kchodorow

Git for Interns and New Employees

My interns are leaving today 😦 and I think the most important skill they learned this summer was how to use git. However, I had a hard time finding concise references to send them about my expectations, so I’m writing this up for next year. How to Create a Good Commit A commit is anContinue reading “Git for Interns and New Employees”

Controlling Collection Distribution

Shard tagging is a new feature in MongoDB version 2.2.0. It’s supposed to force writes to go to a local data center, but it can also be used to pin a collection to a shard or set of shards. Note: to try this out, you’ll have to use 2.2.0-rc0 or greater. To play with thisContinue reading “Controlling Collection Distribution”

Summer Reading Blogroll

What are some good ops blogs? Server Density does a nice weekly roundup of sys admin posts, but that’s about all I’ve found. So, anyone know any other good resources? The more basic the better. In exchange, here are my top-10 “I’m totally doing something productive and learning something new” blogs: Programming Daniel Lemire’s BlogContinue reading “Summer Reading Blogroll”

Replica Set Internals Part V: Initial Sync

I’ve been doing replica set “bootcamps” for new hires. It’s mainly focused on applying this to debug replica set issues and being able to talk fluently about what’s happening, but it occurred to me that you (blog readers) might be interested in it, too. There are 8 subjects I cover in my bootcamp: Elections CreatingContinue reading “Replica Set Internals Part V: Initial Sync”

Good Night, Westley: Time-To-Live Collections

In The Princess Bride, every night the Dread Pirate Roberts tells Westley: “Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.” Let’s say the Dread Pirate Roberts wants to optimize this process, so he stores prisoners in a database. When he captures Westley, he can put: > db.prisoners.insert({ …Continue reading “Good Night, Westley: Time-To-Live Collections”

The Snail Crawls On…

A bit of housekeeping: I’ve changed domain names, now this site is kchodorow.com, not snailinaturtleneck.com. Old links should still work, they’ll just be permanent redirects to the new domain. Please let me know if you come across any issues! Why the change? kchodorow.com sounds more professional and is shorter. Also, I’m after fame and gloryContinue reading “The Snail Crawls On…”

––thursday #6: using git over ssh

Got a secret project on machine A and too cheap to get a Github private repo? Clone it directly on machine B with: $ git clone ssh://user@A/absolute/path/to/repo/ Replace “user” with your username on A, “A” with the actual hostname of A, and “/absolute/path/to/repo/” with the absolute path to the git repository.

Replica Set Internals Bootcamp Part III: Reconfiguring

10 Kindle Apps for the Non-Existent Developer API

The Kindle should have a developer API. Ereaders could be revolutionizing the way people read, but right now they’re like paperbacks without the nice book smell. I’ve heard a lot of people say, “the Kindle isn’t powerful enough for apps.” Poppycock. I’m not talking about using it to play Angry Birds, I’m talking about stuffContinue reading “10 Kindle Apps for the Non-Existent Developer API”

––thursday #5: diagnosing high readahead

Having readahead set too high can slow your database to a crawl. This post discusses why that is and how you can diagnose it. The #1 sign that readahead is too high is that MongoDB isn’t using as much RAM as it should be. If you’re running Mongo Monitoring Service (MMS), take a look atContinue reading “––thursday #5: diagnosing high readahead”