The inner life of NFS filehandles

The NFS protocol uses something called a 'file handle' to identifywhat file a given operation applies to; this is sort of analogous tohow a traditional Unix system internally identifies files by theirinode number (well, their device plus their inode number).

In theory a NFS filehandle is opaque and an NFS server can use anyscheme it wants in order to uniquely identify files. In practice thereare a number of constraints on how a NFS server can form filehandles,based on preserving as many Unix semantics as possible


Walk the Talk

When we fall in love with arguing with people, it is a good feeling that will lead to a darn bad effect. Dale Carnegie claimed that we can't win an argument. We can't because if we lose it, we lose it; and if we win it, we lose it. Why? As often happens, the moment we triumph over the other man and shoot his argument full of holes in an apparently landslide victory, we feel good. But that particular person gets hurt and resents our

(無題, 因無言以對)

人事部的女同事召我入房傾計, 我抱著被炒魷的心理準備踏步前進. 公司「例行公事」出了張警告信給我, 大意是不准再做錯事, 並要小心維護公司聲譽、繼續忠誠服務之類. 女同事是個好人, 談了一會, 她說警告信的事並不嚴

當每一個我們都叫喊時,天使會側耳傾聽

馮炳德今日獲保釋候上訴

黐線,開心到喊。

我想唔撈呢份工:Geek Geek戰鬥員之哀歌。

幪面超人劇集內經常行先死先果班二打六壞人,究竟點稱呼?

問過幪面超人專家肥倫,佢好正經咁答我話:「佢地一般被統稱為戰鬥員」,而坊間就向來慣稱他們為Geek Geek,因為佢地出親場,都係Geek Geek聲咁叫。

無諗過呢班Geek Geek都有


Using iptables to get around the policy based routing limitation

A while back I discovered a limitation in Linux's policy basedrouting, where you couldn't use the straightforward means to flexibly route outgoing traffic ona dual identity machine over differentinterfaces (for example, to force all SSH traffic to flow over one link,regardless of the destination). At the time I wrote:

To fix this situation up, you need to change the source IP address ofthe packets to fix them up. Unfortunately the only way I know of doingthis is to use source-


Lady First 專欄 (29-30)

旅行的意義


如果有人同我哋講,某間餐廳好邪門,情侶去親就會出事,輕則鬧交重則分手,我哋通常都會信邪,唔去嗰度食飯。

去少一間餐廳啫,有咩所謂呢?又唔會死人嘅……

之不過,如果有人同我哋講,情侶一齊去旅行,十

The basic implementation of relatively high-availability NFS

There's a lot of complicated approaches for high availability servicesin general. Fortunately, NFS's statelessness makes it easy to do arelatively simple, low-rent version of this.

First, make your fileserver names point to virtual IP addresses. Embodythese virtual IPs on the physical machines of your choice that have someform of shared storage. To fail over a (virtual) fileserver, take downthe IP address on the original machine, unshare and unmount everything,mount and share it on the new machine


天空之城大合唱

聽完後非常認同 :「這樣的演出,真希望自己能夠置身現場,被感動到雙膝發軟的地步」。

記起大學上一個電腦課程,講師用教室電腦當場播了《天空之城》的 MIDI 與 MP3,想讓同學感受一下當中分別。但當時即使是普通音效卡,


超級噩夢

排球改制,人數變成由6人至15人不等,巴西對意大利,巴西仍是6人但換了便服,意大利則是15人站滿了球場,有男有女,有人身穿嘉年華服飾、佛朗明高舞裙,隊中部分人根本不懂排球,也沒有了持球條例,扣球攻擊是