Finding Rifts

Seth Godin's blog has an interesting article about Steve Jobs. In his estimation, Jobs is "addicted to Rifting--he process of fixing problems, of leaping from one broken market to another. " Godin refers back to an article he wrote in 2000 about people who "find a rift in the continuum of life." And what is a rift? According to Godin, "it's a big tear in the fabric of the rules that we live by. Most people who build important businesses build them on a rift, usually one that they find by accident."

So what are some possible rifts?

• Why can't I know what other people are investing in?
• How do I create multiple virtual machines to act as an application server farm?
• Where did my friend get their last, best travel deal?
• What cellphone plan are my friends using?
• Why do I have to have my own contact list in my phone?
  
• Why can't I get my shared contacts from my friends?
• Email isn't a good task manager. Make a clean break between email and tasks.When you get a "to-do" via email, you add the task to your to-do list
  

Something to keep in mind.

"Keep focusing on your strengths. What you focus on grows."
--Adrian Savage

Poor man's VMWare VM cloning

1) Copy the entire directory.
2) vmware-vdiskmanager -n Windows\ Server\ 2003\ Standard\ Edition.vmdk W2K3_R2_Clone1.vmdk
3) Open the Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition.vmx file and change the disk image parameter to point to the new disk:
scsi0:0.fileName = " W2K3_R2_Clone1.vmdk"
#scsi0:0.fileName = "Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition.vmdk"

4) Give the cloned VM a new name in the Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition.vmx file:
displayName = "W2K3 R2 Enterprise Edition - Clone1"
#displayName = "W2K3 R2 Enterprise Edition"

5) Change the name of the VMX file:
mv Windows\ Server\ 2003\ Standard\ Edition.vmx W2K3_R2_Clone1.vmx

Start it up.

Run the sysprep utility.

ext2online missing in RHEL5

Ext2online's functions have been included in resize2fs in Red Hat 5. Ext3 filesystems can still be extended online, but reducing a filesystems is only available offline.

Remount root filesystem in read-only mode

The following command remounts the root in read-only mode:

mount -o remount ro /

Quote

"There is more data sitting in file systems than in relational databases."
--Steve Mills, SVP IBM Software