Author Archives: Tigr

Containers gone wrong: lxc vs. xen

I run a few websites myself and I was always keen on making my life easier looking after them. So virtual servers and services are not something that I ignore if you catch my drift. I have been running xen for quite a long while and I have to say it is bothersome to upgrade all of those linux machines running this and that, isn’t it?

So I did try some other virtualization approaches before and I quite liked the idea of the OS level virtualization, that is similar to the regular BSD jails, but on linux and it worked nicely.The virtual machine was not that well isolated, I was a bit cautious to use it in production but the idea stuck – mainly because of the ease of maintaining the server, where you upgrade the OS only once and all VMs get the updates automatically, since they simply run from the root FS of the main machine, basically.

So when people started to come across with the lxc and docker, calling them “mature” and “OS level virtual machines”, I was rather excited to try them on. I thought they would provide the same idea – secure virtualization of the running processes environment while keeping the FS in sync with the main host, allowing for an easy maintenance.

Oh, boy, was I into a major disappointment! First, the whole thing of lxc is based on downloading virtual machines over the Internet from an insecure repository. Okay, we do that with Debian, but Debian has been around for many a decade, so we kinda trust them, all right? Why should I want to run my production services on a VM that has been installed by someone else and offered for me as a download? What a silly idea indeed.

But, secondly, it is no better than hardware-emulating hypervisor-based virtualization in terms of maintenance. Once you get this VM downloaded and installed, it behaves completely separately. You have to go to each VM and update it manually! Except that you share the kernel and you may have a compatibility problem there, oops. What sort of nonsense is that? Why would anyone want to move from xen to lxc if the maintenance is the same but security and quality is down the drain, eh? For some mythical changes in performance or what else?

So, to summarize: I say lxc and everything based on top of it sucks. It serves no real purpose, it is an over-complicated exercise in engineering that solves a non-existing problem (if any at all).

What we really need is something similar… -->

continue reading →

International marriage and living abroad

An interesting article from a lady living in an international marriage has prompted me thinking about her ideas and advice but I quickly realized that she is making false assumptions and leads us to wrong conclusions in general. So I will jot down my ideas here lest I forget them.

You see, her starting point seems to be that we need to discuss where to live and how to organize our life together if we are from different countries and cultures. On the surface, it seems like a really reasonable idea and then all the other things follow naturally: pick a safe country, make sure you get enough money to afford a good living standard, bla-bla-bla.

No. This is all wrong because it places us, men, squarely on the playing ground of women. Those are their values, their interests: comfort, safety, sufficient supplies to grow children and so on. All of those things do not matter if I come to ask the question that matters: I am a man and I have a purpose in life, would I sell my soul for more money, better climate or safer environment? Quite often, nowadays, men tend to answer “yes” to that question and in doing so they seize to be men proper and become surrogate women. And this is wrong.

A man, a proper grown up man, usually has ideas that are bigger than the minutiae of the current situation and living conditions. The man wants to conquer the world, create something monumental, change something grandiose in its momentum. The scale may be different depending on the man and his environment, but the ideas are always such that they surpass all this trivia of “where do we live and what will we eat tomorrow”.

Over the years, I myself have moved several times quite monumentally, changing countries and continents, disposing of everything I had collected and built. It was never to move where “the grass is greener” but always is to where my work and my interests take me. And I am sure that any man worth his salt will certainly want to do the same. Perhaps not all will act on it, but want they will.

So, the only thing I can tell to all of you girls out there who consider a marriage in general and an international marriage in particular: if you find a real man, your man will go wherever his passion takes him. You, sweet creations, will have to follow your men. Whether it is to the better or to the worse, you must be prepared to follow him and make the best out of whatever conditions you… -->

continue reading →

The Good and The Evil

I was sitting on my dragon hovering near our wall thinking “they found me, somehow they did”. Dragons and other flying creatures were popping into the space around me, most carrying warriors on their back. They were quite a distance away yet but they will be closing in soon. I wondered how long our defense shield would contain them … It will… For a while it will but the battle is unavoidable.

“Blow them”,- said the voice of our great wizard in my head. It sounded a lot like the voice of Dumbledore from “Harry Potter” or Gandalf from “Hobbit”, I thought. “The more you manage to blow up now, the less we will have to fight later”. And I thought that was a pretty good idea. And it may also slow them down a bit and give our guys more time to gather, perhaps.

I thought all that in a split second and did exactly like the voice suggested. An explosion of magic light rippled the surface of the wall and rushed out, destroying and blowing away everything in its path.

And our dragons arrived popping out of the wall, both them and warriors on their backs sparkling bright in the cool light of the morning. We rushed all together down the wall to the foot of the mountain where the battle was starting.

I watched in amazement how every our warrior was matched by an equal warrior on the dark side. How they battled and hanged in balance and I realized something deeply that I thought about before but never felt on such a profound level.

We are bound to a balance. We cannot destroy the dark and the evil. If we were to do that, what would that make us? We would not be good anymore. At least not all of us. The destroying part would be then the dark side, our friends would become the evil ones, the light would be subverted. We were bound to keep a balance, a precarious balance with the dark side forever if we wanted to keep the light of good in the world.

The evil does not have such qualms. They would destroy us and not think twice about it. In fact, if they destroyed the good, the lesser evil would become the good, you know. The evil would split into really evil and less evil, creating this surrogate good somehow.

I walked up the city wall on the hill, watched the battle and wept at this realization. And then I realized also that this, what I just imagined, might have already happened. We may just be the lesser evil. The thought horrified me.

And I woke up.… -->

continue reading →

Wakeboarding

I tried wakeboarding recently… Well, about a month ago, actually. I meant to write about it right away but it slipped through and I only now got around to writing about the awesome experience.

I tried snowboarding before and failed miserably. I tried surfing (in a training pool) and failed miserably. Now, suddenly, I could actually do something very similar and that was a lot of fun. I think I quite like the sport, I would not do it on purpose, like I could go skiing, for example, but being on a beach and seeing the setup…

I think I would go for it. It’s a lot of fun and it is also a heavy exercise. And if I ever get around to actually jumping… Yahoo! You can see how happy I am already with the small and simple exercises :)

… -->

continue reading →

Getting email off your Linux server with ssmtp and yandex

A quick note to self about configuration of servers with ssmtp and yandex mail service (any other would work too, of course). I keep forgetting how it is done and keep spending time looking about so here goes the summary.

Install ssmtp package, if missing, install also bsd-mailx.

Configuration for ssmtp goes into /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf

MailHub=smtp.yandex.ru:587 # Provider SMTP server hostname and port
UseStartTLS=YES # Secure connection (SSL/TLS)
FromLineOverride=YES # Force the From: line
Hostname=example.com # The name of this host
RewriteDomain=example.com # The host the mail appears to be coming from
Root=webmaster@example.com # Redirect mail for root@ to webmaster@example.com
AuthUser=webmaster@example.com # Provider mail account
AuthPass=password # The password for the mail account

Note that it is not UseTLS anymore but UseStartTLS, otherwise you’ll get

May 25 18:47:18 example sSMTP[315]: Creating SSL connection to host
May 25 18:47:18 example sSMTP[315]: SSL connection using (null)
May 25 18:47:18 example sSMTP[315]: Cannot open smtp.yandex.ru:587

Now all of the accounts that send email must be mentioned in the /etc/ssmtp/revaliases file and be mapped to this existing account at the provider:

root:webmaster@example.com:smtp.yandex.ru
www-data:webmaster@example.com:smtp.yandex.ru
cron:webmaster@example.com:smtp.yandex.ru

Now we have a working configuration but the password for the service is exposed in a world-readable config file. To fix that, we create a new group:

groupadd ssmtp

Change the ownership of both the config file and the sSMTP binary to this group:

chown :ssmtp /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf

chown :ssmtp /usr/sbin/ssmtp

Set the SGID bit for the binary so that others invoking it get the proper permissions:

chmod g+s /usr/sbin/ssmtp

And restrict the permissions of the config file:

chmod 640 /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf

Now everything should work like a charm… unless I forgot something again :)… -->

continue reading →

Invaders are changing the sexual life of Europe

Amazing how things are turning out in Europe nowadays with the influx of all the asylum seekers, refugees and other immigrants. The sexual life is definitely changing, most of the time unwillingly for the locals.

A surge in violent attacks and rape attempts on women and girls in Sweden caused the police to advice women not to go outdoors alone anymore. Sex attacks on girls and children in Germany cause the public authorities to introduce new rules: the public swimming pools will be sex segregated now. Moreover, the swimming pools “have also hired plainclothes security officials, dressed in swimwear to look like other visitors, who will be on patrol swimming in the pools and using the slides.” In Germany the sex attacks can be followed on a map created by volunteers drawing information from the media reported cases, called “Cologne every day“.

You would think the government may want to do something about it, right? Well, the Ministry of Health has put up an explicitly-illustrated website dedicated exclusively to promoting interracial and non-traditional sex between the nonwhite “refugees” and Europeans. The website says that its purpose is to give “advice on sex and sexuality for migrants who have not been living long in Germany.” The drawings on the website mostly depict interracial sex and the website also promotes homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, and “transgenderism.”

The website provides useful advice like “A man and a woman, or two men, can have sex with penetration of the anus. A woman cannot get pregnant through penetration of the anus. However, avoid semen leaking into the vagina.” For those girls, who are afraid to go out onto the streets, the site helpfully hints: “You can also have vaginal sex using objects, like a dildo or a vibrator (sex toys).” On the other hand, if you are a male and you are not sure whether you should get out onto the street or in a swimming pool and score, the site advises: “If you drink alcohol, you can feel more like having sex and you feel fewer restraints.” Yeah-hoo!

Overall, the government message leaves no uncertainty about one thing: anal intercourse between “migrants” and Europeans must be viewed by both sides as the new norm, whether the latter like it or not.… -->

continue reading →