Simply Internet Trash

Today I got my first EC2 instance running. It took a total of about two hours from registering for the service to a point where I had a full CentOS 5 install up and going serving out a static web page. Responsiveness of my server was fast ( even at the cheapest level ) and my experience on the command line felt like I was running on my own hardware. I have to say I was pretty high on the whole thing, that was until I realized there is no way to get a static ip or host name. Not getting a static IP I can understand. The inability to have a static hostname I don’t understand, this kills most of the uses I would have for the service. Sure there are ways you can get around this with dynamic dns and I can hear the hacker side in it’s Darth Vader voice, “Put together an XMPP based service to update to a master and share server locations as they come up. Only then will you know the true power of that Dark Side”. While my sysadmin side manifests itself as ObiWan’s ethereal image and says “Don’t listen to the guy who’s life support system shot craps and let him die”.

Linux server IO utilitzation:

iostat -d -x <wait> <count>

Things to note from output:

r/s and w/s (reads and writes per second)

svctm ( average service time per request)

%util (Percentage of CPU time during which IO requests issued to the device. Device saturation occurs as this approaches 100%)

combined info from the iostat man page and here

Today I was spending some time working on my job description.  In looking at titles I thought I might apply to myself I thought I’d see if I could get “Ender Wiggins”, but that is just a little bit presumptuous. There are days though where I feel like people are changing the rules of the game just to see how I’ll react and scheme awful hard to give me new obstacles to overcome. Those days can be damn frustrating but that’s part of the fun, working through them are part of the draw which keeps me coming back.

After eight years of working in one group in one company I’ve become pretty entrenched. In the tech industry that’s almost unheard of and generally equated to lack of ambition or having no interest in what you do. Quite to the contrary, I really like what I do. Over those years, as far as ambition, I’ve been: help desk, programmer, database administrator and sys admin. The reason for role changes is never that I’ve got bored with my previous position, just that there’s been a need and I figured it would be most beneficial if I hopped into the role, I was already doing a significant amount of that work already in all cases. So lack of ambition or interest in what I do, I think not.

Entitlement though is something I have struggled with over the last couple of years.  There are times where I felt like I have poured my blood and soul into the company and they owe me something back for it. When I start to think about it though in the bigger picture I’m quite fortunate that I work at a place that enables me to pour my blood and soul into what it is that I like to do. I work with some amazingly bright and energetic people that challenge me every day. There are a lot of people that spend their time counting the ticks on the clock waiting to come out of stasis and get on with their life once work is over, I’ve never felt that way. I do get annoyed with people or frustrated when I see something going a way that I don’t like, but I need to remember that is a reminder, a reminder that I still care about things. Should I not have those feeling, I need to do a check as I’m no longer taking a personal interest in what it is I do and it has just become “a job”. I don’t want to be going to “a job” every day.

This last week has been a straight up hell week of problems, one thing after the other. Amazingly though I’m feeling good and optomistic tonight. I’ll have to remember to refer back to this post at a time when things are going crazy wrong and ideally it will help me be a bit more zen.

There not much more that could be put in these cupcakes to make me not like them more. For some reason I equate vegan with tofu which I know is TOTALLY incorrect in all manner of ways as vegan isn’t even a specific food, but that doesn’t stop my mind from making the association. I saw these and had to take a picture because I’m not sure if I could have put more nasty in an item to sell and have it be something someone might actually buy.

Needed to code up something rather quickly today to monitor load average on our servers and send a notification. I should look into getting OpenNMS to do this, but it only took a few tweaks to an existing program to create this.  Before hand you need nmap running and creating the servers.txt and SNMP setup on the servers.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Net::SNMP;
use MIME::Lite;
use POSIX;

my %servers;

my %skip_list = (
  '10.168.0.1'   => 'Pix',
  '10.168.1.101' => 'Power Strip',
  '10.168.1.102' => 'Power Strip',
  '10.168.5.100' => 'Windows Backup Server aka The Sux',
  );

my $date = strftime('%Y-%m-%d',localtime(time));

open(FILE,"<","servers.txt");
while (<FILE>) {
  my $line = $_;
  my ($ip,$hostname) = $line =~ /^Host\: (\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+) \((.*?)\)/;
  next if ( !$ip || !$hostname );
  #print "$ip $hostname\n";
  $servers{$ip} = $hostname;
  }
close(FILE);

my $output;
my $urgent;
my $watch;
foreach my $server ( sort keys %servers ) {
  #print "QUERY SERVER $server\n";
  next if ( $skip_list{$server} );
  eval {
    my ($session, $error) = Net::SNMP->session(
       -version   => 'snmpv2c',
       -hostname  => $server || 'localhost',
       -community => 'public',
       -port      => 161
       );

    if (!defined($session)) {
      printf("ERROR: %s.\n", $error);
      next;
      }

    my $loadAverage = '1.3.6.1.4.1.2021.10.1.5.2';

    my $result = $session->get_request(
      -varbindlist => [$loadAverage]
      );

    if (!defined($result)) {
      printf("ERROR: %s.\n", $session->error);
      $session->close;
      next;
      }

    my $load = sprintf( '%.2f', ( $result->{$loadAverage} / 100 ) );
    #print "Load $server\t$load\n";

    $session->close;

    if ( $load > 5 ) {
      $watch .= "$servers{$server}($server) LOAD: $load\n\n";
      }
    }
  }

if ($watch && $watch ne '') {
  $watch .= "\n\nSYSRPTID-007\n\n";
  my $msg = MIME::Lite->new(
         From    =>      'me@host.com',
         To      =>      'me@host.com',
         Subject =>      "[SYS Report] Load Check $date",
         Type    =>      'text/plain',
         Sender  =>      'me@host.com',
         Data    =>      "$watch"
         );
  MIME::Lite->send('smtp','outbound.host.com', Timeout=>60, Hello => 'outbound.host.com');
  $msg->send();
  #print "$watch\n";
  }
exit;

Aside from rebuilding my personal server this weekend I accomplished a couple other things. One of which was getting the trim on the inside of the windows in our bedroom. Next up is the part I hate, filling nail holes, caulking and painting.

Before:

After:

I think hearing things like “we’re having another baby” really helps light the fire to get some of those projects done.

I came home on Friday and wanted a coffee and a drink. I’d mentioned this in Twitter and got a couple suggestions, but I decided to go my own route. I made our normal bastard latte (espresso, milk, flavored creamer) and then mixed in a couple shots of Godiva Cappuccino. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t good either, it reminded me a lot of drinking the Schnapps beverages I downed regularly before being able to buy my own liquor. Next time I think I’ll just put some Jack or something that is not as sugary sweet as the Godiva in there and put that stuff in the back of the cabinet.

Kate took a test today and we got the big positive, one more kid in the oven. Our fifth anniversary will be this fall so that’s four pregnancies since we’ve been married. I’m a bit excited about this one, a little more then normal I’d say and I’m not sure why. Not really a planned thing and Kate was hoping for some more time. I feel bad because she’s the one that does all the work and she’s spent about half the time since I met her preggo, she doesn’t have easy pregnancies. With kids as cute as ours though you just want to have more and more.

Why the hell is Phil Gramm stepping down from his position. I couldn’t agree with the guy more, we have become a nation of whiners. In fact it seems you can’t make a public comment as a politician without someone making a big stink about it. Everyone’s so afraid to take the blame for something that what needs to be said never gets said and we can’t fix the things that need to be fixed. In fact that seems to be one of the key points of Obama’s rhetoric to the bad seeds in the black community, quit whining and take responsibility.
As far as blaming the depth of the recession on the newpapers I don’t necessarily buy that, but I guess there is something to be said if money flow is based on consumer confidence then the media definitely doesn’t help.
I’m glad I’m not a politician because it seems these days shooting straight from the hip is a liability rather than a quality people want.