Ok, I’m going to rant about technical stuffs here, am so pissed off with something that I have no control about but to obey and just blardy do what’s needed by the darn daemon.
AFAIK, all BSD or Linux geek that owns and run their own mailserver knows that SpamAssassin is the next best thing to sliced Gardenia bread and you just can’t live or get a decent sleep without these two fellas looking after your mailserver.
I own a mailserver that processes and deleted between 10-15k spams each day, that’s quite a lot for a server that has only a few dozen users (some people they just have no clue how to prevent and protect their email addresses from spammers and causes helluva lot of problems… anyway that’s another story) .
Quite a while ago when the MRTG graph started to show the number of inbound spams climbing faster than anything, I noticed that the RAM too starting to wear out fast when spamd started to get busy doing what it does best, so I doubled up the RAM capacity and on top of that I even created a 3Gb swapfile file just in case if the added physical RAM would run out too… I thought I was safe there and left it alone thinking that the system would be smart enough to concatenate the memory intelligently that spamd or whatever daemons in the server would see it as native rather and as separate location.
But no, that’s unfortunately not the case, at least in my situation. The swap is happily sitting there under utilized at around 3-5% at all times while the RAM got bashed up like mad by the spamd and at certain times it’d be until 95% and left almost nothing for the server to work sanely. In turn, I turn insane trying to mitigate the problem when spamd went berserk and refused to process pushing through the spams as valid emails.
Damn.
So, now I have no choice but had to whack da fella tinkering here and there to stop all those bloody spams while I work on doubling or tripling the RAM capacity to cater to the demands of my mailserver’s best buddy – spamd daemon.
Hmmph… it’s a daemon, so be it lah… I’ll get more and more RAM as much as I can, feeding the darn daemon so long as it’ll continue stopping those darn spams.
Similarly with my Suunto D6/Stinger that it’s not a watch but instead a dive computer that happens to also display the time, the iPhone is not a phone but is actually a miniaturized Mac computer that can also make phone calls.
Initially I only wanted to get the iPod Touch to run the prototype application software I wrote for Frankie to continue developing it as a full development version. I love what they did with the SDK 2.2.1 and supported Apple’s decision to lift the NDA which I believe will be the real catalyst to Apple’s market growth.
Anyway, while I was thinking about iPod, the iPhone 3G keeps on popping in my mind and its phone feature was quite tempting at the same time. So, after considering and reading about it for a while, I decided to pay a visit to Maxis store to check out their promotions. Well, anyone driving around KL would notice Maxis’s huge billboards promoting iPhone 3G all over the country, nobody could miss the huge billboard ads and Maxis has been very aggressive in marketing the iPhone 3G everywhere.
After one final call for second opinion, I decided to give it a try…. and I’ve been an extremely happy owner of the Apple’s iPhone 3G.
Last weekend, I went to watch Arish and Saladin testing their new modified Gentoo for the Malaysian Rally Championship. Zekry changed the car’s engine to Evo but the rest remained as Proton’s body.
It wasn’t a planned thing, I woke up to an SMS invitation and since I’ve already recovered my sleeps and starting to feel better, I grabbed my camera and went there with the slightest expectation of what it’s going to be. I wanted to take the kids along but Aldin had other plans and Aliff was clingy to stay home, so it’s just me and Mado with our huge lens.
It turns out that it was extremely hot, good thing that the kids didn’t tag along. I nearly blacked out from the heat shock but I was happy with the action shots I managed to snap… plus, Mado let me use his Nikkor 80-200 f/2.8 and that lens was awesome.
I came home with sun burns worse than any I’ve ever got from my scubadive trips. But it was all worth the trouble, I got my portfolio shots especially the one where Saladin taking the corner with a punctured tyre.
Saladin was leading with Karamjit few sconds behind him, but later overtook Saladin’s time because the Gentoo had engine failure. Next race, would be in Perlis in May and hopefully if time permits, I’ll be there again.
Today will be the last day that I have to stay back at the office so late, after this I’ll be resting at home… hibernating, catching up all the sleeps that I’ve lost working like a madman. All of my guys/gals too, will be giving them a few days off.
The whole team is still in the office now and I’m proud of them; such a dedicated bunch of people that I’ve worked with for the last 9 years and we’re as close as family members. The amount of dedication these guys/gals gives for the company, I can’t even describe. Even my numero-uno stayed with us to the wee hour, despite his back pain and still suffering jet lag.
Anyway… zzzz
Life, Rants & Raves, Sysadmin stuffs | leafy April 30, 2009 | 
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