Weblog entry #135 for ajt
See all weblog entries made by ajt.
Today someone asked me to fix a proxy server for another site at work that wasn't working. The member of staff that should look after the boxes at that site having left the company a few weeks ago and so far they have not been able to replace him.
My colleague left me in front of his notebook logged on as root via PuTTY to some remove Unix/Linux system. A quick ps aux | grep squid showed that Squid wasn't running (I did know that Squid was used already), /etc/init.d/squid start started it up - and ps confirmed it still wasn't running.
I then had a look in the /var/log/ directory tree for a Squid log, and then tail showed that there wasn't able to write to it's log filesystem that Squid wanted to write too, df confirmed the filesystem was full. It's not my box and there just wasn't space to dump 11 GiB of Squid logs any where so rm got rid of the oldest ones (several months old) and then Squid started okay.
The whole process was done in less than 2 minutes, I didn't know which OS it was (though it turned out to be Debian Sarge) and I know sod all about Squid other than it's a proxy server. Interestingly the network guy who asked me to fix it said it took me less time to fix the server than it would have taken him to start the Windows GUI on the Windows ISA servers at our site...
Comments on this Entry
Doing all that using webmin?
No thanks.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
GUIs are useful from time to time, especially when you are doing something for the first time or if it's something you do very infrequently. They are however a real nuisance if it's something you do often - when a CLI is more efficient or when the GUI makes you think it's easy when it's not.
I think one of the greatest disservice that Microsoft have performed is their GUI only design, which lulls people into thinking that setting up a complex client server environment is easy - it isn't, which then results in an inefficient and poorly deployed solution because people were not thinking what they were doing, they were simply clicked until it worked...
Interestingly their latest server platform has CLI access to everything, indeed some things can't be done from the GUI they require CLI skills. It's a shame it's taken Microsoft so long to catch up with where Unix was more than two decades ago...
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Interestingly their latest server platform has CLI access to everything, indeed some things can't be done from the GUI they require CLI skills. It's a shame it's taken Microsoft so long to catch up with where Unix was more than two decades ago...
Have you spent any time with the Server 2008, especially the new "core" edition?
What a laugh we had that day...
OK, so I have to say that better CLI usability is a step in the right direction for MS, but it seems that, while they've put a whole heap of work into it, they've still really missed the point. Badly.
So what does it look like? Well, it's a normal looking, if sparse, windows desktop. There's even a taskbar, but no "Start" button. And there's a big DOS window in the middle. If you think that there's some wasted space, well, you hit the maximise button on the window's frame and, well, there's a big strip of unused desktop down the right hand side, just like a normal windows DOS box when it's maximised.
You want to edit a file? Sure, run notepad. (I wonder if Vim will install?)
Before I slate the poor thing any further, I'd briefly like to digress into (what MS think of as "The Wonderful") powershell. This is apparently the new be-all/end-all "object" based CLI scriptable management interface into all things Windows.
The new Exchange uses it heavily, with all the management interface having a powershell tab that you can click on to see what the powershell rendition of what you're about to "Apply" is in CLI terms, so you can learn the syntax and use it at the prompt, but with conditional logic like if's and for loops. And all the MS monkeys think "Yay! aren't we cool".
The problem is that is hellishly ugly, clunkly, and not entirely intuitive, but that could just be because I spend 10+ hours a day in bash...
OK, digression aside, back to Windows Server Core Edition. The cut down server core is probably meant for data-centre usage, and allows you to run a number of server roles, such as the new modular IIS7 (read: clean room copy of Apache built out of IIS6 spare parts), file and print services, even Active Directory. This would be great for a windows shop, as you could then feel better knowing that more of the server horse power is going to authenticating all those kerberos login request, rather than drawing a fancy GUI that no-one sees.
So why all this prattle -- guess what doesn't run on Server 2008 Core Edition? Yep, Powershell, the new "be-all/end-all object based CLI scriptable management interface into all things Windows".
Typical I suppose, but still surpirisingly pathetic...
Cheers.:wq
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Another golden opportunity missed by Microsoft then. I suppose they have been so lucky in the past with incompetent competition. These days they have to really compete on their merits and that must be hard for a company that never has done...
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
CLI vs GUI or How to create an alias for the loopback interface:
IIRC it's taken from the manual of a HP printer or similar. The text is in German but I guess you get the idea...
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Sad and depressing isn't it...? And PHBs think a GUI makes things easier..!
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work"
Adam
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