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packetqueue.net

Musings on computer stuff, and things... and other stuff.

October 30, 2013 Monkey

Network Monkey

Read­ing Time: 1 minute

Pub­lic Ser­vice Announce­ment of the day: I’ve long believed that the Trunk Mon­key secu­ri­ty sys­tem should be avail­able in a net­work mon­key form. Many layer‑8 prob­lems could be solved before the need for esca­la­tion to the net­work team aris­es. Sad­ly, Sub­ur­ban Auto Group has not licensed this mod­el to any large net­work ven­dors, so for now please do what I do and enjoy their videos instead.

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October 30, 2013 Apple

OSX X11 Forwarding

Read­ing Time: 2 min­utes

I access var­i­ous Unix and Unix-like sys­tems all the time.  In most cas­es I don’t ever use any of the GUI tools or appli­ca­tions they may pro­vide.  I’ve been using Lin­ux since before Slack­ware was even a dis­tri­b­u­tion, and Unix longer than that, so I gen­er­al­ly find GUIs get in my way more often than not.  That said, some­times a GUI tool is the best way to do some­thing.

Some peo­ple like VNC, but I’ve always been an SSH man myself.  And, I’ve always used SSH X11 tun­nel­ing when I need it.  That means that on my Win­dows machine I have the Exceed suite installed, which includes a nice X11 instal­la­tion for Win­dows.  Every­where else, however–including on my Mac­book Pro–I’ve always just used the native X11 win­dows man­agers.  Until recent­ly.

I had­n’t noticed that X11 tun­nel­ing was­n’t work­ing from my Mac until recent­ly and found out that the X11 win­dow man­ag­er has been gone from Mac since Moun­tain Lion–which tells you how often I use GUI apps in this way.  It’s not a big deal to fix, but I fig­ured there are prob­a­bly some peo­ple out there who don’t know how to make it all work, so I’d type up this quick blur­ble.

Essen­tial­ly, you just need to down­load XQuartz and install it.  XQuartz is the new ver­sion of what used to be the X11.app that came by default in OSX ver­sions pri­or to Moun­tain Lion.  Or, it’s the same project.  Or some­thing.  You can read the Apple blurb here.

If you don’t have X11 for­ward­ing turned on, just edit your /etc/sshd file and change the X11 For­ward­ing line to be like so:

/etc/sshd file

 

 

 

 

Be sure to restart any ssh ses­sions you have open, and then con­nect using the ‑X flag in ssh.  Some­thing like “ssh ‑X [email protected]” should work.  Read the man page on ssh if you have any ques­tions, but it’s pret­ty straight for­ward over­all.  Once logged into your remote machine you can ver­i­fy if things are work­ing by run­ning any kind of X11 app (xclock or xeyes are my usu­al test sub­jects).  If not, start by echo­ing your local dis­play vari­able (echo $DISPLAY) and see if you have any­thing there.  If it’s emp­ty, then your local ssh client isn’t for­ward­ing the X11 infor­ma­tion and you might try using ‑vvv when you log in (lot’s of infor­ma­tion).

Like I said, easy-peasy.  Now I can go back to not using any GUI apps for a few more years when, I’m sure, some­thing else will be bro­ken or changed.

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October 23, 2013 Career Advice

On Titles, Certifications, and Not My Job

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes

I’ve nev­er con­sid­ered myself—strictly speaking—a net­work engi­neer, or any­thing in par­tic­u­lar like that.  It’s help­ful for job descrip­tions, or hir­ing, but not as a means of self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.  I start­ed my career as a programmer—and had been pro­gram­ming as an ama­teur for years before that—then moved into sys­tems (Unix, ear­ly DOS, then Nov­ell, Win­dows, etc.), net­works, and now into an amal­ga­ma­tion of all of those dis­ci­plines under the aus­pices of strat­e­gy and man­age­ment.

I don’t under­stand peo­ple who don’t want to learn to pro­gram, or about stor­age, or vir­tu­al­iza­tion.  I don’t under­stand pro­gram­mers who don’t want to know about net­works.  This “hyer-silo-iza­tion” that’s hap­pened in the last 15 years or so is some­thing I’m still not used to, even though I osten­si­bly have to deal with it on a dai­ly basis to make hir­ing deci­sions, task track­ing, etc.

This stems back to my roots in the com­put­er world.  I start­ed out as a young kid back in 1980 or so, teach­ing myself to pro­gram LOGO and Basic on an Apple IIc.  As time went on I picked up more lan­guages, mov­ing on to Pas­cal and C, but also expand­ing into set­ting up BBS sys­tems, toy­ing with modems and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy, and get­ting time with main­frames and the old big-iron at local uni­ver­si­ties when­ev­er I could get a teacher who knew some­one to slip me in under the radar.  I was fas­ci­nat­ed by the tech­nol­o­gy and all it allowed for me to do cre­ative­ly.  Fun­da­men­tal­ly, how­ev­er, I had no con­cept that I was any­thing oth­er than real­ly into com­put­ers and sys­tems.

Fast-for­ward a few years, and at some point—and I blame the HR folks for this, mostly—people start­ed to describe them­selves in terms of job func­tions.  It wasn’t good enough to be some­one who knew com­put­ers, or could learn new tech­nol­o­gy quick­ly, or could pro­gram in a cer­tain lan­guage or what­ev­er.  Now you had to “be” some­thing.  You had to be a soft­ware engi­neer, or a net­work admin­is­tra­tor, or some oth­er thing.  Then it fur­ther broke down by OS, and the cer­ti­fi­ca­tions came.

Now we have peo­ple who are the gate­keep­ers, and if you don’t have a cer­tain cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, or a cer­tain set of very spe­cif­ic job titles, or haven’t banged out a min­i­mum accept­able num­ber of Bin­ford-6100 installs, you’re not qual­i­fied to do <insert job title here>.  So peo­ple pur­sue titles, and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, and expe­ri­ence with what­ev­er they think the recruiters are look­ing for—but noth­ing more.

The soft­ware folks claim no knowl­edge about net­works, net­work folks claim no knowl­edge of sys­tems, sys­tems claim no knowl­edge of data­bas­es.  On and on the sto­ry rolls, cre­at­ing a giant ball of not-my-prob­lem as it goes.  Fur­ther tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ments con­tin­ue the cycle; things like SDN cre­ate even more fric­tion and sep­a­ra­tion… one more thing to not know any­thing about.

The first job I ever had as a pro­fes­sion­al in the com­put­er world was to build out a net­work and devel­op some soft­ware for a com­pa­ny.  These were the heady days of tech­nolo­gies with names like vam­pire-taps, before every­thing turned into a “don­gle-gate” fias­co to be avoid­ed at all costs.  But I digress.

I can imag­ine the hor­ror some of you are now feel­ing; won­der­ing what’s wrong with a world where you’d hire some­one to build a net­work and devel­op soft­ware for it.  Can you imag­ine the fur­ther hor­ror of telling you that I lat­er on—at that same company—developed a web page for them, back before most peo­ple even had AOL or Com­puServe, let alone the “real” Inter­net?

I don’t tell you this to tout my own back­ground or make myself feel old.  I tell you this because the key dif­fer­ence between then and now—at least in my mind—is that we in the indus­try used to be prob­lem solvers.  Used to.

I don’t know if it’s the influx of money—people in col­lege decid­ing that law school is too hard but this com­put­er gig is pay­ing well—or some oth­er fac­tor, but some­where along the way we became obsta­cles to prob­lem solv­ing.  We became entrenched in an us vs. them men­tal­i­ty, and we stopped think­ing of how to say “yes”. How to say “yes” to solv­ing a prob­lem using any tech­nol­o­gy avail­able.  How to say “yes” to learn­ing to pro­gram or script if that’s what is nec­es­sary.  We stopped being will­ing to use any and all tools to get the job done and instead we became divas, only will­ing to use the tech­nol­o­gy that we decid­ed was wor­thy of our time, or we decid­ed was use­ful to our careers.

I’m here to tell you that the indus­try is chang­ing again.  It doesn’t mat­ter what silo you think you’re in, the indus­try is chang­ing for all of us.  Spe­cial­ties will still exist—things we’re “bet­ter” at than others—but silos will not per­sist as they are today for very much longer.  You are either going to be one of the peo­ple will­ing to learn, adapt, and say “yes” to busi­ness-enable­ment, or you’ll be the part of the indus­try we don’t acknowledge—the crusty rel­ic in the back room that nobody wants to talk to and is even­tu­al­ly, and uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly, replaced.

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October 9, 2013 Uncategorized

SDN Explained

Read­ing Time: 1 minute

Soft­ware Defined Net­work­ing Explained:

type­def struct net­work {

void * stuff
void * moreStuff

}; SDN

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September 22, 2013 Uncategorized

On Writing

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes

So, you want to be a writer?

Writ­ing is a lone­ly, dirty, self-dep­re­cat­ing affair.  And that’s if you’re good at it.  Robert Hein­lein said that “writ­ing is not nec­es­sar­i­ly some­thing to be ashamed of, but do it in pri­vate and wash your hands after­ward.”  That feels just about spot-on to me these days, as I fight the blank screen to see who is going to win on any giv­en day.  Usu­al­ly it’s the screen.

When you feel so pas­sion­ate­ly about any­thing that you want to take the time and effort to write it down, there is an inevitable come­down.  Osten­si­bly the writ­ing is a cathar­tic expe­ri­ence and when you’re done, it should be over.  You’ve said your piece, made your peace, and should let it rest in peace.

But we’re all just a lit­tle narcissistic—writers more so than every­one else—and we crave feed­back, val­i­da­tion, if not of our writ­ing skills or our ideas, then at least that we exist some­where out­side of the vac­u­um of our own thoughts. We want some­one to notice and care, even if it is sim­ply to pick a fight or claim that we have no busi­ness writ­ing.  Writ­ers are used to rejec­tion, so that’s not real­ly a prob­lem.  What we’re not used to is silence—at least not at first.

As writ­ers, we spend an inor­di­nate amount of time obsess­ing over our words—the way they flow on the page, or the sym­me­try of the sentences—and when we’re done we expect a sim­i­lar lev­el of feed­back from what­ev­er audi­ence we may have.  What­ev­er the size of our plat­form, we expect some lev­el of acknowl­edge­ment com­men­su­rate with the lev­el of effort we put into the writ­ing, and the fact is that in most cas­es what we get is the prover­bial silence and crick­ets.

Vir­ginia Woolf said that, “writ­ing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for mon­ey.” Once you start sell­ing your soul, you’ve fall­en off the precipice into a tru­ly dark place, a place where the explo­sive mix of cre­ativ­i­ty and edi­to­r­i­al demands col­lide and ignite like the improb­a­ble mix of drunk rodeo clowns and Pamplona—comedic tragedy writ large.

We nat­u­ral­ly think our writ­ing is per­fect when it’s done, and we expect that at least the one per­son com­mit­ted to read­ing what we write—our erst­while editor—will see our bril­liance and praise us for it.  That does hap­pen, but often that very thing we crave comes sad­dled with requests for changes rang­ing from small bits of gram­mar to com­plete whole­sale rewrites.  We sac­ri­fice our cre­ativ­i­ty to feed the beast.

Self-doubt begins to creep into the mix, and the writ­ing becomes hard­er and more painful, the page more men­ac­ing, and the anx­i­ety of dead­lines more prescient—creeping in even before we’ve accept­ed a new assign­ment.  The work we do sub­mit can take weeks or months to get pub­lished, and just as long to be paid for.  And if you dab­ble in the dirty art of essay writ­ing, you begin to find that your opin­ion has often­times rad­i­cal­ly changed by the time your words show up to be read, and you find your­self argu­ing on behalf of a point you no longer agree with.

Yes, writ­ing is a dirty, sor­did affair. It’s a back-alley ren­dezvous with some­thing or some­one you shouldn’t be involved with. But for those of us who write, it’s also unavoid­able.  It becomes some­thing we absolute­ly have to do to feel alive—something we can’t stop doing any more than will­ing our­selves not to breathe.

If you want to be a writer, then write.  Just don’t expect it to offer any­thing to you but therapy—an out­let for your own needs that like­ly will grow more des­per­ate as a result. Writ­ing makes no promis­es, and deliv­ers no boons.  But even after all of that, for me, I will always be a writer.  But I will do it in pri­vate, and I will wash my hands after­ward.

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September 21, 2013 Uncategorized

Cisco Live and Social Media Redux

Read­ing Time: 1 minute

A few peo­ple you might rec­og­nize, includ­ing yours tru­ly, are fea­tured here in a video for Cis­co Live. This was shot at Cis­co Live in Orlan­do back in June. I’ll see you all next year in San Fran­cis­co!

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