moving parts of the kasper clan

One of the coolest things about Linux is the amazing amount of configurability it offers. One of those things that you’re allowed to choose in your Linux machine is the type of filesystem that your Linux machine will use.

Linux has, for the majority of its life, been tied to the ext2 filesystem. That stands for second extended filesystem, not that that means anything to you. But it’s a decently-fast filesystem that has done very well for Linux for a long time.

Well, times have changed, etc., etc., and folks are desiring more reliability, fault-tolerance, higher performance, more security, and other valuable features from their filesystems these days. And this is a good thing!

I have poked around a bit amongst these and other mysteries of the universe and have chosen to go with the XFS filesystem for Linux as my first choice. There are others that offer similar benefits to XFS, but for reasons best-described by the authors of XFS (can you say SGI? =:), XFS looks to me to be the next and bestest thing going.

I run debian, as I’ve said elsewhere, and after researching the subject for a few weeks, I made the decision to go with XFS. Now, this isn’t a trivial matter yet, at least not for the debian users, since XFS isn’t included in the kernel source that comes from the good Linux kernel maintainers. This will be changing in the near future (yay, yet another soon-to-be-out-of-date page on my site!!!), and XFS will be supported directly by the unpatched kernel, but for the time being, it’s a bit above the new-to-Linux crowd in difficulty.

I may come back and describe how I ended up getting a fully XFS-based debian unstable distribution running on my little laptop, but it’s not all THAT difficult, and besides, nobody’s asked… =:)

But let me just say… XFS has impressed me greatly in the few months that I’ve been using it–so much so that I’ve converted my Internet/Intranet development team’s main development environment to a fully XFS-based one. =:)

Oh–and remind me to tell you about the joys of getting IBM’s Tivoli Storage Manager client (previously ADSM) running on an XFS-based filesystem to play nicely with their server. =:

It’s an interesting thing to note–I’m still using blackbox. =:) Heh. I must be getting old….

Further note to self: put some newer screenshots up… sheesh!

Hm. Much has happened since I’ve last updated this page. The toolbox project, that now will be pushed to its own page just for posterity’s sake, has been replaced by bbconf, the much-improved blackbox configurator. I’ve done more miscellaneous coding, some of which may actually be considered useful for people other than myself.

I think I’ll list some of it here… =:)

Well alrighty then… A design overhaul. Much needed and all. I’d love to think that this space could eventually be used to communicate with anyone who cares… sort of like that new-fangled “blog” thingey. =:) But being that I actually know me–and know just how little time I have… well, we’ll see how it goes…. =:) Let’s just say I’m not optimistic that I’ll actually have the time to keep it up…

So life is interesting. Mine has taken turns that I’d never thought it would take.

My Dad has passed away very recently.

I miss you, Dad.

So not much has changed employment-wise in the last year+ that has gone by. =:\ I think that’s a good thing.

I’m still working for Rite Aid. For the last year or so, I’ve taken on the lead-developer role for Rite Aid in their Internet/Intranet environment. I’ve had some really great opportunities in that role. I’ve lead my team in throwing out a really old, crappy frame-based *shudder*, NT-driven, antiquated web site that Rite Aid’s had up for at least 2 years. I’ve architected and implemented the first production Linux solution that Rite Aid has ever used–a fault-tolerant web environment that utilizes balanced clustering as well as director-level failover. And that was REALLY fun. =:) And the kicker is–we did it for just about zero cost. The individual nodes are 5-year-old desktop machines that you’d just as soon throw out the door with any other operating system.

My first choice for this was FreeBSD. You simply cannot beat FreeBSD’s speed and performance with Linux–especially on older hardware like this. But FreeBSD gurus are rather few and far-between at my company. My second choice was debian, since it is by far the best long-term Linux distribution. But not that many people are familiar with debian either. So I chose the at-the-time-most stable Linux distro that had a big-enough name behind it as to inspire confidence in those who maintain the boxes themselves. Hey–at least they’re Linux. =:)

Since we put my little Linux servers into production, we’ve had absolutely ZERO downtime due to the servers (network problems are not my problem =:). And it’s been exciting to see Linux make serious business-need/solution inroads in other areas of Rite Aid since then.

I am currently still working with the Internet/Intranet environment for Rite Aid, and am Systems Administrator of Rite Aid’s Internet development servers. They’re debian XFS-filesystem-based boxen, of course. =;) I maintain several large CVS repositories for the team, as well as manage routine server maintenance, hardware/software/network configuration, a decently-large Oracle 8.1.6.1 development database, and do some of the meanest PHP/Perl/Apache coding around (can you spell obfuscation?). =:)

It will be interesting to see where we go from here….

Okay, bye.

So. About me. I’m a Systems Engineer by trade. At heart, I’m an artist. A Renaissance man. I’ve always strived to be the absolute best that I could be. Not for anybody else, necessarily. Just because I enjoy seeing myself doing something that I can be proud of when it’s all said and done. I still remember my first “real” job. I worked in a library. I was the “book returner” guy. But, I quickly became valued as the quickest “fix-it-all” guy, the best and most knowledgeable computer guy, and the hardest worker. Well, maybe not the hardest worker, but you get the idea. =:) I was first given the title of “A True Renaissance Man” at that job. I guess it’s something I’ve always strived for–excellence at whatever I do. And the name has sort of stuck.

So when I first discovered the wonders of IRC (internet relay chat for those in the older crowd who might not be down with that scene, daddy-oh), I chose the nickname of Rembrandt for myself. Sort of liked it. Fit right in with my personality. And oddly enough, most of the young kiddies who popped in and out of undernet’s #linux channel had absolutely no idea who the real Rembrandt was and what tremendous contributions he made to his society–and quite truthfully, to our society. So it was also a nickname (nick) that once in a while got some decently intelligent conversations going. I stress the once in a while, unfortunately. =:) Well, anyway, it wasn’t too long after I started using IRC that some other guy decided that the nick of Rembrandt was rightfully his. It irritated me enough that I crashed his computer a few times for him with such infamously neato tools (read exploits =:)) such as land, winnuke, jolt, and nuke. *sigh* Ahh the good old days, when Winblows was still such a play-thing that was so-poorly understood that many a tremendously fun night could be had by joining #windows and helping people to reboot their machines remotely…. =:) *nostalgia*

So shortly thereafter (although it was a pretty fun couple of weeks, helping my alter-ego reboot his machine at most probably very un-desirable moments), I decided that a change was necessary. And I decided that if Rembrandt was such an unknown name (except for the toothpaste and the 3.0.4 release of RedHat Linux), that his last name would be even less well-known. This has most definitely proved to be the case. Actually, I feel like I’m due for a nick change, but as I’m more widely known by my nick of vanRijn than I am by my real name, I guess I’ll leave it be. =:) And really, it’s rather amusing, as most people have absolutely no clue how to pronounce Rembrandt’s last name of van Rijn, and most often placing odd combinations of consonants into it in trying to pronounce it, such as “vanRipkin”. =:) *cough* Shawn *cough* But, as you can see below, it’s not all that difficult. Sort of like the Rhine river with a van thrown in before it.

Rem-brandt (rembrant, -bränt), n. (Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn or van Ryn) 1606 - 69, Dutch painter.

You know, the real dead painter guy! =:) In fact, the absolutely funniest side-effect of my odd nick thus far has been when somebody submitted my bbkeys application to freshmeat.net and he creditted its authorship by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn!!! Imagine my surprise!! First, my surprise at seeing my bouncing baby code being proudly seen by thousands of people on freshmeat.net, but then my surprise when the Dutch painter who’s been dead for well over 300 years is getting the credit for writing my code!!!!!! =:)