You may know Mark from his work on Computer Immunology and the cfengine configuration management tool. I've used cfengine on and off for years and I've always tried to follow the rule that all computers you manage should be as similar as possible. I think Mark said that but I'm sure others have said it too.
My particular interest in this session was the issue of configuration management for network devices such as routers and switches. Although there are many tools to standardize the configuration of servers and workstations, it is currently virtually impossible to extend this to other devices. The result is that you end up manually configuring each one.
Alva had some good advice on this, in particular that people at Great Circle were working on it (here's their blog entry). This was a popular topic. Another big discussion centered on why the people researching system automation don't talk much about cfengine (answer: they are concerned with the systems, while sysadmins are concerned with the people).
Mark is from Oslo and I'm always amazed at how much he travels. In fact, there were quite a few Scandinavians at the conference. I don't know why - is USENIX well-advertised over there?
All of this led to lunch and on to the afternoon's presentations. Now my notes get a little thin here. I'm going to blame that on a big lunch and a need for an afternoon nap. I did check out a couple of talks but they turned out to be too academic and the speaker weren't very engaging. One note I left myself: Where is Richard Stallman. I.e., you need passionate and inflammatory speakers to keep people awake in the afternoon. Oh well, that happens at these conferences.
Luckily, I had recovered in time for the 3:30 coffee break. Two things I learned at the coffee break:
- if you're late to the coffee break, all you get are really dry peanut butter cookies.
- You also don't get any coffee!
The next presentation was a talk on Online Gaming by Mark Wirt, CTO of Butterfy.net. This is one area where USENIX really shines: it attracts some top-notch industry speakers.
Mark had a lot to say about the MMOG (massively multiplayer online gaming) world. His company produces an online gaming engine (I apologize in advance if I've over-simplified). Mark's previous experience was in weapons research. Is there a connection there? I'm still not sure.
When I was at the Configuration guru session, about eighty percent of the laptops were Macs. At other talks, it was more like forty percent. Why do Sysadmins like macs so much? I need to research that some more.
I learned that the first MMOG (or maybe MMO? I'm confused about the acronym) was Spacewar, developed on the PDP-1 at MIT in 1962. You can see how 'old-school' this conference is when Mark stated that he was sure someone in the audience had worked on a PDP-1. To quote Mark, in 1962 the PDP-1 was "the cat's pajamas." He noted that games have always pushed hardware to the limits, even all the way back to Spacewar.
Mark traced out the evolution of online games, through the MUD (multi-user dungeon) invented in the late 70s, and through the first 'modern' MMOGs, Meridan 59 (released in 1996) and Ultima Online a few years later.
Mark is obviously very knowledgeable about this field. He pointed out that isomorphic (overhead) MMOGs are very popular in China today due to limited hardware power. In contrast, you have to do full 3D for a game in the US. He also pointed out that persistent connections are what makes broadband appealing for online games. Bandwidth is a secondary consideration because if you try to fill up everyone's cable modem, you quickly end up paying huge bandwidth bills on the server end.
And that brings us to the end of the first day of USENIX. Actually now is where the real meat of this or any other tech conference occurs: after-hours Birds of a Feather meetings. It's amazing what you learn from the experts after they have a couple of beers. I hope to attend a meeting with Great Circle to learn more about automatic network configuration.
I have to note that I did all my note-taking today on a little hotel-supplied notepad with a pen. I think tomorrow I might try taking notes on my PowerBook. All the typing in these conferences does seem a little distracting, though. Stay tuned for tomorrow's update.
About the Author:
Phil Hollenback is a System Administrator at a financial company in Manhattan. When he's not taking care of computers, he
spends his time skateboarding and working on his website.
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