Running grep without parameters is also pretty fucking useless.
The difference is grep is a simple tool that can take in text, transform it, and output it to a console. It operates in a powerful and easy to understand way by default (take in text and print lines in the text containing the search parameters). This vmalert tool is just an interface to another, even more complicated piece of software.
Claims to have a Unix background, doesn’t RTFM.
Since when do Unix tools output 3,000 word long usage info? Even GNU tools don’t even come close…
Translation: Author does not understand APIs.
The point is that these abstractions do not mesh with the rest of the system. HTTP and REST are very strange ways to accomplish IPC or networked communication on Unix when someone would normally accomplish the same thing with signals, POSIX IPC, a simpler protocol over TCP with BSD sockets, or any other thing already in the base system. It does make sense to develop things this way, though, if you’re a corpo web company trying to manage ad-hoc grids of Linux systems for your own profit rather than trying to further the development of the base system.
Ok. Now give me high availability
I would hope the filesystems you use are “high availability” lol
atomic writes to sets of keys
You’re right, that would be nice. Someone should put together a Plan 9 fileserver that can do that or something.
caching, access control
Plan 9 is capable of handling distributed access controls and caching (even of remote fileservers!). There’s probably some Linux filesystems that can do that too.
In the end, it’s not so much about specific tools that can accomplish this but that there are alternatives to the dominant way of doing things and that the humble file metaphor can still represent these concepts in a simpler and more robust way.
This reads as “I applied to the jobs and got rejected. There’s nothing wrong with me, so the jobs must be broken”.
This is the maybe the worst way of interpreting what they said. They can come and correct me if I’m wrong but I read that as: they have a particular ideological objection to this “cloud” ecosystem and the way it does things. It’s not a lack of skill as your comment implies but rather a rejection of this way of doing things.
Since when do Unix tools output 3,000 word long usage info? Even GNU tools don’t even come close…
man bash clocks in on about 43.000 words, just FYI
Since when do Unix tools output 3,000 word long usage info? Even GNU tools don’t even come close…
[zlatko@dilj ~/Projects/galactic-bloodshed]$ man grep | wc -w
4297
[zlatko@dilj ~/Projects/galactic-bloodshed]$ man man | wc -w
4697
[zlatko@dilj ~/Projects/galactic-bloodshed]$
True, but a man page is a different thing from a tool’s built-in usage information.
I would disagree, or rather: it depends. You can print the --help of bash, but will that actually tell you anything about bash except a really superficial subset of flags? In the same way that the author argues that the help of his tool is too long to be useful, the help of bash is to short for the same reason. He argues that “cloud tools have a gazillion options where UNIX tools have good defaults”. Bash has a gazillion options and no good defaults. As a matter of fact, bash on defaults is fairly dangerous. Yet, it is at the heart of most Unix systems today I’d argue.
This vmalert tool is just an interface to another, even more complicated piece of software.
Not really just an interface. It is a pluggable service that connects to one or more TSDBs, performs periodic queries, and notifies another service when certain thresholds are exceeded. So with all those configuration options, why is the standalone binary expected to have defaults that may sound same on one system but insane in a different one? If the author wants out of the box configuration they could have gotten the helm chart or the operator and then that would be taken care of. But they seem to be deathly allergic to yaml, so I guess that won’t happen.
Since when do Unix tools output 3,000 word long usage info? Even GNU tools don’t even come close…
You just said that this software was much more complex than Unix tools. Also if only there were alternate documentation formats….
HTTP and REST are very strange ways to accomplish IPC or networked communication on Unix when someone would normally accomplish the same thing with signals, POSIX IPC, a simpler protocol over TCP with BSD sockets, or any other thing already in the base system.
Until you need authentication, out of the box libraries, observability instrumentation, interoperability… which can be done much more easily with a mature communication protocol like HTTP. And for those chasing the bleeding edge there’s gRPC.
I would hope the filesystems you use are “high availability” lol
They’re not, and I’m disappointed that you think they are. Any individual filesystem is a single point of failure. High availability lets me take down an entire system with zero service disruption because there’s redundancy, load balancing, disaster recovery…
the humble file metaphor can still represent these concepts
They can, and they still do… Inside the container.
It’s not a lack of skill as your comment implies but rather a rejection of this way of doing things.
Which I understand, I honestly do. I rejected containers for a (relatively) long time myself, and the argument that the author is making echoes what I would have said about containers. Which is why I believe myself to be justified in making the argument that I did, because rejecting a way of doing things based on preconception is a lack of flexibility, and in cloud ecosystems that translates to a lack of skill.
You just said that this software was much more complex than Unix tools
Probably need to keep in mind incidental versus essential complexity here.
So with all those configuration options, why is the standalone binary expected to have defaults that may sound same on one system but insane in a different one?
Because this is how much of what we use already is implemented. Significant effort goes in to portability, interoperability and balancing compromises. When I’m doing software development e.g. writing HTTP APIs (of which I apparently know nothing about ;) ) - I feel like I’ve got a responsibility to carefully balance what I expose as some user-configurable thing versus something managed internally by the application. Sometimes, thankfully, the application doesn’t even have to think about it al all - like what TCP flags to set when I dial some service.
You bring up containers which is a great example of some cool features provided by the Linux kernel to solve interesting problems. If you’re interested, have a look at FreeBSD’s Jails, Plan 9 and LXC. Compare the interface to all these systems, both at the library level and userspace, and compare the applications developed using those systems. How easy is it to get going? How much do I need to keep in my head when using these features? Docker, Kubernetes, and the rest all have made different tradeoffs and compromises.
Another one I think about is SQLite. Some seriously clever smarts. Huge numbers of people don’t know anything about for-loops, C, or B-Trees but can read & write SQL. That’s technology at its best.
Consider how difficult it could be to, say, start a car in all the different operating conditions it is expected to be used in. But we never think about it.
We as tech people pride ourselves on familiarity with esoteric detail, but it doesn’t need to be like this. Nor does memorising it all have anything to do with “skill”.
What I’m struggling with are thoughts of significant vested commercial interest in exposing this kind of detail, fuelling multi-billion dollar service industries. Feelings of being an outsider despite understanding how it all fits together.
It is a pluggable service that connects to one or more TSDBs, performs periodic queries, and notifies another service when certain thresholds are exceeded.
Have you ever written this kind of software before?
It sounds like you are comfortable with the status quo of this part of the software industry, and I’m truly jealous! If you’ve got any tips on dealing with this kind of stuff you can find my email at https://www.olowe.co/about.html Thanks :)
Probably need to keep in mind incidental versus essential complexity here.
Go on…
Because this is how much of what we use already is implemented. Significant effort goes in to portability, interoperability and balancing compromises. When I’m doing software development e.g. writing HTTP APIs (of which I apparently know nothing about ;) ) - I feel like I’ve got a responsibility to carefully balance what I expose as some user-configurable thing versus something managed internally by the application. Sometimes, thankfully, the application doesn’t even have to think about it al all - like what TCP flags to set when I dial some service.
In the case of vmalert, the binary makes no assumptions as to default behaviour because it was not meant to be run standalone. It comes as part of a container with specific environment variables, which in turn is packaged as a Helm chart which has sane configurations. Taking the vmalert binary by itself is like taking a kerberos server binary without its libraries and config files in /etc files and complaining that it’s not working.
You bring up containers which is a great example of some cool features provided by the Linux kernel to solve interesting problems. If you’re interested, have a look at FreeBSD’s Jails, Plan 9 and LXC. Compare the interface to all these systems, both at the library level and userspace, and compare the applications developed using those systems. How easy is it to get going? How much do I need to keep in my head when using these features? Docker, Kubernetes, and the rest all have made different tradeoffs and compromises.
I am very well versed in jails, chroot, openvz, LXC, etc. OCI containers are in a different class - don’t think of them as an OS-like environment, think of them as a self-contained, packaged service. Docker is then one example of a runtime runtime on which those services run, and Kubernetes is an orchestrator that managed containers in runtimes. And yes, there are some tradeoffs and compromises, but those are well within the bounds of the Pareto principle - remove the 10% long tail of features on the host, reduce user-facing complexity by 90%.
Another one I think about is SQLite. Some seriously clever smarts. Huge numbers of people don’t know anything about for-loops, C, or B-Trees but can read & write SQL. That’s technology at its best.
Are you arguing that Kubernetes doesn’t do that for you? Because with Kubernetes I can say “run the service in this container with these settings and so many replicas”, attach some conditions like “stop sending traffic to any one container that takes longer than N seconds to respond” and “restart the container if a certain command returns an error”, and just let it run. I can do a rolling upgrade of the nodes and Kubernetes will reschedule the containers on any other available node, it can load balance traffic, I can update the spec of a deployment and Kubernetes will do a zero-downtime upgrade for me. Try implementing the same on a Unix system. You’d need a way to push configs (Ansible, Puppet, etc?). You need load balancing and leader election (Keepalived?). You need error detection. You need DNS. You need to run the services. You need to ensure there’s no library conflict. There’s a LOT of complexity that a Kubernetes user does not need to worry about any more. Tell me that’s not serious smarts and technology at its best.
What I’m struggling with are thoughts of significant vested commercial interest in exposing this kind of detail, fuelling multi-billion dollar service industries. Feelings of being an outsider despite understanding how it all fits together.
You seem to be conflating Kubernetes and cloud services. Being a cloud native technology does not mean it has to run on a managed cloud service. It just means that it has certain expectations as to how workloads run on it, and if those expectations are met then it makes certain promises about how it will behave.
Have you ever written this kind of software before?
I have contributed to several similar open source projects, yes. What about it?
It sounds like you are comfortable with the status quo of this part of the software industry, and I’m truly jealous!
I am comfortable with my knowledge of this part of the software industry. There is no status quo - there’s currently an equilibrium, yes, but it is a tenuous one. I know the tools I use today will likely not be the same tools I will be using a decade from now. But I also know that the concepts and architectures I learn from managing these tools will still be applicable then, and I can stay agile enough to adapt and become comfortable in a new ecosystem. I would urge you to consider the same approach for yourself.
You just said that this software was much more complex than Unix tools.
That’s the problem. The reason Unix became so popular is because it has a highly integrated design and a few very reused abstractions. A lot of simple parts build up in predictable ways to accomplish big things. The complexity is spread out and minimized. The traditional Unix way of doing things is definitely very outdated though. A modern Unix system is like a 100 story skyscraper with the bottom 20 floors nearly abandoned.
Kubernetes and its users would probably be happier if it was used to manage a completely different operating system. In the end, Kubernetes is trying to impose a semi-distributed model of computation on a very NOT distributed operating system to the detriment of system complexity, maintainability, and security.
Until you need authentication, out of the box libraries, observability instrumentation, interoperability… which can be done much more easily with a mature communication protocol like HTTP.
I agree that universal protocols capable of handling these things are definitely useful. This is why the authors of Unix moved away from communication and protocols that only function on a single system when they were developing Plan 9 and developed the Plan 9 Filesystem Protocol as the universal system “bus” protocol capable of working over networks and on the same physical system. I don’t bring this up to be an evangelist. I just want to emphasize that there are alternative ways of doing things. 9P is much simpler and more elegant than HTTP. Also, many of the people who worked on Plan 9 ended up working for Google and having some influence over the design of things there.
They’re not, and I’m disappointed that you think they are. Any individual filesystem is a single point of failure. High availability lets me take down an entire system with zero service disruption because there’s redundancy, load balancing, disaster recovery…
A filesystem does not exclusively mean an on-disk representation of a tree of files with a single physical point of origin. A filesystem can be just as “highly available” and distributed as any other way of representing resources of a system if not more so because of its abstractness. Also, you’re “disappointed” in me? Lmao
They can, and they still do… Inside the container.
And how do you manage containers? With bespoke tools and infrastructure removed from the file abstraction. Which is another way Kubernetes is removed from the Unix way of doing things. Unless I’m mistaken, it’s been a long time since I touched Kubernetes.
because rejecting a way of doing things based on preconception is a lack of flexibility
It’s not a preconception. They engaged with your way of doing things and didn’t like it.
in cloud ecosystems that translates to a lack of skill.
By what standard? The standard of you and your employer? In general, you seem to be under the impression that the conventional hegemonic corporate “cloud” way of doing things is the only correct way and that everyone else is unskilled and not flexible.
I’m not saying that this approach doesn’t have merits, just that you should be more open-minded and not judge everyone else seeking a different path to the conventional model of cloud/distributed computing as naive, unskilled people making “bad-faith arguments”.
A lot of simple parts build up in predictable ways to accomplish big things. The complexity is spread out and minimized.
This has always felt untrue to me. The command line has always been simple parts. However we cannot argue that this applies to all Unix-like systems: The monolithic Linux kernel, Kerberos, httpd, SAMBA, X windowing, heck even OpenSSL. There’s many examples of tooling built on top of Unix systems that don’t follow that philosophy.
The traditional Unix way of doing things is definitely very outdated though.
Depends on what you mean. “Everything is a file”? Sure, that metaphor can be put to rest. “Low coupling, high cohesion”? That’s even more valid now for cloud architectures. You cannot scale a monolith efficiently these days.
In the end, Kubernetes is trying to impose a semi-distributed model of computation on a very NOT distributed operating system to the detriment of system complexity, maintainability, and security.
Kubernetes is more complex than a single Unix system. It is less complex than manually configuring multiple systems to give the same benefits of Kubernetes in terms of automatic reconciliation, failure recovery, and declarative configuration. This is because those three are first class citizens in Kubernetes, whereas they’re just afterthoughts in traditional systems. This also makes Kubernetes much more maintainable and secure. Every workload is containerized, every workload has predeclared conditions under which it should run. If it drifts out of those parameters Kubernetes automatically corrects that (when it comes to reconciliation) and/or blocks the undesirable behaviour (security). And Kubernetes keeps an audit trail for its actions, something that again in Unix land is an optional feature.
If you work with the Kubernetes model then you spend 10% more time setting things up and 90% less time maintaining things.
9P is much simpler and more elegant than HTTP
It also has negligible adoption compared to HTTP. And unless it provides an order of magnitude advantage over HTTP, then it’s going to be unlikely that developers will use it. Consider git vs mercurial. Is the latter better than git? Almost certainly. Is it 10x better? No, and that’s why it finds it hard to gain traction against git.
A filesystem does not exclusively mean an on-disk representation of a tree of files with a single physical point of origin. A filesystem can be just as “highly available” and distributed as any other way of representing resources of a system if not more so because of its abstractness.
Even an online filesystem does not guarantee high availability. If I want highly available data I still need to have replication, leader election, load balancing, failure detection, traffic routing, and geographic distribution. You don’t do those in the filesystem layer, you do them in the application layer.
Also, you’re “disappointed” in me? Lmao
Nice ad hominem. I guess it’s rules for thee, but not for me.
And how do you manage containers? With bespoke tools and infrastructure removed from the file abstraction. Which is another way Kubernetes is removed from the Unix way of doing things. Unless I’m mistaken, it’s been a long time since I touched Kubernetes.
So what’s the problem? Didn’t you just say that the Unix way of doing things is outdated? Let the CSI plugin handle the filesystem side if things, and let Kubernetes focus on the workload scheduling and reconciliation.
It’s not a preconception. They engaged with your way of doing things and didn’t like it.
Dismissal based on flawed anecdote is preconception.
By what standard? The standard of you and your employer? In general, you seem to be under the impression that the conventional hegemonic corporate “cloud” way of doing things is the only correct way and that everyone else is unskilled and not flexible.
No. I’m not married to the “cloud” way of doing things. But if someone comes to me and says “Hey boblin, we want to implement something on system foo, can you help us?” and I am not used to doing things the foo way I will say “I’m not familiar with it but let’s talk about your requirements, and why you chose foo” instead of “foo is for bureaucrats, I don’t want to use it”. I’d rather hire an open-mined junior than a gray-bearded Unix wizard that dismisses anything unfamilar. And I will also be the first person to reject use cases for Kubernetes when they do not make sense.
just that you should be more open-minded and not judge everyone else seeking a different path to the conventional model of cloud/distributed computing as naive, unskilled people making “bad-faith arguments”.
There are scenarios where cloud compute just does not make sense, like HPC. If the author had led with something like that, then they would have made a better argument. But instead they went for
cloud-native tooling feels like it’s meant for bureaucrats in well-paid jobs,
,
In the 90s my school taught us files and folders when we were 8 years old
, and
When you finally specify all those flags, neatly namespaced with . to make it feel all so very organised, you feel like you’ve achieved something. Sunk-cost fallacy kicks in: look at all those flags that I’ve tuned just so - it must be robust and performant!
It’s hard to not take that as bad faith.
This is more along the lines I was thinking.
I think the parent comment went ad hominem rather than trying to understand some of the difficulties I brought up. I’m not sure whether engaging with them would be productive.
I’m glad I at least got closer to understanding your criticism than they did.
Don’t let anyone tell you you’re old or naive or “stuck in the past” for thinking these things! There is a real crisis in the operating systems world that your criticism is reflecting. It takes an army of software engineers and billions of dollars to keep this ecosystem and these systems going and they still struggle with reliability and security. The reason it’s like this is an issue of economic organization.
We can’t go back to the old way of doing things but we can’t keep maintaining these fundamentally flawed systems either. You may find something inspiring in this brief presentation by Rob Pike: http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/utah2000/
We can’t go back to the old way of doing things but we can’t keep maintaining these fundamentally flawed systems either.
That’s a great way of putting it, thanks. I’m actually only 30 years old (lol). Sometimes I feel there’s so few people who’ve ever used or written software at this level in the part of the industry I find myself in. It seems more common to throw money at Amazon, Microsoft, and more staff.
I’ve replaced big Java systems with small Go programs and rescued stalled projects trying to adopt Kubernetes. My fave was a failed attempt to adopt k8s for fault tolerance when all that was going on was an inability to code around TCP resets (concurrent programming helped here). That team wasn’t “unskilled”; they were just normal people being crushed by complexity. I could help because they just weren’t familiar with the kind of problem solving I was, nor what tooling is available without installing extra stuff and dependencies.
Thanks for your understanding :)
