Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from October 2012

12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:20:00 +0200

I work at the University of Oslo +looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general +all over the place. I am also a member (and currently leader) of +the NUUG association, which in turn +make me a member of USENIX. NUUG +is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free +software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX +is a US based member organisation with similar targets. And thanks to +these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine +;login: in the +mail several times a year. The magazine is great, and I read most of +it every time.

+ +

In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an +article by Stuart Kendrick from +Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled +"What +Takes Us Down" (longer version also +available +from his own site), where he report what he found when he +processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the +last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day, +etc etc. The article is a good read to get some empirical data on +what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired +me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.

+ +

The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly +standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when +it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the +assumtions on scope and user impact. Here is the two example from the +article: First the unplanned outage: + +

+Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
+Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
+Start: 	     Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
+End: 	     Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
+Duration:    40 minutes
+Scope:	     Exchange 2003
+Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
+             a cluster failover.
+
+User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
+             access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
+Technician:  [xxx]
+

+ +Next the planned outage: + +

+Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
+Severity:    Major (Planned)
+Start:	     Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
+End:	     Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
+Duration:    10 hours
+Scope:	     H2 Transport
+Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
+	     stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
+	     4510s.
+User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
+     	     this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
+     	     connectivity.
+Technician:  [xxx]
+

+ +

He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have +been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them +into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601 +dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask +people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time +format listed above). There are also other issues with the format +that could be improved, read the article for the details.

+ +

I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a +good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the +university too. We do register +planned +changes and outages in a calendar, and report the to a mailing +list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a +report to the same location for unplanned outages. Perhaps something +for other sites to consider too?

Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 20:30:00 +0200

A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of +how +Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account +and refuse to tell the customer why. If a real book store did +this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property +and theft. The story has spread around the net today. A bit more +background information is available in Norwegian from +digi.no. +It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used +this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was +introduced many years back. And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was +willing to + +break into customers equipment and remove the books people had +bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the +customers who had bought it. From the official comments, it even +sounded like +Amazon +would never do that again. And here we are, three years +later.

+ +

And thought this action is +against +Norwegian regulations and law, it is according to the terms of use +as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to +Norwegian laws. It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms +of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer +rights.

+ +

Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without +unacceptable terms. For example +Project Gutenberg (about 40,000 +books), Project Runenberg (1,652 +books) and The Internet +Archive (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which +can read by anyone and shared with anyone.

+ +

Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In +the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon +restored the account of the user, as reported by +digi.no +and NRK. +Apparently public pressure work. The story from Martin have seen +several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite +a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention. But even when the +account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist. I recommend +reading two opinions from +Simon +Phipps and +Glen +Moody if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more +details about the original story.

The fight for freedom and privacy

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 10:50:00 +0200

Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the +drain, and it is hard to fight against it. I try to do my best, but +time is limited. I hope you do your best too. A few years ago I came +across a marvellous drawing by +Clay Bennett +visualising some of what is going on. + +

+ +

+Â«They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary +safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.Â» - Benjamin Franklin +

+ +

Do you feel safe at the airport? I do not. Do you feel safe when +you see a surveillance camera? I do not. Do you feel safe when you +leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions? I do not. I +just remember the +Panopticon, and can not help to think that we are slowly +transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.

57 kommuner omfavner nÃ¥ FiksGataMi

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 23:40:00 +0200

+ +

For noen dager siden omfavnet nok en kommune NUUGs +FiksGataMi. Med 57 kommuner +som lenker til FiksGataMi fra sine hjemmesider er "markedsandelen" +13% (av 429 kommuner). Sist ut er VÃ¥ler kommune, som slÃ¥r +fÃ¸lge med kommunene Askim, AskÃ¸y, Audnedal, Aure, Balestrand, BÃ¦rum, +Eide, Farsund, Flekkefjord, Folldal, Gran, Grue, Hadsel, Halden, +Halsa, Hamar, HobÃ¸l, HoltÃ¥len, HÃ¦gebostad, HÃ¸yanger, Kongsberg, +Kristiansund, Kvinesdal, Kviteseid, Levanger, Lindesnes, Luster, +Lyngdal, LÃ¸ten, Mandal, Marnardal, Moss, Namsos, Nissedal, Nordreisa, +Randaberg, Rindal, Sel, Sirdal, Skiptvet, Sortland, Spydeberg, +StjÃ¸rdal, Stord, SÃ¸gne, SÃ¸r-Odal, Tolga, Trysil, Tynset, TysvÃ¦r, +Ullensvang Herad, Vennesla, Verdal, VÃ¥gan, VÃ¥gÃ¥ og Ãseral. Oppdatert +liste og kart er tilgjengelig fra +NUUGs +wiki. + +

I snitt rapporteres det nÃ¥ via FiksGataMi ca. 110 meldinger fra +innbyggerne i uka om feil pÃ¥ offentlig infrastruktur.

Netflix krever at du frasier deg dine forbrukerrettigheter...

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 15:30:00 +0200

Filmtjenesten Netflix lanseres i Norge, med en jublende presse pÃ¥ sidelinjen. Men har journalistene lest bruksvilkÃ¥rene? Synes de @@ -58,13 +264,25 @@ personvernlovgivingen) eller leverer en tjeneste som ikke holder mÃ¥l? Nei takk. Med slike bruksvilkÃ¥r takker jeg hÃ¸flig nei til tilbudet, og de fÃ¥r ikke meg som kunde fÃ¸r de har en helt annen tilnÃ¦rming mot sine kunder.

+ +

Oppdatering 2012-10-18: BÃ¥de +Aftenposten, +NRK og +Teknofil +har snappet opp saken (dog nevner ikke NRK kilde, sÃ¥ de kan jo ha +oppdaget det selv). Veldig bra at flere blir oppmerksom pÃ¥ slike +ting. Â«- Helt hinsides, mener ForbrukerrÃ¥det om Netflix' +brukervilkÃ¥rÂ», siterer Aftenposten. Og +Aftenposten +melder videre at ForbrukerrÃ¥det vil granske TV-bransjen med bakgrunn i +dette.

Alternativindustrien og NRKs Folkeopplysningen - debatten sÃ¥ langt

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 19:40:00 +0200

NRKs program Folkeopplysningen @@ -77,9 +295,16 @@ forsÃ¸kt Ã¥ samle alle debattinnleggene her.

+2012-10-25 +Hvem bor i tomannsboliger? - morgenbladet.no + +
2012-10-18 +Postmodernisme? - morgenbladet.no
2012-10-16 Sukkerpiller -og silkehansker - fritanke.no.
2012-10-15 Â«VitenskapeligÂ» @@ -215,13 +440,16 @@ for Ã¥ ha hjulpet meg Ã¥ fÃ¸lge debatten.

Bonuslenke til deg som lurer pÃ¥ om det er sÃ¥ farlig med alternativ behandling. Sjekk Â«What's the harmÂ» for informasjon om hva som kan gÃ¥ galt. + +
Oppdatering 2012-10-30: Lagt inn to nye debattinnlegg publisert +etter 2012-10-16.