I arrived shortly after 8AM, registered to receive my badge and t-shirt then milled around the vendor booths until the keynotes were ready to start. I watched the keynotes (Jim Zemlin, Linux Foundation and Jim  Whitehurts, Red Hat), went to every session I could and came back to the main ballroom for the panel discussion with Jon “Maddog” Hall, Eben Moglen and Dan Frye and the following interview of Linus Torvalds by Greg Kroah-Hartman to wrap things up for day 1. So far, so good.

The Keynotes

Jim Zemlin’s opening keynote “Imagining a World Without Linux” was decent. While he did take some inevitable potshots at Microsoft, the message was generally very positive and uplifting. I won’t go into details but basically Jim described a world without Linux as one that would be black & white as opposed to the colour filled world we know today (due to Linux). Jim is a smiley and positive person on stage, his style helped kick off LinuxCon 2011 with a good vibe.

Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat had a similar approach of sending positive vibes but focused on how the progress of Linux and Open Source has enabled businesses and business models. He said that Google wouldn’t exist (at least not in it’s current form) without Linux and basically implying the same about other major well know Linux-powered companies such as Amazon and Facebook. Jim struck me as a fairly modest fellow but he wasn’t shy about mentioning Red Hat’s penetration into Fortune 500 companies. Nor was he reserved about how Linux has powered, enabled, strongly driven by or directly benefitted various global forces that may or may not be angels (U.S. Navy, NSA, Russian Military, NYSE/Wall Street). While his examples spoke to the breadth of applications for and the wide reach of Linux, I couldn’t help but think about how the pervasiveness of Linux is not only helping drive great positive change int he world but may also be powering negative forces as well.

Overall both Jim’s did a good job and left me excited for the rest of LinuxCon to come.

First Day Sessions

I attended four sessions on day 1:

1. Centralized User Administration with FreeIPA and sssd by Stephen Gallagher
2. Watching Mad Men and Thinking About Open Source by Karen Copenhaver
3. 20 Years – And More – of Kernel Development by Jon Cobert
4. What to Expect from Linux Storage by James Bottomley

Centralized User Administration with FreeIPA and sssd

My first LinuxCon session was by Stephen Gallagher of Red Hat. As is clear by the title, it was about FreeIPA and sssd, two emerging Red Hat driven projects relating to centralized directory and authentication services. Stephen wasn’t the most natural speaker I’ve had the pleasure to watch and I suspect that presentations aren’t something he does on a regular basis but he clearly knew his material and he was able to field the post-presentation questions with ease. The presentation material was fairly spot on to what I expected. I should stop by the Red Hat booth and speak with Stephen tomorrow as there are a few FreeIPA/sssd related questions I have which I didn’t ask during the question period. Overall, I was satisfied.

Watching Mad Men and Thinking About Open Source

First of all, Karen is a more natural speaker than Stephen but I suppose that’s to be expected: She is legal counsel for the Linux Foundation. The material in this session while clear and understandable was maybe not quite as impactful as I had hoped. Karen had some very nice points and brought good historical reference to the table but it wasn’t really anything that I didn’t already think think about in my own internal dialog, for the most part.

Some key points that Karen made early which did resonate with me:

• “It’s a privilege to work on something so important”, I believe she was quoting Linus Torvalds. This hits home for me as my work is only to enable the much more important and relevant work of others.
• The observation that the open source community generally doesn’t have time for anything but the truth which is a nice ideal but perhaps isn’t necessarily reflective of the entire open source world so much as a few of the important luminaries.
• Identify the things that you value and… well I missed that part. But I do think identifying the things you value is, well, valuable.

These are all straight forward things but to hear someone say them can be powerful. This session was good but it wasn’t quite as hard hitting as I thought it might be based on the title and description. It was no let down, though.

20 Year – And More – Of Linux Kernel Development

Ok, now we’re getting way out of my league. Jon Corbet is a high profile Linux kernel contributor and he knows what he is talking about. This man has confidence and ostensibly the knowledge to back it up. His overview of the last 20 years of Linux kernel development was excellent and spotted with just enough humour to keep the real developers cracking up and the rest of us only getting every second joke.

Jon’s timeline approach to describing the history of kernel development was excellent and enabled him to visually map releases, events and growth in a very simple and understandable way. He made an excellent observation regarding the pace (measure by lines of code) of Linux kernel development during the dot com bust not slowing down one bit despite industry turmoil and job loss and pointed out the correlation between important points in Linux kernel development time with other events that may not be obvious to every outsider (BitKeeper, Git, time between certain releases, Merge Window, etc.).

While this session was developer focused, it wasn’t so technical to be devoid of value for anyone else, in fact I think it really helped frame the history of Linux kernel development for me in a way that I had never experienced before. Way to go, Jon.

What To Expect From Linux Storage

I’m not sure why James’ talk was titled what it was because for the best of what I could tell, the majority of the talk was about what already is, not what to expect. That’s not to say it was devoid of important information regarding “what to expect” and maybe it was because James ran out of time and had to skip some slides but I did find the title interesting in that capacity none-the-less.

James is charismatic. He makes jokes, he wears a bow tie, he speaks with an attractive accent. He’s also clearly very knowledgable about his part of the Linux kernel: the Block layer.

Being a sysadmin, knowing more about the block layer and James’ perspective on storage was hugely beneficial. He has historical reference that I never will and deep knowledge of the kernel which I’ll never achieve. With that said, some of his opinions regarding specific technologies and methods, I personally already held myself! How is it that a Linux kernel rube such as myself could had gleaned the same opinions on specific technologies as one of the people  who understands these technologies the best of anyone? iSCSI was an example. I think it’s safe to say James thinks iSCSI is an abhorrent mess that simply tries to solve a problem in entirely the wrong way. I’m also not a big fan of iSCSI and his reasoning  resonated with me, despite my lack of in depth knowledge.

I could go on because I liked this session but I already feel like I’m burning myself out on this summary of day 1 and we haven’t even gotten to the panel discussion or Linus interview yet.

Panel Discussion

The panel discussion with Jon Hall, Eben Moglen and Dan Frye was fairly profound despite Eben using the platform for an interesting but strangely placed speech that appeared entirely scripted/written. That’s not to say I didn’t like his speech or that I don’t agree with him or his world views but the way he momentarily took over the panel with what was clearly a pre-planned speech during a panel discussion main-hall format was strange indeed.

Dan Frye struck me as level-headed and one of those business people whom can take the challenge of  balancing the need to run a profitable business with social awareness and decency and excel at it. I’ve never really doubted IBM’s commitment to Linux and I know their commitment is based on profitability but the way that Dan framed the reasons that he and his team knew Linux meant good business for IBM put a smile on my face.

Jon Hall’s experience in the computing industry is staggering and humbling, even for today’s big shots. What a dude. Level head, very articulated, sense of humour and a huge white beard. It’s hard not to love the guy after watching that panel discussion. Jon talked about his hopes for how Linux and the open source model will foster the next generation of great thinkers, movers and shakers and enable them to do great things. I liked that.

I’m not really sure what to say about Eben. I agreed with everything he said but he just wasn’t as loveable as Jon Hall. Must be because he’s a lawyer :D I suppose that slightly awkward speech about the troubled times that are looming (mounting patent threats and inevitable “10-20 billion” dollar war) could have been a factor as well. That said, he seemed positive despite the heavy and serious tone he used to describe the battles ahead.

On one hand, the panel discussion left me feeling good and uplifted but on the other hand I was left with a feeling of powerlessness. I’m not one of the next great thinkers, doers or talkers. What’s my place in the Linux and open source world, then? Everything that was discussed revolved around the greatest minds in open source and the huge impacts made by major players. I almost felt a little left out as a lowly sysadmin whom has to deploy at least some non-RMS blessed systems alongside the requisite Linux systems. What’s my role in all this?

Interview with Linus

I really don’t have much to say about this one. Linus is down to earth, but strong in his opinions. He admits when something is outside of his immediate expertise, as evidenced by his answers to many non-Linux kernel specific questions. He talks well and he would have preferred if the crowd did not give him a standing ovation at the end but I suppose you cannot make a room full of Linux geeks sit down when their proverbial leader is being applauded.

I liked a lot of what Linus talked about regarding the modern direction of Linux such as the version numbering changes, the idea that we should be looking backwards at how to improve existing subsystems and layers instead of always looking forward to new feature inclusions. I liked how he described the cross-pollination of various parts of Linux that exist when everyone from embedded systems to massively parallel SMP systems are made to use the exact same kernel instead of everyone having their own specialized forks.

Linus was clam and cool, just like Linux and I had a seriously good time at LinuxCon today. Rock on, LinuxCon!

Related posts:

1. Is Ubuntu Ready for the Enterprise?
2. LVM filters and initrd

NOTE: IT Watchdogs has since released the SuperGoose II. Since I haven’t compared the two products, I can’t comment on any differences.

IT Watchdogs

I really don’t know a lot about these guys but they appear to be a fairly small company. Their name came up several times during my searches for environmental monitoring solutions. What I do know is that their support people get back to you fairly quickly and they aren’t demanding a product serial number before assisting you with your IT Watchdogs related product questions. Their support gives you the impression you’re speaking with people that understand the product very well.

They provide firmware upgrades on their website where you can download them and get instructions on the upgrade process. There is no service contract necessary to continue getting firmware updates, which is very nice considering one of the main points they seem to be competing on is price and thus you not only get good initial value for your dollar, you get long term value in the software improvements over the lifetime of the device.

It’s a plane, it’s a bird, it’s a SuperGoose!

IT Watchdogs have a wide range of monitoring products but the SuperGoose (also known as the WxGoos-2) is (was) their flagship product. With a $499 price tag, it’s not dirt cheap but comparing it’s feature list to much of the competition out there and it really does start to look like a bargain.

The unit itself is a tiny litte 1U rackmount box that is no deeper than it is tall. That is, it’s about 1U deep. The unit has an LCD on the front that will cycle through readings from your various attached sensors that provide visual stimulus for those lonely nights in the server room. The unit also has a audible alarm which is of no use to me, but we’ll come to that later.

The build quality of the SuperGoose is good. It’s made out of metal, which is always nice. Everything is solid and well manufactured. There is just one design feature of the SuperGoose that I just don’t get: It requires an external power adapter (included), the kind you use to charge your cellphone or to power your crappy D-Link hub you’ve got installed in your office that the IT guys keep ragging on you about. It really isn’t a big deal but I just don’t see why they couldn’t have integrated the power transformer (A/C to D/C) into the chassis of the device and allowed the common and standard IEC C13 plug for power. Such a solution would have been cleaner and more compliant with the existing power infrastructure in the average server room/data center. Not to mention that the current power adapter plugs into the front of the SuperGoose, another little design issue I don’t fully understand. Either way, this is a minor gripe but something worth noting regardless as you’ll need to have a suitable PDU or extension cable to power the thing.

The SuperGoose allows for two kinds of external sensors to be added in addition to the full set of built-in sensors. The first kind of sensor is connected via RJ-12 jacks. The sensors supported in the RJ-12 jacks are digital sensors which means there is some kind of tiny microchip in the sensor itself. It’s not “passive”, if you will. While only five physical RJ-12 ports are included, the SuperGoose supports up to 16 sensors by using an RJ-12 splitter. The second kind of sensor is analog. In our case, we’re only using digital sensors so I cannot comment on the analog sensor functionality at this point, unfortunately.

Setting up the SuperGoose

Setup is really quite easy:

1. Mount the SuperGoose in your rack (and cable it up).
2. Grab the MAC address from the front of the device and setup a DHCP address for it (or just leave the default IP and setup a host on that subnet to initially configure it).
3. Power it up.
4. Point your browser to the SuperGoose’s IP address and begin configuring!

Of course, you can add many sensors as well at this point, which is key to a general purpose environmental monitoring solution.

The SuperGoose has a robust web server where you can view the collected data and graphs and configure various things such as networking, NTP, email, SNMP, camera setting and the device information. You can also configure alarm thresholds for your sensors so that you can get an email or SNMP trap fired off in case of abnormal readings. While useful for smaller shops lacking a centralized monitoring solution, these built-in alerts are not a factor when integrating the SuperGoose into a larger environments where a centralized monitoring solution has been implemented. It’s nice to have them, but you might not need them.

The configuration page is clear and straight forward. The language used to describe configuration options should be totally familiar to anyone with cursory knowledge of the various technologies, standards and protocols in use. The SuperGoose provides three level of access to the device: View-only, Control and Administrative. Each access level has a configurable account name and password. The SuperGoose unfortunately does not support multiple accounts of the same level. That said, enterprise use of the SuperGoose will often involve SNMP data collection instead of users and admins logging into the SuperGoose web server directly and so, more fine grained per-user/admin accounts can be configured in the SNMP monitoring solution to control access to data while at the same time locking out access to the SuperGoose directly to all but the SNMP/env administrators in order to achieve “lock down” and logging on who can see/do what.

Digital Sensors & SNMP Monitoring

Digital sensors have unique IDs to which names can be assigned within the configuration interface. This means that when you connect/disconnect your digital sensors, or the SuperGoose reboots, the graphs produced by the SuperGoose and the data it has collected remain valid and consistent.

One snag I did run into momentarily is that although the SuperGoose will internally track the digital sensors correctly, the SNMP OIDs for each sensor were not consistent upon reboot of the SuperGoose! My SNMP monitoring station would collect false data when the SuperGoose was rebooted because the sensors were detected in a different order and thus the OIDs for each sensor changed! The reason this happened is because I was monitoring the OIDs in static fashion by associating a sensor definition in the monitoring software with a particular, static OID. When the OID for the any sensor changed (as it often does upon reboot), the monitoring station would be collecting information for a particular item in the monitoring database from the wrong physical sensor. The solution is to use SNMP monitoring software that supports using dynamic SNMP indexes. Zabbix is such an open source monitoring solution. It took me a little while to configure Zabbix correctly for dynamics SNMP indexes but it was worth it: no more collecting data from the wrong sensor and thus more consistent and correct long term trending data is collected.

For what it’s worth the following is an example of the “OID” string I use within a Zabbix “item” to implement the dynamic index feature:

IT-WATCHDOGS-MIB::tempSensorTempC[index,IT-WATCHDOGS-MIB::tempSensorName,Ambient Front]

Where “Ambient Front” is the name of the sensor, as set in the SuperGoose configuration.

Well Folks, that’s Part 1

Well, that’s part 1 of the review. Part 2 of the review will arrive sometime in the future… I’ve just been sitting on this much of the review for too long now and it needs to be posted. I hope everyone enjoys half reviews (for now)!

Related posts:

1. IBM Changed UPS Vendors
2. OpenGear CM4116 Review

What’s Included?

My Studio Master 6.4 came with a beautiful chromed 13″ snare, four 10″ toms, one 8″ kick, the plastic ECYMBAL crashes and a metal ECYMBAL ride and metal hihats with a fully functional and moving hi-hat stand. It appears the modern Studio Master 6.4 now comes with the ECYMBAL-II cymbals instead, which I have not had the pleasure of playing yet.

The included rack is sturdy but it’s not entirely rock solid. I still have some sway while really hammering on the kit but that could be a result of the fact that I’ve often be labeled a “hard hitter” when it comes to drumming. The rack is nice but it’s entirely standard, nothing special.

The kit also comes with cables and basically everything you need except one crucial element: the module. As I’ll describe later, I decided to take a chance on a DIY project called MegaDrum instead of buying a commercial module. It saved me cash and it works really, really well (after a lot of tweaking).

Mesh vs. Rubber

My only other previous electronic drumming experience comes on a Yamaha DTXpress IV, which has rubber pads unlike the mesh pads of the Hart kit.

I can only say that for my style and comfort, there is no comparison. Mesh all the way. I used to get wrist pains from acoustic drumming many years ago and I found the problem was even worse on the rubber Yamaha pads. After switching to the mesh pads of the Studio Master 6.4, all my wrist pain associated with drumming went away.

The playability of mesh is also night and day. With the ability to set the head tension like you would with an acoustic kit, the mesh snare and toms allow for just as much or as little bounce as one might like. Personally? I’m liking the heads tight at the moment. It allows me to play faster rolls more accurately and with less effort. Another big difference when moving to mesh was the kick response. The rubber kick pad of the Yamaha was “dead”, it had no rebound whatsoever and was actually rather acoustically loud. I was never able to achieve my desired level of kick accuracy with the rubber pad.

Overall, the mesh is entirely superior for my drumming.

Plastic vs. Metal

As far as cymbals go, my kit came with the (now discontinued?) original plastic ECYMBAL crashes and metal ECYMBAL ride and hihat. My only major comment about the cymbals are that there is no question the metal cymbals are superior in feel. The ride is very heavy and sits like a nice good acoustic ride. Same with the hihats. The plastic crashes on the other hand are very light and they don’t play the same way a good acoustic metal cymbals does. That’s not to say they are bad, but if there was one instant upgrade for the Studio Master 6.4 that I would recommend, it would be replacing the plastic crash cymbals with something more solid and more accurate feel.

The ride cymbal is two-zone: bow and bell. The hihat is also two zone: bow and edge. The crashes are single zone with a switch-based choke. Both the ride and hihat come with an included rubber pad to minimize stick noise. Neither of the plastic crashes come with noise-reducing rubber but I’ve added my own, lighter rubber to the crashes to achieve the same goal.

Playing the Kit

Playing the Studio Master 6.4 is a dream come true: Nearly acoustic feel but quiet enough to play in an apartment building (if you’ve got the kit raised off the floor with some kind of mat to dampen the “thud, thud, thud” from the kit, that is). Since getting things setup perfectly, I’ve been playing this kit just as I remember playing my old acoustic kit. I’m not making any serious compensation for the fact that this is an electronic drum kit.

Electronic drumming isn’t for everyone, but for those of us who either prefer the versatility or have no other option, the Studio Master 6.4 is a good mid-range kit that provides excellent acoustic-like feel without the acoustic output of a “real” drum kit. As far as playability is concerned, Hart gets a major thumbs up for the Studio Master 6.4.

The best part of this kit has to be the snare. Being 13″ it’s much bigger than your average Yamaha or Roland snares. It’s super heavy because it’s made out of some serious metal with a nice chrome finish. The size of the playing surface along with the tensionable mesh head provides a great snare experience, which is key to a great drum kit experience.

What about the Module?

As mentioned earlier, the only thing the Studio Master 6.4 doesn’t come with that you’ll need right away to get drumming is a drum module that converts the piezo triggers into sounds (or MIDI). The two big players here are Roland and Yamaha. Alesis also offers a few modules, but none with the reputation of Yamaha or Roland’s modules.

After using a Yamaha DTXpress IV with it’s included module for several months and playing demo Roland kits at the music store, I knew I wasn’t ever going to be happy with the sounds that come with these modules. As such, we began trying out MIDI triggering of BFD1.5 with my Yamaha module instead. It wasn’t easy at first but we eventually got things going fairly well but I still wanted more tweakability as the Yamaha module only had very basic trigger settings.

Right about  that time, I ditched the Yamaha kit for the Hart kit and started to build myself a MegaDrum to play the role of trigger to MIDI interface instead of buying a commercial module. There’s no looking back! I had ordered a MegaDrum kit offered by a forum member that included quality professional PCB and most of the parts necessary. Building the MegaDrum with this kit was more like “assembling” than building due to the high quality of the kit. My friend even did all the board soldering for me! It took some time to get the MegaDrum mounted in a case and working but it was worth it.

We’ve since upgraded to BFD2 and made many, many firmware upgrades for the MegaDrum since first building it and it’s sweeter than ever. If you’re not a DIY kind of person, it might be a bit daunting to build a MegaDrum, but for anyone out there wanting to trigger MIDI from their electronic drum kit and with some DIY skills, I would highly recommend the MegaDrum. It’s far, far, far cheaper than anything Roland or Yamaha make and it’s far more tweakable too. Unfortunately, this can mean more setup time but it also means that a wider range of pads are better supported with MegaDrum because of it’s inherent tweakability.

Conclusion

The Hart Dynamics Studio Master 6.4 kit totally rocks!

Related posts:

1. BFD2, Variable Hats and MIDI CC Messages
2. OpenGear CM4116 Review

I don’t like serial connections. I think I’m a generation too young to have a love affair with RS232 serial communication. First of all, I like the ability to open more than one shell at a time. Yes, there are tools such as GNU screen to multiplex a single terminal into many but I’m a simple guy, I prefer many graphical SSH terminals to a single multiplexed serial terminal.

Recently, I decided I would look more closely into this device after I had it shut down for some time. I was able to discover that our installed firmware version was from 2005 and lacked many of the much more interesting (to me) features of the device including tunneling network connections to hosts and IPMI-based power device control. I promptly installed the newest firmware and was on my way to remote console bliss.

Physical

This device is physically simple:

It’s not very deep at all, about half as deep as most 24/48 port switches out there.

Functionality

With the 2005 firmware, I would have given this product a pretty low score for functionality but since OpenGear has provided so many features and benefits in the new firmware, I have to give them credit where credit is due. While the entire feature list is too long and would be pointless to repeat, I will mention the features I find most useful and interesting:

As you can see the main feature list, while not novel, is impressive. All tunnels are pre-configured through the web-interface and can be accessed by directly SSH-ing into the box or using the SDT Connector software to manage connections to tunnels from your client system.

I’m currently using serial tunnels for two CORAID systems that are managed over serial consoles. I also use serial consoles to most of my main servers in the event that they somehow loose network connectivity. Think of the serial consoles as my backup.

I’m not using the IPMI power control yet but I plan to setup as many IPMI-capable systems to be controlled via the CM4116 as the ultimate remote management fall-back.

Performance

Performance is the one area where I feel this product could do better. While console sessions don’t lag, I find there is too much waiting time for the initial password prompt on the device when accessing it with SSH as well as the web interface. The web interface just seems to take a bit longer than I’d like to submit changes. Not a big deal but something to consider.

As for multi-user performance, I haven’t really put it to the test yet. I will be opening it up for two other individuals to use but I know they will only use it on rare occasions. So, in this regard I can say the device performs adequately for multiple sessions at once but I cannot vouch for it under multi-user, multi-session conditions.

On a much more positive note, the device powers on and boots up quite quickly. This of course is rather unimportant unless for whatever reason you end up power cycling the device over and over again.

Conclusion

Because I wasn’t around when this device was purchased, I don’t know exactly what it cost (Update: It was just around $700!). Thus, I cannot make judgments on whether it lives up to it’s cost (it does!) but I can say it’s an excellent remote console tool to have around for small shops. For larger shops OpenGear makes larger more powerful units.

The CM4116 from OpenGear gets my official bigasssmiley :D

Related posts:

1. IT Watchdogs SuperGoose (WxGoos-2) Review
2. Hart Dynamics Studio Master 6.4 Review