LaunchPad bug 1013893 asked nicely if the drop action for iptables rules created by nova-network could be configured. The idea here is that you might want to do something other than a plain old drop — for example logging before dropping. This has now been implemented in Havana. To configure the drop action, set the…
Upgrade problems with the new Fixed IP quota
In the last few weeks a new quota has been added to Nova covering Fixed IPs. This was done in response to LaunchPad bug 1125468, which was disclosed as CVE 2013-1838. To be honest I think there are some things the vulnerability management team learned the hard way with this disclosure. For example, we didn’t…
Havana Nova PTL elections
This is just a quick reminder that there are only a couple more days to vote in the Nova PTL elections for the Havana cycle. If you’re eligible to vote, you should have a voting URL in your email. The candidates: Russell Bryant — announcement Michael Still — announcement The incumbent PTL, Vishvananda Ishaya, has…
Redshirts
I was super excited to get my hands on the latest John Scalzi book because I’ve really liked his previous stuff. Unfortunately while this book is fun I feel that the underlying concept is pretty weak… Its more of a toy boy than something which makes you think, which is a disappointment to me. Don’t…
Earthbound
This is the third book in the Marsbound series. The Others have just turned off all electronics on Earth, and now we need to survive. One problem with this book is that it jumps straight into the action — I had to go back and re-read Marsbound and Starbound in order to understand what was…
OpenStack at linux.conf.au 2013
As some of you might know, I’m the Director for linux.conf.au 2013. I’ve tried really hard to not use my powers for evil and make the entire conference about OpenStack — in fact I haven’t pulled rank and demanded that specific content be included at all. However, the level of interest in OpenStack has grown…
Image handlers (in essex)
George asks in the comments on my previous post about loop and nbd devices an interesting question about the behavior of this code on essex. I figured the question was worth bringing out into its own post so that its more visible. I’ve edited George’s question lightly so that this blog post flows reasonably. Can…
The Forever War (again)
Still excellent. Title: The Forever War Author: Joe Haldeman Genre: Fiction Publisher: Macmillan Release Date: 1975 Pages: 287 “Del Rey book.” Battling the Taurans in space was one problem as Private William Mandella worked his way up the ranks to major. In spanning the stars, he aged only months while Earth aged centuries.
Some quick operational notes for users of loop and nbd devices
A quick note for OpenStack operators — if you are using loop or nbd devices to mount disk images in nova-compute, then you would be well served to have plenty of device files hanging around to reduce contention. For loop devices, that seems as simple as making more of them with MAKEDEV. With nbd, you’ll…
Starquake
The sequel to the very excellent Dragon’s Egg, this book covers the continued interaction between the humans and the super cute Cheela. Unfortunately for the Cheela they suffer a major natural disaster which destroys society. I love an author who is willing to kill of characters when it progresses the story, and there is lots…