamere producten uit de Redmond stal.

Maar het is intussen nog niet zo lang geleden dat versie 2005 uitkwam. Ik herinner me nog niet zo lang geleden een namiddag in ‘t Kasteel van Zwijnaarde met heel Orbid aandacht krijgen van een sessie pep-talk over de sql/visual studio combo. Toen hadden we al iets van “ogh ja, wat nieuwe toeters en bellen, maar uiteindelijk is het een DB server die zijn ding moet doen, en zoveel nieuws is er dan niet”.

Enfin, twee jaar later komt er dus al een nieuwe versie. Vinden jullie nu ook niet dat zoiets vreselijk rap is? Tussen de vorige en huidige versies zijn er bijgod meer dan vijf jaren tussengeweest. Toeval of niet, die huidige versie zit dus nu ook ongelooflijk vol van de marketing snufjes. Business Intelligence en zo, dat ligt tegenwoordig goed in de markt natuurlijk.

Wat doet PostgreSQL eigenlijk? Even kijken naar de major releases:

Release 8.2 Release date: 2006-12-05
Release 8.1 Release date: 2005-11-08
Release 8.0 Release date: 2005-01-19
Release 7.4 Release date: 2003-11-17
Release 7.3 Release date: 2002-11-27

Pakweg ongeveer 1 per jaar dus. Maar is dit eigenlijk vergelijkbaar? Een PostgreSQL gaat over de basis: een database server. Hooguit wat replicatietoestanden en nieuwe syntax. Dat zit in SQL Server ook. Het verschil zit natuurlijk in de bundel. De load van software die je allemaal door dezelfde setup wizzard gedraaid krijgt. En dat is sinds SQL 2005 wel een hele bundel. Maar goed. Een nieuwe versie dus. ‘t Is dat er wel iets anders achter steekt dan Release Early, Release Often natuurlijk. En ik vrees toch vooral dat het de groene amerikaantjes zijn.

“Ze voeden de sales maar de (hardcore) tech’s zien er ‘t nut niet van in.” vertelt iemand die er (nu nog) dagelijks met zijn neus op kijkt. Maar hij walgt dan ook van de autogenerated crap die je met de grafische MDX designer maakt. Ik volgde ook even niet meer, maar denk gewoon “Frontpage OLAP queries”. *shiver*, ja.

Hopelijk zijn ze niet vergeten om de “exportfunctionaliteit naar Excel” te blijven ondersteunen, dan kan de Y&Z consultant zijn checklist ook afpunten.

Vista speeching perl

Serge van Ginderachter — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 16:19:03 +0000

En nu over naar serieuzere dingen.

(embedded vid)

Ha! Die hypemannen toch.

Serge van Ginderachter — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 20:21:36 +0000

En dagelijks kom ik terug met beide voeten op de grond. Hoe meer gehyped de bloggers, hoe vlotter ze me daarbij helpen. Wellicht een van de weinige goede redenen waarom die nog in mijn stroomlezer vertoeven.

Da’s zoals eerst reclame voor Telenet digitale televisie en dan een digibox in huis halen. De wonderen der techniek zijn de wereld waarlijk nog niet uit. Nee, ze laten ferm op zich wachten. Hype en marketing voor dingen die toch maar half werken. Ik ben dat dus ferm beu hÃ©.

En kom nu niet af dat ik moet RTFM en het een pebcak probleem is. Of dat het niet gebruiksvriendelijk is. Of dat de interface suckt. Kom liever mijn achterdeur opentrappen.

En in geheel ander – bijna tegenstrijdig of toch niet? – nieuws zijn er nog anderen die het totaal niet snappen.

Man, man, man. Miserie, miserie, miserie. Misschien moet ik toch nog voor boswachter gaan.

Apple, Open Source and Microsoft

Serge van Ginderachter — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 20:43:30 +0000

Via Nixcraft

Everything is a fsck'ing RAID problem

Serge van Ginderachter — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 20:30:15 +0000

Got myself a small quick job yesterday. A customer had a server with raid-1 array. A Dell Perc box running Sarge with a mirror that was broken and runnning on one remaining disk.

We already recovered from file system corruption, data loss, and some other fine things last week. Al we had to do was plugging in a new disk and let the mirror rebuild.

Well, at least , that’s what raid should be about. But as Kris already reports, not only DNS, but also raid is quite funky.

Dell seems to agree with Kris. In short, I afterwards found a forum comment from someone who confirmed the issue where initializing a new disk had the funny side effect of resetting existing “containers” (= raid array) 50% of the times you tried this exercise. Not to say, this is big fun when all you wanted to do was putting back some redundancy in a degraded mirror.

Enjoy hardware RAID. Be stuck wih the controller bios interface. Quite a spartan one I must say. Enjoy a simple interface with not too much choice – or was it not enough choice?

I quickly decided, when reinstalling was all we could do, to define each of the two disks, as a simple volume. They still were exported by that funky scsi controller, but once I had a separate sda and sdb, I was ready to let Debian manage them.

At first I was quite optimistic. It was the first install I did with a freshly downloaded Etch. Software raid md devices and LVM volumes all you can eat.

Let me be short. The Debian installer, even in Etch, is funky. Luckily you can always ctrl-alt-F2 to a shell to have some more control and forcing some stuff manually. But in the meantime, that installer is full of bugs.

I remain deadly sure I did configure the /boot partition (on a md, not lvm device) with the proper mount point. Turns out, and I noticed this again at a later reinstall, the Debian installer insists on resetting stuff like that. This is Not Nice.

Another funky problem is when the Debian Installer kernel cannot handle some SCSI routines to let the running kernel know some new md devices were created. Which is not very handy when you need to put those pv‘s in a vg during the same setup. Setup which refuses to write to disk because you didn’t define a root partition yet.

O well. Besides this funky music, linux software raid remains a lot more flexible.

You can read those partitions from any (operating) system with a recent Linux kernel. No data lock-in.

It’s no problem to create a mirror with one disk. Especially when you have some data left you need on the other disk, it’s nice to know you can start the raid array without needing to already reformat that disk.

Did I mention flexibility?

O, some nice article I found, when unrelatedly browsing tfw today. An interesting read on md devices, which seems quite complete on the debian raid subject.

It's a free option.

Serge van Ginderachter — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 19:45:49 +0000

A Day in the Life of the Win32 Loader

(Originally, A Day in the Life of the Image Activator
as recounted to Stanley Rabinowitz on 7-Jan-1985 )
(Translated to Win32 by Matt Pietrek, August 2001)

CMD Prompt: Good morning sir! I am your command prompt today That was a
flawlessly executed logon. How may I help you today?

USER: Good morning to you too computer. I
think today I want to do some data retrieving.

CMD Prompt: A wonderful choice sir! A finer day it couldn’t be for looking over your data. How will
you have it today? Sunny side up? Once over lightly?

USER: I think I’ll use Microsoft Access. Would you kindly load Access please?

CMD Prompt: Most certainly sir! An excellent choice! One moment while I load it.

CMD Prompt: Oh, Win32 loader? Would you please load that ACCESS.EXE file that I notice in the Office directory? My
user desires to
play with it a bit now.

LOADER: No problem. Shouldn’t take but a jiff.

CMD Prompt: Any problems?

LOADER: No sir, not a one. It’s just that I’m surprised to see that ACCESS.EXE uses 21 DLLs. Quite an
unusual number for a Win32 program. Most EXEs only use 3 or 4 DLLs. This one really sets a record!
But no problem – I just love to map in all these DLLs. After all – that’s my primary
purpose in life.

LOADER: Well, that should do it. They’re all mapped in.

CMD Prompt: Then we can start her up now?

LOADER: Well not quite. I just noticed that these DLLs invokes some other DLLs. Oh well, I guess I’ll
have to go load them too. At least we’ll only have to load those DLLs that this program
really needs.

CMD Prompt: How many DLLs does it require?

LOADER: Oh my gosh! It references 1477 DLLs! Another record! I can’t believe it! Oh well, here goes…

LOADER: The first one it wants is MSO9.DLL. That should be an easy one.

LOADER: Oh no! Not more! MSO9.DLL just called LoadLibrary on another 20 DLLs!

CMD Prompt: Have you enough room for them all?

LOADER: No sweat. This is a virtual memory machine. And this disk I/O is real fast. I’ll have it in a minute.

LOADER: There. Now on to the other DLLs. Next comes USER32.DLL. Guess it’s important that we be able to use all this data.

CMD Prompt: Yup. What next?

LOADER: Now we’ll need a database manager, so I guess we’ll just have to go off and load ODBC32,
the database management system.

CMD Prompt: Sounds reasonable.

USER: How’s it coming there computer?

CMD Prompt: No sweat. It’ll be just another moment.

LOADER: And now we’ll load ODBCCU32.DLL.

CMD Prompt: But I thought you just brought in your database manager?

LOADER: Yes, but this one is the relational database system. It’s a whole different ballgame.

CMD Prompt: Well, hurry it along.

LOADER: Okay. Next comes ODBCJT32.DLL, the relational database manager.

CMD Prompt: But how does that differ from ODBC32.DLL?

LOADER: I don’t know. I just load’em. They tell me to load and I load.

CMD Prompt: Well, I hope that’s it for database managers.

LOADER: Not quite. There’s still MSJET40.DLL. This company specializes in its excellent collection of managers.

CMD Prompt: Great! I guess that’s it then.

LOADER: Not on your life! Do you think our user merely wants to query his data? What if he wants
a chart using his data?

CMD Prompt: Oh.

LOADER: Didn’t think of that did you? I guess we’ll just have to go load MSCHART20.OCX.

CMD Prompt: I guess so.

USER: But I don’t plan to do any charting today. I just wanted to prepare a short report.

LOADER: Sorry. MSCHART20.OCX comes with this program. It’s a free option.

CMD Prompt: What next?

LOADER: Hmm. Looks like a request to bring in VBAR332.DLL, the VBA run-time library.

CMD Prompt: Why would they want that? Is Access written in VBA?

LOADER: No, but the VBA run time library has many precious gems of useful routines that one might wish to call…
Guess, I’ll just go load it now.

CMD Prompt: Good thing you don’t also need the Java run-time library too.

LOADER: Now you’ve done it! You’ve given me the evil eye. Either that or I just got up out of the wrong side
of the bed this morning. Here look at this: this DLL is also requesting MSVBVM60.DLL and MSVCRT.DLL.
Oh! and now look: It wants OLEAUT32.DLL too!

CMD Prompt: You never know when our user might want to do some scripting. He might need to embed a WinWord document
you know. Better safe than sorry.

USER: What’s taking so long?

CMD Prompt: (still trying to be pleasant) We’re almost there now. Shant be much longer. After all, you want a
user-friendly system don’t you?

LOADER: That’s right. I guess that’s why I’ve been instructed to load HLP95EN.DLL. You never
know when the user might request some on-line help so we’ve got to have our help system ready to answer
his questions.

CMD Prompt: That’s nice. I’m sure our user will appreciate that.

LOADER: And oh yeah – we’ll need GDI32.DLL too, the screen
package. Only the best on this system. Can’t let our user make do without fancy graphics!

CMD Prompt: A wonderful thought. But will GDI32.DLL be enough?

LOADER: No. you’re right of course. We’ll also have to bring in COMCTL32.DLL. GDI32.DLL is only the low level
graphics. COMCTL32.DLL will really let our user edit his data in style.

USER: But I wasn’t planning to change the data today. Just one simple report…

CMD Prompt: Keep your shirt on. When this program finally comes up, it will really blow your mind.

CMD Prompt: But loader, will COMCTL32.DLL really be enough?
Aren’t web views the big thing these days?

LOADER: Right you are CMD, baby. Guess we’ll need MSHTML.DLL, the HTLML display component. Won’t take
but another moment. (sigh) I think that was the last one.

CMD Prompt: Great! Then I can report back that we’re ready to go?

LOADER: One second. Let me make one last check…

CMD Prompt: Never pays to be hasty.

LOADER: Ah nuts! Some of these new DLLs that we just loaded are requesting further attention.
It looks like they too want to load other DLLs.

CMD Prompt: Don’t we have enough DLLs? That’s been 16 already!

LOADER: Well, security is an important issue too. Wouldn’t want our
user to lose any data.
Look here: USER32.DLL wants us to bring in ADVAPI32.DLL. Guess I’ll just have to load another one…

USER: (getting impatient) What’s taking so long?

CMD Prompt: We’re putting all the pieces together for you now. Shouldn’t be much longer.

USER: Putting them together? Doesn’t it come all assembled?

CMD Prompt: Not to worry. There’s no extra charge for installation.

LOADER: There. And now what? Look at this: USER32.DLL also wants us to load MSVCRT.DLL, the common run-time library.

CMD Prompt: But didn’t you already load MSVCRT.DLL?

LOADER: Right on baby! Let me just look around.

LOADER: Oh there it is. We have it mapped into memory already. I guess I’ll just throw this request away.

CMD Prompt: Do you get many of these redundant requests?

LOADER: Yeah, they happen all the time. Nothing to worry about. You get used to it. Look here, GDI32.DLL wants MSVCRT.DLL too;
and so does ADVAPI32.DLL, and VBAR332.DLL, and MSVBVM60.DLL, and …

CMD Prompt: Well hurry it along please.

LOADER: … and MSJET40.DLL and ODBCJT32.DLL and … Oh and look at this duplicate request for
USER32.DLL and
OLE32.DLL and OLEAUT32.DLL and SHELL32.DLL and …

CMD Prompt: SHELL32.DLL? I don’t remember seeing that one before. What is it and who wants it?

LOADER: Oops, you’re right. I almost overlooked this request by
SHELL32.DLL. It’s easy to overlook this one; it’s so
small. Only contains a few wrapper functions.

CMD Prompt: Guess it should be easy to load then?

LOADER: On the contrary. This one attempts to load the entire C++ RTL! Imagine that. Oh well. That’s life.
Fortunately, I’ve already brought in most of the C++ RTL. Let’s see now, what else will we need? Oh yes,
COMDLG32.DLL. Can’t imagine how we overlooked that one.

CMD Prompt: Is that it then?

LOADER: Yup. That’s it. She’s all here. You can go start her up!

USER: (pounding on keyboard) Where’s my data!

CMD Prompt: Please use voice input sir! Those ctrl-C’s are MOST annoying. They cause the most insidious
interruptions to what I’m trying to do. We’re starting your process now.

USER: It’s about time.

CMD Prompt: There. How’s that? Lovely data isn’t it?

USER: I wouldn’t know. Where’s my window?

CMD Prompt: I don’t know. Let me look into it.

CMD Prompt: CPU, where’s his window?

CPU: We’re executing instructions as fast as we can! Oh my god! An exception!

CMD Prompt: An exception! Is that serious?

CPU: My mistake; it’s not a hardware exception, it’s merely a software exception. Looks like the program signalled.

CMD Prompt: Why’d it do that?

CPU: Well, this program is naturally user friendly, so it wants to start up by
displaying a splash screen.

CMD Prompt: So why doesn’t it do that?

CPU: Well the dialog template is in a resource, sir.

CMD Prompt: Well get it!

CPU: That’s what we’re trying to do. You’ll have to check with the
USER32
system. It takes care of those things.

SYSTEM: Ah, I have the dialog request now. I’ll have it up in a moment.

CMD Prompt: Well, how do you get it?

SYSTEM: No sweat, we’re just searching for the appropriate resource
section.

LOADER: Oh no. I thought I had a deserved rest coming.

SYSTEM: Sorry, just a little bit longer.

USER: WHERE’S MY WINDOW!!!!!

CMD Prompt: Keep your pants on. Just be glad you’re not trying to create any threads.

LOADER: Okay, one last time. Which dialog template do you need loaded?

SYSTEM: I’m not sure. Let’s try ACCESS.EXE.

LOADER: (struggling) Okay. There it is. I’ve searched ACCESS.EXE.

SYSTEM: Sorry. It wasn’t in that one. Try MSO9.DLL’s resources. Maybe it’s in there.

LOADER: Okay. (grumble)

SYSTEM: Nope. It wasn’t there either. Try MSOWCW.DLL.

LOADER: Look. I’m getting tired of this. Couldn’t you just give me the complete list of
resource sections to search? I’ll keep searching them until we find that damn
template. Exactly what dialog are we looking for?

SYSTEM: Not sure yet, all I have is a name, but it’s probably something like

"DLG_WelcomeToMSAccess".

LOADER: Well…

SYSTEM: Well what?

LOADER: That dialog?

SYSTEM: Oh yeah. Well ODBC32.DLL has just loaded ODBCCP32.DLL, and not to be
outdone, MSJET40.DLL wants ODBCBCP.DLL, not to be confused with ODBCCP32.DLL, and MSO9.DLL wants MSOTHUNK.DLL, and RPRCRT4.DLL
wants ADVAPI32.DLL, and lots of other guys are asking for ADVAPI32.DLL also – but I’m too smart
for them. I’ll just get it once and no one will ever know the difference.

LOADER: Working…

SYSTEM: And don’t forget MSAEXP30.DLL. The dialog might be in there too.

CMD Prompt: OH NO!

SYSTEM: What is it?

LOADER: Are you all right?

CMD Prompt: An interrupt!

LOADER: An interrupt?

CMD Prompt: That’s what I said, an interrupt.

LOADER: Stop what you’re doing.

LOADER: Why? Just when I was getting the hang of it.

CMD Prompt: The user has typed ctrl-break.

LOADER: Okay, everything has been suspended. Can I go to sleep now?

CMD Prompt: No, you better stick around in case the user wants to continue. And notify the exit routines to stand by.
Also, I need moral support. Maybe if I flash a ^C in front of his eyes, he’ll stop looking so angry.

USER: Computer, I’m really getting tired of this.

CMD Prompt: But we were so close…

USER: A likely story.

CMD Prompt: Well what can I do for you instead?

USER: I still want my report. Let’s try some other way of retrieving my data.

CMD Prompt: A wonderful idea sir! A finer day it couldn’t be for looking over your data. How will you have it today?
Sunny side up? Once over lightly?

USER: How about SCRAMBLED?

CMD Prompt: No problem sir. Wait one moment while I load OUTLOOK.EXE…

The curtain falls as the dance begins again…

From via Vomit