A fairy tale

Once upon a time I did an operating system upgrade, a minor one that should do no harm, but just get me up to date by fixing any bugs in the version I had been using. It seemed like a good idea.

All seemed to be fine. I use a package provided by an external vendor and not the one produced by the operating system provider as this vendor provides a newer version of the package and I need that. The vendor has to make his package fit in the os environment his package is built for and normally does a pretty good job.

I use automation to build my systems and when I built a new one some issues appeared. Related to the new version of the OS the provider had enhanced one of his packages and the installation pulled in new dependencies. The install of the external package I use then broke as it conflicted with the new dependency provided by the OS.  While a workaround is possible: uninstall …

Previously, I’ve called out years for non-desktop Linux in 2008, Linux in both the low and high-ends of the market in 2009, ‘hidden’ Linux in 2010 and last year, cloud computing in 2011. For 2012, I see continued growth, prevalence, innovation and impact from Linux, thus leading to a 2012 that is dominated by Linux.

I expect to see nothing but continued strength for Linux and …

I’ve always been a big fan of having a customized .bashrc file. The one I distribute to all of my servers has aliases for quick commands to save me time on the command line, functions that get work done when aliases are too simplistic, reporting for the server for each cli login, and of course a formatted and colored prompt (for terms that support colors). I also change certain aspects and commands based on the operating system since I’m not always on a redhat box or linux at all. Here’s my bashrc file – maybe you have some fun additions that you’d like to share. What saves you time on the command line?

I’ve been playing around with some quick system automation scripts that are handy to use when you don’t want / need to setup a chef or puppet action. I like to keep all of my hostnames and login details in a MySQL database (a cmdb actually) but for this example we’ll just use a couple of nested lists. This script executes commands in parallel across the hosts you choose in the menu system via the “pdsh” command, so make sure you have that installed before running. Alternately you can change the command call to use ssh instead of pdsh for a serialized execution, but that’s not as fun or fast. With some customizations here and there you can expand this to operate parallelized jobs for simplifying daily work in database administration, usage reporting, log file parsing, or other system automation as you see fit. Here’s the code. Comments welcome as always!

#!/usr/bin/env python
## NAME: menu_parallel_execution.py
## DATE: …

In this latest release I’ve added a basic MySQL connection pool to the benchmarking script which improves the method in which connections to MySQL are handled and reused. In addition, there have been some optimizations made to the thread handler functions for better debug reporting. Download the latest release now and see how your MySQL server performs against the rest of the community! Download here: download page.

So far the benchmarking script supports Linux, FreeBSD, and OSX. I’m installing virtual machines today to get ready for development on the next OS that the community wants to have supported. Vote today for your choice. Development will begin Friday 2010-09-03.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

I’m pleased to announce the first release of Kontrollcomm – “The Server Command Automation Interface” is a web-based application that automates remote command execution on linux and unix based servers. There are three main areas of the application: Hosts, Templates, and Commands. The use is very simple: all of your hosts are setup in the [...]

We’re continuing to see signs that the dominant GPL open source license may be fading from favor among commercial open source software players. The latest move away from the GPL comes from content management software vendor Alfresco, which is moving to the LGPL after originally releasing its code under the GPL three years ago. The reasoning for the shift, according to Alfresco CEO John Newton, is the company sees greater opportunity beyond being a software application, particularly given the emergence of the Content Management Interoperability Services standard. Alfresco won mostly praise for its move, and it does make sense given where open source is going these days.

I believe the emerging trend away …

Having been a free software user and supporter for many years, I am disheartened by some of the comments made in the MySQL/Oracle debate regarding the GNU Public License (GPL) and other licenses. There is much throwing around of misconceptions and untruths about licenses and their differences. In this blog, I shall take on some of the bigger misconceptions.

While Linux is indeed distributed under the GPL, as is MySQL, Linux has an exception that allows anyone to run any kind of applications (including closed source applications) on top of Linux.

Monty says: Help keep the Internet free

There is nothing in the GPL that forbids running closed source applications on top of GPL-licensed software. The only thing that GPL has in this regard is that if you make changes to GPL-licensed software and re-distribute it as a binary, then …

Topics for this podcast:

*As the Oracle-Sun-MySQL EC world turns
*Google gets its Web on with Go and Chrome
*Open source and cloud computing complement, compete
*How transparent is your open core?

iTunes or direct download (26:20, 6.0 MB)