Perl
Laptop upgrade horror story
- Posted by Rob (#1) on March 19, 2006 22:17 CET
Last week I decided to upgrade the software on my laptop. I had been running an old version of KDE for quite a while and ignored the "if it isn't broken, don't fix it" rule by jumping into FreeBSD's ports system. Quick summary of that adventure: I broke it. For some reason kdeinit hang indefinitely because DCOPserver had some problems with ICE. I'm sure I could fix it if I really wanted to, but for some reason I've been dying to get back to Slackware anyway.
So, I'm currently downloading the lastest Slackware torrents while uploading my personal files and configuration settings to a backup drive. Hopefully my system is up and running again before midnight. And hopefully I won't have to spend all Monday making a new build of the development repository we use at work. I probably will though: we use Perl and Perl is a language, not a platform. To do anything useful with it one has to navigate through dependency hell a few times. (Sometimes the mere number of "use this" and "use that" includes are a bigger part of a module than actual code, go figure.)
Wish me luck.
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- Tags: KDE, laptop, FreeBSD, ICE, DCOP, Perl
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How to convince management of necessities?
- Posted by Rob (#1) on February 24, 2006 15:47 CET
Today I have been installing Debian on a dozen servers at work, in pairs of two identical machines at the time. So far so good: every single server is shiny, clean and consistent with its counterpart. But therein lies the problem: how to ensure that these servers stay in sync when it comes to code updates to our own software, as well as configuration settings? I once wrote a script called cvssync which did just that, but I am afraid I won't get the resources to reimplement such as system.
The alternative would be a custom-made automated system (but if a proper one would exist then I doubt I ever had to write cvssync in the first place) or something I would definitely hate: procedures. Not that I have a dislike of procedures in general, but I can already guarantee that when we enact procedures at some point:
- dependencies for our own Perl code come from CPAN, not Debian packages
- our own scripts will simply be copied onto the servers without any kind of version control made possible by either packaging them or using cvssync
- configuration settings will not have a proper backup, version control and in the end will be in all sorts of states except for synchronisation
- undocumented hacks will enter the system without anyone documenting changes
- and so on..
In other words, if I don't get to reimplement any sort of automated synchronisation system for code and configuration settings.. my job as a system administrator will be hell.
Any tips on how I should convince management that this is vital for our operations?
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- Tags: Perl, Debian, cvssync, CPAN
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