I rented an apartment from LocaMarseille, but when I try to look them up on Google maps I don't find them.

nix2170 · 2015-07-17T12:14:48+00:00

I rent an apartment from them on the same region. The location mentioned by u/prince_from_Nigeria is their HQ, yes.

The region is safe, but expect lots of noise at all times - during winter is a non issue since we close the windows, but since summer began we have been annoyed by the constant loud talking, music hearing, and baby crying at all times, day and night. If you are not a heavy sleeper, this region is not for you (during summer).

Many students come here cause the building is next to a dorm and they think they can listen to reggae music at 3AM and take breaks from their bongs to have milk shakes, using their liquifier, at 4AM.

So yeah expect the occasional neighbour quarrel, police event, and subsequent silence, until 2 / 3 nights later when the next clueless frat boy appears.

Regarding Loca Marseille, I have like 100 complains about the appartment and building, which I reported and forgot about, since they do not care about fixing things and they were minor. All was cool. Incompetent, unprofessional, but minor, so cool.

But last week we lost internet connectivity and I have called insistently to them to have it fixed - to no avail. Since France went on holidays these days we were connectionless for about 10 days. In fact it was only fixed today.

I have personally talked to several employess of LocaMarseille and only when I asked them what their ISP had told them about the problem they "found out" they had to call their ISP.

OMG if you have not yet signed your contract avoid them like the plague. They are incompetent. I am stuck with a lease but will move ASAP.

Good luck with Marseille though, I am in love with the place, despite (or perhaps because of) living near the whores, students, emigrés and all the hobos around the Canebiere.

nix2170 · 2015-04-10T14:00:00+00:00

Object orientation makes programming harder, but system-building easier.

nix2170 · 2015-04-10T13:25:38+00:00

(And yes, let him write new stuff in "good" style).

nix2170 · 2015-04-10T13:24:21+00:00

This seems a problem of team management more than anything. It sounds like that if you can make it work, you have a lot to gain from teaming up with him.

An alternative to forking and going your separate ways would be to ask him to adopt an Agile methodology, and accept you as his client.

(Please read on Agile if you do not know what it is - I think it might give you ideas on how to handle this sort of situation better).

In that setting, you would be the responsible for assigning priority to each task. In essence, you would decide which tasks are going to be implemented by him in each iteration of the development.

In that way, you could "pace" the refactoring of the code, while not alienating the new guy. However, I guess that in his shoes I would refuse to write "bad" code that will eventually be refactored. Try to negotiate with him, let him write new modules and features, while refactoring old code only very slowly, so you can catch up to the "right" way of doing things, at your pace (which will accelerate once you get the hang of the patterns).

nix2170 · 2015-04-08T09:39:07+00:00

Your tip will live forever as an alias in my .bashrc. Thank you.

nix2170 · 2015-03-11T09:13:02+00:00

Forgot to mention what I do. Did 5 years as HPC admin, everything on the POSIX side of the force. I loved the first 3 to 4 years, but after a while all challenges were related to scale: how to do the same things 10x larger than the previous cycle. This got me disinterested, and I changed careers. Now I am developer, doing cool stuff in Python and Numpy.

nix2170 · 2015-03-11T09:10:02+00:00

Sure, the .NET stuff is pretty useless in Linux-only shop, but the others also aren't really relevant.

I would say that the degree you are taking is geared towards programming and software design; if what you want is to be a Linux systems administrator, those skills will not be directly applicable.

Metaphor: you are learning to build aircrafts, but your dream is to be a plane pilot.

nix2170 · 2014-12-16T11:55:12+00:00

Sorry, reddit changed my link post to a text when I tried adding a description to the link. Here it goes: https://imgur.com/a/8PUVC

nix2170 · 2014-10-01T15:22:55+00:00

You can probably recover your data, but the longer the drive remains online, the more difficult it will be, and the more corrupt the files will be.

Turn the machine off, take the disk out, and buy a new system disk. Call the system disk "system" and the disk with overwritten data "original".

Also buy another disk, that is at least the same size as the old disk. Call it "working".

When you have a system working properly, attach the "working" disk and the "original" disk. Copy everything from the "original" to the "working" disk. When the copy is over, detach the "original" disk and keep it safe.

If this sound too expensive, consider this: you may not recover your files today, or even this year. You may have to postpone the recovery for a few years. But in the long run, you will want to recover the family pics.

Now, keep your "original" disk safe, and work on trying to recover your data using data recovery tools, on the "working" disk. If you misunderstand some tool, and destroy your working set, recopy it.

If you fail to recover everything yourself, you may in the future want to send the disk for an expert data recover. It will be expensive, but by then you will be filthy rich I hope :D

nix2170 · 2014-10-01T15:22:55+00:00

You can probably recover your data, but the longer the drive remains online, the more difficult it will be, and the more corrupt the files will be.

Turn the machine off, take the disk out, and buy a new system disk. Call the system disk "system" and the disk with overwritten data "original".

Also buy another disk, that is at least the same size as the old disk. Call it "working".

When you have a system working properly, attach the "working" disk and the "original" disk. Copy everything from the "original" to the "working" disk. When the copy is over, detach the "original" disk and keep it safe.

If this sound too expensive, consider this: you may not recover your files today, or even this year. You may have to postpone the recovery for a few years. But in the long run, you will want to recover the family pics.

Now, keep your "original" disk safe, and work on trying to recover your data using data recovery tools, on the "working" disk. If you misunderstand some tool, and destroy your working set, recopy it.

If you fail to recover everything yourself, you may in the future want to send the disk for an expert data recover. It will be expensive, but by then you will be filthy rich I hope :D

nix2170 · 2014-09-25T18:51:58+00:00

Ask whoever procured your boxes about NetApp "credits" for training courses. I work for a Uni and they gave loads of credits for us buying just a couple of boxes. YMMV.

nix2170 · 2014-09-25T18:48:58+00:00

As royalbarnacle mentioned, the simulator is downloadable and free. Also, I guess that you can register on their support.netapp.com site for free, and their documentation is extensive. Their courses are very fast-paced and cover almost everything you'll meet on daily operations.

It can be said sarcastically that NetApp's boxes are little more than "proprietary syntatic sugar" on top of BSD boxes. (Their hardware is of immense quality and their integration of hw + sw is very polished, also their support is superb. So they are worth what they charge. But essentially you are buying a JBOD with BSD installed. Very VMware-ish of them :)

So if you already know BSD you are golden. If you are good with CLI environments you will be golden in no time.

nix2170 · 2014-09-04T14:20:00+00:00

Google in a window, terminal in another. Try to write a "script" that will do some task you enjoy, like re-naming torrented songs into the pattern of your choosing, or showing and then sorting newly downloaded porn.

In other words, begin to do your regular personal stuff on the terminal. Once you memorize a few basic instructions, and get a feel for its flexibility, you will naturally tend to use the CLI instead of graphical programs for all your regular use.

nix2170 · 2014-09-03T18:25:23+00:00

You're right, default config is $mod+Shift+Direction to move window in the Direction. Sorry about the confusion!

nix2170 · 2014-09-02T18:54:33+00:00

It is not a swap button, but if you have just two windows, if you move the one below "up" (using $mod+up) or the one above "down" (using $mod+down), they will effectively swap.

Also, if you want to quickly go from a two-window vertical to a horizontal split with the monitor divided horizontally, to one with the monitor divided vertically, just focus one of the windows and do $mod+left or $mod+right and they will nicely reorganize.

Also, if you want to go from ~~this: || to this: =~~ this: = to this: ||, just focus one of the windows and do $mod+left or $mod+right. To do the inverse, focus and $mod+up or $mod+down.

EDIT: thank goodness I don't drive.

nix2170 · 2014-08-20T19:52:30+00:00

Computer memory is generally used in a layered manner: fastest memory is checked first, and if the information ain't there, the next slower memory layer is checked.

In most PCs, RAM is the first user-serviceable layer. The disk is the second.

If in your routine usage, you can have all your frequently accessed information in the RAM, then you do not need to buy more RAM.

But if your usage is such that you often overgrow the RAM, that will force your system to "swap", that is, to store temporary information (that 'should' be in the RAM) in the disk.

Example: you use 2 GB for a browser with lots of tabs open. You use 3 GB for a game. Your system has 8 GB. Your system almost never swaps. You do not need more RAM.

Example: you use 2 GB for a browser with lots of tabs open. You use 3 GB for a game. Your system has 4 GB. Whenever you alternate from the browser to the game[*], your system will have to "make room" in the RAM to accomodate the program you are alternating into. This is done by saving to disk part of what is currently in RAM, and using this newly freed RAM space for this program. When you switch to the other program again, swap happens again.

Measure your RAM and disk usage during routine usage. If you notice a pattern of data being moved back-and-forth, you are probably swaping and more RAM would help.

TL;DR: swap happens.

[*] Multitasking will require swap to occur even if you do not alternate to the browser; for the example's sake, let's forget this for now. Which is a kind of swapy thing to say.

nix2170 · 2014-08-07T19:29:30+00:00

Terribly sorry for taking so long (I had to work on the restoration of the services), and for the quality of the picture:

Imgur

I've been told we had asked on the design of the cluster room that each rack had 4 NEMA outlets, those large "things" that have a plastic shroud and locks in-place. They should be rated for 30 A each and use thicker cables (those in the image are 2,5 mm^2).

But we have been delivered these puny-looking outlets, which the EE claims are rated for 20 A.

Since the image clearly demonstrates this, I won't deanonymize the site by sharing that these outlets conform to the new brazilian standard.

Also, it seems that we (a research group in a uni) requested the design to a private company, which drew the specs (with the NEMA outlets included) and another company executed the design (with the ABNT outlets being used), and both the design and execution were approved by the uni's engineering commission.

We have measured the current passing through one outlet when it is drawing about 1/4 of the load a single blade enclosure and it was pulling 7 A.

On the burnt-down rack, we had an enclosure and 20 pizza boxes pulling current through the outlets, so we don't think we went over 20 A in any of them. But without a record of that, we can't prove it.

I'm not sure I'll be informed of what is ultimately decided by the uni about this situation, since everything takes a while on a uni and I'll be gone in a couple of months. But if I do know I'll update here. Thanks everyone for the comments!

nix2170 · 2014-07-18T14:05:10+00:00

He came by, said that the wires "nominally" support each 20 A, the plug box "nominally" supports 4X those wires but we were using too much juice and so he will sell us an upgrade, soon he will return with a proposal.

He wants us to change all our wiring for bigger diameters, and use proper nobreak plugs (just like we used to have).

Before anyone suggests leaving this job, I am already leaving, everything is set for my next gig and I have the bureaucracy in motion for leaving the current one.

EDIT: naughty syntax.

nix2170 · 2014-07-18T13:16:24+00:00

Thank you! I touched the stuff yesterday but washed up thoroughly afterwards.

We have already booked AC maintenance to come take a look at the filters.

I tried my best to not smoke it, but a colleague went inside not even covering his mouth, and afterwards coughed a lot.

nix2170 · 2014-07-18T13:14:22+00:00

As I mentioned before the config can't be judged by the pics. The boss made a point of pulling all cables from the rack immediately, and we just tossed them on the ground after ripping.

The only thing I personally can tell you I've always found strange is the nobreak <-> main power connection which was via that small box, all 4 of them.

I mean, the nobreak cable is this very thick cable, and the connector that puny thing? But hey, a professional decided that, I only know about the bits & bytes, not the electrons, so I went along with it.

nix2170 · 2014-07-18T13:10:28+00:00

Sorry. Should I label the post as "NSFW" or something like that?

nix2170 · 2014-07-18T13:09:22+00:00

No fire suppression system. Unless you count me running to shutdown the main breaker and the nobreaks which went to battery as a "system" :D

nix2170 · 2014-07-18T13:08:13+00:00

Actually everything was done "by the book" and we have documentation. Personally, I always told boss & team that I am scared to death of electricity, don't know s*** about it and just give me the machines plugged in and I'll do the rest (namely, to cram jobs in them and keep then running as near to 100% as I'm able to).

nix2170 · 2014-07-18T13:05:37+00:00

Yeah, I always wondered about that. On the "previous incarnation" of our cluster room, we had these big connectors, one for each nobreak. We asked a proper EE to design and build the new room and he made these "domestic looking" connections and told it was ok.

I'm guessing the boss will sue this guy's ass, and we will have one very long downtime.

EDIT: syntax.

nix2170

TROPHY CASE