Ask Shadowman

Can you feel the music?

The music is everywhere in this week's issue. It seeps into the pores. It hangs on the wind. Its grandeur permeates.

People say that that nobody makes good music anymore. Hmph. It may be that the radios don't play good music, but that's because they can't sell enough soap playing the music that you think is good, kid.

So go find your own music, already. The best part: it might be free.

Go listen to artists like Revolution Void, or Tomas PhUsIoN, or any of the hundreds of artists who are releasing great music for free. And if you're still not impressed, fine -- but one day soon, you will be impressed by the music of a free artist. Whether the RIAA likes it or not.

Got a question you'd like Shadowman to answer? Ask him.

Kalya asked:

Hi, I recently passed the RHCE exam. I was curious to know the total number of RHCEs till now. Can you help me with that?

To which Shadowman replies:

Ah, the Knowledge. Shadowman loves it when he gets an opportunity to pimp The Knowledge.

Kalya, you'll be pleased to know that as of Wednesday September 27th, there are exactly 22,285 Red Hat Certified Engineers worldwide (14,866 current). There are also 14,129 Red Hat Certified Technicians (all of whom are current).

Actually, as Shadowman goes through the numbers, he's finding all kinds of festive facts. To wit:

There are Red Hat certificate holders in 132 different countries. There are 192 countries in the United Nations.

The nation with the most Red Hat certificate holders: the United States, at 9234. In second: India, with 5622. And closing the gap.

There are currently 22 countries in which a lone RHCE plies his or her trade. Out of respect for the incredible marketability of these individuals, Shadowman will not divulge the names of the countries in question.

The current passing rate for people who take the RHCE or RHCT exams hover at around 45%. (No numbers on how many people rip their hair out after failing the exam. Hey, if everyone got an RHCE the first time they tried, then it wouldn't prove much, would it?)

Mind you, all of these numbers will be completely different tomorrow.

Rarezki asked:

I'm sure you have it many times this sort of question : Do you have an easy way to recover my deleted files with command "rm -rf *.pdf"? My filesystem is of course ext3.

To which Shadowman replies:

You can't.

You can read about why exactly that is, but it doesn't really matter, now, does it? Those pdfs are gone. Gone, baby, gone. Shadowman offers his condolences.

Knives are sharp. Stoves are hot. And "rm -rf" is dangerous. Thus endeth the lesson.

sstrick asked:

Mr. Shadowman, when I set compression on my files with chattr +c, they don't get any smaller. Is this just a placebo? (rhel4 update 3)

To which Shadowman replies:

Not a placebo so much as a placeholder. Quoting "man chattr":

"The 'c', 's' and 'u' attributes are not honored by the ext2 and ext3 filesystems as implemented in the current mainline Linux kernels. These attributes may be implemented in future versions of ext2 and ext3."

And by the way, Shadowman really, really, *really* prefers not to be called Mister Shadowman. It makes him feel old.

Actually, Shadowman tried to sign up on the Myspace not too long ago, but his name was already taken by a gentleman from the Greater Miami area. So Shadowman had to go with "Shadowman1" instead, but then no one would be his friend except Tom (which Shadowman really wasn't interested in any way). After a few days of rejection by 13-year-olds, Shadowman decided to pass on the whole thing. Now that made Shadowman feel old.

So... um... yeah, no Mister. Just plain old Shadowman. kthxbye.