IMEI Check Code

This is mostly a reminder to myself:

(for most phones) To check a phone for its IMEI number(s), from the phone's dialer, type *#06#.

Leadership...

When the Russian leadership makes the american (uncapitalized intentionally) leadership look like fools, there's really something to be said.  I'm not sure what that thing is that should be said, but it cannot be good.

Woefully lacking predators

Once upon a time, a friend of mine, and I came to the realization that one of the reasons the species had gotten lazy, sloppy, stupid, and a number of other things was because we lacked something resembling a proper predator.

Humans, as a group and individually, become a bit stupid and lazy in general without upward pressure.  Sometimes this pressure comes in the form of an enemy to be defeated, such as during World War I and II.  Other times it exhibits because there is a predator that must be defeated or avoided.  Minus this upward pressure, the species has this tendency to generate some silly illusions of stability.  Preemptively, I will say that "caste systems" and "slavery" are mechanisms that while "unfair" do tend to generate a semblance of stability.  Then, there's another number of misguided people that would see something (that appears to be) more powerful (than themself) and they would try to make a god from the thing, and start worshiping it, leading to human sacrifice and other horrors.


He suggested that humans are naturally the only real predator for humans.  I agreed, but lamented the fact that humans being humans, most underestimate the capacity of fellow humans to be truly inhumane creatures.  As such most humans are incapable of seeing their fellow humans as predators that must be defeated or avoided.  So, humans just aren't enough of a threat to be taken seriously until it is too late.  I guess that's the hallmark of a great predator.  The predator isn't noticed until it is too late.

Then, humans being humans, entirely too many are incapable of learning anything from experiences that are not their own.  They can see another person being attacked and totally omit any possibility from their thinking that the same thing could happen to them.  As thinking goes, we're a pretty dense species.

I have lamented a lack of zombies, vampires, werewolves, hostile space aliens... pick a poison.  I continue to.  In the face of zombies, stupid causes like "climate change", welfare, immigration "equality", "gay marriage", eat the rich, and a host of other stupid (typically liberal led) causes would not just take a back burner, but they'd be thrown off the stove because they're useless.  On the plus side, zombies would willingly comply with gun-free zones, and kill people anyway.

From the "religion of peace" (which in all honesty is repressive and hasn't really ever been peaceful) has arisen ISIS.  The behavior of these predators can only truthfully be categorized as predatory.  And yet again, humans just don't get it.  The american president doesn't get it.  Most of the american public doesn't get it.  (the anti-capitalization isn't a typo, it's on purpose)

I wished for a better predator.  As the djinn's warning goes, "Be careful what you wish for.  You just might get it."  Well, we got it.  It hasn't helped one bit.  I still want zombies, or vampires, or aliens (from space, not Mexico).

Oh well.  I'll keep wishing and hope it eventually doesn't backfire.

ZFS:Main

ZFS is included in FreeBSD and several other operating systems and comes bundled with the supporting tools. This supplies a very large number of tools and toys for managing your disks and filesystems.

Included ZFS features:
(These features are baked into ZFS, but that does not mean that all of them are a good idea)

Disk Management - disk(s) assigned to ZFS pools do not need to be micromanaged by other tools
ZFS Managed Software Raid - stripe, mirror, or raidz (or, some combination/variation like Striped-Raidz)
Datasets - child filesystems of the pool, no special partitioning required.
Volumes - virtual disks created from raw storage of the pool, no special partitioning required
Transparent Compression - lz4, lzjb, gzip, gzip-[1-9], zle, or none (Pool version 5000, also called "feature flags" added lz4 to this list)
Dedup - Identical blocks are not stored more than once. VERY HIGH MEMORY COST, AND SPEED IS SACRIFICED, PLUS OTHER HAZARDS. NOT RECOMMENDED, but available.
Snapshots - read-only reference to a dataset or volume as of a specific moment in time
Cloning - replica of a dataset/volume created from a snapshot

ZFS Structural Elements:
vdev - structural elements that make up a pool
Pool - the nexus that presents the underlying storage devices
Dataset - a child filesystem of the pool
Volume - a child of the pool that acts as a virtual block device
Snapshot - a point-in-time reference to the state of a dataset or volume
Clone - a new dataset or volume that starts with a snapshot as its template

Further Reading/Links

Link		Source		Notes
FreeBSD zpool man page		freebsd.org		for creation, manipulation, and destruction of pools
FreeBSD zfs man page		freebsd.org		for creation, manipulation, and destruction of datasets, snapshots, clones, and volumes
FreeBSD zdb man page		freebsd.org		ZFS debugger - useful for checking pool and vdev parameters
FreeBSD ZFS wiki		freebsd.org
ZFS Tuning Guide		wiki.freebsd.org
ZFS Best Practices Guide		solarisinternals.com		Some is Solaris specific, but most is equally valid
ZFS snapshot, clone, volume		googlux.com
Dedup details		blogs.oracle.com		In case you're curious about dedup. Dedup is NOT recommended
Migrating ZFS pools		docs.huihoo.com
zfs copies=x		blogs.oracle.com
Moving ZFS pools		barbz.com.au
ZFS Compression - A Win-Win		blogs.oracle.com
Becoming a ZFS Ninja		blogs.oracle.com		(video)
ZFS Cheatsheet		lildude.co.uk
ZFS: Read Me 1st		nex7.blogspot.com
Fixing the 4k problem		blog.monsted.dk

Originally from zfs/main.txt · Last modified: 2014/09/04 06:49 by killermist  This is a copy, just in case.

"Popular" protocols comparison

Very unofficial protocols comparison

These conclusions are ENTIRELY the responsibility of me. You can blame me for anything you disagree with.

Protocol		Lan/Internet		Scope		Complexity
HTTP		both pretty safe		fairly universal		fairly simple, great for downloading of static files
FTP		fair for both		diminishing, thankfully		Not “hard” to use, but also not the easiest to set up. Also not particularly secure
TFTP		lan, mostly		obscure		Used mostly for booting diskless workstations. No idea about setup difficulty.
SMB		lan. NOT internet-safe.		Mostly windows, some media players		Sometimes quirky to configure initially, pretty easy to use.
NFS		lan. not recommended for internet		Mostly unix-like		Setup generally fairly simple, both for server and clients. No encryption included
AFP		mostly lan, I think		Mostly Apple		Not sure, never personally tried. Some users have easy success, others, not.
SSH		either. not recommended to expose root account to internet		Mostly unix-like, and windows via programs		Very simple to administer.
RSYNC (over SSH)		Same as SSH		Mostly unix-like console		Very simple to use, no rsync service to configure, only SSH required
RSYNC (module/service)		either, if secured properly		Mostly unix-like, often GUI		A little hard to configure initially.
Torrent		almost entirely internet		fairly universal		Popular for distributing large files to/from large communities. Can be a little challenging to configure initially. Should be fairly easy to use after.
Unison		Not sure, maybe reliant on SSH		mostly unix-like ??		Not sure, kinda tried and failed to use it once. Sorry
iSCSI		lan. internet probably too slow and not safe		growing		Used most often with VMs or diskless workstations. Sometimes hard to configure, but very powerful.
UPnP		Only heard of on lan, thankfully		growing, unfortunately		UPnP, as a concept needs to die in a fire. And manufacturers shouldn't have been so lazy as to add UPnP to their devices and then lie to consumers and say the device is “media ready”.
DAAP/iTunes		probably mostly lan, not sure		apple/windows mostly, I guess		Configuration looks maybe complicated. Not sure, haven't tried.

Originally from documentation/setup_and_user_guide/very_unofficial_protocol_comparison.txt · Last modified: 2014/02/19 14:29 (external edit)  This copy is here as a backup.

What a NAS should and should not be

This is one of my rants. Some people may disagree with the “bias” of the following. But I, killermist, WILL NOT assist anyone in doing any of the things listed below. Those things are things that a NAS should not be doing.

A NAS should be many things.

First and foremost, a NAS should be a storage system. In order to be a storage system that is useful (what good is storage if you can't get it to store or retrieve things?), it must include file transfer protocols (some of which are referred to as “streaming”, which is a fairly useless designation, in general). This carves out a giant area that a NAS should do. And it should do those things expertly. ZFS creates a very stable storage platform. UFS can be used if you don't care about the integrity of your data, because it doesn't checksum the data, and it will gleefully return corrupted data to you as if it were 100% healthy. The list of valid and useful protocols for reading, writing, and moving files is quite comprehensive. NFS, SSH/SSHFS/rsync, SMB and HTTP make up a very comprehensive and useful block. Bittorrent, as a long-running, random availability protocol adds some very useful flexibility. AFP and novelty protocols like UPnP or iTunes add some misguided but commonly requested stuff and can round out a protocol set pretty completely.
That being said, there are a good number of things that a NAS should not be. Further, the list of things that a NAS should not be are things that really should never be supported. Asking me how to install ANYTHING will likely red-flag you as someone that is probably beyond help.

Hint: A good NAS, capable of using the power of ZFS is probably based on FreeBSD. It is probably NOT based on Linux (mostly because of license reasons). So, while some knowledge gained from learning to administrate a Linux system may apply, A LOT of how Linux works is completely invalid in dealing with a good NAS distribution. For almost every action in a good NAS system, using the CLI (SSH or connected screen/keyboard) is entirely the wrong method since the WebGUI should be where configuration changes are made. Furthermore, the "sudo" command, that many Linux people have grown accustomed to, does not exist. Asking why it isn't “installed by default” or why it “can't be installed” is likely to be met with groans and facepalms. 

Among the things that a NAS should not be are the following items, which make up a non-complete list.

• Usenet downloader - You should be using some other machine to do that. Using the NAS to store the results, through a mounted share, great. But A NAS should not be that. There are many low-cost, low-power solutions for little headless tasks like that. Pushing the NAS to do them is not wise.
• Database server - Again, using another machine to run a database server, and storing the database data on a NAS, great. But a NAS is not intended to handle database serving duties. Again, many low-cost, low-power solutions exist to do this. Hey, it could even be your Usenet downloader box…
• Media transcoder - This includes the (misguidedly included) transcoding in UPnP. The processing power and ram of the NAS are supposed to be used for moving hard drive data to/from the network, and not mangling that data along the way for “compatibility” with woefully incompetent devices. If your device isn't compatible with your media, then either fix the media or fix the device. Transcode the data yourself, or get a media player that works right. And no, game consoles are not a good choice for playing media. Anyone that tells you otherwise is lying to you, possibly because they've been lied to them-self. Programs like Handbrake make it really easy to transcode your videos into a format that competent devices can play. But it will require another machine to chug away at the video for a while, depending on the quality level you're demanding of it. But demanding transcoding from the NAS will only slow things down and make responsiveness worse.
• Virtual Machine Host - Again, the processing power and ram of the NAS are supposed to be used for moving hard drive data to/from the network. Wasting your CPU time or memory on running virtual machines means that those resources are unavailable to other more important tasks, like making sure the data can get to/from the network in an expedient manner. In particular, if your NAS only had the recommended quantity of ram for the size of your ZFS storage to begin with, it is especially unwise to take any of that ram away. Even the setup, configuration, and especially troubleshooting of jails (which are virtual-machine-like), which tend to be an included technology in FreeBSD, are a bad idea. So, when someone sets up a jail, and then breaks anything, they will find no help from me for fixing their mess.

Common nonsense

To address some grumbling I can already hear forming, here's some retorts to what I know people are probably about to ask:

• “But, bittorrent is included in a number of NAS solutions. Why not have [X]?” – Transmission is an annoying double-edged sword. It uses the bittorrent protocol to help move files to and from the NAS. Just like NFS, SSH, or SMB. This makes it a valid and useful protocol. In particular, this is a question most commonly asked by people wanting Usenet downloading or other file-leeching mechanisms. Neither of these is a server-like function, which is pretty essential to how a NAS works. If I had to choose to either add these other non-server functions or to remove bittorrent, I'd willingly jettison bittorrent as a supported protocol for the sake of the rest of the system.
• “But my media player uses UPnP and needs things to be transcoded on the fly.” – Get a media player that isn't crap. TV and game console manufacturers have gotten really lazy and bought into the lie and simplicity (stupidity) of adding a broken protocol that then permits them to slap on the “media ready” sticker to their product. Consider these: 
  Scenario 1, I transcode my media once on a client machine and store it on the NAS to play to my media player using SMB. I spend the CPU time ONCE ONLY. I'm also doing it on a machine that isn't the NAS, so the network isn't suffering from a slowed NAS while the encode occurs. And I'm left with a nice pretty file as the result of that spent CPU time. Two, three, 10, even 100 devices can all play video via SMB with no problem provided there's enough network bandwidth and raw disk speed. 
  Scenario 2, some fool uses UPnP to stream files to some broken thing, like PS3/4 or Xbox-something. Every friggin' time a file gets played, CPU time must be wasted (more energy usage and cost, duh) to reencode it on the fly. Worse, all this wasted CPU time leaves no result for having been wasted. Further, because the NAS (and not some other machine) is wasting CPU time encoding, every other task on the NAS has less CPU time available. Simultaneous encodes because of simultaneous viewers can seriously waste CPU time and kneecap NAS performance.

Originally from what_nas4free_is_and_is_not.txt · Last modified: 2015/06/01 09:15 by killermist

FreeNAS Grievances

This listing is maintained by killermist, and not an official rant, so complain to killermist if you think any of this is in error. (hint: it isn't)

Plugins

Such a bad idea from the word “Go.”
Let's start with a definition. NAS means “Network Attached Storage”. It doesn't mean ANYTHING else. It definitely does NOT mean “database server”, or “media transcoder”, or “usenet scheduler and downloader”.
In opening up the Pandora's Box that is “plugins”, it encourages users to do with their NAS things that a NAS isn't intended to do.
On top of this, there's the problem of feature bloat and feature lag.
With users doing so many unrelated and inappropriate things with their NAS, extra care must be taken to not break any of the user's precious plugins. So, every time some feature or program that is in the core system gets upgraded, all kinds of stupid extra tests have to be performed to make sure they don't break user plugins. There's your feature lag.
If in order to keep user plugins running, 2 versions of some thing must coexist, that means you're wasting space keeping the 2 versions of the thing around. There's your feature bloat.

ZFS Partitioning

Where to start with this abomination…. ZFS is memory hungry. Duh. If you don't have enough of it, you're going to have problems. Remember this, I'll come back to it.
Anyone that knows anything about ZFS knows that you want to feed it raw disks to manage. Why?

1. If ZFS controls the whole drive, it can intelligently choose what, if anything, to do with the drive's in-built cache.
2. ZFS should, in anything resembling optimal conditions, be the only user of a drive, and not be challenged for I/O time.

Remember how I said that ZFS is memory hungry? Well, what genius idea did the FreeNAS people have to deal with people without enough memory? SWAP! That's right, swap. And how do they plan to pay for this swap? Well, by taking every disk that will be part of a ZFS pool and partitioning a few percent of it to be swap. Then they take and make the remaining space a partition that will be used for the pool.
So, they wasted space. They put something on ZFS disks that will likely challenge ZFS for I/O time. AND they've prohibited ZFS from exercising its own control over the drive cache.
But, that's one of the things I'd expect from a system designed by committee.

ZFS Documentation

As is only possible in a system designed by committee, the documentation takes liberties with the language and nomenclature that can only confuse users when they try to figure out what they're doing. For example. In ZFS, a volume is a virtual block device that acts like a disk. A volume IS NOT a pool. A volume is a child construct of a pool.
But, the people creating FreeNAS obviously know NOTHING about ZFS, so I can't be surprised that they screwed up the nomenclature/language.

This was originally posted on  the NAS4Free wiki by me.  This is just another copy, just in case.

I am not a peaceful person

I had an epiphany recently.  On the scope and scale of epiphanies that I've had (in the past) this one wasn't a big one, but it was a piece of the puzzle that finally fell into place and gave me a "Well, duh.  Why didn't I realize that before?"-type reaction.

I am not a peaceful person.
This is in direct contradiction to what others might assume from my actions (more precisely lack thereof).

• I have not yet killed a human and hope to have the good luck to not have to within my lifetime.  

• Since elementary school, I don't think it could not be said that I've thrown a punch (actually at anything, human or creature).

These elements of evidence are not necessarily evidence of peacefulness. 

I know that I am possessed of (or in possession of) a quantity (legion?) of war-like states.  Since these states are all housed within me, each has a number of big, fat targets to go after.  Elitism, stupidity, willful ignorance, the left, too-much-order-at-the-expense-of-liberty, government, lack-of-government... the list goes on.  All of these have an army or at least some soldier on the battlefield that is my mind.  With the war-like states being kept so close to each other, each one constantly gains and loses ground against the others.  None lack for targets and none are ever really at rest.  One particular army of note is the "Don't do something stupid" army, which has some really big guns and some awesome snipers.  That army knows that there's a war on.  And it knows that there are only so many threats it can neutralize.  And that one army does an expert job at keeping the others from running amok (and ruining my life).

I look peaceful.  Mathematically, that may hold true, generally.  But, it completely misses the truth regarding what's going on below the surface.

Survivor Season 30, episodes 1-5

I'm feeling fairly solid at this point.  I haven't yet seen some obviously incompetent  defeat some more obviously capable person.

Episode 1, So Kim and Joaquin proved to be untrustable (hopefully permanently) and So got sent home.
Episode 2, Vince showed too much attachment, plus or minus, and repelled a number of others.
Episode 3, Nina tried too hard to play the victim.  She may not realize that she's playing that role.  She got voted out, and may finally realize that it was because she played a role that was unwanted.
Episode 4, Meh.  Lindsey got removed.  I didn't hate her, but I didn't love her.
Episode 5, Max was a bit of a weirdo.  Things were in a considerable bit of flux.  The instability he represented was something that others had a responsibility to redact.

I can hope that the rest of the season makes sense.  But after last season, I'm trying to restrain my hopes.  Last season really poisoned me on the series.

The Curse of Knowledge

Have you recently started to recoil in horror at having to know [pick something]?  I didn't previously recoil from knowledge.  I assimilated it.  Then when queried about anything related to the topic, I regurgitated some simulacrum of what I had consumed.  I never once thought about attribution, but my domains were generally websites, chat channels, and spoken word.  The purpose was to spread knowledge.
Sadly, I'm starting to develop a habit of recoiling in horror at having to learn things because to learn it means that sooner or later, I'll have to cite the source of the damned thing.  My memory is vast, but I CAN NOT remember every stupid source for every stupid fact or opinion which I absorb.  I could take some machine I have and make it a database of "where I got [x] from" thinger, but that's totally unrealistic.  Maybe I could push that database into the cloud (and then pay for that ... monthly) but again, that's wasteful.  What is the purpose?

Is wisdom intended to be only held for a short term and then destroyed?

I tend to buy books, not necessarily because I intend to read them again, but because it is a story that I really love.  If I later pass those to my nieces and nephews am I doing a service or a disservice by expanding their knowledge?  If that child, which I love, then says (or types) something that they got from some book that I passed them, will they then be accused of plagiarism?  Will I be culpable in causing grief and possibly permanent damage to the reputation of a child which I love?  Is my responsibility then to keep the child ignorant of things I know?  Further, is it my responsibility to keep myself ignorant of as much as possible because to learn things can cause irreparable harm later? Should I shield instead of exposing my extended family to Piers Anthony, Robert Heinlein, R.A. Salvatore, and Stephen King because some idea or phrasing may "look like" something that they may formulate on their own later?

The species seems to be in flux and day-by-day, ignorance seems to be heralded as a virtue while wisdom seems to be shunned.  Is wisdom no longer wanted?  Is it the goal to be an ignorant sheep that does what it is told, and no thought is applied?

(side note: I somewhat equate wisdom and knowledge, though they're not exactly the same.  Intelligence is something else which isn't strictly necessary.  Some unintelligent people make some very good decisions regularly because they know who/what to listen to and who/what to not listen to.  Some "intelligent" people make some really dumb decisions, REPEATEDLY because they're using "facts" that are entirely false.  You get some real facts to penetrate those craniums, and those people will either recoil in horror at what they've done, or they'll embrace the dark side and keep going.)