[nycbug-talk] fave BSD tips/tricks?

[Jerry B. Altzman]

on 8/26/2009 6:49 PM Miles Nordin said the following:
>>>>>> "jba" == Jerry B Altzman <jbaltz at 3phasecomputing.com> writes:
>    jba> Why are you developing on production servers?
> You're not.

Well, that's a grand relief! I can let my breath go now!

> What I think Jerry's really saying is ``why do I have to put up with
> people smarter than me with all their fancy smart-person tools using
> my machines?  I should have a separate space where I don't have to

Ah, well you see, there you're wrong. Please note that I don't deign to 
put words in your mouth. Yet, it seems that you have enough words for 
both of us! This must be my lucky day!

I have never claimed that you don't need tools on development servers. 
Yes, wireshark is k-ool and 1338 and all that...but YAGNI. Capture with 
tcpdump, carry it offline, and analyze it later.

It works for us physicists, and we found the top quark.

(Dtrace is something of a special case, for which I'd venture to say 
that I'd make accommodations for it. X11? Why? I'm still curious why 
you'd want to log onto a production server only to throw up an xcalc 
window from there? You can't run xcalc on your local machine?)

> accomodate them, so I'm maximally free to do the small job for which I
> was hired, a job at which I'm provably quite good.''  I think this is

Sigh. Well, whatever, I'm sure you're the smartest person in the room 
there with yourself.

> a really valid view and a strong point.  yeah these guys do break
> things.  so long as you state it honestly, that what you're really
> doing is making your box deliberately rude, ponderous, and unwelcoming
> to keep other authorized people off of it, maybe people your
> management told you ``let them on,'' not defending from outside
> attackers.

Or, alternatively, you're doing things not to make it friendly for 
users, but to make it friendly for processing. You know, computing 'n' 
stuff.
The box isn't there to make the developers' lives easy. It's there to 
run the frikkin nuclear bomb simulation. While we're at it, by the way, 
it ALSO has the added bonus of making it hard for unauthorized users to 
do nasty things. Moby win!

> however...using some of these powerful complicated observational tools
> is, serious win, like night and day, and if you can welcome these
> people in comfortably instead of talking obstructionist circles in
> meetings, you will all win big.  I wish I'd brought it up so clearly.

I know I know...and you CAN do that...but you don't have to do it on 
production servers. Or you can bring in your specialized tools - when 
you need them - and take them off again. (An aside with performance 
measurement: be careful, lest you carefully measure your tools. But 
that's a different issue--one that by and large people also ignore.)

>    jba> Once again, how can you have MORE clutter when FEWER things
>    jba> are there?
> haha yeah.  I leave this as an exercise for the reader.

You're the smartest guy in the room there, I'm sure you and Euler can 
figure it out.

Thanks, Miles, I'm sure you're a fun guy and all, go put words in 
someone else's mouth.

//jbaltz
-- 
jerry b. altzman  jbaltz at 3phasecomputing.com  +1 718 763 7405