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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • This is the method I use in your scenario, OP. You can use Folder2iso to get the files in that you need. If the OS has official VMware tools, you can also mount the VMware Tools ISO straight from workstation into the VM and this will give you the clipboard service so you can copy and paste files between the host and VM, if this scenario is permitted within your isolation needs.

    Otherwise, go the ISO route. You just can’t bring stuff out of the VM back to the host is all.



  • Its very much still needed and heavily utilised in the enterprise world. Volume size is usually the lowest priority when it comes to arrays, redundancy and IOPS (the amount of concurrent transactions to the storage) is typically the priority. The exception here would be backup and archive storage, where IOPS is less important and volume size is more important.

    As far as replacing sectors goes, I’ve never heard of this and I might just be ignorant on the subject but as far as I know you can’t “replace” a bad sector. Only mark it as bad and not use it, and whatever was there before is gone. This has existed since HDD days. This is also why we use RAID - parity across disks to protect data.

    Generally production storage will be in RAID-10, and backup/archive storage in RAID-6 or in some cases RAID-60 but I’m personally not a fan.

    You also would consider how many disks are in the volume because there is a sweet spot. Too many disks = higher likelihood of total array failure due to simultaneous disk failures and more data loss in the event it does, but too few disks and you won’t have good redundancy, capacity or performance either (depending on RAID level).

    The biggest change I see in RAID these days is moving away from hardware RAID cards and into software-based solutions like Microsoft Storage Spaces, md, ZFS and similar. These all have their own way of doing things and some can even synchronise the data with other hosts.

    Hope this helps!













  • TIL about Fedora, last I knew it was a rolling bleeding edge OS. Clearly lots of movement in the Red Hat camp.

    As for gaming, drivers were not the problem for me. Getting games to run with ease was. On OpenSUSE, I just install Steam, enable Proton and basically go at that point. Red Hat was non-trivial to do this. Could be a skill issue, but I had a better time getting going with OpenSUSE TW.


  • Sort of, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. I started on OpenSUSE Leap but had issues getting things like GPU and Steam working. Red Hat was also a non-starter because of the lack of gaming functionality.

    TW works great for gaming and the enterprise features I care about (like domain joining) work out of the box. Its certainly harder to set up than something more geared towards home use (typically one of the various the downstreams of Debian or Arch) but that doesn’t bother me.


  • Servers are a different story but for Desktop, OpenSUSE.

    Because:

    • It’s stable even on their rolling OS (Tumbleweed)
    • Gaming works exceptionally well
    • CUDA works with little effort
    • RPM-based (personal preference)
    • zypper is an excellent package manager and my experience has been better than that of yum/dnf
    • Extensive native packages and 3rd party repos
    • No covert advertising in the OS
    • Minimal (no?) Telemetry
    • Easy to bind to active directory
    • it feels polished and well built
    • I do not have to mess with it to make it work

    Part of my transition from Windows to Linux was that basic tasks like installing software or even the OS itself shouldn’t be a high effort endeavour. I should be able to point to a package file or run a package manager and be able to go about my day without running “make” and working my way through dependency hell.

    I say this as a Linux user of all different flavours for well over 15 years who has a deep love for what it brings to the table. If we want it to be common place with non-IT folks, it needs to work and it needs to be simple to use.



  • Worked for an MSP, we had a large storage array which was our cloud backup repository for all of our clients. It locked up and was doing this semi-regularly, so we decided to run an “OS reinstall”. Basically these things install the OS across all of the disks, on a separate partition to where the data lives. “OS Reinstall” clones the OS from the flash drive plugged into the mainboard back to all the disks and retains all configuration and data. “Factory default”, however, does not.

    This array was particularly… special… In that you booted it up, held a paperclip into the reset pin, and the LEDs would flash a pattern to let you know you’re in the boot menu. You click the pin to move through the boot menu options, each time you click it the lights flash a different pattern to tell you which option is selected. First option was normal boot, second or third was OS reinstall, the very next option was factory default.

    I head into the data centre. I had the manual, I watched those lights like a hawk and verified the “OS reinstall” LED flash pattern matched up, then I held the pin in for a few seconds to select the option.

    All the disks lit up, away we go. 10 minutes pass. Nothing. Not responding on its interface. 15 minutes. 20 minutes, I start sweating. I plug directly into the NIC and head to the default IP filled with dread. It loads. I enter the default password, it works.

    There staring back at me: “0B of 45TB used”.

    Fuck.

    This was in the days where 50M fibre was rare and most clients had 1-20M ADSL. Yes, asymmetric. We had to send guys out as far as 3 hour trips with portable hard disks to re-seed the backups over a painful 30ish days of re-ingesting them into the NAS.

    The worst part? Years later I discovered that, completely undocumented, you can plug a VGA cable in and you get a text menu on the screen that shows you which option you have selected.

    I (somehow) did not get fired.


  • Because prospective customers get shy when the browser says that your site is “insecure”

    Because it factually is insecure. It is not encrypted and trivial to inspect.

    Because it makes for better google ranking.

    No, in this day and age it is permission to play. Firefox has a built in feature to only load HTTPS sites, which I have enabled. This has nothing to do with Google. Your issue is with expensive CAs, to which there is a free solution (Let’s Encrypt). Not HTTPS itself.

    So there you go. Mob hype and googlian dictatorship.

    Incorrect. It is a matter of safety and security and a trivial thing to implement. You are free to not use HTTPS if you want, just as people are free to not consume your service if you don’t.

    Calling it a “dictatorship” is hyperbole and demonstrates that you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about and won’t listen to people that do.