Sunday, January 09, 2005
“Hi! I'm Charley Foxtrot!”
Between control panels and “Project White Elephant” it may appear that my new job sucks.
It doesn't really. Aside from the control panels and “Project White Elephant” the job is quite easy really, and gives me time to do my own thing.
But like my other job (managing several servers) when it sucks it sucks.
I'm spending this fine Sunday evening dealing with the current lunacy that is “Project White Elephant.” The particular lunancy I'm talking about would probably be helped with UCARP but sadly, not only do we not have the time to get this installed and tested, but we (myself and C) are not in full control of the project (there's apparently a third name server that's running Bind 9x which is causing all sorts of fun) so we're stuck with the current solution.
Blah.
More Server Madness
This site contains information relating to the development of Linux kernel-based virtual servers running on a single piece of hardware. This particular virtual server model is implemented through a combination of “security contexts”, segmented routing, chroot, extended quotas and some other standard tools.
Mark sent me that link, saying it could help with some of the control panel madness around here and even allow C to sell a virtual server for the more advanced customers (instead of a dedicated host) I don't think it will really solve the problems I have with the control panels.
I don't want to use the control panels.
But our customers do.
Generally, C only uses Insipid
for his control panels, and
it's not like the customers are clamoring to use other ones like
Blech
or Badminton
—Insipid
works well
enough for them (and if they are advanced enough to want something else,
they're advanced enough for a dedicated server).
“Project White Elephant” is the anomaly here, running both
Blech
and Badminton
. It's running
Blech
because you can get support up the wazoo, and
Badminton
only because the other admin working on the
project can't configure DNS using
the command line (okay, there's also the issue that Blech
comes
with Bind
9x, and there's a feature we need that's only available for Bind 8x but
that's another rant).
Using a virtual server won't really fix that problem.
It's a nice idea though (and yes, I will keep this link in mind for the future).