Blogs

Kernel upgrade? Ksplice

Ksplice allows system administrators to apply security patches to the Linux kernel without having to reboot. Ksplice takes as input a source code change in unified diff format and the kernel source code to be patched, and it applies the patch to the corresponding running kernel. The running kernel does not need to have been prepared in advance in any way.

To be fully automatic, Ksplice's design is limited to patches that do not introduce semantic changes to data structures, but most Linux kernel security patches don't make these kinds of changes. An evaluation against Linux kernel security patches from May 2005 to December 2007 finds that Ksplice can automatically apply 84% of the 50 significant kernel vulnerabilities from this interval.

God can now telnet into your box

Feels good to start programming again. Even better writing patches for free software. Just finished adding telnet support for God. Now you can have god telnet to your server issue some commands and verify the output. The code is still pretty cruddy. :(

P1i: Must have applications

IM+
Instant messenger. Ability to connect to all the major services.

Fring
VoIP Client. Hook up your Gizmo account, accept and make long distant calls for free.

Fring
VoIP Client. Hook up your Gizmo account, accept and make long distant calls for free.

ScummVM
Game emulator. Remember King's Quest? Well you can now play it on your P1i

Virtual Radio
Web Radio. Listen to online radio station.

JotSpot relaunches as Google Sites

Now I only wish they would integrate my personal JotSpot Wiki with my Google account.


We're contacting everyone who's expressed interest in learning of
JotSpot registration re-openings on the JotSpot website. And
today, we're excited to announce that JotSpot is working on Google
infrastructure and has been re-launched as Google Sites.

Google Sites is the latest offering from Google Apps, a suite of
products designed to improve communication and collaboration
amongst employees, students, and groups. Google Sites makes
creating a team web site as easy as editing a document. You can
quickly gather a variety of information in one place -- including
videos, calendars, presentations, attachments, and gadgets -- and
easily share it for viewing or editing with a small group, their
entire organization, or the world.

To get started with Google Sites, you'll first need to sign up for
the Google Apps edition that's right for you (if you're not
already a Google Apps user). Start the sign-up process at:

http://sites.google.com

Scaling up with Rails and EC2

A challenge I faced recently was "scaling up on demand" (without manual intervention). EC2 was the my platform of choice because I could write a small script to manage all my machines. EC2 being Xen based also allowed me to create custom images of my application servers.

  1. Hook into the load balancer's health monitor
  2. If the load goes over 70% launch a new ec2 instance
  3. If the load goes under 50% remove an instance

Example:

  • @ 7am - 2 servers
  • @ 1pm - 4 servers
  • @ 6 pm - 3 servers
  • @ 9 pm - 2 servers

I have a base of 2 machines, and no real limit set to the maximum number of ec2 machines that can launched. The script is set to send me a mail every time a new machine is launched or terminated.

Now I am trying to automate creation of MySQL Slaves

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