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Tuesday, November 23, 2010
The RPG Ecology
That may seem like an insignificant detail, but I don't think it is. I've come to realize that, back in my youth, there was an RPG "ecology." Nearly everyone I ever met who played RPGs started with D&D, whether it was the White Box or Holmes or Moldvay or even AD&D. There were a couple of older weirdos I knew who started with Tunnels & Trolls and one guy who started with Traveller, but, by and large, some form of Dungeons & Dragons was the entry point for the overwhelming majority of roleplayers. Then, as now, many gamers got tired of playing D&D, either because they simply wanted a change or because they'd grown to dislike the game in some fashion. Finding D&D wanting in some way is probably the hobby's oldest tradition, after all. And when this happened, where did these gamers go?
That's where "second tier" RPGs like RuneQuest and Chivalry and Sorcery and RoleMaster came into the picture. These were the games to which disaffected D&D players turned when they could no longer stomach the infelicities of Gygax and Arneson's creation. All of these games "fixed" D&D in various ways, in the process becoming more complex than the game they had rejected. But that was OK, because complexity was part of the point. They had a lot of experience with roleplaying games already; they'd been playing D&D and other games for years. They were ready for all the niggling little details and confusing charts and special cases. Indeed, they craved this sort of thing.
Nowadays, it's popular to suggest, falsely, that a characteristic of old school gaming is its rules "lightness." Historically speaking, this suggestion fails to account for games like the ones I've been re-reading lately. I suspect the reason for this failure is that many gamers either never played or never understood the appeal of those rules-heavy games existed on the fringes of TSR's empire. And let's be clear: they existed quite well. Certainly, neither Chaosium nor FGU were ever making as much money as TSR certainly was, but I have little doubt they were more profitable than most RPG companies today. There were a lot of gamers back then for whom games like Dungeons & Dragons were "entry-level," which is to say, strictly for neophytes. Experienced and sophisticated gamers eventually "grew out" of D&D and the games I'm calling "second tier" were there to provide for them.
Obviously, as time went on, many of these games (RuneQuest being a prime example) no longer required disaffection with D&D to generate interest, but that doesn't change the fact that disaffection with D&D was the wellspring for a great many new RPGs in the late 70s and early 80s. But, even so, it wasn't just disaffection with D&D; there was also the question of experience. As one develops more facility with the concept of RPGs, one is (in my experience anyway) much more prone to tinker with their rules, adding complexity and detail that, at the beginning of one's entry into the hobby, would likely have been bewildering and off-putting. "Simple" games are much less satisfying to many experienced gamers, who've "been there, done that" and so they often seek out RPGs that are written to accommodate their tastes.
Again, none of this is to suggest that experienced players can't find enjoyment in simple games -- far from it! Yet, there's no denying that there has always been a segment of the hobby who, as they gained more familiarity and facility with RPGs, needed increased complexity to hold their attention. These are the guys who like to spend hours poring over their rulebooks looking for the perfect combination of abilities for their characters and who think that nothing less than dozens of nested, cross-referenced encounter charts containing hundreds of entries is sufficient to create a "realistic" campaign world. That's definitely not what I want in a RPG, but I won't deny that there are gamers out there who do -- and there always have been.
The problem today, I think, is that the hobby has suffered severe "ecological damage." There aren't many "entry-level" RPGs anymore. Most RPGs would have belonged to the second tier in the past, as they assume a degree of familiarity and experience that many potential players don't actually possess. If there were more entry-level games -- heck, if D&D were still an entry-level game -- the RPG ecology might be very different. Alas, RPGs have, since the late 1980s at least catered increasingly to already-experienced gamers, who crave the complexity and sophistication that, in the past, would have primarily been found in those second tier games the older, more experienced guys played back in the day.
There should always be a place for those older, more experienced guys in the hobby, but the kinds of games that are satisfying to them aren't (generally) the kind that are accessible to complete newcomers. And, more importantly, those second tier games depend heavily on the existence of entry-level games to provide a steady stream of players hungry for the greater complexity they have to offer. In short, the RPG ecology is out of balance and it needs to be repaired. I wish I knew how.
43 comments:
- AnonymousNovember 23, 2010 at 10:40 AM
In short, the RPG ecology is out of balance and it needs to be repaired. I wish I knew how.
4e essentials...
sorry, i couldn't resist. :) Several Comments.
My memories of the situation in my hometown in rural NW Pennsylvania is roughly similar to your recollections. I would add that the primary reasons of unhappiness with D&D among my age cohort was
1) The abstract combat didn't offer enough options especially in the hands of a poor referee. By the mid 80s (when many of us switched when we were in college) we had several well designed tactically detailed systems to choose from.
2) However the primary driver was character customization. Being able to create a character exactly the way you want it with the exact mix of abilities. Sure there was munchkinism from the get go but compared to the straight jacket of AD&D 1st it felt like liberation.
3) Part of the success of D&D 3.0 is that is successfully scratched the character customization itch yet still remaining recognizably D&D. Thanks to feats you had more options in combat as well. More the D20 SRD and the OGL this is was devastated the 2nd tier RPG market in the early 00s.
I agree with your assessment about the lack of a entry level ecology. It not enough to have a starter set. You need a complete RPG with support to get things going.
D&D Essentials may do the trick. It is complete and simple but still too expensive when you add up the main products.
Dragon Age seems to have a slow release schedule.
Currently I think the big three of OSR especially Swords & Wizardry, and Labyrinth Lords are the most approachable beginning RPG products. But their reach is limited.Warhammer 3ed can make for a nice entry level game. The special dice eliminate much of the math in more complex games, it is very roleplaying driven, and the rules don't go into minutia. Of course the biggest problem is that it is fairly expensive, but Fantasy Flight is releasing a version that requires no chits, cards, etc. this holiday and as result costs less so maybe that will help.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, this is a large part of the reason for the massive restructuring in 4e: to make D&D more accessible without mentorship. The problem is that it got sabotaged by the business model. Rules are spread out over multiple books and you need the digital library subscription to find anything.
ReplyDeleteYou can get along quite well in 4e with a PHB, DMG & MM, just like in previous editions of D&D. And it is a fairly rules-lite game by modern standards. However, I don't think it's anywhere near as light as some of the older games out there.
Back when I was in high school, it was always easier to get people started with games like Vampire or Mage rather than D&D. "Add the dots in column A with the dots in column B and then roll that many dice" is a pretty simple game mechanic to teach beginners. I never played Exalted, but I hear it had very similar mechanics, which would probably go a long way towards explaining its popularity with the younger crowd.My understanding is that in Europe - especially in regions where D&D never took off - games like RuneQuest and MERP/Rolemaster were the entry-level games.
I can't speak to that, but I do know that, in the British Isles anyway, RQ was a very strong competitor with D&D, which is why some much of White Dwarf's content was devoted to it.You can get along quite well in 4e with a PHB, DMG & MM, just like in previous editions of D&D. And it is a fairly rules-lite game by modern standards. However, I don't think it's anywhere near as light as some of the older games out there.
Personally, I think 64 pages is the absolute upper limit for anything intended to reach a mass audience and, truth be told, 64 pages is probably stretching it a great deal. However more simple 4e may be than, say, 3e was, it's still not simple enough to have a huge reach outside the already-existing hobby, because it's still too complex.My experience with some of my players is that some of the video RPGs derived from D&D--like Baldur's Gate and Shadowwhateverit'scalled are the entry-level RPG. They taught a few of my characters the core concepts so I didn't have to.
There may be some mileage in selling pnp RPGs as "Like computer games, ONLY LIVE!!!!!"You're sounding a tad melancholy, James.
I don't think we're lacking for entry-level games. LL and S&W spring immediately to mind. It's the demand for them that has evaporated.
Even if, say, a "big" company like Hasbro decided to published a true entry-level RPG, would MMO and video gamers abandon their consoles and return to tabletop gaming?
My gut tells me, no.
It's not so much that the ecology is damaged, as new plants have been introduced (MMO's and console games) that have pushed the older, less hardy plants out.There may be some mileage in selling pnp RPGs as "Like computer games, ONLY LIVE!!!!!"
I've always been skeptical of this approach, because, as I've always seen it done, it more or less concedes the field to computer games, or at least frames the discussion in their terms, which isn't always to the benefit of tabletop RPGs.You're sounding a tad melancholy, James.
I was born melancholy, I think, and old age has only strengthened that emotion in me :)
It's not so much that the ecology is damaged, as new plants have been introduced (MMO's and console games) that have pushed the older, less hardy plants out.
Now, there's an analogy that makes me feel much better.Do modern pen-and-paper RPGs explain themselves in terms of "this is like WoW or Final Fantasy, but it's all done on paper?" If not, should they?
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that the recently-released D&D Starter Kit does this and I felt it was a bad decision on WotC's part. As I said above, I really don't think RPGs have a lot to gain by drawing attention to their similarities with computer games.A related question - are some MMORPG players frustrated by the inability to customise the game?
My limited experience suggests that many are, but the source of their frustration is more in the realm of the superficial -- their character's "physical" appearance within the game -- and not having anything to do with the rules, which is why I tend to think "character customization" is overstated as an explanation for the increase in rules complexity.I've been recently rereading my favourite set of Western (as in the genre) role-playing rules. It's called Once Upon A Time In The West. It was published in 1978 by Tabletop Games. And you've probably never heard of them because they are not actually a set of RPG rules, but are rather a set of skirmish tabletop rules. [However the have all the elements of a role-playing game (especially once you add in the expansion which details how to run a campaign of connected games).]
But two interesting things about these rules are that they are incredibly rule dense (massively so) and that there was no coherent overall system to the game (each individual aspect of the game was treated separately and used different methods of resolution).
And by rule, I don't just mean resolution mechanics. I mean actual rules. This was because of the often competitive nature of wargaming on the tabletop you needed concrete rules to settle disputes between the players [wargamers are famous for exceedingly heated rule quibbles, and there often isn't a referee available to ajudicate (unless you are in a campaign of some kind)]. And they thought about each situation that came up in their games and created a method of resolving that situation. But there was little consistency in how they went about it. They simply created a system which they felt worked, and was often added to the existing system.
Does this remind you of anything?
The reason why the very first generation of role-playing games often followed this system is because it was what wargamers were comfortable with. It's why you have an interesting blend of specific rule mechanics (when related to the resolution of contests), often coupled with extremely vague hand-waving over campaign specifics (as the referee of the campaign was expected to be able to make the appropriate decisions about their campaign - including what rules to include and what rules to exclude as inappropriate - as they had experience doing this).
And this is, I believe, why you found that the older generation of gamers could cope a lot more easily with the stuff that FGU produced. Because, while a lot more coherent than such early tabletop minatures games, they still, as a rule, used the same mindset when they came to writing the rules. They were familiar with the wargaming roots of the hobby, and so the FGU rules were written in a manner that they were familiar with. [At least that's my experience as a fan of FGU games.] And like wargaming rules, if you knew how the authors thought you could generally locate the needed rule very quickly.
As role-playing matured, the rules moved away from these roots and developed it's own sense of what is appropriate. They also became more coherent and integrated with a specific campaign environment [So much so that younger people looked at me strangely when I ran a Traveller game without any FTL at all, because they hadn't realised it was possible to do this sort of thing.]
Similarly I had no problems with OD&D. After all, it was just a guide on how to create a fantasy campaign (in wargaming parlance), and thus very hand-wavey and drawn from the examples of the author's own games. [Whereas AD&D started separating the game into specific rules for players and gamemasters...]
[Incidentally, I rate Runequest as third or fourth tier (but published waaaaaaay ahead of it's time). It introduced unified mechanics (a single system that was used for [almost] everything), and treating NPCs/Monsters in the same manner as player-characters. Revolutionary advances! (But still, not really what Greg actually wanted for his game/world.)]One thing I think that has damaged the entire ecology of the RPG has actually been the OGL. One thing different about back then was that everybody tried to create something new and different. In part it was because the RPG was new, but it was also because the larger players did not want wholesale copying of their stuff.
While I think the OGL did a lot for the OSR, one of the reasons I'm a big critic of it is that it encouraged people to design games dervived from the master system. And a lot of publishers did this. I think that short-sighted view hurt the gaming economy in the long term. Before D&D3, we had a lot of people making interesting games, but later the top tier game studios were the ones doing d20 compatible adventures, sourcebooks, and systems. Meantime, we've seen long-standing game studios go under (GDW, admittedly pre-d20), or reduce their output significantly (SJG and their RPG line).
I mean, say what negative things you'd like about stuff like Vampire, Castle Falkeinstein, etc., they were written like it was a person's first RPG. We need more of that, and we need more ideas that aren't slavishly devoted or derived from a single system.I dunno, I've been doing a lot of research lately on D&D 4E, and to be honest, it seems much more like an entry level game. There are less options, more plug and play, and the removal of the Vancian spell system.
While I do agree with your mention that the price tag is what takes it out of the realm of a beginning RPG, but I will probably be buying it for my son who is 11. The cost for a new RPG is much cheaper then last years big gifts- a cell phone and the 40K starter set. Both of which cost more money after the initial investment.
On the other hand, D&D has always been prohibitively expensive for the DM. The player could always get away with just a PHB. But right now the PHB, DMG, and MM are $64 on amazon, which is approximately how much you would pay for a new video game, which probably won't last out the year.To be honest, I was first introduced to this hobby (at least, with direct contact) by playing Baldur's Gate. Now I will have to admit, BG was and still is very different than most video game RPGs, as it was modeled after a real possibly D&D campaign.
Other than the other D&D-derived games (Icewind Dale, Planescape Torment, Neverwinter Nights...), the only other game that springs to mind that follows this model (and is not an inherent D&D game) is Dragon Age Origins.
So what I think I am getting at is that video games are certainly a good entry-point into the hobby (Baldur's Gate certainly made me hungry for "real" tabletop gameplay), but only a select few offer that incentive (with nearly only one coming out in the past decade). Other video games, even RPGs, do not offer that incentive. Final Fantasy games, for example certainly do not follow the model of tabletop RPGs.I've always been skeptical of this approach, because, as I've always seen it done, it more or less concedes the field to computer games, or at least frames the discussion in their terms, which isn't always to the benefit of tabletop RPGs.
But hasn't the RPG field already been conceded long ago to computers and consoles? When I was first gaging interest for a Dungeons and Dragons program at the library that I work at, kids and teens' first exposures to the concept of roleplaying games are through the Final Fantasy series or Blizzard and BioWare games.
I'm of a mind to think that this isn't a bad thing, just different. There's an existing frame of reference as to what RPGs are like and it is up to us as proponents of tabletop games to show what makes those games fulfilling and different.My favorite RPG is C&S, even though I can barely manage to make a character for it anymore, much less run a combat. Magic use is right out.
After playing Mentzer Red Box for a few years, I found a brand new copy of 2nd edition C&S sitting on a dusty shelf at my local gaming store. The shop owner just wanted to get rid of it and I think I only paid $5. It was on that day I became a man. The level of detail was insane compared to D&D, and I loved it. My introduction to Star Fleet Battles happened around the same time, so I was probably ready for mind-numbing complexity. Now, I enjoy reading rules sets, the more complex the better, but I'll never play them. Labyrinth Lord is my game of choice. I DO own just about every FGU game published, though...for whatever reason, they always had the quirkiest rules with strange but interesting ideas.I like the idea that much of the market, the "fantasy heartbreakers" if you will, were created as havens for folks who were disenchanted with D&D for one reason or another and wanted to find a game that scratched their particular itch.
I don't believe that this means that they were all more complex. *Some* of them were, but other people (myself included) were disenchanted with D&D for completely different reasons that have nothing to do with being old time wargamers who wanted more complexity. In fact, the entire success of things like the "Hickman Revolution" and the White Wolf business model were based tapping into pent-up demand for games that were *less* complex, and focused more on a storytelling experience.
For instance.There was a popular rpg called Dragon Warriors released on this side of the pond in 1985. Definitely second tier and introductory. Extremely simple rules with atmospheric english folk adventures embedded into the six novel sized books. It has been re-released and might contribute something to the repair.
ReplyDeleteMMO's put a stake into the heart of pencil-and-paper RPG's. It solves a lot of logistical issues, and hides (some of) the mechanics off in the computer program so you don't have to worry about how to fairly adjudicate the game.
MMO's may not scratch the itch better (I certainly like the face-to-face experience better), but they scratch it easier.Those second-tier games you mention are certainly represented today.
We call them "Fantasy Heartbreakers".
People are still trying to "fix" D&D with decidedly long-tail products that will appeal to maybe 5-10% of the market.
I'd be willing to bet that's as much as any of those older games like C&S were ever able to capture.MMO's put a stake into the heart of pencil-and-paper RPG's. It solves a lot of logistical issues, and hides (some of) the mechanics off in the computer program so you don't have to worry about how to fairly adjudicate the game.
The way I view is that in the 70s there was this mass of players for roleplaying games. Everybody played for different and overlapping reasons. As new forms of roleplaying spawned off (LARP, interactive fiction, MMORPGs, etc) the various sub groups got pared off leaving only a core group for whom tabletop roleplaying games is great entertainment.
Then there is the social network effect where each of the new forms of RPGs developed their own social networks to a greater or lesser degree. CRPGs not so much, MMORPGs very much so.
The key for survival for tabletop roleplaying is to play to it's strengths and not try to pretend to be something else (like Essentials allusion to being WoW with paper). The strengths being the imagination of the human referee and the human players. Along with the ability to be able to do anything with very little work.
Technology, like the internet and computers, will positively effect tabletop roleplaying. It just needs to be the right type of technology. The whole adventure, Rogue, MUD, MMORPGs progression is more of competitor than an aid.
In contrast web conferencing and voice over internet software evolving into virtual tabletops have proven complementary.
Complex rules are not as appealing today because MMORPGs and CRPGs can't be beat in this regard. They can have arbitrary complex rules and drape them in a good user interface to make them easy to learn. If you look at WoW or City of Heroes you will many people who take delight in plumbing the numbers for these games.
Yet with the rise of computer everywhere and new form factors like the iPad and surface computers, tabletop games could have similar complex rules with a friendly UI to make learning and management easy.
By playing to its strengths , using the right technology, tabletop roleplaying can continue as a viable hobby and even industry.I don't think I could teach anyone any game that can't wear its rules on its character sheet. nWoD was decent in this regard. It's count-on-your-fingers arithmetic with about a half-dozen sheets to cover rules summaries for more complex things like combat or hacking; the only part it fell down was the more esoteric power descriptions, but then, that's not something that's going to be dumped on a player ("How does Presence work?" "Do you have it?" "No." "Then how would you know?").
GUMSHOE is my current go-to because it cuts half the arithmetic down, and fits on a one page rule summary.I think some of us (myself included) moved on simply because D&D didn't provide enough. I moved onto things like RoleMaster, RuneQuest, Palladium and the boxed set of Chivalry & Sorcery simply because I was a glutton for new systems, and I wanted something that my sensibilities agreed with.
I had a conversation with my buddy last Saturday about this -- that most players nowadays weren't interested in roleplaying anymore, it was all about rules lawyering and munchkin play. He said that they'd been groomed for that with 3E and 4E, and it was up to us to bring 'em back. Maybe he's right.
I've only come back into D&D recently, having been annoyed enough by 2E, 3E, and 4E to seek for fun alternatives.
I think a more complex system would do well with a "basic game" and then in later chapters moving on to the "advanced game." The basic game could introduce the core mechanics and ideas, the advanced game would offer the options. That way everyone wins.After reading some comments I checked the page count on those two books which are 176/304 ... the original books (without reproducing the cards, etc) are 96 pages each. Not quite the 64 page limit your thinking of so probably doesn't fit the your target intro game. Though the are very image heavy.
ReplyDeleteHaving thought about this some more, I'd argue that D&D could be seen as the 3rd tier, with the 2nd tier being things like Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and board games like Talisman and Dungeon, and the 1st tier being Lord of the Rings and similar books.
The 1st tier still exists - in fact Harry Potter is probably more popular now than Tolkien then. But I get the impression that the RPG industry/hobby doesn't do much to make the link.
It's like the 'fantasy' in 'fantasy RPG' is a different thing to the 'fantasy' in 'fantasy books and movies'.
PS Non-fantasy RPGs seem to be better at doing this.Interesting post! Though I wish you'd talk more, at times, about the sea change in RPGs in the 80s and 90s that brought in rules-lite frameworks vastly better-suited to real collaborative storytelling than D&D. I have a feeling a lot of your tidy 'Golden Age' narrative and D&D-uber-alles attitude make that subject hard to deal with straight-on, but since D&D's weird relationship with 'story' is such a key element of the 'old-school' philosophy, such as it is, well...
Personally, I think 64 pages is the absolute upper limit for anything intended to reach a mass audience
But AD&D 1e was waaaaaaay more than that - and it was the first TSR product explicitly marketed to a mass audience through mainstream distribution channels (bookstores), correct? Indeed it set the template for marketing in the hobby. Then again, maybe lack of novelty is the single most important factor in the decline of RPGs as a widespread form of children's/nerds' entertainment?
Leaving that aside (and despite your resentment toward it), the new 'Red Box' really is a fine introductory product - vastly better in that role than any D&D-related product since the Cyclopedia's 'black box' companion game, probably even longer. The Choose Your Own Adventure-style chargen, all-in-one presentation, and nicely-designed basic adventure really do make for a fine product that shows off some of its strengths while downplaying its weaknesses (e.g. complexity of the combat minigame). When you say it's too complex to reach beyond the hobby, how exactly are you judging that? After all, World of Warcraft is a complex game that dramatically expanded the reach of MMORPGs...
...because despite complex gameplay, the pitch is dead simple. That's one thing D&D has been missing for a long time. The OD&D pitch is as simple as WoW's, but even the one-liner for AD&D is hard to pin down - and that falls to Gygax as much as anyone, for wanting to have it both ways re: simulation/gaming.
The absolute greatest RPG pitch I've heard is Rients's 'I'm Conan, you're Gandalf, let's go fight Dracula,' but WotC's marketing droids are too 'cool' to just admit they've been trumped by a blogger.
Of course there are very short RPGs floating around out there. Risus, for instance, would be a great starter RPG for kids. Or, say, the licensed Buffy RPG - whether or not it's a great game in itself, it sells itself ('I'm Buffy, you're Xander, the rules tell you how fights go, here's a map of Sunnydale, go!!').
But D&D hasn't sold itself in a long time. That's about video games, mainly. AD&D 1e was a moving target, 2e had related problems (all those campaign worlds, half-baked narrativism), 3e was a complex answer in search of a question; 4e is a fine game in itself, but now it has to answer the 'Why not play Diablo 3?' question, and poorly-socialized RPG geeks have a hard time getting to the best possible answer ('This is a game about telling stories with your friends').I don't know if the RPG ecology is out of balance, but it definitely different from its past. I know that there are the few intrepid souls who would buy a game off the shelf with no prior experience and begin playing the game, but I think more people are "initiated" into the RPG world. The initiation can take place in various ways, often times I think the simple selling point of interactive stories where you write your own adventures is enough. You have a friend who is trying it, and you join him or her. The real pain is time. It is tighter than ever and few gamers have RPGs as their sole obsessive hobby. . . how I miss the 80's.
ReplyDeleteJust because a game is old doesn't make it old school.
Am I too predictable? ^_^
We could have a thousand good "first tier" games, but if they don't say "Dungeons & Dragons" on the cover, there is a limit on the good they can do for the hobby. 3e inherited too much from AD&D and the other second (or even third) tier games, but it had the first tier brand. 4e or essentials may be less complex, but I don't find them to be good first tier RPGs either.
That is something that I think will correct itself in time. The D&D brand will become less and less associated with traditional role-playing. Maybe "traditional" or "old school" or some other terminology will become widespread enough to differentiate traditional RPGs from computer RPGs, new school RPGs, story games, and whatever D&D has now become. In any case, we have too many things that are too different trying to live under the same "RPG" tent, and I'm beginning to think that they all would benefit from some stronger differentiation.


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Frequently Asked Questions
From Linux-VServer
We currently migrate to MediaWiki from our old installation, but not all content has been migrated yet. Take a look at the Wiki Team page for instructions how to help or look at the old wiki to find the information not migrated yet.
To ease migration we created a List of old Documentation pages.
What is the status of Linux-VServer?
What is a 'Guest'?
What kind of Operating System (OS) can I run as guest?
Is this a new project? When was it started?
Which distributions did you test?
Is VServer comparable to XEN/UML/QEMU?
With which version should I begin?
Is VServer secure?
What is the "great flower page"?
Resources usage
Resource sharing?
- memory: Dynamically.
- CPU usage: Dynamically (token bucket)
Resource limiting?
- using ulimits and rlimits (rlimit is a new feature of kernel 2.6/vs2.0.) per guest, to limit the memory consumption, the number of processes or file-handles, ... : see Resource Limits
- CPU usage : see CPU Scheduler
- disk space usage : see Disk Limits and Quota
How do I limit a guests RAM? I want to prevent OOM situations on the host!
If you want a recipe, do this:
- Check the size of memory pages. On x86 and x86_64 is usually 4 KB per page. (on linux "getconf -a
Disk I/O limiting? Is that possible?
# cat /sys/block/hdc/queue/scheduler noop [anticipatory] deadline cfq
The default since 2.6.18 in Sept 2006 is CFQ, described below, and prior to that was anticipatory a.k.a. "AS" ([Wikipedia]). When running several guests on a host you probably want the I/O performance shared in a fair way among the different guests. The kernel comes with a "completely fair queueing" scheduler, CFQ, which can do that. (More on schedulers can be found at http://lwn.net/Articles/114770/) This is how to set the scheduler to "cfq" manually:
root# echo "cfq" > /sys/block/hdc/queue/scheduler root# cat /sys/block/hdc/queue/scheduler noop anticipatory deadline [cfq]
Keep in mind that you have to do it on all physical discs. So if you run an md-softraid, do it to all physical /dev/hdXYZ discs! If you run Debian there is a predefined way to set the /sys values at boot-time:
# apt-get install sysfsutils [...] # grep cfq /etc/sysfs.conf block/sda/queue/scheduler = cfq block/sdc/queue/scheduler = cfq # /etc/init.d/sysfsutils restart
For non-vserver processes and CFQ you can set by which key the kernel decides about the fairness:
cat /sys/block/hdc/queue/iosched/key_type pgid [tgid] uid gid
Hint: The 'key_type'-feature has been removed in the mainline kernel recently. Don't look for it any longer :(
The default is tgid, which means to share fairly among process groups. Think every guest is treated like a own process group. It's not possible to set a scheduler strategy within a guest. All processes belonging to the same guest are treated like "noop" within the guest. So: If you run apache and some ftp-server within the _same_ guest, there is no fair scheduling between them, but there is fair scheduling between the whole guest and all other guests.
And: It's possible to tune the scheduler parameters in several ways. Have a look at /sys/block/hdc/queue/....
Nice disk I/O scheduling, is that possible?
It's split into three groups, called real-time, best effort and idle. The default is best-effort, but within best-effort, you can have a niceness from 0 to and including 7. You can set this niceness by the tool ionice, which for debian is either in the package util-linux or schedutils. To change the io-niceness you need the CAP_SYS_NICE, and need to have the same uid as the processe you want to ionice.
- Note: If you want to use any schedulung other than best-effort you will also need the CAP_SYS_ADMIN-flag. Be warned that this gives quite some capabilities to the vserver, not just for I/O scheduling!
If you want to increase the niceness of an I/O hogging process within a vserver you need to do:
chcontext --xid sponlp1 sudo -u '#2089' ionice -c2 -n5 -p24409with sudo and ionice installed on the root server to increase the *nice*ness of pid 24409, with uid 2089
I want iotop to display all guest processes on host to give me a nice overview of I/O usage.
# setattr --watch /proc/vmstat
to, for example, rc.local, and later run iotop:
# vcontext --migrate --xid 1 -- iotop
What is unification (vunify)?
What is vhashify?
It creates hardlinks to files named after a hash of the content of the file. If you have a recent version of the vserver patch (2.2+), with CONFIG_VSERVER_COWBL enabled, you can even modify the hardlinked files inside the vservers and the links will be broken automatically. There seems to be a catch when a hashified file has multiple hardlinks inside a guest, or when another internal hardlink is added after hashification. Link breaking will remove all the internal hardlinks too, so the guest will end up with different copies of the original file. The correct solution would be to not hashify files that have multiple links prior to hashification, and to break the link to the hashified version when a new internal hardlink is created. Apparently, this is not implemented yet (?).
How do I manage a multi-guest setup with vhashify?
mkdir /etc/vservers/.defaults/apps/vunify/hash /vservers/.hash ln -s /vservers/.hash /etc/vservers/.defaults/apps/vunify/hash/root
Then, do this one line per vserver:
mkdir /etc/vservers/<vservername>/apps/vunify # vhashify reuses vunify configuration
To hashify a running vserver, do (possibly from a cronjob):
vserver name-of-guest hashify
The guest needs to be running because vhashify tries to figure out what files not to hashify by calling the package manager of the guest via vserver enter.
In order for the OS cache to benefit from the hardlinking, you'll have to restart the vservers.
To clean up hashified files that are no longer referenced by any vserver, do (possibly from a cronjob):
find /vservers/.hash -type f -links 1 -print0 | xargs -0 rmUntil you do this, the files still take up place even though no vservers need them.
Filesystem usage
Is there a way to implement "user/group quota" per VServer?
What about "Quota" for a context? Howto limit disk usage?
How do I tag a guest's directory with xid?
Filesystem XID tagging only works on supported filesystem. Those are currently: ext2/3, reiserfs/reiser3, xfs and jfs. To activate the XID tagging you have to mount the filesystem with "-o tag" (former tagxid is outdated since VS2.2). Attention: It's _not_ possible to "-o remount,tag", you have to mount it freshly. The guests will tag their files automatiaclly. If you copy files in from the host, you have to tag them manually like this:
chxid -c xid -R /var/lib/vservers/<guest>
Note: Context 0 and 1 will see all files, guests will only be able to access untagged files and their own XID. They can see other XID files but no information about the file, e.g. no owner, no group, no permissions.
Note: It is not advised to tag the root filesystem, as explained by Herbert : trying to do so will expose you to some troubles !
How can I copy anything from host to guest partition, normally unvisible on host?
vnamespace --enter <xid> -- /bin/bashand then use standard cp or rsync programs.
Why is the barrier attribute disappearing on reiserfs filesystem after umount or host reboot?
mount /dev/reiserfsdev /vservers -oattrs setattr --barrier /vserversto get the barrier survive after umount/reboot.
Does it support IPv6?
I can't do all I want with the network interfaces inside the guest?
How do I add several IPs to a vserver?
Update from IRC (2011-08-22): <mmouse> quick question: what is the maximum count of IPs (v4) I can have in a single guest? <daniel_hozac> unlimited.
Here is a little helper-script that adds a list of IPs defined in a text file, one per line.
#!/bin/bash j=1 for i in `cat myiplist`; do j=$(($j+1)) mkdir $j echo $i > $j/ip echo "24" > $j/prefix done
How do I assign a new IP address to a running guest?
- add the ip on the host, for example
ip addr add 220.127.116.11/24 dev eth0
- add the ip to the guest's network context (a guests NID is the same as the XID {context ID})
naddress --add --nid <nid> --ip 18.104.22.168/24
- enter the guest (best via ssh)
- restart the services that need to make use of the new address if required
- update the config in /etc/vserver/<servername>/interfaces to reflect the changes for the next guest restart (if desired)
If my host has only one a single public IP, can I use RFC1918 IP (e.g. 192.168.foo.bar) for the guest vservers?
iptables -t nat -I POSTROUTING -s $VSERVER_NETZ ! -d $VSERVER_NETZ -j SNAT --to $EXT_IP
See: HowtoPrivateNetworking and
http://www.tgunkel.de/it/software/doc/linux_server.en#h3-VServer_Masquerading_SNAT (THX, [MUPPETS]Gonzo)
If I shut down my vserver guest, the whole Internet interface ethX on the host is shut down. What happened?
You can check this on the host using the command "ip addr show". Example output:
1: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP qlen 1000 link/ether 00:01:02:03:04:05 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff inet 192.168.249.172/27 brd 192.168.249.191 scope global eth0 inet 192.168.234.194/27 brd 192.168.234.223 scope global eth0 inet 192.168.249.169/27 brd 192.168.249.191 scope global secondary eth0 inet 192.168.234.195/27 brd 192.168.234.223 scope global secondary eth0
In this example, if you stop the guest which brings down the IP 192.168.249.172, the IP 192.168.249.169 will be brought down as well, because it is a secondary IP of the "parent" 192.168.249.172.
But in very recent kernels, there is an option settable which prevents that nasty feature. It's called "alias promotion". You may set it via sysctl by adding net.ipv4.conf.all.promote_secondaries=1 in /etc/sysctl.conf or via sysctl command line.
Can I run an OpenVPN Server in a guest?
This is the minimal OpenVPN configuration for the Server which will be used to demonstrate how to get it running in a client:
# Networking setup server 192.168.16.0 255.255.255.0 dev tun16 ifconfig-noexec comp-lzo # Certificates dh ... ca ... cert ... key ... # Management persist-key keepalive 10 60 verb 4
First of all you have to prepare the host with a persistent interface in the right mode and with the right settings. This is easily done by using openvpn and the ip and route tools.
# openvpn --mktun --dev tun16 # ip link set dev tun16 txqueuelen 100 # ifconfig tun16 192.168.16.1 pointopoint 192.168.16.2 mtu 1500 # route add -net 192.168.16.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 gw 192.168.16.2
If you need different settings, openvpn will tell you the ifconfig and route commands it uses to configure the interface when being started on the host with the original config file, but without ifconfig-noexec. Additionally, the guest needs /dev/net/tun to make OpenVPN happy. This can be created with MAKEDEV:
# cd /var/lib/vserver/<myopenvpnserver>/dev/ # ./MAKEDEV tun (creates the dev/net/tun device accessible by the guest - even a tap interface needs /dev/net/tun !)
Finally, the guest needs to have the tun device assigned:
# head /etc/vservers/<myopenvpnserver>/interfaces/1/* ==> /etc/vservers/<myopenvpnserver>/interfaces/1/ip <== 192.168.16.1 ==> /etc/vservers/<myopenvpnserver>/interfaces/1/nodev <== tun16 ==> /etc/vservers/<myopenvpnserver>/interfaces/1/prefix <== 24 #
The client's conf may look like that:
# Basic setup client proto tcp-client dev tun remote <ipaddress> comp-lzo verb 4 # Certificate ca ...[ Based on derJohn's original answer, all errors mine ]
Trying to connect to a vserver from the host or another vserver on the same host fails
sin_addr=inet_addr("xx.xx.xx.xx")}, yy) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
A: The host/guest cannot communicate with another guest on same host.
- check all netmasks on all interfaces (do they overlap) ?
- check policy routing (disable it temporary) ?
- check that lo is up (Networking within a host/guest always uses lo interface)
Can I use iptables ?
If you really, really, really need iptables on the guest and you are aware about loosing a big part of VServer isolation and security you could add the NET_ADMIN capability. Consider writing wrappers to manage iptables on the host instead.
Is it possible to prevent guest from bringing down primary ip?
Is it possible to provide a different MAC address per vServer?
Real answer from _are_:
When I once needed 'real' seperate MAC-addresses I used TAP-devices and VDE2 ([http://vde.sourceforge.net/ Virtual Distributed Ethernet]). Basically vServer is an isolation of existing resources, not a virtualization of 'new' devices. Without extra fuss you can't add a 'new' network interface to a vServer, no matter if it is eth* or tap*, you always add it to the host and give the vServer access to it. I got the TAP+VDE2 up and running, but I think it is too much trouble for basically the simple adding of IPs to a vServer unless you really need the MAC address separate.
You can also utilize MACVLAN ability from kernel.
I.e. create macvlan0 interface with:
ip link add link eth0 address 00:19:d1:29:d2:58 macvlan0 type macvlan[Reference]
Is it possible to hide packet counters on the host network interface from vServer guests?
Services won't bind to 127.0.0.1 when I configure them to bind to all available IPs / (binding service to * doesn't bind to loopback)?
It means somehow "optimized" :D If you don't want this you have 3 possible solutions (quoting Bertl):
* disable the auto single IP in the kernel * assign more than one IP to the guest * disable single ip special casing for that guest
The later is done by : echo "~single_ip" >> /etc/vservers/<VSERVER>/nflags
At runtime to avoid restarting the vserver: nattribute --set --nid <guest> --flag ~single_ip
When using network namespaces and vserver together, netstat does not work in the vserver. What's wrong?
If you create a new network namespace you have to do the same in the network namespace because the new /proc/net files are not available for the vprocunhide outside the new network namespace. So something like that should be sufficient to get netstat working in vservers with network namespaces:
ip netns exec $NAMESPACE /usr/lib/util-vserver/vprocunhide
Administration tools
Which guest vservers are running?
CTX PROC VSZ RSS userTIME sysTIME UPTIME NAME 0 77 965.1M 334.6M 14m14s18 2m28s69 1h33m46 root server 49152 7 14M 5.2M 0m00s40 0m00s30 1h30m15 chiffon
Is there a web-based interface for vserver that will allow creation/deletion/configuration etc. of vserver guests?
- http://Openvcp.org which is a distributed system (agent!) with a web-interface, with which you can build/remove guests
- http://vsmon.revolutionlinux.com/ is a distributed monitoring-only solution that allows you to search for a particular vserver in your park.
Hosting foreign distributions
I run a Debian host and want to build an Ubuntu guest. Howto?
vserver vubuntu build --force -m debootstrap --hostname vubuntu.myvservers.net --netdev eth0 --interface 192.168.0.2/24 \ --context 42 -- -d breezy -m http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu
[UPDATE] Currently there are problems in building breezy under unclear circumstances, which seems to have to do with udev. If the above didnt work, try:
vserver vubuntu build --force -m debootstrap --hostname vubuntu.myvservers.net --netdev eth0 --interface 192.168.0.2/24 \ --context 42 -- -d breezy -m http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu -- --exclude=udev
In very recent versions of the utils, the problem should not occur anymore (it has to do with the 'secure-mount' if you look in the MLs)
Well, sid's debootstrap knows how to bootstrap Ubuntu linux. Make sure to have a current debootstrap package:
apt-get update apt-get install debootstrapThe knowledge how to build ubuntu 'breezy badger' (which you probably want to be your guest at the time of writing) has been added recently.
I want to build a Gentoo guest. Howto?
Application level problems
I did everything right, but the application foo does not start. What's up there?
When I try to ssh to the guest, I log into the host, even if I installed sshd on the guest. What's wrong here?
Port 22 # Use these options to restrict which interfaces/protocols sshd will bind to #ListenAddress ::
And now change the setting to
Port 22 # Use these options to restrict which interfaces/protocols sshd will bind to ListenAddress your.hosts.ip.here # not the guests IP!
Then '/etc/init.d/ssh restart' on the host, after that on the guest (if you did apt-get install ssh on the guest already.) Do I have to explain more? If the hosts sshd binds all available IP addresses on port 22 (The hosts 'sees' even all addresses of the guests!). So if the guest starts its sshd, it can't bind to port 22 any more. You need to change that setting only on the host.
(BTW: A similar approach has to be done for a lot of daemons, e.g. Apache. If the daemon does not support an explicit bind, you may use the chbind command to 'hide' IP addresses from the daemon before starting.)
Bind9 does not like to start in my guest.
My mysqld running in a guest behaves strangely and is awfully slow/locks up
If you prefer not to modify or disable tmpfs, you can reconfigure MySQL to use a different tmpdir such as "/var/tmp". For example, edit /etc/my.cnf (RHEL/CentOS) or create /etc/mysql/conf.d/mysqld_custom.conf (Debian) and add the following line:
tmpdir = /var/tmpAfterwards, restart MySQL (/etc/init.d/mysqld restart) and then review MySQL variables (mysqladmin -uroot -p variables) to confirm "tmpdir" is no longer pointing to "/tmp".
Pure-FTP does not run inside a VServer?
Why do neither sshd nor crond (vixie-cron) work correctly in my CentOS / Fedora guest? I get 'pam_loginuid(crond:session): set_loginuid failed opening loginuid' and similar lines in my logs.
pam authentication (also used with openssh) enables "pam_loginuid.so" in the /etc/pam.d/* files. Comment those out as they are not necessary and will not load within a guest anyway. This probably is also necessary on updates later on, if the configs get changed. You therefore may add the following command line to a cronjob file or your software update script:
/bin/sed --in-place -e "s/^session.*required.*pam_loginuid.so/# session\trequired\tpam_loginuid.so/g" /etc/pam.d/*UPDATE: If you are compiling your own kernel this can be fixed system-wide by setting CONFIG_AUDIT_LOGINUID_IMMUTABLE=n in kernels .config file.
How do i install nagios-plugins on a Gentoo guest?
The easiest way to do this from the host (assuming the guest is running) is:
vnamespace -e <xid> -- chroot /vservers/<name> emerge nagios-plugins -va
Somebody runs ntpd in guest and you can't use ntpdate in host?
ntpdate -u ntp.domain.xy
or you can use command:
chbind --nid 42 --ip 188.8.131.52 -- ntpdate ntp.domain.xywhere IP will be the IP of host.
Start / Stop a VServer
How do I make a vserver guest start by default?
echo "default" > /etc/vservers/derjohn/apps/init/mark
If you want to start it earlier, please read the init script "/etc/init.d/util-vserver" to find out how to do it. In most cases you don't need to change this. On Debian the vservers are started at "20", so after most other stuff is up (networking etc.).
Besides that I created a small helper script for managing the autostart foo: ((vserver-autostart))
How do I start all vservers with a mark value of something other than "default"?
MARK=foo NUMPARALLEL=42 LOCKFILE=vserver-foo /path/to/util-vserver/vserver-wrapper startIf you want to automate this, you can create a copy of the /etc/init.d/vservers-default script called /etc/init.d/vservers-foo, set MARK, NUMPARALLEL and LOCKFILE appropriately in it, and have it start at whatever point in the boot process.
My host works, but when I start a guest it says that it has a problem with chbind.
What is old-style and new-style config?
How can I reboot/halt guests?
For legacy Linux-VServer (i.e. 1.2.x), you have to replace /sbin/halt in the guests with vreboot and start rebootmgr in the host. You also need to have a <guest>.conf file in /etc/vservers for each guest. Please have a look at /etc/init.d/rebootmgr.
For Linux-VServer 2.0+, sys_reboot has been virtualized to do the right thing. No changes are needed in guests. Please note that some things depend on the init style used by the guest : read util-vserver:InitStyles
What is the initial PATH?
When I try to start a guest i get this message "/proc/uptime can not be accessed. Usually, this is caused by procfs-security. Please read the FAQ for more details"?
When I try to start a guest i get this message "vsched: vc_set_sched(): Function not implemented".
Is SMP Supported?
Do I really need the legacy-interfaces? What are these legacy-interfaces?
I have a vserver running on a Linux kernel with preemption. Is VServer "preempt" safe?
32 vs 64 Bit? What should I take?
[*] Kernel support for ELF binaries <M> Kernel support for MISC binaries [*] IA32 Emulation <---- without that, the entire 32bit API is not present <M> IA32 a.out support
You can force the guest to behave like a 32 environment like this:
echo linux_32bit > /etc/vservers/$NAME/personality echo i686 > /etc/vservers/$NAME/uts/machine
(thanks cehteh for the hint!)
But you can force debootstrap to put 32 bit binaries into the guest by 'export ARCH=i386';
export ARCH=i386 ; vserver build ....
On debian when using the newvserver script "export ARCH=i386" has no effect, just use:
newvserver --arch i386 ...
On debian debootstrap can also be gived the arch option:
vserver myguest \ build -m debootstrap -n myguest \ --hostname myguest.mydomain.com \ -- -d squeeze -- \ --arch=amd64 (or i386 if you want 32bit)
What does the guest privacy option do in the kernel settings ?
>i was wondering about the real thing that guest privacy does. #ifdef CONFIG_VSERVER_PRIVACY #define VS_ADMIN_P (0) #define VS_WATCH_P (0) #else > > Does it just prevent the spectator context ? it prevents the spectator context and the admin functionality in all cases which are privacy sensitive, which includes: - ptrace - devmapper - devpts - inode tag permissions - mountinfo - kill/signal - netlink dumps - tun control - iopriority > > What security do it bring to the system ? together with the VXF_STATE_ADMIN it can be used to secure a guest (to some degree) from unwanted access from the host admin, of course, as the admin can change the kernel, this is a voluntary feature which mostly prevents certain kinds of accidential peeking or guest modification
Distribution specific questions
VServer is included in the stable Debian GNU/Linux for years now. What VS version did they include?
Were can I get newer versions of VServer as ready made packages for Debian?
- http://repo.psand.net/info/ has Debian Lenny, Squeeze and Wheezy repositories. Many kernel versions are present. Currently (Febraury 2013) 3.2 kernels are being maintained for Wheezy, with additional packages for 3.4 and 3.10 also available. Architectures available are i386 and amd64. This repository also contains curremt util-vserver builds. Build will shortly begin for Jessie.
- http://www.lihas.de/anleitungen-und-service/linux-vserver-kernel-fuer-debian/linux-vserver-kernel-english details their automatically built repository currently for 3.4 kernels. Building, patching and testing for the kernels is automated.
Older unmaintained repositories are/were here:
- http://linux-vserver.derjohn.de/ - "my kernels are always 'devel' branch" (derjohn). This repo contain kernels up to 2.6.29 for amd64, 2.6.26 for i386.
- http://backports.debian.org/ contains 2.6.32 backports for Lenny at time of writing (11th May 2010)
- http://zbla.net/debian/ Unofficial debian vserver packages WARNING : i386 packets are compiled for 64bits ! apt source line: deb http://zbla.net/debian/ ./ (N/A as of 2011/12/27)
Were can I get newer versions of VServer as ready made packages for Ubuntu?
- http://repo-ubuntu.psand.net/dists/ is the only repository maintained for Ubuntu. It covers the same builds as http://repo.psand.net/info/ - and information there should be used, replacing 'precise' as distro in your /etc/apt/source.list.
Why isn't there a device /dev/xyz within a guest?
I want to (re)mount a virtual filesystem (like tmpfs) in a running guest ... but the guest has no rights (capability) to (re)mount?
# vnamespace -e XID mount -t tmpfs -o remount,size=256m,mode=1777 none /var/lib/vservers/<guest>/tmp/
(if there's a problem, try expanding the symlinks in the mount path) Be warned that the guest will not recognize the change, as the /etc/mtab file is not updated when you mount like this. To permanently change the mount, edit /etc/vserver/<guest>/fstab on the host.
If you get:
mount: can't find /var/lib/vservers/<guest>/tmp in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab
then try instead:
vnamespace -e builder chroot /var/lib/vservers/<guest>/ mount -o remount,size=64m,mode=1777 /tmp
How do I bind mount a host directory inside a running guest?
To understand the other way, let me explain how mount namespaces work.
Every guest has two mount namespaces associated with it: one "management namespace" and one "operational namespace".
On starting the guest, first the management namespace is created as a copy of the host namespace (which means that everything that was mounted on the host is mounted in the new namespace as well). This has unwelcome side effects: for example, if you had a cdrom mounted while starting the guest, you wouldn't be able to eject it until you stop the guest even if you umount it on the host, because it's still mounted in the guest. Therefore, the namespace is cleaned up: filesystems that are mounted outside the root of the guest get unmounted in the guest namespace.
Subsequently, the operational namespace of the guest is created as a copy of the management namespace, and the guest's processes are started in it.
To bind mount a host directory in the guest, you must first make that host directory visible in the management namespace of the guest. This is automatically the case if the directory resides inside a mountpoint that exists in the guest namespace as well; however, if the guest config referenced no part of this mountpoint (or it didn't yet exist when you started the guest), then the cleanup mentioned above removed it from the guest's management namespace and you need to re-add it.
Let's assume, as an example, that we want a guest to see a subdirectory, called foo, of the cdrom we just mounted on the host (e.g. under /media/cdrom).
Let's enter the management namespace of the guest (that's what -i 0 is for):
# vnamespace -i 0 -e <guest-xid> -- /bin/bash
Now you have access to all host devices; mount the device that contains your directory wherever you want, but you may prefer to mount it in the same location you used on the host. (Note, though, that it's not even necessary for the device to be mounted in the host namespace at all.)
It's likely best to use mount -n lest your host /etc/mtab get polluted with mounts from other namespaces.
# mount -n /dev/sr0 /media/cdrom # exit
We're now back in the host namespace. vmount can now be used to bind mount /media/cdrom/foo inside a running guest (in this example, under /foo inside the vserver root):
# vmount guestname -- --bind /media/cdrom/foo /mnt/foo
How do I mount a device present on the host under a directory in a running guest?
vnamespace -e <guestname> mount -n /dev/<device> /vservers/<guest>/place/you/want/to/mount/it
This device can be unmounted with:
vnamespace -e <guestname> umount -n /vservers/<guest>/place/you/want/to/mount/it
Does anyone know how to increase the size of /tmp within a vserver w/o restarting?
# vnamespace -e XID mount -n -t tmpfs -o remount,size=32m tmpfs /<vdir>/<guest>/tmp
or something like that. The arguments are needed since mount is not going to be using /etc/fstab for the information and the version of /proc/mounts is best understood by
# vnamespace -e XID cat /proc/mounts.See Frequently_Asked_Questions#I want to (re)mount a partition in a running guest ... but the guest has no rights (capability) to (re)mount?
#1 ERROR: capset(): Operation not permitted
How can I make 'vserver start' mount the root filesystem?
/dev/drbd0 / xfs rw,dev 0 0
I deleted a guest's directory without shutting it down. Now I have a "ghost" running. Is there any possibility to get it out of proc without rebooting?
You will also need to remove guest's ip, for example with:
ip addr del <ip> dev eth0
When using nice and su (for example, in the updatedb cron job), I get: su: Permission denied. What does it mean?
$ strace nice su nobody [...] setpriority(PRIO_PROCESS, 0, 0) = -1 EACCES (Permission denied)
You can use 'su nobody -c nice some_cmd' instead.
The problem is caused by the fact that host system is setting limits for guests (when instructed to do so) and the dropped capability dissallows processess on guest systems to change and increase them later. That means no process on a guest can lower nice value above the limit set by host.
If the pam_limits module is activated on a guest system it will first try to reset nice value to 0 even if /etc/security/limits.conf file is empty or even if there are lower priority limits set in it. The pam_limits module does that since its developers decided that it should reset some limits to defaults and start from scratch when applying new restrictions. Unfortunately, already limited guest system won't be able to do it since resetting nice value to 0 means increasing the limit which is forbidden. See Debian Bug report logs - #311058 for more information about that Debian bug.
See also Cron is not working…
Cron is not working on my guest system (which is Debian). How can I fix it?
CRON[xxxxx]: Permission denied
Similar thing may happen with the su when trying to execute a command as root.
It's not the problem in Cron but in the pam_limits module on a guest system (see FAQ:When using nice and su… for more information about the cause).
There are 4 ways to solve or work-around this problem:
1. Allowing guests to reset resource limits:
It's clean solution but you may expect some guest processes increasing their limits because not everything is controlled by PAM. It also breaks centralized resources limiting approach so a guest can do bad things that may cause other guests and host to be overloaded and unresponsive.
To apply it you have to add CAP_SYS_RESOURCE flag to /etc/vservers/<server name>/bcapabilities (2.6 kernels).
See Capabilities and Flags for more information.
2. Disabling pam_limits on a guest systems:
This workaround is easy and works fine when your guest systems aren't really multiuser but rather service boxes. It disables setting of the resource limits by PAM so the limits can only be set globally for the whole guest (using rlimits or cgroups on a host) but never increased inside of the guest system.
To apply it just enter the guest and edit the files listed below, commenting out any line containing pam_limits:
/etc/pam.d/su /etc/pam.d/sudo /etc/pam.d/cron
You can also use this one-liner on a guest:
/bin/sed --in-place -e "s/^\s\?session.*pam_limits.so.*/\#\0/g" /etc/pam.d/{su,sudo,cron}
3. Allowing guest's pam_limits to set limits when possible:
This workaround allows you to have working pam_limits inside a guest system and global limits set by a host system. What's the catch? The problematic PAM module won't fully work for the root user on a guest system as expected and there might appear some PAM's warnings in guest's auth.log. Since using pam_limits to limit regular user processes is far more frequent than using it to limit root processes, this solution may be a good compromise. It is about setting a proper limits in pam_limits configuration and about setting this PAM module in a way that its function is optional (instead of required). The last change makes PAM to continue with session even if pam_limits encounters some error during setting limits (it usually applies to superuser sessions).
The not so nice news is that there might be a need of keeping guest's limits configuration up to date according to limits globally set for a guest. The limits set in pam_limits configuration file(s) shouldn't be higher (lower in case of nice value) than global guest's limits.
To apply it enter the guest and edit the files listed below, replacing occurences of required by optional in the lines containing pam_limits:
/etc/pam.d/su /etc/pam.d/sudo /etc/pam.d/cron
For example:
# Sets up user limits, please define limits for cron tasks # through /etc/security/limits.conf session optional pam_limits.so
Then on a guest system create the file /etc/security/limits.d/01-fixpam.conf containing:
* - priority X # replace X with your guest's nice value
You can automate this process to happen automagically for any guest by creating the startup script named /etc/vservers/.defaults/scripts/post-start.d/01-pamfix:
#!/bin/sh # This script tries to fix pam_limits entries # to make it possible for PAM in a guest system to # set its own limits. PAM_DIR="etc/pam.d" PAM_SERVICES="su sudo cron" LIMITS_FILE="etc/security/limits.d/01-pamfix.conf" vname="$2" [ -z "$vname" ] && exit 0 vcfg=$( /usr/sbin/vserver-info "$vname" CFGDIR ) [ ! -d "$vcfg" ] && exit 0 for s in $PAM_SERVICES do pamfile="${PAM_DIR#\/}/$s" [ -f "$pamfile" ] && /bin/sed --in-place -e "s/\(^\s\?session.*\)required\(.*pam_limits.so.*\)/\1optional\2/g" "$pamfile" done [ ! -f "${vcfg}/nice" ] && exit 0 nval=$( /usr/bin/head -1 "${vcfg}/nice" ) [ -n "$nval" ] && echo "* - priority $nval # (added by vserver startup script)" > "${LIMITS_FILE#\/}" exit 0
4. Disabling resource limits for a guest:
It easy, clean and… unsafe solution. You just have to not set resource limits (e.g. priority, nice value) for a guest or set the nice value limit to 0 on a host system. Resetting it later by guest's pam_limits will not generate an error.
How do I handle NFS mounts within in a guest?
In any case, you probably want to force the nfs version to 3 or lower to avoid id mapping issues (one symptom of having an id mapping issue is that no_root_squash appears to be ignored). You can check whether the mount uses nfsv4 by looking at /proc/mounts inside the guest. You can force the protocol version to 3 by passing the mount options nfsvers=3,mountvers=3.
1) Mount the NFS share from the host OS and let vserver guest access it as part of it's file system.
mount --bind may also be beneficial in this scenario.
2) Use util-vserver and create a fstab.remote file in the /etc/vserver/<vserver_name> directory. Populate this with the NFS shares and they will be mounted in the context of the vserver guest.
See http://www.nongnu.org/util-vserver/doc/conf/configuration.html
Note that as of 0.30.216-pre3000 and kernel 3.0.4-vs2.3.1-pre10.1, the mount request will appear to originate from the IP of the host, not the guest. It is unclear (to Guy-) whether this is a bug.
3) Add capabilities to the vserver guest instance to grant sufficient rights to allow NFS mounts.
Add the following to /etc/vserver/<vserver_name>/bcapabilities
Add the following to /etc/vserver/<vserver_name>/ccapabilities
See Capabilities_and_Flags for more information about vserver capabilities.
If you want the NFS shares to be mounted when the guest starts, add them to /etc/vserver/<vserver_name>/fstab.
4) Before starting the guest, make a directory of the host "shared" using mount --make-shared /path/to/dir, then set up autofs to mount nfs shares under /path/to/dir/sharename.
rbind mount subdirectories of /path/to/dir in the guest from its fstab.
This setup is good if the nfs shares are not often needed, and especially if they're occasionally needed by more than one guest. (As of September 2011, running autofs inside a vserver guest didn't work for me. --Guy- 01:05, 30 October 2011 (UTC))
vserver start/stop/enter fails with something like "vnamespace: execvp("/usr/sbin/vserver"): No such file or directory" ?
vnamespace -e <guest> cat /proc/mounts
If there is no /usr, you can fix your problem with simply mounting it using the following command:
vnamespace -e <guest> mount /dev/<device> /usr
The command vserver <$server> start gives '/etc/init.d/rc: line 74: /etc/default/rcS: No such file or directory', what do I do?
check your install log and it should tell you something about that your server didn't get installed properly
- use stable distribution of debian as server (debootstrap may be different over the versions)
- deny_mount, deny_caps and deny_pivot should be off if your running grsec.
How could I rename a vserver directory?
- Stop the vserver in question
- rename the /vservers/<server name> directory
- rename the /etc/vservers/<server name> directory
- update link: /etc/vservers/<server name>/run → /var/run/vservers/<server name>
- update link: /etc/vservers/<server name>/vdir → /etc/vservers/.defaults/vdirbase/<server name>
- update link: /etc/vservers/<server name>/cache → /etc/vservers/.defaults/cachebase/<server name>
- update link: /var/run/vservers.rev/<server XID> → /etc/vservers/<server name>
- Start the vserver in question. It should start properly.
what if i see my vserver in vserver-stat but with no name ?
Just do a : cat /etc/vservers/<guest>/context > /var/run/vservers/<guest>
check that the <guest> is the good one by using vuname --get --xid <context> with the context you have in the vserver-stat listing.
Upgrade from 2.0 to 2.2
I now get errors like "ncontext: vc_net_create(): Invalid argument; dynamic contexts disabled." on startup. Vservers are not started
echo 101 > /etc/vservers/myvserv/contextADDENDUM: please consider that valid static contexts are between 2 and 49151 ( daniel_hozac on IRC ) otherwise you will end up with unexplainable error "ncontext: vc_net_migrate(): No such process" when trying to start the vserver.
How do I assign a static context to an existing vserver?
Since upgrading to a newer VS version my guest complains about "vsched: non-numeric value specified for '--priority_bias" at start time. What's wrong?
# cat /usr/local/sbin/vserver-convert-schedule-to-scheddir #/bin/sh mkdir /etc/vservers/$1/sched sed -e 1p -n /etc/vservers/$1/schedule > /etc/vservers/$1/sched/fill-rate sed -e 2p -n /etc/vservers/$1/schedule > /etc/vservers/$1/sched/interval sed -e 3p -n /etc/vservers/$1/schedule > /etc/vservers/$1/sched/tokens sed -e 4p -n /etc/vservers/$1/schedule > /etc/vservers/$1/sched/tokens-min sed -e 5p -n /etc/vservers/$1/schedule > /etc/vservers/$1/sched/tokens-max mv /etc/vservers/$1/schedule /etc/vservers/$1/schedule.converted.see.scheddir # see: http://oldwiki.linux-vserver.org/Scheduler+Parameters # see: http://www.nongnu.org/util-vserver/doc/conf/configuration.html#sched
Here is an example how to do so:
# mkdir /etc/vservers/<vserver>/sysctl/0 -p # echo kernel.shmall > /etc/vservers/<vserver>/sysctl/0/setting # echo 134217728 > /etc/vservers/<vserver>/sysctl/0/value # mkdir /etc/vservers/<vserver>/sysctl/1 -p # echo kernel.shmmax > /etc/vservers/<vserver>/sysctl/1/setting # echo 134217728 > /etc/vservers/<vserver>/sysctl/1/value
It's also explained on the geat flower page:
- see: http://www.nongnu.org/util-vserver/doc/conf/configuration.html -> Look for "sysctl".
After changing those values, restart your guest, enter it and check if the values are set:
# sysctl -a | grep shm ... kernel.shmall = 134217728 kernel.shmmax = 134217728
To change a value for a running guest, on the host use:
vspace -e CONTEXTID --ipc sysctl -w kernel.shmall=134217728 vspace -e CONTEXTID --ipc sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=134217728


text:
GOP has to end its family feud must end
Published 12:00 am Sunday, October 13, 2013
WASHINGTON — In trying to understand the Republican Party's internal battles, it helps to think of Michael and Sonny.
Corleone, that is.
On one side we have Sonny — the hot-headed, impulsive, shoot-now-take-names-later son of Don Corleone. On Capitol Hill, he personifies the tea party followers who would rather die on principle than live to win a later day.
On the other side, we have Michael — the cooler-headed son and intellectual strategist. On the Hill, Michael represents the so-called establishment legislators who understand the way forward but thus far have been reluctant to pull the trigger.
That's a metaphor for all those literalists out there who may feel compelled to issue fresh gun-control imperatives. It means to take necessary, if unpleasant, action. Before action, however, there should be a plan, which has been demonstrably missing in recent weeks. Had there been a strategic, long-view plan rather than a series of tactical blunders, Republicans might now be basking in the realization of a dream: Obamacare is a hot mess.
Remember the "train wreck" Republicans kept promising? Well, guess what. It's happening. The train is wrecking. And yet, rather than popping open the champagne as the Obamacare website crashes in a glut of glitches, Michael and Sonny are having a staring contest.
It's as though Republicans didn't have faith in their own prognostications.
Meanwhile, almost two weeks after the government shutdown, polls are showing a shift in Democrats' favor. Not only do fewer Americans view Republicans in a positive light (28 percent, according to Gallup) but they're becoming more, not less, approving of Obamacare. While Republicans were nudging the can up the road on the debt ceiling, approval for Obamacare leapt up 7 points, according to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal polls.
Great job, Teddy!
That would be Ted Cruz, the Texas senator who grabbed headlines by filibustering for 21 hours against Obamacare. Cruz is neither Michael nor Sonny, but is the star of his own movie. He's Ted bin Laden — the guy who hands out suicide vests and then goes to lunch.
The family clash between the Corleone brothers is about to become bloodier, though it doesn't have to. What needs to happen is for certain parties to become wiser and to absorb this simple truth: You cannot govern if you cannot win.
Tea-party warriors may prefer to perish on principle, but perish they will. And, if something doesn't change fast and soon, the fear is that they'll take down the House with them. Forget the Senate in 2014. And forget the White House for the foreseeable future.
Unless, that is, the hard-right suicide flame throwers can be neutralized or converted. The latter isn't likely when the echo chamber cheers them on. And while organizations such as Heritage Action are grading legislators on their "conservative" performance. The threat of facing a primary challenge in their districts from someone even loonier keeps many in lockstep with Sonny.
Thus, the only alternative is a systematic, strategic purge of the GOP's Sonny side. Rational conservatives who understand that governing requires compromise, not just "winning," need to form their own groups to first protect their reasonable legislators and then actively recruit and elect strong, likable candidates who can win general elections. They need to create their own scorecards to grade the obstructionists.
If Republicans can pull this off, then they can (maybe) keep the House and (just maybe) take the Senate. Then, with a clear mandate from the people, they can have their way with Obamacare. Theoretically, they could repeal — or use their strength in numbers to improve it and also move forward on entitlements and tax reform in ways that most sensible Americans would support.
Storming the barricades may be fine at times, but it's helpful to also have a plan. Remember the day after shock and awe? Now what? This is essentially where the GOP finds itself today. It shut down the government — and now what? It tried to defund the un-defundable (Obamacare was already funded), and now people are gravitating toward the train wreck. The GOP's delaying tactic, though justifiable, came too late in the game. Finally, Republicans failed to capitalize on Obamacare's own embarrassing launch.
Now what? Painful though it may be to witness, it may be time for Sonny to take a drive through the toll plaza. Maybe he could give Ted bin Laden a lift.
(That's a metaphor, too.)
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com.


text:
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text:
Weighing The Benefits Of Prepaid Debit Cards
Today more than half of all Americans use prepaid debit cards for personal use, compared to just 19% in 2008.¹
A prepaid debit card is established when an individual provides cash to a financial institution in exchange for a card that can be used like any debit card or credit card, except it is limited to purchases in an amount not to exceed the card's cash balance. When the balance runs low, or is exhausted, the card can be reloaded with additional cash.
There are reasons why you might consider using a prepaid debit card, including:
- For individuals with poor credit, who may be unable to get a credit card, carrying a prepaid debit card means they don't have to carry cash.
- For individuals who have trouble managing their spending, prepaid debit cards can act as a restraint on poor habits.
- As an alternative to credit cards for college students, they can help protect parents from their children's excessive spending, while teaching important budgeting lessons.
- They offer potential protection against the loss of cash when traveling.
- In a world of data theft, prepaid debit cards do not house personal data, such as your Social Security number or bank account information, shielding that data in the event of theft.
They do come with drawbacks, such as:
- They do not provide any advance of credit, like a credit card. So if you have an emergency expense that exceeds your prepaid debit card balance, the debit card will be of limited use.
- Prepaid debit cards may come with considerable fees, including account opening fees, transaction fees, and monthly charges. Depending upon the balance, fees can represent a high percentage of your cash value.
- You will not earn reward points or rebates, like you might with a credit card.
If you are considering a prepaid debit card, be sure to comparison shop. The fees can vary widely, so look for an appropriate card. And keep yourself informed about your running balance so you don't find yourself short on money.
- CreditCards.com, June 20, 2016
The content is developed from sources believed to be providing accurate information. The information in this material is not intended as tax or legal advice. It may not be used for the purpose of avoiding any federal tax penalties. Please consult legal or tax professionals for specific information regarding your individual situation. This material was developed and produced by FMG Suite to provide information on a topic that may be of interest. FMG Suite is not affiliated with the named broker-dealer, state- or SEC-registered investment advisory firm. The opinions expressed and material provided are for general information, and should not be considered a solicitation for the purchase or sale of any security. Copyright 2019 FMG Suite.


text:
ITC Garamond™ Handtooled
ITC Garamond™ Handtooled.TTF
ITC Garamond™ Handtooled
Claude Garamond (ca. 1480-1561) cut types for the Parisian scholar-printer Robert Estienne in the first part of the sixteenth century, basing his romans on the types cut by Francesco Griffo for Venetian printer Aldus Manutius in 1495. Garamond refined his romans in later versions, adding his own concepts as he developed his skills as a punchcutter. After his death in 1561, the Garamond punches made their way to the printing office of Christoph Plantin in Antwerp, where they were used by Plantin for many decades, and still exist in the Plantin-Moretus museum. Other Garamond punches went to the Frankfurt foundry of Egenolff-Berner, who issued a specimen in 1592 that became an important source of information about the Garamond types for later scholars and designers. In 1621, sixty years after Garamond's death, the French printer Jean Jannon (1580-1635) issued a specimen of typefaces that had some characteristics similar to the Garamond designs, though his letters were more asymmetrical and irregular in slope and axis. Jannon's types disappeared from use for about two hundred years, but were re-discovered in the French national printing office in 1825, when they were wrongly attributed to Claude Garamond. Their true origin was not to be revealed until the 1927 research of Beatrice Warde. In the early 1900s, Jannon's types were used to print a history of printing in France, which brought new attention to French typography and the Garamond" types. This sparked the beginning of modern revivals; some based on the mistaken model from Jannon's types, and others on the original Garamond types. Italics for Garamond fonts have sometimes been based on those cut by Robert Granjon (1513-1589), who worked for Plantin and whose types are also on the Egenolff-Berner specimen. Linotype has several versions of the Garamond typefaces. Though they vary in design and model of origin, they are all considered to be distinctive representations of French Renaissance style; easily recognizable by their elegance and readability.
ITC Garamond? was designed in 1977 by Tony Stan. Loosely based on the forms of the original sixteenth-century Garamond, this version has a taller x-height and tighter letterspacing. These modern characteristics make it very suitable for advertising or packaging, and it also works well for manuals and handbooks. Legible and versatile, ITC Garamond? has eight regular weights from light to ultra, plus eight condensed weights. Ed Benguiat designed the four stylish handtooled weights in 1992." In 1993 Ed Benguiat has designed Handtooled versions.


text:
A neck abscess is a collection of pus from an infection in spaces between the structures of the neck. As the amount of pus increases, the soft tissue spaces expand and push against the structures in the neck, such as the throat, tongue, and, in extreme cases, the trachea (windpipe). Neck abscesses are sometimes called cervical abscesses or deep neck infections.
There are several types of neck abscesses that are found in children, including the following:
- Retropharyngeal abscess. An abscess that forms behind the pharynx (back of the throat) often following an upper respiratory infection. In children, the lymph nodes in this area can become infected and break down, forming pus. Retropharyngeal abscesses are most common in young children, because these lymph nodes atrophy (get smaller) by the time a child reaches puberty.
- Peritonsillar abscess (quinsy abscess). An abscess that forms in the tissue walls beside the tonsils (the lymph organs in the back of the throat). Peritonsillar abscesses are most common in adolescents and young adults and are rarely seen in young children.
- Submandibular abscess (Ludwig's angina). An abscess beneath the tissues in the floor of the mouth. Pus collects under the tongue, pushing it upwards and toward the back of the throat, which can cause breathing and swallowing problems. Ludwig's angina is not common in young children but may occur in older adolescents, especially after a dental infection.
What causes a neck abscess?
A neck abscess occurs during or just after a bacterial or viral infection in the head or neck such as a cold, tonsillitis, sinus infection, or otitis media (ear infection). As an infection worsens, it can spread down into the deep tissue spaces in the neck or behind the throat. Pus collects and builds up in these spaces forming a mass. Sometimes, a neck abscess occurs following an inflammation or infection of a congenital (present at birth) neck mass such as a branchial cyst or thyroglossal duct cyst.
What are the symptoms of a neck abscess?
The following are the most common symptoms of a neck abscess. However, each child may experience symptoms differently. Symptoms may include:
- Fever
- Red, swollen, sore throat, sometimes just on one side
- Bulge in the back of the throat
- Tongue pushed back against throat
- Neck pain and/or stiffness
- Ear pain
- Body aches
- Chills
- Difficulty swallowing, talking, and/or breathing
The symptoms of a neck abscess may resemble other neck masses or medical problems. Always consult your child's physician for a diagnosis.
How is a neck abscess diagnosed?
Generally, diagnosis is made by physical examination. In addition to a complete medical history and physical examination, diagnostic procedures for a neck abscess may include the following:
- Throat culture. A procedure that involves taking a swab of the back of the throat and monitoring it in the laboratory to determine the type of organism causing an infection.
- Blood tests. To measure the body's response to infection
- Biopsy. A procedure in which tissue samples are removed (with a needle or during surgery) from the body for examination under a microscope.
- X-ray. A diagnostic test which uses invisible electromagnetic energy beams to produce images of internal tissues, bones, and organs onto film.
- Computed tomography scan (also called a CT or CAT scan). A diagnostic imaging procedure that uses a combination of X-rays and computer technology to produce horizontal, or axial, images (often called slices) of the body. A CT scan shows detailed images of any part of the body, including the bones, muscles, fat, and organs. CT scans are more detailed than general X-rays.
Treatment of a neck abscess
Specific treatment of a neck abscess will be determined by your child's physician based on:
- Your child's age, overall health, and medical history
- Extent of the condition
- Your child's tolerance for specific medications, procedures, or therapies
- Expectations for the course of the condition
- Your opinion or preference
Treatment may include:
- Antibiotic medications (to treat the infection). Often, antibiotics must be given intravenously (in the vein) and hospitalization may be required.
- Drainage of the abscess using a needle. This procedure may require hospitalization.


text:
When you need to satisfy a cheesecake craving, turn to these easy mini berry cheesecakes with buttery graham cracker crusts and fresh whipped cream!
While I DO have a pretty intense sweet tooth, I don't need to eat a whole half of a pie, or even a slice, to get my fill. Thanksgiving, Christmas and birthdays being the exception, of course. Bring on the apple pie, tiramisu and layer cake!
But, during the rest of the year I love, love, love mini desserts. Just a little something sweet is all you need to satiate that sweet loving demon inside and keep trim enough for tiny swimsuits!
These mini cheesecakes are sensationally simple, delicious and super versatile – Add cocoa powder to the cream cheese mixture for chocolate cheesecake, maybe? Or how about topping the little cuties with mixed berries or chopped nuts and a caramel drizzle? No? You're tough to please.
Okay, what about…
… Heavenly homemade whipped cream mixed with the silky smooth, tangy-sweet puree of a fresh mango?
Oh baby.
Or, puree your favorite berries instead for an extra berry-licious addition to these already mouthwatering little morsels of dessert!
So, go ahead, have a little cheesecake this summer as you're slipping into sundresses and sunning outside with an icy cold margarita! Make 'em fancy and frilly or keep 'em casual and fuss-free, just don't be surprised when your super impressed guests start asking for the recipe!
Mini Berry Cheesecakes
- 6-7 graham crackers
- 3 Tbsp. melted butter
- 2 8 ounce packages cream cheese or Neufchatel cheese, softened
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 2/3 cup granulated sugar
Topping ideas:
- Fresh berries, such as strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, etc.
- Fruit pie filling, such as cherry or mixed berry
- Chopped pecans or walnuts
- Fresh whipped cream
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Line muffin tins with 12 paper baking cups, or leave mini cheesecake pan unlined.
- In a food processor, pulse graham crackers with melted butter until you've achieved wet sand consistency. Place 1 tbsp. of graham cracker mixture into each cup, gently patting into the bottom and sides of each cup.
- In a large mixing bowl, beat cream cheese until fluffy. Mix in eggs one at a time. Add lemon juice and sugar. Beat until smooth and thoroughly combined.
- Fill each baking cup 2/3 full with cream cheese mixture.
- Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes. Cool pan completely on a rack before removing cheesecakes.
- Top with fresh berries, fruit pie filling, chopped nuts, or fresh whipped cream before serving, if desired.
- Enjoy!


text:
Dutch Uncles
Memphis Industries
Having hit The Times' Ones to Watch 2011 list, Dutch Uncles has a quirky sound. Hailing from Manchester, don't be too quick to attach a genre label.With distinct vocals, and catchy guitar riffs, the album's 11 tracks are incredibly diverse.
Comprising five band members who met at primary school, Dutch Uncles possess a level of cohesion that's only possible by truly knowing each other. In 2009, the band found themselves in Germany recording their first album, but after these adventures, returned to Manchester to record Cadenza in a Salford basement.
Starting with the album's title track, Cadenza, one thing becomes apparent; they are not just any ordinary Mancunian band. It's upbeat, catchy and unashamed pop. Dolli, a mostly a cappella track introduces a rousing sentimentality with hints of James Mercer's reflective starkness. The Rub is a contemporary lullaby, all warm and fuzzy.
The diversity of this album is astounding, some tracks will have you swooning, while others pass on by, however the ones that stand out pull the whole album together. www.dutchuncles.co.uk
Shirley Stevenson


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William Lett's contributions to the theatrical and academic worlds are so welcome and sought after in the entertainment industry."
- Dan Mojica, Director & Choreographer
I appreciated the professionalism and the high standard he demanded from all of my students."
- Kari Hayter, Director / Educator
He is a gifted scholar and performer, an articulate, warm and humorous individual who will creatively enhance any theatre program."
- Gary Krinkie, Director, Fullerton College
William F. Lett has won the respect of his peers and faculty alike. He is someone of whom this university is proud to say, 'He is an alumnus.'"
- Jeffery L. Warburton, University of Arizona
Bill's expertise in so many fields combined with his genuine and caring heart has made a significant mark on my life and career. Genuine commitment to not just the art form, but truly teaching it, is what sets Bill so far ahead as an Arts Educator."
- Garrett Minniti, Dancer / Choreographer
He has what it takes to help young men and women be well rounded, versatile, and ready for anything. Bill Lett is personally molding the GREAT performers of tomorrow."
- Matthew Morrison, Actor: Broadway TV, Film


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