I’ve had a good day. I got up this morning around eleven, after several sleep/wake cycles. I had set my alarm for eleven, but I guess my body was anxious about not oversleeping, as I woke up several times before then, rolled over, and went back to sleep. I normally would have slept in even more, but there was a group of people from work that wanted to go bike riding on the Silver Comet Trail. I stopped off at work on my way, grabbing a bagel, a banana, and some Gatorade (it’s tough to believe, I know, that I ate a bagel and banana for breakfast). We met up around 12:30 and we finally headed out around 1, I think. The trip was supposed to be fifteen miles, which we surpassed. My computer said that I averaged about 13.9 mph, and our travel time was roughly an hour fifteen. There were some legs where we sustained about 20 mph, and I and another guy drafted off of each other and traded off leading. Afterwards, most of us went to eat lunch at a little sandwich shop. I was and am really surprised at how little sore I am and good I felt at the end. When I’ve ridden this past week, I’ve always felt dead at the end of a 2 or 3 mile jaunt, which hasn’t given me much desire to ride again. I came back home and showered and haven’t done much since.

I’m in the middle of Two Towers, having already watched The Fellowship recently. I should have had my Netflix in today, but they were not in my mailbox when I checked upon my arrival back after lunch, which was disheartening. So, that put somewhat of a damper on the rest of my weekend, as I would have had some new movies to watch. I can’t imagine why they are late, and I don’t know if I should blame Netflix or the post office.

http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/xen/How-To-8-15-06/install/AugDomUs/;jsessionid=9E9E779D80E585F4F2559E2E9E598150
http://julien.danjou.info/xen.html
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/intro/
http://prefetch.net/blog/index.php/category/solaris-zfs/

http://www.sun.drydog.com/

How is it that I just spent $800 on a road bike, yet I don’t want to go riding in the morning? This is why I don’t buy stuff. This is why I don’t talk. This is why I eat the same food. Because when I deviate from the norm I get screwed, and I only wish that I hadn’t.

Long live the status quo.

So, I got a road bike this past Saturday. I ordered it the Saturday before, which in turn meant that they had to order it and put it together, so I picked it up yesterday. I rode yesterday and today, and remembered how much out of shape I am (I also remembered that I am still in mourning over having my Gary Fisher Marlin stolen many, many moons ago). It’s a Trek 1000, and I took some pictures of it, so maybe I’ll post them to the photoblog. I watched “Taxi Driver” and thought that it was ok, and I watched “Puddle Cruiser”, which was ok as well. “Puddle Cruizer” is Broken Lizard’s first feature lenght film on 35mm. I guess that they just released it on DVD, as it was filmed in the mid-90s. The commentary was done pretty recently, as they made several references to “Dukes of Hazzard” in the commentaries. And, btw, they are planning a Super Troopers 2. Here’s to hoping it’s as funny as the first. I am leaning more and more towards augmenting my internet situation. Maybe I’ll make a decision soon… My parents are flying out on October 13, so that should be fun/interesting, which means I need to clean the apartment thoroughly beforehand. I went out with a few guys from work on Friday after work. Went to a bar until around 11. It wasn’t too drunken, so it was enjoyable.

I feel like I’ve really been out of it lately, and I have no idea why. I sort of miss being around people who will correct your smallest grammar mistake or mispoken word. It keeps your mind and tongue on their toes.

This week or last, I also had a guy from work ask me if I was going to church. We were discussing work and how I was down about it, and he asked me sort of out of the blue. This is a guy who I pretty much thought was a pagan, so it really took me aback.

I also finally got to watch the second episode of Studio 60. It was on par with the first. It’s still too early to tell, but I imagine that I will be a watcher…

So, I’ve been wanting to play with ZFS for a really long time. Finally tonight I got my ducks in a row. I should have written some notes on the process, but I now have a functional OpenSolaris server running as a domU in a Debian dom0 in a little Xen cluster on my 2U.

Following (basically) the instructions on the web, I got the xen packages installed on top of my pre-existing Debian Etch install. I bought a WRT54G over the weekend, so that I could free up the 2U for more ambition endeavors. I uninstalled Shorewall so that it wouldn’t get in the way, and disabled dhcp3-server.

I installed

linux-image-2.6.17-2-xen-686
libc6-xen
xen-hypervisor-3.0-unstable-1-i386
xen-tools xen-utils-3.0.2-1
xen-utils-3.0-unstable-1

I don’t know if I need both of the xen-utils packages… I was using Lilo (yay lilo!), but apparently Xen needs some functionality only available with Grub. So, I tried to install that, but it continually locked up during grub-install (that fix deserves its own post…). I got that fixed, and it booted fine. After configuring it for serial access, I was finally good to go. The next hurdle involved figuring out that not one of those xen packages added the necessary bridge interface to /etc/network/interfaces.

auto xenbr0
iface xenbr0 inet static
address 192.168.1.25
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1
bridge_ports eth0
bridge_maxwait 0

Everybody seems to use a different name for that interface. There was at least xen-br0, but the Debian scripts that I installed are looking for xenbr0. You also have to manually bring up the bridge. Note that this will clobber the settings of eth0. So, if you were ssh’ed into the box, the ssh session will die, and, if the bridge came up properly, you can now ssh into 192.168.1.25. So, if eth0′s ip was dynamically assigned, it will now be static and 192.168.1.25. That took me a bit to figure out. So, once that’s done, you should be able to edit /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp, and finally do a xen-create-image and xm create that won’t error out.

So, I created a Debian image to verify that everything was working, and then I downloaded the ready to use Solaris domU image (twice because apparently I didn’t download it all the first time). I got it running, added some pseudo disks to the xen config, and tinkered with ZFS. I added me as a user and added a home directory, got the permissions all setup and even was able to mount it remotely via NFS. It’s all far from automated, but it is somewhere. I realized in all of this that I probably could export my fibre channel drives via xen to the Solaris domU. I could then put ZFS on top of them and re-export them to the entire network. It’s convoluted, I know, but it’s the best solution until Linux gets some form of ZFS. The overhead of xen isn’t supposed to be that bad, but it still seems to make for an overly complex, yet working solution. I also had thought that there wouldn’t be any reason not to be able to run apache, ftp, etc. directly on top of OpenSolaris, but dealing with OpenSolaris the little that I have, I would pull my hair out. So, just having nfs running, running all of the other value added services from nfs mounts, seems like a possible plan. You get clean snapshotting from ZFS for everybody. I guess the next hurdle is moving everything over to LDAP and Kerberos. Looking forward to it… :)

Don’t worry if you didn’t follow any of that. I guarantee you are not alone.

I’ve been remiss in my keeping you all up to date on the movies that I’ve been watching as of late, so here’s an update.

A couple of weekends ago (the 16th, I think) I went to see “The Last Kiss”. I figured that it would be good because of Zach Braff, and it had a good IMDB rating. Oddly, though, it was only showing in four theaters in the entirety of Atlanta, so I had to traipse across town to find a theater. The one that I picked, though, was really nice, and I am more convinced that the theater where I usually go has poor sound. Overall, I think I liked it, but it’s hard for me to remember now.

I also watched “Some Like It Hot” with Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon, some time back. It was supposed to be a really screwball comedy, but I didn’t think it too much of one. It was still pretty good though, and now I understand why everyone loves Marilyn.

I watched “Buffalo Soldiers” and “The Great Raid”, both of which I thought were mediocre.

I watched “12 Angry Men” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and found them lackluster. I don’t really know what either one was about. Perhaps I just wasn’t in the mood to watch either of them (I slept a bunch through the latter).

I finished the few episodes I lacked in season two of Lost, if you couldn’t tell. I yelled at the TV multiple times, which to me indicates that I was pretty in to it (as much as I hate to admit it).

F-u-c-k u Lost!1!

My mark on Wesley is gone… :(

Is anyone reading this?

Popeyes has the crack biscuits.
Texas Roadhouse has the crack rolls.
Koppe Bridge has the crack french fries.
What else am I missing?

Handsome Rob asked me a good question tonight, “what areas are you aggressive in your life?”. And I really didn’t have a good answer for him, because I’m not really sure that there are any. He did say driving, and I will give him that. I think that I tend to avoid conflict, I try to do what people expect of me, I try to please people, and be generally as agreeable as possible, becuase I figure that’s what most people like best, someone who will go along with you. I’m, of course, speaking in generalities here, but when am I agressive?