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105: A Fully Patched ShroomOS

Here’s a tidbit from the backers-only special edition of Networking for System Administrators.

All those shrooms were one interconnected, internally networked living thing.

Networked. Sort of like computers.

Except mushroom networks are efficient. The nodes eliminate interoperability issues by requiring identical hardware and a fully patched ShroomOS. The Internet would be infinitely better if every node ran BeOS or, better still, Fifth Edition Bell Laboratories UNIX on VAX. But the Humungous Fungus infects trees and shrubs much like the Internet infects washing machines and democracy. Most of an a. ostoyae colony is buried underground. Most of the Internet is buried in concrete. The Humungous Fungus wins on points because it is not only edible, it is a delicacy. No matter how thoroughly you stir-fry your laptop or how much black bean sauce you add, it remains unpalatable.

If you need a tie breaker? Fungi are at peace. They don’t even try to support printers.

If you didn’t back the book before now, this bit is all you will ever see.

104: Software RAID on Windows 3.1

“Trust” seems to be a recurrent theme of the OpenZFS book. Here we discuss so-called hardware RAID.

All RAID is software RAID. Your hardware RAID controller runs a custom operating system to perform RAID tasks, and in the process obscures the storage hardware from the operating system. This made sense back in the early days of widespread commercial computing, when consumer operating systems could not be trusted. Spend three seconds contemplating OS-level software RAID on Windows 3.1, and you’ll understand why hardware RAID became ubiquitous. The computing ecosystem has changed. Our operating systems have improved. Our hardware is billions of times more powerful.

ZFS is designed for direct access to the hardware. It deliberately stores critical metadata on multiple disks. It watches those disks for errors, and makes decisions based on those errors. A hardware RAID device hides all of this worrisome detail from the operating system, eliminating ZFS’ ability to heal itself. Hardware RAID presents no competing abilities.

The Sinclair ZX81 was as good as computers got.

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N4SA2e Print Sponsor Address Check

Anywhere from 1%-5% of sponsors move before I ship print sponsor gifts. (Yes, they’re gifts, not preorders. Because I send sponsors things.) In the past, I’ve eaten the cost of reshipping these. With hundreds of print sponsors, that small error rate becomes an expensive pile.

So I went into my store system, extracted all the sponsor orders on “Networking for System Administrators, 2nd edition,” and converted them to a GoShippo postage ordering spreadsheet so I’m all set to order postage for sponsor gifts. I then wrote a script to extract sponsor addresses from the file and email them to request address verification and a shipping phone number.1

If you’re a print sponsor of this book, you should have an email requesting you verify your address and phone number. If address and phone number are correct, ignore the mail. If something is wrong or missing, please reply with corrections. Yes, some folks will miss the verification. I’ll wind up eating some reshipping cost. But with your help it’ll be less than otherwise–and you’ll get your books earlier!

If you didn’t get the email, you probably also didn’t get the email with the ebook links. Email me with your order number and I’ll try again.

I’m also amused to note that for the first time since I started offering book sponsorships, several print sponsors left the United States. I charge extra shipping for overseas sponsors. I’m not doing chasing people for extra, though. Those folks have my sympathy, envy, and gratitude.

I probably need to set a “so you fled the US” policy for future sponsorships, though.

103: We Can’t Trust

Last week’s episode was called on account of covid. My brain is only lightly friend today, so here’s a bit of OpenZFS Mastery.

Storage is a sysadmin’s natural enemy.

You might think it’s management, but some folks touch computers for fun. Similarly, not all sysadmins have users other than themselves. Most computer hardware is fairly robust, barring encounters with free-range pile drivers. CPUs and memory rarely catch fire. Packets go missing? No biggie, just retransmit. But no matter how big your system or how many users it has or who you answer to, storage is an unending annoyance.

A computer’s filesystem dictates much of its performance and behavior. We rebuild entire systems because a major filesystem was configured incorrectly, or the filesystem chosen wasn’t suitable for the task, or because subtle filesystem corruption infiltrated our data and we can’t trust even the basic programs shipped with the operating system.

OpenZFS on Linux is best described as a “trip.” No, not a journey, a fall.

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“Networking for System Administrators” Kickstarter closing soon

If you back the campaign, you also get copies of FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS and SSH Mastery.

I wouldn’t be shocked to break the $ git commit murder stretch goal.

I would be surprised to break the Advanced ZFS goal.

Plus there’s the online “launch party,” which is a highfalutin’ way to say “I’ll open a Zoom and we can hang out for an hour.”

This is also your last chance to get the backers-only special edition. It will never be commercially available. I’ll have a few extra to solve fulfillment problems, yes. They’ll go up for charity auctions.

I’m biased, so here’s Ray with an outside opinion.

Listen to the network manager. Back this book.

Thank you.

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September’s Stillicidious Sausage

This post goes to Patronizers in September and becomes public in October. Not a Patronizer? You could be! $12 a year gets you my latest updates, occasional free tidbits, and the completely pointless MWL Footnote Fortune File.

Operation Acclimate To Mac proceeds apace.

So does Project Math The Networking for System Administrators Kickstarter.

The Mac has has certainly fulfilled the promise of Rage Different. I’d like to set a list of particular folders in the Finder sidebar. Not an option. Instead, I’ve set up symlinks in the Documents directory. If I SSH using the Remote Connection terminal and the connection terminates, the terminal window hangs there without exiting and non-restartable. The only option seems to be open a new Remote Connection terminal, resize the new terminal appropriately on the correct monitor, and close the old window. I’m using terminal windows so I can reboot a host, get a command prompt back, and reconnect with an up arrow. I still have to set up Time Machine to point at my home freenas. Wait, I should go do that before finishing this post. (3 days pass.) Okay, done. The functionality of the CTRL key is split between the COMMAND and CTRL keys, which requires remapping my fancy keyboards and retraining my fingers.

Many little annoyances. Nothing insurmountable, merely irritating. It’ll pass.

Shipping prices have increased, as have print prices. I had to double-check every price for the N4SA2e Kickstarter. This prompted me to build a spreadsheet of costs, so that the next time this happens I’ll have a convenient list of everything that needs updating. And prices will go up. US food prices are about to increase even more, which will drag everything else upward. This compels me to consider raising prices in advance of everybody else’s price increase. That feels wrong, so I’m not going to do that. The prices of my print books are largely dictated by manufacturing costs. Ebooks are more about the market and my innate sense of fairness. N4SA2e is a hefty 55,000 words so I’m going to price the ebook at $12.99. For now. We’ll see what happens.

Eventually I’ll have to raise the price of all my ebooks. This will mean pulling most of the tech books from Amazon’s Kindle store. I want to hold that off as long as I can, out of some vestigial hope that Amazon will increase their $9.99 limit. They won’t raise the limit. Raising the limit is not in their interest. But like a hostage during a bank robbery, I hold out as long as I can before accepting that nobody’s coming to save me. 2

Anyway, if you’re curious, I have a private preview of the Kickstarter up. You can’t back it yet, and please don’t share the link. Any benefits that Kickstarter backers get as a result of stretch goals will also go to sponsors. Why? Sponsors supported this book early, and I won’t penalize them for that. I successfully recorded and edited the video on my Mac without triggering another apocalypse, so that’s a plus.

The manuscript is due back from copyedit at the end of September. I should be able to make the corrections and get a print proof ordered before the campaign ends on 9 October. By the time the Kickstarter money arrives, I’ll be able to order the print books for fulfillment.

I made the first real words on the next book, OpenZFS Mastery. I’m cowriting this with Allan Jude. It’s basically a second edition of the two existing ZFS books, but adds Linux material. This will be the biggest Mastery book by far, and the most expensive, dang it. Just the initial “slam two manuscripts together and mark places to add new information” draft breaks 100,000 words. Fortunately, print-on-demand tech has improved enough to support manufacturing such a book in durable form. Sponsorships won’t open until I ship the N4SA2e sponsor gifts. I must fulfill one sponsorship before I start another! (Yeah, I know, stupid ethics, but still.)

I really want to finish this book before BSDCan 2026. Will I? That depends on a whole bunch of factors beyond my control, but I’m gonna try.

My other big thing this month is EuroBSDCon. I’m going over my slides for the TLS and SMTP tutorials, making sure everything is up-to-date. In theory the slides from BSDCan 2024 should still be good but in practice there’s always something. (Remember, “in theory there’s no difference between theory and practice.” Whenever practice hears this cliche it laughs until it soils itself.) I also want to talk to some folks about what it would take to build my business in the EU, and possibly setting up a parallel company there to help shield my family from US political stupidity.

Oh, well. At least I’m not teaching Shoggothic Network Management Protocol.

Running a Kickstarter from a foreign country that’s six hours ahead of home is going to be… interesting. It launches before the conference starts so I can post the mailing list announcements while not jet lagged. I have to post something about it on social media every day, however, preferably something clever. While some folks can easily adapt to time zone changes, I am not among them. I did a six hour shift for EuroBSDCon 2013 on Malta, and felt sick for days. I arrive on Tuesday the 23rd, so I’ll have a couple days to try to shift my schedule. Shift my schedule before leaving? Great idea! My flight leaves Detroit at 10PM, so I have to stay up late that day anyway. It’s gonna be ugly. Much like my other trips to Europe, I suspect that only the power of caffeine can sustain me. A vat of hot black tea upon waking, followed by mainlining Coke Zero throughout the sessions. My biggest regret from EuroBSDCon 2017 is that I didn’t use enough caffeine to remain awake until dinner, which meant I missed out on nifty Parisian dining. No, upon second thought, my biggest regret was getting my pocket picked on the subway on the last day, leaving me without cash or ID as I tried to get home. Fortunately I had my passport in a different pocket. This time, I have a money belt. The only thing that I’ll have in my wallet is a sticker saying EBOLA SAMPLES DO NOT TOUCH.

Anyway, I’ll not only have to remain conscious throughout the con, I will need to be creative. My social media posts might be a little less connected to reality than usual. Yes, I know, high bar. Maybe sleeplessness will improve my connection to consensual reality? Dunno.

Anyway. OpenZFS Mastery. N4SA2e launch. EuroBSDCon. This is what you’re supporting. Thank you.

102: My Chief Goon

I’m at EuroBSDCon in Croatia teaching TLS and SMTP, so here’s a snippet from my TLS tutorial.

Let’s say I create a public key pair. I keep one key of the pair. The other key I give to my chief goon, Vizzini, before I dispatch him out into the world. Nobody else has either of these keys. My goon and I can use these keys to exchange messages that can be read only with the other key in the pair. I use my half to encrypt my messages to my goon. Hopefully I remember what I said, because once the message is encrypted, my key cannot decrypt my message. Fortunately, “Start a war and frame Guilder for it” is short enough that even I can remember it. Only the other key in the pair can decrypt that message. I mail my message. Anyone who snoops on that message sees only indecipherable gibberish.

When my message reaches my goons, they use their key to decrypt it. They can then use their key to encrypt a response, like “How about we kidnap the princess?” and send the encrypted message back to me. Only my half of the key can decrypt this message.

So far, so good.

Yes, the tutorial is based on TLS Mastery, which features the most apropos cover art of any book I have written.

101: The Hearing’s Gonna Be Lit

The Networking for System Administrators Kickstarter is running full steam ahead, so I’m making words on OpenZFS Mastery. It’s a second edition of FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS and FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS, but a single large volume also covering Linux.

ZFS support in Linux distributions varies. The broader Linux community questions the compatibility between the GPL and the CDDL and in response, distributions have added and removed installer ZFS support. Intellectual property attorneys who have considered CDDL/GPL compatibility often say “it’s an interesting question,” which is lawyerese for “$500 an hour and the hearing’s gonna be lit.” This doesn’t matter to users, but operating system vendors are risk-adverse. The result? OpenZFS considers Linux a top-tier platform. Most Linux distributions do not consider ZFS a top-tier filesystem. Check your Linux documentation for installation and upgrade instructions.

We have chosen to believe that some Linux will adopt ZFS as a preferred filesystem and integrate all its features the way FreeBSD and Illumos have. Until then, Linux users often compromise to make their lives easier.

License wars are the worst.

Before you ask, I won’t open sponsorships on OpenZFS Mastery until I ship the N4SA2e sponsor gifts.

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“Networking for System Administrators, 2nd ed” Kickstarter is live

The silly thing funded in fifteen minutes, and has gone high enough that all backers get a bonus ebook of FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS.

Yes, Allan and I are working on a new edition of the ZFS book. But the old one is still good, and applies to OpenZFS on any Unixy system.

Anyway, it’s there if you want it. The higher the Kickstarter goes, the more books I will give away.

The truth is, I don’t expect the current trajectory to continue. I made a point of asking folks to back the first day, in the hope that Kickstarter would notice momentum and slap “Project We Love” on it, blessing me with front page exposure. They still might. We’ll see.