Andrés J. Díaz

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  ajdiaz 7:41 pm on November 21, 2009 | 0 | # |
  Tags: cloud, code, distribute, nss, security, systems

  Last week I was working on libnss_map, aNSS library module to map user credentials to existent user in the system. This module is intended to be used in high virtualized environment like cloud computing or embedded systems which require a lot of users.

  When a new user has been authenticated by PAM or other authentication mechanism, then the nss_map module create a virtual user when credentials mapped to an existent user. For example, suppose here are a user virtual, created a la standard way on /etc/passwd:

      virtual:x:15000:15000:virtual user for nss_map:/dev/null:/sbin/nologin
  

  Then edit the /etc/nssmap.conf
  file:

      virtual:x:15000:15000:virtual user for nss_map:/home/virtual:/bin/bash
  

  Note that the user directory is really a base dir in nssmap, each new user can search their home in /home/virtual/logname, where logname is the name used by user to login, and the /home/virtual is the prefix setted in nssmap.conf.

  As usual, you can get the project from http://connectical.com/projects/libnss-map.

  Enjoy!

   

• ajdiaz 8:50 pm on June 20, 2009 | 0 | # |
  

  Really the sysfs and /proc filesystems are worlds of magic and fantasy. Each day I discover a new trick using this filesystems. So, I decided to post a short summary of my favorites ones. Enjoy and feel free to add your tricks in comments, maybe we can a /proc and /sys knownledge database in a post

  1. Scanning for LUNs in attached FC
  echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/hostX/scan

  2. CPU hotplug
  echp 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuX/online

  Obviously when run echo 1, put the CPU online again

  3. Enable dmesg timestamp
  echo Y > /sys/modules/prinkt/parameters/time

  4. Restore a removed file when is still in use
  cat /proc/pid/fd/descriptor number > /tmp/myfile_restored

  5. Get the IO operations for a process:
  cat /proc/pid/io
  The syscr and the syscw are the accumulated read and write IO operations that process do where running.

  6. Increase size of IO scheduler queue:
  echo 10000 > /sys/block/device/queue/nr_request

  7. Get the current IO scheduler enabed to a specific device:
  cat /sys/block/device/queue/scheduler

  8. Get the threads of pdflush process which are running:
  cat /proc/sys/vm/nr_pdflush_threads

  9. Set the percentage threshold for memory to start to flushd data to disk:
  echo XX > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_background_ratio

  10. Set the sleep time for pdflush checking (in centisecs):
  echo XXX > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs

  11. Set the time to live for a data in buffer, when raises, data will commit to disk (in centisecs):
  echo XXX > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_expire_centisecs

   

• ajdiaz 7:29 pm on April 3, 2009 | 0 | # |
  Tags: admin, bash, code, config, gentoo

  For last months I needed to maintain a number of heterogeneous servers for mi work, I need to do some usually actions, like update a config file, restart a service, create local users etc.

  For this purposes there are a lot of applications, like dsh (or full csm), pysh, shmux and many others (only need to perform a search in google using phrase “distributed shell”). Unfortunately for me, I want a easy-to-parse solution, because I’ve a big (really big) number of servers, and I want a single cut-based/awk parsing, and also I need to do some actions as other users (like root, for example) via sudo. Althought many of the existants solutions offers me a subset of this features, I cannot found a complete solution. So I decided to create one

  You can find the code, and some packages in the dtools development site. I was use this solution in production environment from months with excelent results, and you can feel free to use.

  Of course, its free (of freedom) software, distributed under MIT license.

  Enjoy and remember: feedback are welcome

   

• ajdiaz 4:00 pm on February 24, 2009 | 0 | # |
  Tags: bash, scripts

  Yerterday (monday 23 of Feb) the GNU team released a new version of bash.

  This new version contains a lot of interesting features, for example asociative arrays (yep!), autocd … and more!

  The notices was published in the bash mailing list.

   

• ajdiaz 5:27 pm on August 9, 2008 | 0 | # |
  Tags: code

  This week I publish a tiny library to manage netstrings, as described in Bernstein’s paper. This library is wirten in C and provide a very basic implementation for small applications. I use this library in some projects for months, and now a publish the code over MIT License in launchpad.

  You can visit the page of the project in launchpad, or get the code via bzr:

  bzr get lp:netstr
  

   

• ajdiaz 4:57 pm on May 10, 2008 | 4 | # |
  Tags: gentoo systems pkgcore config

  Last days I reinstalled my Gentoo in my desktop computer, a Dell Dimension C521 using the new package handler pkgcore.

  The last months I’ve use official portage, and also new replacement called paludis. The main advantage of this one is being written entirely in C++, so paludis is very fast, but also you can detect some problems when you need to compile some “specials” packages, such qemu, which requires to be compiled with gcc3. If you compile paludis with another version of gcc, you can find a beauty error related to dynamic linking. Obviously, you can solve this problem by hand or with sonme tricks , but I don’t like tricks in production machines.

  (More …)

   

• ajdiaz 10:18 pm on March 18, 2008 | 1 | # |
  Tags: education, physics, university

  I see in the “People of the Web” the last interview to the Professor Walter Lewin, at MIT. I have no comments about him and his classes, only two comments: 1) the great phrase: “Physics work!”, and 2) can other people regarded teacher? I don’t need to think more about it…

   

• ajdiaz 1:09 am on March 16, 2008 | 0 | # |
  Tags: book, physics, quantum

  

  Last days I was read the book titled “Entanglement: The greatest mystery in physics”, which is written by Ph.D. Amir D. Aczel, famous for his books about physics. This one is about quantum physics, particularly the entanglement phenomenon. The entanglement is an effect of quantum objects (if we can call them “objects”) consists in a relation between the quantum state of implicated objects, so when we alter one of them, the others “know” automagically the change, even though the objects are spatially separated.

  I’m surprised at how easy is to read, it’s funny and clearly (as much as quantum theory allows) and I recommended to people who are interesting in quantum theory and it’s history.

   

• ajdiaz 7:42 pm on February 9, 2008 | 27 | # |
  Tags: code, tips

  In some situations i like to use INI files as configuration files, as python do. But bash do not provide a parser for these files, obviously you can use a awk code or a couple of sed calls, but if you are bash-priest and do not want to use nothing more, then you can try the following obscure code:

  cfg.parser () {
      IFS=$'\n' && ini=( $(<$1) )              # convert to line-array
      ini=( ${ini[*]//;*/} )                   # remove comments
      ini=( ${ini[*]/#[/\}$'\n'cfg.section.} ) # set section prefix
      ini=( ${ini[*]/%]/ \(} )                 # convert text2function (1)
      ini=( ${ini[*]/=/=\( } )                 # convert item to array
      ini=( ${ini[*]/%/ \)} )                  # close array parenthesis
      ini=( ${ini[*]/%\( \)/\(\) \{} )         # convert text2function (2)
      ini=( ${ini[*]/%\} \)/\}} )              # remove extra parenthesis
      ini[0]=''                                # remove first element
      ini[${#ini[*]} + 1]='}'                  # add the last brace
      eval "$(echo "${ini[*]}")"               # eval the result
  }
  

  And then you can parse your ini files as following:

  # parse the config file called 'myfile.ini', with the following
  # contents::
  #   [sec2]
  #   var2='something'
  cfg.parser 'myfile.ini'
  
  # enable section called 'sec2' (in the file [sec2]) for reading
  cfg.section.sec2
  
  # read the content of the variable called 'var2' (in the file
  # var2=XXX). If your var2 is an array, then you can use
  # ${var[index]}
  echo "$var2"
  

  Unfortunately, the cfg.parser() function do no support embedded spaces
  in section names… yet

   

• ajdiaz 11:27 pm on February 8, 2008 | 1 | # |
  Tags: code

  bashdoc is a small utility to make documentation automatically from bash scripts, using awk to frontend parser (and you can add your own frontends in awk language), and reStructuredText as backend parser. bashdoc parse the object script (using awk) and create an intermediate documentation in RST, which is parsed in next step using RST backend.

  The fronted allows you to parse more complicated scripts (or other than bash scripts) and the backend allows you to make the output in different formats.

  You can download the source code from launchpad project page or using bzr version control system:

  $ bzr get lp:bashdoc

   

• Tags

  admin bash book cloud code config distribute education floss gentoo gentoo systems pkgcore config network nss physics quantum scripts security systems tips university

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