Archive for the ‘Blog’ Category

I got a new job

You probably noticed that I didn’t write anything new for awhile. Well, I was looking for a new job and didn’t have much time to write. Luckily, this is over. I am now a senior software engineer at Exanet LTD. Exanet is developing storage solutions for large organisations. ExaStore, main product of the company, is […]

MSI-X – the right way to spread interrupt load

When considering ways to spread interrupts from one device among multiple cores, I can’t not to mention MSI-X. The thing is that MSI-X is actually the right way to do the job. Interrupt affinity, which I discussed here and here, has a fundamental problem. That is inevitable CPU cache misses. To emphasise this, think about […]

Why interrupt affinity with multiple cores is not such a good thing

One of the features of x86 architecture is ability to spread interrupts evenly among multiple cores. Benefits of such configuration seems to be obvious. Interrupts consume CPU time and by spreading them on all cores we avoid bottle-necks. I’ve written an article explaining this mechanism in greater detail. Yet let me remind you how it […]

PSC for Personal Super Computer

I’ve been waiting for this for quiet some time and now it is finally here. I am talking about Personal Super Computers. Five years ago I purchased a brand new laptop computer. It is a decent computer – I am still using it today. It cost me around 1500$ U.S. Obviously, today it is less […]

2 reasons why small package repository is better than large

I am in the middle of CentOS and Ubuntu comparison frenzy. It started with an attempt to assert quality of Linux distributions made for busy people. Today I am considering packaging. When comparing Ubuntu and CentOS packaging systems, first thing that crosses my mind is that, well, size matters. Ubuntu has nearly 70000 packages. CentOS […]

Few thoughts about Ubuntu servers and CentOS

This Saturday I tried to configure VNC server to start in the background automatically at boot. You know, in Ubuntu you normally run VNC server when you need it and stop it when you don’t need it anymore.

“Linux Tips and Tricks”, cracking passwords and security

Carla Schroder of Linux Today has posted a nice list of her Linux tips and tricks, here. One tip I could not make work is Cracking Passwords. The program simply refused to identify my passwords file. I found that it might be because it doesn’t support this kind of encryption or something like that.

Mono is here to stay, period?

There has been a new development in the subject I raised a day ago. It seems that there has been some effort on Microsoft’s side to clarify the legal issue with the Mono Project. According to this article in iTWire, Microsoft will extend its Community Promise to the C# and CLI standards.

Security breach in Apache and other web-servers

Apparently, there is a serious breach in Apache’s security. Attacker can launch a denial of service attack on Apache based web-site causing it to stop responding.

Mono is here to stay

There’s an ongoing discussion about the Mono project. Mono is somewhat controversial because it is an open source implementation of C# programming language and .NET platform. Mono has constantly being bullied because both C# and .NET are creations of the cause of all evil on earth, Microsoft corp.