After talking with the group there, they seem committed to a path of relying on a certain set of tools that aren't necessarily up to the task at the scale they want to run their service at. It would be like AOL building their instant messaging platform on top of Visual Basic, and insisting that no one write anything outside of that. I don't think AIM would have scaled to 600M users that way.
So my small tidbit for today: ssh -v -X hostname is the way to find those hidden problems with an install that you aren't going to see any other way. -v gives you lots of great arcane information, which combined with google reveals many things. Oh, and the answer was, sshd won't forward X11 without xauth installed.
Feb '04
Oops I dropped by satellite.
New Jets create excitement in the air.
The audience is not listening.
Mar '04
Neat chemicals you don't want to mess with.
The Lack of Practise Effect
Apr '04
Scramjets take to the air
Doing dangerous things in the fire.
The Real Way to get a job
May '04
Checking out cool tools (with the kids)
A master geek (Ink Tank flashback)
How to play with your kids