The Mac-Mini server: reliability through redundancy

PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column

A great column, even by the very high Cringely standards. This quote, from a very authoritative source, is very interesting.

'The second box is going to be our source-code server. It's safe as heck, because OS X includes one-click firewalls. And, again, it's not like I have so many engineers that we're checking in code every second. If it processes a transaction every ten minutes, I'll consider our company very productive. For us little guys, the Mac mini is the absolute perfect server. I'm hooking up two identical external drives to each Mac mini (total of four), each two set up as a RAID 1. (Each drive is slightly bigger than the mini.) The chances of losing data via disk failure are astronomically low this way. And if a motherboard crashes, I can swap in the other box -- I have a $500 hot-backup OF THE WHOLE MACHINE. I have a complete server 'closet' that fits in less than a cubic foot. It's quiet. It's got a redundant RAID built-in. It's easy to administer and set up. I share a monitor and keyboard with my main workstation, so I don't have any extra clutter. Look out, Linux.'

Hmm. I'm not sure Apple will like this; they sell xserve blades! The cost advantages over doing this with a cheap PC come from security, built-in RAID support, and a low cost quiet machine.

More broadly speaking we've moved to high reliability systems in the past 10 years not by making individual machines more reliable, but rather by seeking reliability at the system level -- not the component level. Hmm. Reliability at the system level. Where have I heard that idea before?

The other point the author makes, that many people forget, is that many servers really aren't doing much work at all. Our home server is a very old Win2K machine and that's overkill.

Cringely has more in the article. Clearly he's fond of Apple. He describes how to build a $9K supercomputer with 16 Mac-Minis:

Imagine a Mac Minicluster running Apple's xGrid software. Start with a 16-port fast Ethernet switch and stack 16 Mac Minis on top. That's a 720 gigaflop micro-supercomputer that costs less than $9,000, can fit on a bookshelf, and can be up and running in as little time as it takes to connect the network cables. High schools will be sequencing genes.

Read the whole thing. Good fun. Now if Apple could only get their #$!* iPhoto product working ....

Sending large files: YouSendIt and others

ExtraBITS

I've used YouSendIt for a while (blogged on it sometime). This post lists some others. YouSendIt can be very slow (minutes) to initiate an upload, but otherwise it's worked well for me.

As the author notes it would be interesting to learn how YouSendIt expects to make money. (Probably they're just trying to get Google to buy them --- which smells like a 1998 business plan.)

Google Microsoft Search

Google Microsoft Search

Running into a Microsoft problem? Start here.

Obscure Windows XP networking problems: Disabling the DNS Cache

JSI Tip 6540. How do I disable client-side DNS caching in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003?

I'm having DNS problems with my Cisco VPN connection. I'm testing if it might be related to a bad DNS cache.

Update: Yep. That did it. I could connect to work via my Cisco VPN from my home LAN, or from a cafe LAN. I couldn't do it from the hotel though! I have XP firewall disabled. When I tried to ping a machine in the office I saw the DNS was returning an IP address of 1.1.1.1

I tried various VPN options and even reinstalled it. Nothing worked. Finally I made a wild guess that XP cached DNS values and that the cache was corrupted. So I did the search and found the above.

Then I did:

net stop dnscache

- after this the VPN wouldn't connect at all

net start dnscache

- the VPN connected and I was fine again.

Update: I've since learned ipconfig, the secret weapon of windows IP networking, has some useful options for debugging DNS problems. There's a secret glitch however, a windows networking guru tells me one must run /flushdns TWICE to really clean out the Resolver cache.

Here are the options displayed with ipconfig /?:

/all Display full configuration information.
/release Release the IP address for the specified adapter.
/renew Renew the IP address for the specified adapter.
/flushdns Purges the DNS Resolver cache.
/registerdns Refreshes all DHCP leases and re-registers DNS names
/displaydns Display the contents of the DNS Resolver Cache.
/showclassid Displays all the dhcp class IDs allowed for adapter.
/setclassid Modifies the dhcp class id.

BBC Internet Radio -- including podcasting In Our Tme

BBC - Press Office - Radio Player re-launched

This is the first podcast that's caught my attention.

In Our Time is also available via podcasting - the BBC is the first British broadcaster to use this technology.

Wake a Mac from a PC and vice versa

macosxhints - Wake a Mac from a PC and vice versa

The comments to this "hint" fill in more background on "magic packets".

Keynotes subversive XML file format

TN2073: Deconstructing a Keynote Document: Part One - Slides:

Will the same thing be true of Pages? Is Keynote a covert SVG implementation?

MacDevCenter.com: Keynote's XML Connections

MacDevCenter.com: Keynote's XML Connections

Not scriptable, but one can script the xml that Keynote reads .... Interesting.

Is Apple planning to replace AppleScript?

Apple - Discussions - Applescript

From a post I made to Apple Discussions. It may be deleted as it may be contrary to Apple's restrictive posting policy.

Pages is not scriptable. Keynote is not scriptable either.

I was interested in buying iWorks until I learned this. On the plus side both apps have an XML file format and the Keynote spec has been published (AXML). That's very good.

But what's the story with AppleScript? Has Apple decided to replace it with something else?

It's worth noting that iTunes/Windows lacks iTunes/Mac functionality because it doesn't have a scripting solution. I wonder if Apple is considering a cross-platform replacement for AppleScript. If so they may have decided not to invest in AppleScript support for iWorks.

If they're not planning to replace AppleScript, them I'm completely at a loss to explain why their premier desktop productivity software would not be scriptable.

OS/X Pages review

macteens : Review: Apple Pages (iWork '05)

One of the first reviews of Pages (iWorks). Overall this sounds like a much more promising app than iPhoto 5. I'll still wait until I have my G5 before trying it out. My comments:

1. Is it scriptable? A few AppleScripts, esp. if they have keyboard shortcuts, could work around many usability issues (fonts, etc). Unfortunately Keynote is not scriptable. So maybe Pages isn't either. Is Apple going to give up on AppleScript?

2. The file format, I'm told, is human readable XML with associated binaries. If true this is a major plus. But does Apple publish the file format specification? An open format is an essential requirement for any wordprocessing application that is not Microsoft Word. The good news is that Apple does publish the Keynote APXL spec; we'll see if they publish a spec for Pages as well.

Doesn't Apple test anything? - "Register iWork from an admin user account"

Register iWork from an admin user account: "Register iWork from an admin user account
To avoid being asked to register again if you switch user accounts, be sure to install and register iWork using an admin user account instead of a standard user (non-admin user) account. You'll only be asked to register once if you register from an admin user account."

Sigh. Don't they do ANY testing?

Using credit card warrantees in place of unreliable AppleCare

MacInTouch Home Page

Credit card warrantees are a better deal than most vendor extended warrantee plans. Given the recent issues with the quality of AppleCare service I'll likely go this route in future. VISA seems particularly good, but I've had excellent service from AMEX with broken or defective goods.

[Nicolas Martin] Thanks to Doug McLean for noting that Visa's extended warranties are much cheaper than AppleCare for purchases made with eligible cards. The Visa web site lists the costs of those warranties, which extend up to 5 years: [Visa Signature Benefits]

Visa confirms that its warranties are transferable for $10, and a pro-rated refund can be obtained if the warranty is cancelled.

This seems like an good deal, and neither AMEX nor MasterCard offer anything comparable. But to look at it another way, the Visa extended warranties, like Apple's, are in force from the date of purchase. If you have a credit card that offers an additional year of no-charge coverage on a product that has a one year warranty - like a Mac - then a 'three-year' warranty only really buys you one additional year of coverage.

You can almost buy a Mac Mini for what Apple charges for AppleCare on some Macs, so it is a good idea to use a credit card with the 'free' year of extra coverage.

iPhoto 5 is worrisome

Apple - Discussions - iPhoto 5 Strips Color Profiles!

This doesn't look pretty.

1. Not suited to use on a G3 machine. Too slow to tolerate, several editing tools unavailable.
2. Strips out color profiles when editing, seems to ignore system ColorSync settings.
3. Reports of unuseable Libraries after upgrading from earlier versions.
4. Various problems with book editing.

Software QA is my primary concern with Apple. What are they doing?

Delete iTunes store account information

macosxhints - Manually delete iTunes store account information

A comment on software quality: OS X and iPhoto 5

Apple - Discussions - DO NOT USE IPHOTO 5... FOR NOW

I posted this as a part of the above thread. It may be deleted, Apple's policy allows them to delete commentary of this sort.

... Thanks for the warning! I've also read that iPhoto 5 does not work fully on older machines (G3 iBooks) -- many of the new editing features require a G4 (or perhaps use a newer GPU?)

You will receive many replies to your post essentially "blaming the user" for not running UNIX maintenance scripts, not running one disk repair utility or another, not repairing permissions (that's largely superstition by the way), not deleting caches, not forcing iPhoto database restores, etc. Some of these posts are somewhat accurate, but all are irrelevant to the main point -- OS X is marketed as a consumer OS, not a geek platform. (Ironically, some versions of classic had more problems than most OS X releases -- so it's not the 'UNIX' underpinnings that cause issues.)

I believe Apple doesn't do enough beta testing. They ought to have released iPhoto 5 in a public beta, as Google does with their apps (Gmail, etc). Of course this is contrary to Jobs passion for secrecy and big bang product launches. Jobs is a genius, but his interests are not the same as ours.

The RAW support in iPhoto is weak. They shouldn't have gone this route -- the manufacturers simply aren't willing to cooperate. Adobe has spent a fortune reverse engineering RAW file formats, that's why they're championing a "generic" RAW-like file format.

As to the import problems you ran into, similar experiences were seen with iPhoto 2 to iPhoto 4. At that time it seems iPhoto 2 had some severe bugs (they may have been in OS X, we don't know) that led to corruption of the iPhoto 2 database; this corruption was often invisible to the user. The initial release of iPhoto 4 responded to the problem badly. Later iPhoto 4 releases seem to have managed iPhoto 2 database corruption better.

It may also be that you have a hardware issue. Do you use an external drive? External firewire drives have often been problematic with OS X, especially with suboptimal cables. The iPhoto 5 update is a severe stressor on drive i/o, it might precipitate i/o errors and lead to database corruption -- even on a journaled file system. (This might be especially true if you had your iPhoto Library on an external firewire drive that was not journaled.)

Finally, I do want to affirm that I (at least) agree with you that consumer software is far, far from what it should be. Apple is not alone, I do most of my work on XP and Microsoft is at least as guilty. (Apple has very demanding customers, that helps. Microsoft customers have largely learned helplessness.) Perhaps the newer NetApps from Google will take us down a better path. In the meantime, backup relentlessly (yes, backup is FAR more costly, difficult and less reliable than it should be) and, above all, don't install anything until it's been on the market for at least 2 months. Sad advice indeed, but true.