Top all-time · #4059
c0t0d0s0.org
Personal blog · c0t0d0s0.orgsystemshardware
c0t0d0s0.org is a personal blog at c0t0d0s0.org about systems and hardware. Since 2008, 19 different Hacker News readers have linked it 35 times, most often “Sun engineer responds to the Backblaze "Petabytes on a budget" design”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-25, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (14) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for its Solaris and ZFS posts, including a 'Less-known Solaris features' series and a piece arguing ZFS needs no fsck. Commenters cite it as a reference on Solaris privileges and related topics.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 14 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A blog about Life, Solaris, Cycling and all the rest.
Most-linked posts?
- /archives/4075-Less-known-Solaris-features-RBAC-and-Privileges-Part-3-Privileges.html3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-12-05
- Sun engineer responds to the Backblaze "Petabytes on a budget" design2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-09-03
- The impact of virtualisation2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-09-15
What Hacker News says?
Canaries and other techniques that leverage volatiles do not prevent an overflow; they just try to cope with the consequences of an overflow which has happened. (This is why they're generally lumped together as "mitigation".) The canary tries to detect the case of an overflow which overwrites the return address in a stack frame. Data Execution Prevention (DEP) takes this idea a step further, it assumes that the retu…
Comment linking /archives/4075-Less-known-Solaris-features-RBAC-and-Privileges-Part-3-Privileges.html
on “Docker on FreeBSD”Submitted Sun engineer responds to the Backblaze "Petabytes on a budget" design as a story · 169 points
HN discussionSee also, Solaris' Role-Based Access Control and Privileges models. Privileges (seems to fit the post): https://blogs.oracle.com/casper/entry/solaris_privileges http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/4075-Less-known-Solaris-fea... Programming with Privileges Example: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23824_01/html/819-2145/ch3priv-25... Overview: http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/4077-Less-known-Solaris-fea... In particular, the…
Comment linking /archives/4077-Less-known-Solaris-features-RBAC-and-Privileges.html
on “A subsystem to restrict programs into a “reduced feature operating model””Submitted No, ZFS really doesn't need an fsck tool as a story · 112 points
HN discussion"How? ZFS refuses to mount/import a corrupt filesystem." zpool clear -F $POOLNAME http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/6067-PSARC-2009479-zpool-re...
Comment linking /archives/6067-PSARC-2009479-zpool-recovery-support.html
on “ZFS on Linux 0.6.1 released: Ready for wide scale deployment”Submitted Thoughts of a sysadmin starting to get old ... as a story · 18 points
HN discussionZFS needs no fsck. Period. http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/6071-No,-ZFS-really-doesnt-...
Comment linking /archives/6071-No,-ZFS-really-doesnt-need-a-fsck.html
on “ZFS on Linux 0.6.1 released: Ready for wide scale deployment”Submitted Sun isn't just that small RDBMS... as a story · 8 points
HN discussionI think it's worth (re)reading this comment on the original Storage Pod from several years ago: http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/5899-Some-perspective-to-th... I have essentially have all of the same questions for Storage Pod 3.0 -- and in particular, what does the software stack look like? (This config is absolutely begging for ZFS, but I have a haunting feeling that something janky is afoot upstack.) I would also…
Comment linking /archives/5899-Some-perspective-to-this-DIY-storage-server-mentioned-at-Storagemojo.html
on “180TB of Good Vibrations – Storage Pod 3.0”Submitted C0t0d0s0 goes down as a story · 7 points
HN discussion1. "interesting definitions"... Understood. 2. code size: I see that conceptually these 2 code samples work similarly, but one has 5x more LOC. I think that's nit-picking a bit, especially since, as I said, there are some other convenience functions that could be used depending on the situation. But regardless, it's hardly onerous. We're talking about 7 lines of actual code vs. 2 lines. That's not even worth arguing…
Comment linking /archives/4075-Less-known-Solaris-features-RBAC-and-Privileges-Part-3-Privileges.html
on “Pledge() – a new mitigation mechanism in OpenBSD”Submitted More detailed thoughts from a Sun engineer about Backblaze and cheap storage as a story · 6 points
HN discussionThis[0] seems to answer your questions. TL;DR: The kernel does it all and passes the unencrypted traffic to the local port specified. There's a command to configure it with the appropriate keys, etc. [0] http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/5575-Less-known-Solaris-Fea...
Comment linking /archives/5575-Less-known-Solaris-Features-kssl.html
on “Playing with Kernel TLS in Linux 4.13 and Go”Submitted Saving power with failover ethernet interfaces and remote power controls as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI genuinely can't think of anything else I'd rather use less than this. I think MAC (Mandatory Access Control) applied to a desktop environment, picking a better language than C and actually thinking about stuff is more than sufficient to get around the existing problems... Virtualization is just another pile of complexity and performance problems to deal with. It's not a magic bullet. Consider the following as well…
Comment linking /archives/3651-Theo-de-Raadt-about-virtualisation.html
on “Introducing Qubes 1.0 ("a stable and reasonably secure desktop OS")”Submitted Is the Linux community afraid of Opensolaris? as a story · 5 points
HN discussion> What a non-article. ZFS is more mature than an unmature and unstable filesystem? Really? Keep in mind that, with one exception, ZFS is pretty much rock-solid from day one. Also, you should really read: http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/6071- No,-ZFS-really-doesnt-need-a-fsck.html
Comment linking /archives/6071-
on “How ZFS continues to be better than Btrfs.”Submitted Less Known Solaris Features: RBAC and Privileges (4 parts) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionHere's a good SMF resource, by the ever reliable c0t0d0s0! http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/4144-Solaris-Features-Servi...
Comment linking /archives/4144-Solaris-Features-Service-Management-Facility-Part-1-Introduction.html
on “Dustin Sallings: Running Processes”Submitted To dedup or not to dedup - that results in a lot of questions as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIf you are on Solaris (10 or higher works from experience) you can grant a single user the ability to bind to the lower ports: usermod -K defaultpriv=basic,net_privaddr ${user} You can off course also assign the privileges to a role, and then assign the user that role so as required they can su to the role and use the privileges. Here is a pretty neat description of what is possible and why it is pretty awesome: htt…
Comment linking /archives/4075-Less-known-Solaris-features-RBAC-and-Privileges-Part-3-Privileges.html
on “Drop Root Privileges in Node.js after Binding to Port 80”Submitted Perceived Risk for hash collisions in deduping filesystems as a story · 2 points
HN discussionOn Solaris, its trivial to simulate lower bandwidths using VNICs: https://blogs.oracle.com/JeffV/entry/virtual_network_part_4 Or, alternatively, using flowadm: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19963-01/html/821-1458/gfkci.html If you want to simulate latency, that's a little harder, but can be done using hxbt: http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/6625-Less-known-Solaris-fea... http://web.archive.org/web/20130517125147/http://…
Comment linking /archives/6625-Less-known-Solaris-features-hxbt-or-WAN-emulation.html
on “Simulating a Slow Internet Connection”Submitted Oracle/Sun: Ideas are mergerproof as a story · 2 points
HN discussionPackages: You're right, that is a weakness. However, the important stuff is there, and compiling other things is rarely a problem. OK for experienced admins, bad for newcomers. Tools: Solaris has a strong history of standards compliance, so you've got the standards based tools, and the GNU tools. Different audiences prefer different tools. GNU tools are now the defaults to cater for people coming from Linux. Sun/Ora…
Comment linking /archives/5917-The-impact-of-virtualisation.html
on “OpenSolaris vs Linux”Submitted Oracle announcing new Sparc servers with "The world's fastest microprocessor" as a story · 1 points
HN discussionNeat project! However, I would consider changing the name. There's already a CacheFS in Solaris. http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/4727-Less-known-Solaris-Fea... Linux has a similar feature named FS-Cache, and one of its storage backends is named CacheFS. http://people.redhat.com/~dhowells/fscache/FS-Cache.pdf Do you really want to make this situation even more confusing?
Comment linking /archives/4727-Less-known-Solaris-Features-CacheFS.html
on “Show HN: CacheFS”Submitted Server Name Indication and the problem with Windows as a story · 1 points
HN discussionBasically, it's a more-current version of the Linux kernel added to their distro (which is a clone of RHEL5). Surprise surprise... the newer kernel has more performance optimizations and is somewhat faster/featureful. There are a few new features - see here for more on one of the data integrity ones: http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/6919-About-this-data-integr...
Comment linking /archives/6919-About-this-data-integrity-thing-in-Oracle-ULK.html
on “Oracle Linux - Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel”Submitted About that data loss at Microsoft/Danger as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
