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Solaris Volume Manager - Soft Partitioning Explained

This document was originally posted at: http://www2.primushost.com/~griff/soft-partitions.html
however, it has been unavailable for some time now.

Last Updated: Wed Aug 22 2001

Solstice DiskSuite / Solaris Volume Manager

Soft Partitioning

A Primer for Understanding Soft Partitioning,
a new feature in Solstice DiskSuite (Solaris Volume Manager)

The intent of this document is to describe Soft Partitioning within Solstice DiskSuite (soon-to-be-renamed Solaris Volume Manager), and offer a short primer/tutorial on how to create, use, and delete them.

Until now, Solaris, without any volume management software, has only ever allowed a fixed number of partitions on a physical disk (seven (7) on SPARC platforms). With the increase in capacity of disks, this limitation has become a severe restriction.

SDS/SVM uses these slices for its metadevices (sub-mirrors, trans, stripes, and RAID5) and hence is faced with the same limitation, whereas Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) allows for the logical partitioning of disks into a virtually unlimited number of subdisks.

Soft Partitioning allows for a disk to be subdivided into many partitions which are controlled and maintained by software, thereby removing the limitation of the number of partitions on a disk. A soft partition is made up of one or more "extents". An extent describes the parts of the physical disk that make up the soft partition. While the maximum number of extents per soft partition is 2147483647, the majority of soft partitions will use only one (1) extent.


What is new?

Soft Partitioning was not in the original Solstice DiskSuite 4.2.1 Release, which coincided with the release of Solaris 8. However, the soft partitioning functionality was released in patch 108693-06 for SDS 4.2.1.

When Solaris 9 gets released, the "Solstice DiskSuite" name will change to "Solaris Volume Manager" ("SVM") and it will be bundled in with Solaris 9. Soft Partitioning will, of course, be part of the base functionality of that release.

Soft Partitions are implemented by new kernel driver: md_sp.

   # modinfo | grep md_sp
   228 78328000 4743 - 1 md_sp (Meta disk soft partition module)
There are new options to the metainit command:
   metainit softpart -p [-e] component size
   metainit softpart -p component -o offset -b size
The metattach command has been modified to allow for growing of soft partitions:
   metattach softpart size
There is a new command... metarecover:
   metarecover [-n] [-v] component -p [-d|-m]

NOTE: the -p option means that the command refers to soft partitions.


Creating Soft Partitions

There are three methods to create a soft partition using the metainit command:
  1. Specifying an unused disk and size (with the -e option). For example:
     
       # metainit d0 -p -e c1t0d0 200m
    
    
    	

    The -e option requires that the name of the disk supplied be in the form c#t#d#.

    The last parameter (200m) specifies the initial size of the soft partition. The sizes can be specified in blocks, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, and terabytes.

    The -e option causes the disk to be repartitioned such that slice 7 has enough space to hold a replica (although no replica is actually created on this disk) and slice 0 contains the rest of the space. Slice 2 is removed from the disk. The soft partition that is being created is put into slice 0. Further soft partitions can be created on slice 0 by the next method of creating a soft partition.

    After this command is run, the layout of the disk would like similar to this example:

       Part      Tag   Flag   Cylinders     Size           Blocks
         0 unassigned   wm     5 - 2035   999.63MB   (2031/0/0) 2047248
         1 unassigned   wm     0            0        (0/0/0)          0
         2 unassigned   wm     0            0        (0/0/0)          0
         3 unassigned   wm     0            0        (0/0/0)          0
         4 unassigned   wm     0            0        (0/0/0)          0
         5 unassigned   wm     0            0        (0/0/0)          0
         6 unassigned   wm     0            0        (0/0/0)          0
         7 unassigned   wu     0 -   4      2.46MB   (5/0/0)       5040
    
    
    	

    This command (with the -e) can only be run on an empty disk (one that is not used in any other metadevice). If another metadevice or replica already exists on this disk, one of the following messages will be printed, and no soft partition will be created.

       metainit: hostname: c#t#d#s0: has appeared more than once in the specification of d#
    
    or
       metainit: hostname: c#t#d#s#: has a metadevice database replica
    

  2. Specifying an existing slice name and size (without the -e option). This will be the most common method of creation. For example:
        # metainit d1 -p c1t0d0s0 1g
    
    	

    This will create a soft partition on the specified slice. No repartitioning of the disk is done. Provided there is space on the slice, additional soft partitions could be created as required. The device name must include the slice number (c#t#d#s#).

    If another soft partition already exists in this slice, this one will be created immediately after the existing one. Therefore, no overlap of soft partitions can occur by accident.
     

  3. Specifying an existing slice and absolute offset and size values. For example:


     

       # metainit d2 -p c1t0d0s0 -o 2048 -b 1024
    
    
    	The -o parameter signifies the offset into the slice, and the
    	-b parameter is the size for the soft partition. All numbers 
    	are in blocks (a block is 512 bytes). The metainit command ensures 
    	that extents and soft partitions do not overlap. For example, the following 
    	is an attempt to create overlapping soft partitions.
    	

       # metainit d1 -p c1t0d0s0 -o 1 -b 2024
       d1: Soft Partition is setup
       # metainit d2 -p c1t0d0s0 -o 2000 -b 2024
       metainit: hostname: d2: overlapping extents specified
    
    
    	

    An offset of 0 is not valid, as the first block on a slice containing a soft partition contains the initial extent header. Each extent header consumes 1 block of disk and each soft partition will have an extent header placed at the end of each extent. Extent headers are explained in more detail in the next section.

    NOTE: This method is not documented in the man page for metainit and is not recommended for manual use. It is here because a subsequent metastat -p command will output information in this format.


Extent Headers

Whenever a soft partition is created in a disk slice, an "extent header" is written to disk. Internally to Sun, these are sometimes referred to as "watermarks".

An extent header is a consistency record and contains such information as the metadevice (soft partition) name, it's status, it's size, and a checksum. Each extent header 1 block (512 bytes) in size.

The following diagram shows an example 100MB slice (c1t0d0s0) and the extent headers (watermarks) that have been created on it. The command to make the soft partition shown was

   # metainit d1 -p c1t0d0s0 20m
 

There is always an extent header on the first and last blocks in the slice. Note that the 80MB of space left over from the creation of the soft partition can be used to make one or more additional soft partitions. Each additional soft partition will create an additional extent header to be created as well.

Mirroring Soft Partitions

Once you have created soft partitions, what can you do with them? Well, one thing to do is to create mirrors out of them. Unfortunately, even though a soft partition is a metadevice, they cannot serve directly as a submirror. For example:
 
   # metainit d10 -p c1t11d0s4 100m
   d10: Soft Partition is setup
   # metainit d20 -m d10
   metainit: hostname: d10: invalid unit

Instead, you must first take the soft partition and create a simple concat/stripe 
out of it. For example:

   # metainit d10 -p c1t0d0s0 100m
   d10: Soft Partition is setup
   # metainit d20 1 1 d10
   d20: Concat/Stripe is setup
   # metainit d30 -m d20
   d30: Mirror is setup

   # metainit d11 -p c2t0d0s0 100m
   d11: Soft Partition is setup
   # metainit d21 1 1 d11
   d21: Concat/Stripe is setup
   # metattach d30 d21
   d30: submirror d21 is attached

Once done, the resulting metastat output of the mirror will look like this:

   # metastat d30

   d30: Mirror
       Submirror 0: d20
         State: Okay
       Submirror 1: d21
         State: Okay
       Pass: 1
       Read option: roundrobin (default)
       Write option: parallel (default)
       Size: 204624 blocks

   d20: Submirror of d30
       State: Okay
       Size: 204624 blocks
       Stripe 0:
           Device              Start Block  Dbase State        Hot Spare
           d10                        0     No    Okay

   d10: Soft Partition
       Component: c1t0d0s0
       State: Okay
       Size: 204800 blocks
           Extent              Start Block              Block count
                0                        1                   204800

   d21: Submirror of d30
       State: Okay
       Size: 204624 blocks
       Stripe 0:
           Device              Start Block  Dbase State        Hot Spare
           d11                        0     No    Okay

   d11: Soft Partition
       Component: c2t0d0s0
       State: Okay
       Size: 204800 blocks
           Extent              Start Block              Block count
                0                        1                   204800


Combining Soft Partitions Together into a RAID5 Device

RAID5 devices can be made up of soft partitions directly. This example shows 4 soft partitions (from 4 separate slices) striped together to make a RAID5 device:

   # metainit d1 -p c1t0d0s0 10m
   d1: Soft Partition is setup
   # metainit d2 -p c2t0d0s0 10m
   d2: Soft Partition is setup
   # metainit d3 -p c3t0d0s0 10m
   d3: Soft Partition is setup
   # metainit d4 -p c4t0d0s0 10m
   d4: Soft Partition is setup
   # metainit d10 -r d1 d2 d3 d4
   d10: RAID is setup

Once done, the resulting metastat output of the RAID5 device will look like this:

   # metastat d10

   d10: RAID
       State: Okay
       Interlace: 32 blocks
       Size: 59472 blocks
   Original device:
       Size: 60384 blocks
           Device              Start Block  Dbase State        Hot Spare
           d1                       330     No    Okay
           d2                       330     No    Okay
           d3                       330     No    Okay
           d4                       330     No    Okay

   d1: Soft Partition
       Component: c1t0d2s0
       State: Okay
       Size: 20480 blocks
           Extent              Start Block              Block count
                0                        1                    20480

   d2: Soft Partition
       Component: c1t0d4s0
       State: Okay
       Size: 20480 blocks
           Extent              Start Block              Block count
                0                        1                    20480

   d3: Soft Partition
       Component: c1t1d1s0
       State: Okay
       Size: 20480 blocks
           Extent              Start Block              Block count
                0                        1                    20480

   d4: Soft Partition
       Component: c1t1d3s0
       State: Okay
       Size: 20480 blocks
           Extent              Start Block              Block count
                0                        1                    20480

Using Soft Partitions for MetaTrans (UFS Logging) Devices

MetaTrans devices (UFS logging) can be built on top of soft partitions. Soft partitions can be used for the master device, the logging device, or both. In the following example, soft partitions are used for both the master and the logging device:

   # metainit d1 -p c1t0d0s0 500m
   d1: Soft Partition is setup
   # metainit d2 -p c2t0d0s0 50m
   d2: Soft Partition is setup
   # metainit d10 -t d1 d2
   d1: Trans is setup

Once done, the resulting metastat output of the metatrans device will look like this:

   # metastat d10
   d10: Trans
       State: Okay
       Size: 1024000 blocks
       Master Device: d1
       Logging Device: d2

   d1: Soft Partition
       Component: c1t1d3s0
       State: Okay
       Size: 1024000 blocks
           Extent              Start Block              Block count
                0                        1                  1024000

   d2: Logging device for d10
       State: Okay
       Size: 102142 blocks

   d2: Soft Partition
       Component: c1t1d1s0
       State: Okay
       Size: 102400 blocks
           Extent              Start Block              Block count
                0                        1                   102400

Layering

Most of the time, soft partitions are made on a disk slice. However, there are certain situations where it can be beneficial to make a soft partition on top of an existing metadevice. This is referred to as layering.

For example, say you have a 90GB RAID5 device made up of 6 18GB disks. You can then take that 90GB device and "split it up" into many soft partitions. These many soft partitions then can be accessed as separate simple metadevices, although the data in them is protected by the RAID5 parity in the underlying device.

Soft partitions can be layered only on top of concat/stripes, mirrors, and RAID5 devices. Soft partitions cannot be layered on top of a metatrans device or directly on top of another soft partition.

Here is an example of layering soft partitions on top of an existing RAID5 metadevice. First, we create the RAID5 device, then soft partition that device into 3 100MB partitions (obviously, we could create more than just 3 soft partitions).

   # metainit d0 -r c1t0d2s0 c1t0d4s0 c1t1d1s0 c1t1d3s0
   d0: RAID is setup

   # metainit d1 -p d0 100m
   d1: Soft Partition is setup
   # metainit d2 -p d0 100m
   d2: Soft Partition is setup
   # metainit d3 -p d0 100m
   d3: Soft Partition is setup

Each of the resulting soft partitions (d1, d2, and d3) can be accessed individually (i.e., newfs and mount).

Soft partitions can be built on top of an existing mirror device as well, just like we did above on the RAID5 device. In the following example, the mirror device (d0) is "carved up" into 3 smaller soft partitions.

   # metainit d10 1 1 c1t0d2s0
   d10: Concat/Stripe is setup
   # metainit d20 1 1 c2t0d0s0
   d20: Concat/Stripe is setup
   # metainit d0 -m d10 d20
   d0: Mirror is setup

   # metainit d1 -p d0 100m
   d1: Soft Partition is setup
   # metainit d2 -p d0 100m
   d2: Soft Partition is setup
   # metainit d3 -p d0 100m
   d3: Soft Partition is setup

Soft partitions are not allowed to be parented by other soft partitions directly. For example:

   # metainit d1 -p c1t0d0s0 100m
   d1: Soft Partition is setup
   # metainit d2 -p d1 10m
   metainit: hostname: d1: invalid unit

Soft partitions also cannot be built on top of trans (UFS logging) devices. 
For example:

   # metainit d1 -t d10 d20
   d1: Trans is setup
   # metainit d2 -p d1 100m
   metainit: hostname: d1: invalid unit

Growing Soft Partitions

A soft partition can be grown by the use of the metattach command. There is no mechanism to shrink a soft partition.

   # metattach d0 10m
   d0: Soft Partition has been grown

When additional space is added to an existing soft partition, the additional space is taken from any available space on the same device and might not be contiguous with the existing soft partition. Growing soft partitions must be done with free space in the same device as the current soft partition.

The following example shows how growing a soft partition will increase the size of the current extent:

   # metainit d1 -p c1t0d2s0 100m
   d1: Soft Partition is setup
   # metastat d1
   d1: Soft Partition
       Component: c1t0d2s0
       State: Okay
       Size: 204800 blocks
           Extent              Start Block              Block count
                0                        1                   204800

   # metattach d1 50m
   d1: Soft Partition has been grown
   # metastat d1
   d1: Soft Partition
       Component: c1t0d2s0
       State: Okay
       Size: 307200 blocks
           Extent              Start Block              Block count
                0                        1                   307200

Note how after the metattach is run, there is still only one extent, but the (block count) has grown from 204800 (100MB) to 307200 (150MB).

In the following example, the extent cannot be grown, as it was above, because another soft partition is "in the way". Therefore, a second extent is created in the same slice.

   # metainit d1 -p c1t0d2s0 100m
   d1: Soft Partition is setup
   # metainit d2 -p c1t0d2s0 10m
   d2: Soft Partition is setup
   # metastat
   d1: Soft Partition
       Component: c1t0d2s0
       State: Okay
       Size: 204800 blocks
           Extent              Start Block              Block count
                0                        1                   204800

   d2: Soft Partition
       Component: c1t0d2s0
       State: Okay
       Size: 20480 blocks
           Extent              Start Block              Block count
                0                   204802                    20480

   # metattach d1 50m
   d1: Soft Partition has been grown
   # metastat
   d1: Soft Partition
       Component: c1t0d2s0
       State: Okay
       Size: 307200 blocks
           Extent              Start Block              Block count
                0                        1                   204800
                1                   225283                   102400

   d2: Soft Partition
       Component: c1t0d2s0
       State: Okay
       Size: 20480 blocks
           Extent              Start Block              Block count
                0                   204802                    20480

Note how d1 now has two non-contiguous extents that together make up the 307200 (150MB) blocks.

NOTE: Growing the metadevice does not modify the data or the filesystem inside the metadevice. If the metadevice contains a filesystem, you must use the appropriate command(s) to grow that filesystem after the metadevice has been grown.


Deleting Soft Partitions

This is achieved by using the metaclear command in the normal way:

   # metaclear d0
   d0: Soft Partition is cleared

If other metadevices are using the soft partition, the metaclear 
will error with:
   metaclear: hostname: d0: metadevice in use

Using Soft Partitions with Disksets

There are no differences with soft partitioning in a diskset, other than having to specify the -s option on the commandline to specify the diskset name.

The only potential problem occurs when dealing with did disk devices that are in a SunCluster configuration. Unfortunately, the naming convention of the did devices is similar to that of SDS/SVM in that the disks are referred to as d#. This means that SDS/SVM could confuse a did disk with a metadevice when creating a soft partition.

The simple workaround to this problem is to use the full path to the did device on the metainint commandline in order to prevent any confusion.

For example, the following command to create a 1GB soft partition on /dev/did/rdsk/d7s0 would be invalid:

   # metainit -s set2 d0 -p d7s0 1g

Instead, the correct command to run would be:

   # metainit -s set2 d0 -p /dev/did/rdsk/d7s0 1g

How to list the soft partitions in a given slice

The metarecover command, with the -n and -v options, will display information about the soft partitons existing in a given slice.

The metarecover command actually scans the given slice for extent headers and prints the information that it finds about those headers.

In each slice/device, there are also 2 additional extent headers; one which preceeds the free space in the slice, and the one on the last block of the slice. These are printed as well. This is an easy way to determine how much free space is available in a slice for additional soft partitions.

   # metarecover -v -n /dev/rdsk/c1t0d0s0 -p
   Verifying on-disk structures on c1t0d0s0.
   The following extent headers were found on c1t0d0s0.
    Name  Seq#    Type          Offset          Length
      d0     0   ALLOC               0           20481
      d1     0   ALLOC           20481           40961
    NONE     0     END        17674901               1
    NONE     0    FREE           61442        17613459
   Found 2 soft partition(s) on c1t0d0s0.

In the above example, there were 2 soft partitions (d0 and d1) found on c1t0d0s0, as well as 17613458 blocks (approx 8.4GB) of unallocated free space.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The information printed by this command is relative to the extent header, not the soft partition itself. Therefore, the 'offset' is the starting location of the extent header, not the extent itself. Also, the 'length' given is the length of the extent plus the header. Therefore, in the example above, there are only 17613458 free blocks, not 17613459 blocks.

Because soft partitions can be layered above metadevices like mirrors or RAID5 devices (see layering, above), this command can also be run on them to determine the locations and sizes of the extent headers. In the example below, d0 is a RAID5 metadevice which has 4 soft partitions in it. There is no free space left in this device.

   # metarecover -v -n d0 -p
   Verifying on-disk structures on d0.
   The following extent headers were found on d0.
                   Name  Seq#    Type               Offset               Length
                     d1     0   ALLOC                    0               204801
                     d2     0   ALLOC               204801               204801
                     d3     0   ALLOC               409602               204801
                    d99     0   ALLOC               614403              7573580
                   NONE     0     END              8187983                    1
   Found 4 soft partition(s) on d0.

Fragmentation

Fragmentation of free space will occur on a slice when there has been activity in creating, deleting, and possibly growing soft partitions. At this time, there is no method to defragment a disk.

For example, the following sequence of commands can result in some amount of fragmentation. First, create 2 10MB soft partitions on a slice.

   # metainit d1 -p c1t0d0s0 10m
   d1: Soft Partition is setup
   # metainit d2 -p c1t0d0s0 10m
   d2: Soft Partition is setup

Then, remove the first 10MB soft partition and then create a 20MB soft partition.

   # metaclear d1
   d1: Soft Partition is cleared
   # metainit d3 -p c1t0d0s0 20m
   d3: Soft Partition is setup

When the d3 metadevice was created, the 10MB of free space at the 
beginning of the slice is not used, because there is a contiguous 20MB space 
available further out that can be used instead. Therefore, the 10MB of free 
space is skipped over in favor of the first 20MB of contiguous space. The
metarecover command will show the fragmentation (multiple free spaces):

   # metarecover -v -n c1t0d0s0 -p
   Verifying on-disk structures on c1t0d0s0.
   The following extent headers were found on c1t0d0s0.
                Name  Seq#    Type               Offset               Length
                  d2     0   ALLOC                20481                20481
                  d3     0   ALLOC                40962                40961
                NONE     0     END              2047247                    1
                NONE     0    FREE                81923              1965324
                NONE     0    FREE                    0                20481
   Found 2 soft partition(s) on c1t0d0s0.

Recovering Soft Partitions

The 'metarecover' command is run when something has gone wrong. It should not be run except to recover from a catastrophic problem. There are two main functions that this command does. It can

  1. scan through the given slice and recreate the soft partitions that it finds there. this is good when moving a disk with soft partitions to a new machine. The option to use on the metarecover command is -d.

  2. reads through the current replica and creates the soft partitions on the given slice. This is good to run after a disk fails and gets replaced with a new one. The option to use on the metarecover command is -m.

Recreating Information in the Replica from the Extent Headers

Here is a very simple example showing a disk which had soft partitions created on it (in slice 0) on another host, which is being moved to a new machine. We wish to extract the soft partitions on this new machine. Currently, there are no metadevices created.

   # metastat

This command scans the given slice (in this case, "c0t0d0s0") and, for each 
soft partition it finds in that slice, it puts an entry into the current 
replica. The data on the disk is not modified, and nothing on the slice 
specified is modified. All that happens is that the extent headers are read 
and information is written to the replica.
   # metarecover c0t0d0s0 -p -d
   The following soft partitions were found and will be added to
   your metadevice configuration.
    Name            Size     No. of Extents
     d1           61440         1
     d2           20480         1
   WARNING: You are about to add one or more soft partition
   metadevices to your metadevice configuration.  If there
   appears to be an error in the soft partition(s) displayed
   above, do NOT proceed with this recovery operation.

   Are you sure you want to do this (yes/no)? yes

   c0t0d0s0: Soft Partitions recovered from device.

Now, we can see the soft partition metadevices have been created for us:

   # metastat
   d1: Soft Partition
       Component: c0t0d0s0
       State: Okay
       Size: 61440 blocks
           Extent              Start Block              Block count
                0                   120836                    61440

   d2: Soft Partition
       Component: c0t0d0s0
       State: Okay
       Size: 20480 blocks
           Extent              Start Block              Block count
                0                    20482                    20480

Recreating Soft Partitions from Information in the Replica

This example essentially does the opposite of example 1. In this case, the actual extent headers on the disk have been lost, either because something wrote over them, or because the disk hosting the soft partitions had to be replaced with new disk drive. Although the replica shows the soft partitions to be "Okay":

   # metastat
   d1: Soft Partition
       Component: c0t0d0s0
       State: Okay
       Size: 61440 blocks
           Extent              Start Block              Block count
                0                   120836                    61440

   d2: Soft Partition
       Component: c0t0d0s0
       State: Okay
       Size: 20480 blocks
           Extent              Start Block              Block count
                0                    20482                    20480

there are no extent headers on the disk, so I/O to the disk will error out.

   # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/md/rdsk/d2
   dd: /dev/md/rdsk/d2: open: I/O error

To check the disk to see if any extent headers exist on the disk, you can 
run the command

   # metarecover -n c0t0d0s0 -p
   found incorrect magic number 0, expected 20000127.
   No extent headers found on c0t0d0s0.
   c0t0d0s0: On-disk structures invalid or no soft partitions found.
   metarecover: hostname: d0: bad magic number in extent header

The above command confirms that there are no extent headers on the disk. 
To have the extent headers written out to the disk, according to the information 
currently in the replica, run the command

   # metarecover c0t0d0s0 -p -m
   c0t0d0s0: Soft Partition metadb configuration is valid

   WARNING: You are about to overwrite portions of c0t0d0s0
   with soft partition metadata. The extent headers will be
   written to match the existing metadb configuration.  If
   the device was not previously setup with this
   configuration, data loss may result.

   Are you sure you want to do this (yes/no)? yes

   c0t0d0s0: Soft Partitions recovered from metadb

Now, the extent headers have been written to the disk, so I/O will work 
correctly now. Running the verify command again, we see
   # metarecover -n c0t0d0s0 -p
   c0t0d0s0: Soft Partition metadb configuration is valid
   c0t0d0s0: Soft Partition metadb matches extent header configuration



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Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotesSomerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose BierceBernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOSProgramming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC developmentScripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-MonthHow to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D


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Last modified: March, 12, 2019