You can't - yet - use ZFS on your root partition, not without a lot of faffing around, but that gets automatically backed up so long as you're paying the extra $1 per month, so we'll focus on external volumes.

There are three ways to expand your ZFS storage on external volumes.

First, attach a second storage volume to your server.  This will be /dev/sdb.

Second, run zpool add platypus /dev/sdb where platypus is the name of your ZFS pool.

That's it.  Done.  No reboots, extra space is available to all your ZFS filesystems intantly.

But you now have two attached drives that are basically RAID-0.  If one of them fails to attach, you go splat.  How likely that is, I don't know.

But as you add more drives the chance of something going wrong increases, and DigitalOcean limits the number of attached drives both per server and per account, so it doesn't scale.

Before anything else, use the DigitalOcean control panel or API to take a snapshot of your attached disk.  This is the big advantage of this method - because it uses a single attached disk, the snapshot tool provides consistent backups without having to shut down your server first.

First, increase the size of your attached drive.  Probably best to do this in decent-sized chunks, rather than every time you need an extra 10GB.

Also, you can't shrink attached drives - but you can't shrink ZFS pools either, so that doesn't matter.

Second, run gdisk /dev/sda.  Select w and exit without doing anything.

Third, run gdisk /dev/sda again, select n, and create a new partition.  All the defaults should be correct.  Select w and exit. 

If you try to do this without the previous step, all the defaults will be wrong and nothing will work.  

Fourth, run partprobe to tell Linux that new partitions have magically appeared.

And finally, run zpool add platypus /dev/sda2 (or whatever partition number you created in gdisk).

Again, all is now working, no reboots.  (Without partprobe you would probably need to reboot before ZFS could use the new partition.)

The advantage of this method is you only have one network-attached drive.  It's either all there, or not.  This allows you to use DigitalOcean's own snapshot tool to take a complete, consistent backup.

Though I suspect that's stored on the same Ceph cluster as your own data and ZFS snapshots and if the whole thing goes bang you're out of luck anyway.  So it protects you from mistakes but for catastrophic failure you'll want to take your ZFS snapshots and rsync them off to a remote location.

Update: There might be a better way, just resizing the existing partition rather than adding new ones to the pool.  Going to try that next.

Update: That seems to work, but I'll need to try it with something running live on the filesystem to make sure.

The Other Way Which I Haven't Actually Tried

If you have a RAID-Z array in ZFS, you can replace the volumes one-by-one with larger devices.  So you can have three 100GB attached drives, detach one, increase it to 150GB, wait for RAID-Z to finish checking everything, and repeat for the other two drives.

This is safer than the first option, but frankly sounds like a pain in the bum.

• By a combination of ZFS compressed volumes and deleting a ton of old crap (expired sessions, duplicate entries, stuff like that) I squashed the mee.nu database down from 105GB to 22GB.
  
  That will help a lot as we move to DigitalOcean.  They charge for convenience, so I get less memory and disk space for the money (CPU potentially works out better).  Squishing the database that dramatically means we need that much less memory and disk space, so it's all good.
  
  
• Gigabyte is preparing a 5GB/s consumer SSD.  (AnandTech)
  
  PCIe 4.0 of course.
  
  
• Zombie Spectre meets the Disco Dingo.  (Phoronix)
  
  A technical analysis.
  
  ...
  
  Of the performance impact of CPU security flaw mitigation patches on Intel and AMD.
  
  
• Can we declare GDPR a total failure yet?  (TechDirt)
  
  I'm game if you're game.
  
  
• Blah blah everyone's private details leaked blah blah.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  
• Did Apple's fourth attempt at the infamous "magic" keyboard succeed where previous attempts failed no of course it fucking didn't.  (iFixit)

Disclaimer: One does not simply drive into Mordor.

Posted by: Mauser at Monday, May 27 2019 04:39 PM (Ix1l6)

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• QNAP has a USB 5Gb Ethernet adaptor.  (AnandTech)
  
  This works for all-in-ones and laptops and also - pure coincidence - for small NAS boxes that have USB 3.0 or later but only 1Gb Ethernet.
  
  The switch situation is still pretty dire though.
  
  
• Techdirt is suing ICE.  (TechDirt)
  
  For good cause.  ICE boasted of seizing a million websites over the past few years, often on very shaky grounds.  TechDirt filed a FOIA request for information about the million sites they publicly claimed to have seized.  ICE responded, "never heard of them".
  
  
• Chinese company clones a popular game.  Chinese company trademarks name of the game in China.  Chinese company then files a trademark complaint against the original game with the App Store.
  
  Apple removes the original game..  (Reddit)
  
  Don't be Apple.
  
  
• Crossfit has always been at war with Facebook.
  
  Crossfit is marginally less annoying.
  
  
• It's basically the Dread PirateBay Roberts.
  
  
• Google doesn't know what to do with Gophers anymore.
  
  Sad.
  
  
• The US Senate is coming for loot boxes.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Demarcation dispute, I take it.
  
  
• File it under "Sure, Jan": China isn't spying on Americans.  (ZDNet)
  
  
• One of the reasons I didn't go with DigitalOcean before and ended up paying a heap of money for a server I never really managed to use was because all the cloud providers lock you into their infrastructure.
  
  Here's how to migrate your VPS between DigitalOcean, Vultr, and LunaNode.  It's harder than it needs to be, but it works.
  
  I have DigitalOcean and Vultr accounts.  DO has a better range of services; Vultr has broader distribution, including, importantly, Sydney.  (DO says "use Singapore".  Ping times from Sydney to Singapore are often worse than San Francisco, rendering it worse than useless.)
  
  
• You can use DigitalOcean's Spaces (object storage) as a filesystem.
  
  Sort of.  Reading mostly works fine.  Creating, deleting, and replacing files is fine.  Updating files is a train wreck.  Not surprising that it has a problem; it's doing well to work at all.
  
  It's a fifth the price of block storage and can be shared across multiple servers.  If you're publicly service files out of your Space storage they also offer a free global CDN.  Australian CDN nodes are in beta, but I'll see if it's at least a public beta.
  
  
  

Anime Opening of the Day

I can not get it to work properly.

This server - this one right here - is running in a virtualised environment using OpenVZ.  That just works.  Dead simple.  But it's also dead dead now; EOL is November this year.

I tried setting up LXC, couldn't get networking right.  Tried setting up Proxmox VE, couldn't get networking right.  Tried setting up VMware ESXi, couldn't get it to even install.

We're moving to Digital Ocean.  This server isn't as urgent - we still have six months in theory and maybe more in practice, but Ace is on an old server and it needs to be fixed.

It's a shame.  The new server would have given us a great environment going forward.  But I've spent several days now installing and configuring and reinstalling and reconfiguring without any sign of progress.  I should probably have done this three months ago.

I can get a Digital Ocean instance up and running for $6 per month, including automated backups and 1TB of bandwidth, in two minutes flat.  Sure, I need to install the software, but that doesn't simply refuse to work for no reason.  Except sometimes MySQL.

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, May 25 2019 01:26 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Tuesday, June 04 2019 02:18 PM (LZ7Bg)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, June 04 2019 06:05 PM (PiXy!)

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• How to win customers and influence people.
  
  Step one: Don't be the Epic games store.  (TechDirt)
  
  
• Step two: Don't be the SFPD.  (TechDIirt)
  
  
• Step three: Don't be Qualcomm.  (WCCFTech)
  
  
• Step four: Buy your own IBM mainframe.  (Mainframe.dev)
  
  
• Step five: Don't be a module for managing AIFF files in the Python standard library.
  
  
• Step six: Don't be an AI developer.
  
  
• Step seven: Don't be Google.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  
• Step eight: Don't be Google.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  
• Step nine: No, really, don't be Google.  (Medium)
  
  
• Step ten: Or the London Underground either.  (ZDNet)
  
  
• Step eleven: Or this jackass.  (Jalopnik)
  
  Where's Batman when you need him?
  

NetoJuu is definitely better than Netoge.

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, May 24 2019 12:48 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, May 24 2019 03:58 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, May 24 2019 03:58 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Kayle at Friday, May 24 2019 11:56 AM (magRz)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, May 25 2019 09:50 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: muon at Wednesday, May 29 2019 02:56 PM (vMYTH)

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• Arm has suspended business with Huawei.  (AnandTech)
  
  This is getting serious.
  
  Microsoft has also stopped selling Huawei notebooks.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  
• Apple has announced another MacBook Pro refresh with up to 8 cores and version 4 of the Keyboard of Infinite Suck. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  I'm sure they'll get it right someday.  Maybe.  In the meantime, I'm not letting my old Mac keyboard out of my sight.
  
  
• Google was storing some G Suite passwords in plaintext for over a decade.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Yay.
  
  
• Canada says fuck you guys and your First Amendment.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  They plan to crack down on hate speech with financial penalties.
  
  They don't define hate speech.
  

Posted by: Mauser at Thursday, May 23 2019 01:09 PM (Ix1l6)

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• Yarn stands for yet another fucking package manager.
  
  Trust me on this.
  
  
• Huawei has received a quiche waiver.  (AnandTech)
  
  For 90 days, but renewable.
  
  
• Motorola's One Vision is another reasonably-price mid-range phone.  (AnandTech)
  
  It uses a Samsung SoC rather than Qualcomm, with 4 x A73 and 4 x A53 cores, so a little worse single threaded and a little better multi-threaded than yesterday's Realme Pro 3.
  
  6.3" 2520x1080 display, hole-punch camera at the top left, 4GB + 128GB, 3500mAh battery, USB-C and headphone jack, 1 SIM and one SIM/microSD combo.
  
  Standout features here are the cameras: 48MP rear and 25MP front.
  
  €299, no US launch planned for this exact model (presumably because the Samsung modem doesn't cover all the necessary frequency ranges) but will be sold in Australia.
  
  
• Intuit sucks and double sucks.  (Tech Dirt)
  
  
• Tom asks: It's 2019.  Where the fuck is our global peer-to-peer electronic cash system?  (Hackernoon)
  
  After accurately summing up the existing environment as completely broken, the article turns into an ad for a BRAND NEW BLOCKCHAIN that will SOLVE ALL THE PROBLEMS.
  
  Sure, Tom.  Sure.
  
  
• Use Selenium to delete your Facebook posts.
  
  Because using plutonium is illegal.
  
  
• Nvidia did not have a good Q1.  (PDF)
  
  Compared to Q1 2019 (what the heck is their financial year, anyway?) margins are down 6 percentage points, expenses are up 21%, and revenue is down 31%.  They are still making a respectable profit though.
  
  
• No, decimated means reduced by one tenth.  You mean devastated.  (The Verge)
  
  
• No.  (ZDNet)
  
  
• Elasticsearch 6.8 and 7.1 have authentication.  (ZDNet)
  
  Until now, this has been a paid feature for enterprise customers, meaning that the vast majority of Elasticsearch servers had no protection except their firewall.  Naturally they got routinely hacked.
  
  
• Google Glass 2 is here.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  Pocket protector, slide rule, mechanical pencil, and skinny tie available as optional extras.
  
  
• Turn your web browser into a web server.
  
  Sure.  I mean, why not?  What's the worst that could happen?
  
    Directory of c:\
  
  
    14/08/2017 11:37 AM <DIR> Apps
    22/04/2018 03:39 AM <DIR> Book
    09/05/2019 12:11 PM <DIR> Code
    27/06/2018 05:51 PM <DIR> Cygwin
    15/09/2018 05:33 PM <DIR> Perf^C^C^C^C
  
  I mean, apart from that?
  
  

Finished watching Noragami season one.  It's perhaps not groundbreaking and a bit confused about what it wants to be when it grows up, but the art and animation direction, soundtrack, and acting are all first rate.  It's like spotting something shiny in the distance that looks like it might be a silver dollar and when you get there and pick it up turns out to be a silver dollar.

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, May 22 2019 03:05 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, May 22 2019 10:54 AM (Ix1l6)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, May 22 2019 12:34 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wednesday, May 22 2019 12:50 PM (xOgT9)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, May 22 2019 11:34 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, May 23 2019 01:20 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, May 23 2019 01:22 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, May 23 2019 01:47 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: mikeski at Thursday, May 23 2019 01:15 PM (P1f+c)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, May 23 2019 04:18 PM (PiXy!)

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• Google has cut off Huawei's quiche supply.  (Android Authority)
  
  No new Android versions, no support, and no Play Store on new devices.  Existing devices will continue to work.  No official feature or security updates either, but Huawei didn't provide updates for very long anyway.
  
  This is big.  Huawei was fast becoming a dominant player in the handset market and now they are restricted to China, at best.
  
  This is pursuant to the Commerce Department's ban on sales of certain technology to Huawei and a list of partners.
  
  
• Realme (Who?  Oh, it's Oppo again.) announced the Pro 3, a mid-range phone based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 710.  (AnandTech)
  
  6.3" 2340x1080 LCD display, 2 A75 and 6 A55 cores, so it's much faster than A53-based entry-level models if not as fast as A76-based flagships, ~4000mAh battery, and room for dual nano-SIMs plus a microSD card.
  
  Unfortunately there's a small camera notch and it has micro-USB rather than USB-C, but it has a real live headphone jack, dual cameras, and tops out at €249 (about $280) with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of flash.
  
  
• Paranoia is coming.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Happiness is mandatory.
  
  
• Or if you live in China, you can experience the NSVR version today.  (New York Post)
  
  
• Kraken is an open source peer-to-peer Docker registry from Uber.
  
  Born with three strikes and still better than Docker Hub.
  
  
• BuzzFeed is acting as self-appointed morality police for teenagers on YouTube  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  Again.
  
  
• South Korea's government plans to move to Linux instead of Windows 10.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  At this point it might actually work.  We'll see.
  
  

Posted by: J Greely at Tuesday, May 21 2019 11:52 AM (LGSd2)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, May 21 2019 05:23 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: J Greely at Wednesday, May 22 2019 01:04 AM (ZlYZd)

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• As expected, BIOS updates are rolling out for existing AMD motherboards to enable PCIe 4.0 support.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  You'll still need a 3000-series Ryzen CPU to take advantage of this, but you won't need a new motherboard.  Meanwhile, Intel is planning to require new motherboards for their 10th generation chips, but won't be supporting PCIe 4.0.
  
  AMD are expected to launch new motherboards next year with DDR5 support, though they haven't made any specific announcements yet.
  
  
• Computer too fast?  Got too much memory and storage?  Why not try an Arduino Nano, starting at 20MHz with 48KB of flash and 6KB of RAM?  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The more advanced Nano 33 BLE, with a 64MHz Cortex-M4F Arm CPU, 1MB flash, and 256KB RAM, would make a nice desktop system.  Maybe a little light on the RAM, but otherwise solid.
  
  
• TechDirt has settled its dispute with a litigious internet twatwaffle.  (TechDirt)
  
  It's not exactly a resounding victory for free speech, but no money changed hands except in legal expenses, and at least it's over.
  
  
• Python 3.8 hopes to implement subinterpreters and finally work around the perfidious GIL.
  
  At this point my response is a profound meh.  This was needed ten years ago.  Too late.
  
  
• Can "indie" social media save us?  (The New Yorker)
  
  Save whom?  Oh, alright, yeah, maybe.  If I can get a break from fighting with Ethereum.
  
  
• Microsoft, you idiots.  (Bleeping Computer) 
  
  
• Crunchyroll in hot water for removing girls' panties from an anime trailer.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  Honestly though, the show in question looks terrible.

Netoge: I Can't Believe My Party's Healer Is A Complete Airhead But At Least She's Got Big Tits: Not great, not even particularly good, but watchable.  And the soundtrack is good.  Interesting conceit that everything in the real world is brighter and more colourful than in the fantasy world, where so often it's the other way around.

Really, the single biggest problem with this series - after the school uniforms, which are believably hideous - is that all the girls have exactly the same smile.  Aforementioned airhead, pettanko tsundere, student council president, only sane woman, even the teacher.  Lazy character design there, and the end result is slightly creepy.

Inō-Batoru wa Nichijō-kei no Naka de: Just when you think it might actually get interesting, it falls off a cliff.  Dropped hard.

Actually, I Am: Terrible rubbish.

Noragami: Ah, that's what I was looking for.

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, May 20 2019 10:33 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Monday, May 20 2019 11:16 AM (LZ7Bg)

Posted by: Mauser at Monday, May 20 2019 01:27 PM (Ix1l6)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, May 20 2019 02:28 PM (PiXy!)

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Local News

• Sony's next-generation Xperia 1 launches in July at a price of $NOPE. (AnandTech)
  
  Just stop it. Also, no headphone jack.
  
  
• AMD got smart, added a cleric to the party, and is now immune to zombies. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Part of the reason that Intel has had better performance than AMD for the past several years is that they took a whole bunch of unsafe shortcuts, which are now coming back to bite them.
  
  
• San Francisco has restricted government use of facial recognition and apparently by regulatory process and not by smearing the cameras with poop. (TechDirt)
  
  This is a good thing. Maybe they did it for the wrong reasons. Don't know, don't care; it's still a good thing.
  
  
• Clutter has picked up Omni's storage business. (Tech Crunch)
  
  Just watch out for the yellow snow bunnies. The yellow snow bunnies are not your friend.
  
  
• Host your own blog with Gitlab and Netlify.
  
  
• Step one: Go to https://gitlab.com/pages/nfhugo and fork the repository.
  
  
Or don't do that, because that is fucking insane.


• Chiitan got banned from Twitter for...  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  No-one seems to know what for, actually.

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, May 19 2019 01:01 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, May 19 2019 01:09 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, May 19 2019 01:29 AM (PiXy!)

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