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October’s Osmundaceous Sausage

This post goes to Patronizers in October and becomes public in November. 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, which will soon be updated for the new edition of Networking for System Administrators.

Speaking of which, the N4SA2e Kickstarter is rolling along just fine. No, it’s nowhere near the insane RYOMS Kickstarter, but it’s doing nicely. Comparison is the thief of joy, and of paying the mortgage.

I have a deep enough backlist that I can give books away as stretch goals. There’s a delicate balance between “dump everything on backers to make it a better deal” and “flood backers with stuff.” I want this to be a good enough deal while leaving space for people to go to my store and buy more, or buy print versions, or… or… just give me money, okay? Perhaps if I had paid more attention during EuroBSDCon I would have changed some of the stretch goal levels, but I staggered around all week in a state of near-hallucinatory jet lag.

Don’t get me wrong, EuroBSDCon was well-run and had great speakers. The worst problem I knew of was a bad HDMI cable, which means the con went great. Croatia is lovely. It is also the birthplace of the cravat, so each speaker got a tie. The silly thing is, two days before leaving for Croatia we cleaned out our cedar closet and I not only discarded all my ties, I established a life goal of never needing a tie again. I’m closing on 60, so this seems perfectly achievable.

I’m keeping this tie, though. Because it’s meaningful.

My last meeting at the con ended at 10:30PM Sunday. I had to leave for the airport at 3:30AM. Flying on ninety minutes sleep? That’s a whole REM cycle, I’m fine! Except the flight from Zagreb to Amsterdam was delayed by fog, so I missed my connection to Detroit. The airline automatically rebooked me on the next flight out, which would be fine except for the seat assignment in the middle of the back row. The last time I sat in that seat for an hour, my innards went into reverse and I had to be helped off the plane. Can’t imagine what nine hours of that would do. I had to find an airline agent and beg for help, despite being semiconscious. They rebooked me in the economy-plus “torture me less” class I originally paid for. I thanked her profusely and went to buy stroopwaffles before hallucinating my way to the gate.

Yes, airport stroopwaffle is sad. I submit to you, however, that Dutch airport stroopwaffle is inherently better than any commercially available American stroopwaffle.

Get on the plane. Aisle seat along the side. Two seats, side-by-side. There was a 20ish girl sitting in the window seat, dressed all in black and with a nose piercing. I feel kind of glad that the next generation is keeping up the Old Ways, but just say “hi” and settle into my seat.

Across the aisle, an older lady settles in place and looks around. Right before takeoff she leans across the aisle and says, “You know, I think it’s really nice that people like you take family vacations.”

I have had 90 minutes of sleep in the last 36 hours so I just say “Uh, thanks?”

It doesn’t hit me until we’re in the air that I’m wearing black pants, a dark shirt, and a black FLA hoodie. That lady thought that the girl sitting next to me was my child.

So, yeah. If you ever feel the urge to say people like you, you should probably just not.

Besides, the girl was clearly emo goth. I firmly believe that “if it’s not on the Industrial Records label it’s not industrial, it’s just sparkling noise.” You might argue I’m a primordial rivethead from before the fashion industry swiped the word. Anyway, totally different and I have no idea how she thought we were together.

Made it home. Stayed up until 9PM. Went to be. Slept like the dead for eight hours and woke up feeling like a lich.

Which is another reason I rarely travel overseas. It’s now my second day back. I feel like I spent nine hours being beaten with an Airbus. I want to keep these posts G-rated, or maybe PG, so we’re not going to discuss my sinuses.

Add to that: the copyedits for N4SA2e arrived yesterday. I want to get this book ready and a print proof ordered so I can fulfill the Kickstarter ASAP. I can’t open sponsorships on the OpenZFS book until that’s done–okay, technically I could but, you know, ethics. The way the meatsuit feels, I probably won’t feel halfway decent until next week. I spent a few days before EuroBSDCon preparing for the trip. One week in Europe costs three weeks of writing time. I imagine the cost for going to Asia would be similar.

The work I had done on the OpenZFS book has fallen out of my brain. Fortunately I was still in Chapter 0 so it won’t be that hard to load back into working memory.

This is all a long-winded way to say, there are reasons I don’t do EuroBSDCon or AsiaBSDCon every year. I’m always glad to meet readers, up until social exhaustion kicks in and I’m not happy to meet anyone. I left home for exactly that.

But if I routinely attended AsiaBSDCon and EuroBSDCon every year, that’s close to two months writing time lost.

Don’t get me wrong, I had a great time in Croatia! The people were grand, the food was delightful, the BSD crowd charming. But travel grows more difficult every year. I’d like to say something about the work I accomplished this month, but instead it’s a confessional that I haven’t done much actual work.

Despite aches and congestion, actual work begins this week. It’ll be slow, but it needs doing.

I’m going to close with a photo from Croatia: yours truly, at Zagreb’s Nikola Tesla statue.

No idea how someone could think I’m emo. Not with those purple-glitter-Crocs.

106: That Version of GRUB

I skipped last week due to Excessive System Administration, but here’s a snippet from OpenZFS Mastery.

Lucas’ virtualization host for testing this book ran bhyve on FreeBSD 14. FreeBSD 14 uses OpenZFS version 2.2, but the book you are reading right now had to include the RAIDZ expansion of OpenZFS 2.3. The newer OpenZFS was available as an add-on package. OpenZFS 2.3 can read OpenZFS 2.2 pools, but the reverse is not true. So long as the package and the kernel don’t fall out of synchronization, everything will work just fine. The odds of desynchronization are, eventually, one hundred percent, especially when destructively testing every option. The solution was to separate the zroot boot pool from those used for testing, . The zroot boot pool needed to remain compatible with the base system, while the drives used for virtualization and testing could be upgraded. Set compatibility property to lock the feature set to those supported by the base system.

Sponsorships for OpenZFS Mastery will not open until I ship out gifts for the last sponsorship. I don’t take money for a new thing until the previous new thing is complete. Stupid ethics!

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N4SA2e Fulfillment Status

The N4SA2e production process is proceeding apace.

The print books are finalized. Books for me to sign have been ordered. The printer tells me that they’ll ship to me in about 10 days.

When the printer tells me they’ve shipped, I will prepare shipping labels for Patronizers, sponsors, and Kickstarter backers. You getting an email with a tracking number doesn’t mean your book has shipped; it means I am awaiting your book. When the books arrive, the assembly line kicks in and I start packing.

Next week, I order drop shipments for Kickstarter backers. This means your survey answers will be finalized. Hopefully few of you have moved unexpectedly in the last few weeks. Remember, drop shipments do not get tracking numbers. (See “Fulfillment” at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mwlucas/networking-for-system-administrators-2nd-edition/ .)

Some of you sent corrections to the ebook. Those corrections have been uploaded.

Ebooks are fulfilled. I still have to write the stretch goal advice column. It’ll be exclusive to my backers and supporters, at least until the 10-year collection comes out.

Oh, and: the special edition looks pretty decent. I am pleased with it.

Once I ship the books, I will open sponsorships on OpenZFS Mastery.

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.