Slashdot Mirror

Yes, yes it does: http://people.redhat.com/anderson/crash_whitepaper /

Obviously I decided to take it a lot further, so I just started changing stuff, adding stuff, etc.

I used the "I like monkeys" for "I like thinkpads" and "I like seeing eye dogs" last week, but the MoGTroll simply cries out for something MUCH more abusive.

MoGs' pen was dipped in vitriol, steeped in hate, and birthed in green-eyed jealousy. Its been obvious for a long time that she's one of the "enemy". With inspiration like that, it was a pleasure :-)

Feel free to cut-n-paste. If you want, you can include a link to my journal entry

http://books.slashdot.org/~tomhudson/journal/10607 8,

Maybe already posted, but RHEL2.1 performance PISSES on RHEL3 and RHEL4 due to THIS BUG:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi? id=121434

which RedHat just can't seem to fix and it DOESN'T just apply to 3WARE, but ALL IO! ARGH!!!!

"If MS was to keep a major piece of software in Beta for three or four years (as does Google)"

You're looking at this through a very crooked lens.

Google has some services that they have never released as supported software. So does Microsoft. So does Red Hat.

Can you think of a major company that doesn't?

What's unusual about the Googles and Microsofts and Red Hats of the world is that they actually release, unsupported, a fair amount of software that, though without formal support, is still very useful to people.

So -- and I appologize in advance for being rude -- screw you and your "give me free stuff, and support my every whim" attitude. They'll support what they want when and if they should decide to, and I'm just glad to have use of some amazingly useful software until then.

think of it as Debian's package mgmt. with Red Hat's looks

No, it's not "Fedora Red Hat". They are very careful to refer to the "Fedora project" and "Fedora Linux" but you won't see "Fedora Red Hat" around (at least not from the official project). The closet the website gets is "The Fedora Project is a Red-Hat-sponsored and community-supported open source project."

Wrong!! Don't spread mis-information. FC 3 is a beta for RHEL 4. See http://www.fedorafaq.org/ RHEL 3 was already out when FC2 was out. RHEL 3 is really based on RH 9. http://fedora.redhat.com/about/history/ So to wrap up. RHEL 2 based on RH 7.2 7.2.9 or 7.3 (dunno) RHEL 3 based on RH9 RHEL 4 based on FC 3 -A and for the OP: whitebox is okay.

...on Diego's web site here.

Cron is SO much better, certainly in my opinion. Its all down to the config which cron wins hands down: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7.2-M anual/custom-guide/cron-task.html

Speaking to a hushed crowd from the heights of a ceremonial golden minaret hastily erected on the main lawn of the lush GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) estate this morning, chief GNAA spokesman l0de triumphantly announced near-total victory for the Gay Nigger Association of America in the 103rd Trollympics.

"Citizens, never before have you been trolled so hard. You have lost, as none have lost, and as none may ever lose again. Today was truly the nicest day. Doom awaits you all."

A deafening roar of cheering and celebratory gunfire met the announcement, followed by a rare smile from enigmatically taciturn l0de, which has been interpreted by Top Gay Nigger Analists as owing as much to his own two medal haul as his customarily heroic intake of fortified wine. Following the smile, increased cumsumer confidence drove the GNIA (Gay Nigger Incestual Average) over the 15,000 mark, once thought to be unattainable. L0de then read the names of the medal winning trolls, (Which have been reproduced here, sans incomprehensible slurs and racial epithets) and delivered his already-infamous "skeet heard round the world" keynote address, finishing with a scream of "LAST MEASURE" and plummeting nearly 70 feet from the minaret into the crowd below. His current whereabouts are unknown.

GOLD MEDALISTS OF THE 103rd WORLD TROLLYMPIAD

RKZ, GNAA, Silver, Popup blocker breaking
Bare, GNAA, Gold, Ban Evade
Bare GNAA, Gold, DiKKy 4 hour flood
Rolloffle, GNAA, Gold, 100 Minute Proxy Whore
JesuitX, GNAA, Golden Goatse, AOL tech support mental breakdown (Punjabi Circuit). New world record
JesuitX, GNAA, Golden Goatse, Trolling Song or Anthem
Goat-see, GNAA, Golden Goatse, Popup blocker breaking
Penisbird + Rollofflle, GNAA, Golden Goatse, 3000 comment tandem crapflood
DiKKy, GNAA|ITL, Gold, 500 meter OMGWTF
DiKKy, GNAA|ITL, Golden Goatse, 5 minute channel jupe
Toil, GNAA|ITL, Gold, 500 Momfuck server delink
L0de, GNAA|T4C|LRH, Golden Goatse, Troll Radio Show
L0de, GNAA|T4C|LRH, Gold, Metatroll
Sarojin, T4C, Bronze Boner, CUMFUSING FRIST POST
Peccavi, T4C, Bronze Boner, 100m FYAD FYAD LOL
Feerit, T4C, Silver, Badabababa Junktouch
Klerck, T4C, Golden Goatse, 400 foot wide page
QPT, Non-affliated, Gold, 5 day forum ghost-town
QPT, Non-affliated, Gold, G-line
Impi, Non-affliated, (medal confiscated with highest honors), OMG WALLHAX NOOB

About GNAA:
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.

Are you GAY ?
Are you a NIGGER ?
Are you a GAY NIGGER ?

If you answered "Yes" to all of the above questions, then GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) might be exactly what you've been looking for!
Join GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) today, and enjoy all the benefits of being a full-time GNAA member.
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the fastest-growing GAY NIGGER community with THOUSANDS of members all over United States of America and the World! You, too, can be a part of GNAA if you join today!

Why not? It's quick and easy - only 3 simple steps!

why every one is using Movable Type. I know it is best know out there but is not the only one even after bait and switch tactic See Netcraft

Other are very good tested e.g. Drupal at Spread Firefox

http://blogs.businessweek.com/mt/mt-check.cgi
http://blogs.redhat.com/cgi-bin/mt-check.cgi

a step up from the Linux mantra: "RTFM noob"

Well, let's have a look at those planned improvements:

"Jim Allchin details various planned Longhorn features to meet this goal, such as auto-defragmenting in the background"

RTFM

"the ability to have files in more than one folder simultaneously"

RTFM

"and the new ad campaign"

Yeah well, I'm assuming you don't care so much about that one, given that the rest of it has been part of Linux for the last... well, forever.

You see, "RTFM" means, "it just works". What exactly do you think the Windows folks are going to tell you when you ask how to defrag Longhorn...? That's right, RTFM!

If you haven't seen the following they are pretty interesting...

ClasspathShowcase

GTK development in native eclipse

Actually that's not true. The NetworkMonitor applet will launch network-admin (gnome's network configuration tool) if you click the button to configure the interface you're monitoring. From there you get a drop-down list of SSID's which will be populated by nearby networks if you card's driver supports scanning. Granted, it's not as simple to use as NetworkManger, but I've found NetworkManager (on FC3) to slow down DNS resolution (it has a built-in caching mechanism). In terms of ease of use for finding/configuring networks, NetworkManager and Apple's UI are the best I've used.

Ha! Top this - I just installed Core 3.

UT2004 is the best commercial Linux program I've come across in this regard.

Most of the ones I have have broken in the years since their release because they statically linked against Glibc. While this works in theory, when the binary is run on a system with a newer Glibc it will segfault as soon as the program tries to do something involving loading a dynamic module (eg, using networking functions).

From Static Linking considered harmful:

all kinds of features in the libc (locale (through iconv), NSS, IDN, ...) require dynamic linking to load the appropriate external code. We have very limited support for doing this in statically linked code. But it requires that the dynamically loaded modules available at runtime must come from the same glibc version as the code linked into the application. And it is completely unsupported to dynamically load DSOs this way which are not part of glibc.

This is the reason that, Civ: Call To Power segfaults when I try to play a network game.

So, if you are developing/porting a closed source on/to Linux, please please please be careful about which libs you link to statically, and which you link to dynamically. You should always link dynamically to Glibc.

Whether you build other libraries into your binary should depend on how stable they are, and how likely they are to exist in ten years time. Backwards-compatible versions of libs like Glib or GTK will be around forever; the Sonames of their most recent versions (2.6/2.8) are still at 2.0 and show no sign of changing soon; and the older version of the libraries, with Soname 1.2, are still provided by every distribution.

Users of UT2004, Doom 3, HLDS and every other closed source program written with C++ have something else to worry about: the upcoming GCC 4.0 ABI transition. GCC 4.0 changes the C++ ABI from version 102 to version 1002; once your distro recompiles with the new ABI, any program dynamically linking to a C++ library will stop working.

UT2004/Doom 3 are certainly safe, since they are actively maintained; but no one will recompile Civ CTP, HLDS and other unmaintained programs. :(

Rather than "Starter Edition," here's some suggestions, if anyone from Redmond just happens to read this. (I know they won't do it - it's more a mental exercise while I eat)

1. Go download this, and make it natively multi-user if it isn't already. Give it a strong native security model, too...you can get some ideas here, and the best part is, they won't mind you doing that if you don't try and patent said ideas. Also, modularise your GUI, and don't prevent users from accessing the CLI when they want to.

2. Have the CLI composed of this and this for us CLI types.

3. Make the Add/Remove Programs panel essentially a net-aware frontend for either this or this.

4. Use this for hardware detection. Also re drivers, get rid of the suicidal policy of seeing third-party hardware vendors as the enemy, and actually support them...via tools, docs, etc. These people are your friends...they'll help you stay relevant.

5. Download this and use it as your default FS, and then get this and this, (although you already seem to know about this last one) and incorporate both of those into your stock UI. You've essentially got WinFS right there, without all the added complexity you'd no doubt throw into it if you tried to code it from scratch.

6. For the Agent angle, incorporate the last point, as well as putting help/docs in a non-binary format, making them searchable with this, converting said search results for use with this, and then use the AIML output as input for something like this. Also, instead of making the agent a tightly anthropomorphic personality, make it more generic, and more as though it's simply "the operating system" communicating with a user, rather than that dog or Clippit instead.

7. Give Outlook a major overhaul. This and this are examples of directions it IMHO should go in.

Just some random ideas, anywayz. Dreaming's fun. ;) I'll probably get modded Offtopic, but it was worth it.

Fedora does do a netinstall.
1) Download the Boot CD

2) Boot with the aguments askmethod

3) Choose HTTP/FTP

4) Enter http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux /core/test/3.91/i386/os/ as the source

5) Profit.

If you are bandwidth challenged (as I was until recently) then you have a number of options.

• Go with a distro that lets you do a netinstall and only download what you need.
• Go with a smaller distro. This is linux. You have the choice. Choose a distro that comes with everything. Choose a distro that fits on one CDROM. Choose!
• Work with the Fedora team to produce a netinstall version of Fedora (or pay someone else to do it for you.
• Get a friend with a faster internet connection to download it for you
• Pay somebody or another somebody to download it for you
• Buy a magazine that has a cover disc with the distro on it.

Disclaimer: Some options may be overly expensive or impractical due to your geographical location. Don't winge. Pick a different option.

I know DRDB, but that's more for HA pairs and cannot sync drives in background while mounted.

/graf0z.

I've considered setting up software raid on my Linux server, but I haven't found any doc yet about what happens in the event of an unexpected crash or poweroff part way through writing a RAID-5 stripe.

Suppose I have 4+1 disks in a RAID-5 configuration, and during a write to a stripe of the disk only two of the disks are written to before the system crashes. This leaves me with 2 disks with new content, 2 disks with old content, and a useless parity.

I found a page at RedHat that indicates that as of 2001 there was no multistage commit. Has anything changed since then? Do the Linux MD tools address this?

"Linux is free, but the support for it is not."

While it's entirely possible (and easy) for anybody who's interested to get their hands on Linux, consider the company to which many businesses will go first: Red Hat.

Have any of you looked at the cost of a Red Hat Linux subscription lately?

Feast your peepers on these numbers, my friends: Red Hat server licensing options.

Sure, you don't have to go with a solution like this, but any company that depends even a little on its IT department is going to want some real support and culpability - they aren't going to just be throwing Slackware on machines willy-nilly.

Food for thought, mes amis.

I also had a pirated copy of WIndows -- I think all of them were, including the one that came with my first PC.

I made the switch. I use Fedora Core 3, which seems to make a nice desktop. Hello, Gimp, goodbye Photoshop.

There is no "evaluation" version with a 30 timer that starts to nag you. You can download RHEL and make and distribute your own version such as Whitebox Linux. The only real restriction is that you cannot call it Red Hat Linux since that is a trademark of Red Hat. The main thing you get with RHEL is the enterprise grade support. If you called Red Hat and asked for support for Whitebox Linux, you would be told to go jump in a lake or something. Here is the source to RHEL 3. Go have a ball!

Here you go.

RHEL ES Basic Edition is $349 (which is no doubt what the OP meant).

"closed source has no real advantage on open source." -->Except for that little thing called "Developers getting paid"...

Since when does being "closed-source" mean "getting paid"? Yes, many companies base their model on closed source. Many others base their model on open source, and make plenty of money.

So wake up and smell the coffee! Times change, and your FUD-like statements are just so provably wrong.

Didn't you see the article yesterday on how open source drives down the cost of startup?

Don't imply F/OSS isn't good for business. It's just not good for your limited understanding of business.

>Checking RHN and contacting Redhat proved that we could not get the older kernel version ANYWHERE. We basically ran on the new version after manually extracting the IBM rpm file and installing it.

I understood this the first time around - I meant to say with both CentOS and RHEL the solution is the same (as they are binary compatible).
It's quite possible that it indeed was impossible to download the older kernel (although I think you can get older RPMs if you specify the version) - that's yet another reason for using CentOS (you can download all RPMs at any time from any of the mirrors around the world).

With RHN I usually suggest to use the "download RPMs" switch, then their up2date not only updates the machine but also gets those RPMs on the local HDD so that they can burn them on CD-ROMs and/or share with the whole company via NFS/Samba.
You can also get the RPM via the Web (http://rhn.redhat.com/help/faq/using_rhn.pxt#63) and you can get SRPMS of the kernel package and rebuild RPM as well.
You can use CentOS kernel RPM to upgrade your Red Hat kernel (that'd make it unsupported by Red Hat, though).
And finally, you can install 2-3 CentOS RPMs (yum, centos-release, etc.) to perform online conversion of a RHEL box to CentOS box (some consider it waste of money if the system is still under a valid maintenance contract, though - but after that it's a different story :-)). One thing about this is that some RPMs won't install if they look for redhat-release info which can be fixed with vi editor :-), see CentOS docs or forums for details

You can see all CentOS RPMs at
http://www.centos.org/modules/tinycontent/index.ph p?id=13
(the current RHEL 3.0 Update 4 corresponds to CentOS 3.4)

Just what we need to increase confusion. Look - I agree that there some justification to put this out, but do we *really* need yet another distro? A few well placed distros, each appealing to a market segment would be much better than this helter skelter rush for every man and their (yellow) dog to have a distro.

Wouldn't it be better to have 3 distros, one for techies, one for desktops and one for servers with paid with support. I know that those of you who use distro 'X' will yell "But {Debian,Mandrake,RHEL} doesn't quite match my requirements". Those 3 key distro's are very good, and I'm sure if theres some feature on some other distro, it will be available on one of these when all that hacking talent goes to just support them.

I'd rather we were all talking about and backing 3 very very good distros than over 100quite good ones.

Ok, I looked it up. You're confusing Sistina's (now Red Hat) Global File System with the Google File System. The two ARE NOT THE SAME.

Here's Red Hat:

http://www.redhat.com/software/rha/gfs/

Here's Google:

http://www.cs.rochester.edu/sosp2003/papers/p125-g hemawat.pdf (PDF)
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:m0TMQYgIlIoJ: www.cs.rochester.edu/sosp2003/papers/p125-ghemawat .pdf+Google+File+System&hl=en&client=safari (HTML)

RedHat has something called GFS -- the Global File System.

As for dumping users - that's exactly what Red Hat is not doing. They've replaced 'public' release with superior one (Fedora Core). It's rock-solid and does all I need it to on my network(s) internally. Exposed machines run Enterprise version, less than $2K for 3 year subscription per server hasn't really left big dent in my company's bank balance.

I wanted to clarify the prices.
SLES is not 999 per server, it's $349 per server. It's just about the same price of RHEL Basic Edition (URLs: http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/compare/server / and http://www.novell.com/products/linuxenterpriseserv er/pricing.html)

Am I the only one who thinks it a bit much when applications software costs more than the OS?

I have no problem with this. I think it's perfectly fine for each app to charge 100, 1000, or even 1 million times the cost of OS.

So long as they use the price of my OS as a multiplier, I'm all set.

Which is precisely why I installed another distribution (and promptly removed GNOME in favor of Fluxbox). I would have preferred to go with Slackware as an alternative but I had a similar video problem.

You apparently haven't seen the pricing for RedHat Enterprise Linux.

http://blogs.redhat.com/people/archive/000201.html links you to the raw downloadable data on how well Red Hat really did and a trivial Perl script to analyse it and drop out all sorts of metrics.

http://fedora.redhat.com/

It is truly amazing to me how many people equate the PC with Microsoft. People, come on! Using a PC does *not* mean you have to use Microsoft products. You do not need a Mac to escape Microsoft. All you need is broadband, Or, if you go with Ubuntu Linux (my prefered choice) all you need is a mailing address. They will ship you a quantity of installation and liveCDs at no charge, they even pay the shipping. I'd like to see apple try to beat the price on that!

In F/OSS circles, no such certification program exists. There is no list of requirements; there is no explicit testing service.

Actualy there's quite a few. Red Hat, SuSE and most of the major business distros have hardware certification programs.

For example...

I had similar troubles with my Promise Fasttrack 100 TX2, which afaik is just a standard ATA disk controller with the capability to label drives as being part of certain arrays. The raid stuff is then done in software.

Anyway, Linux support for this has been patchy. There was a native driver in 2.4 for some time, which worked on-and-off. There was also a source-wrapped binary driver, available from the Promise site, which worked occasionally under 2.4, but is incompatible with 2.6. I assume Promise have no intention of supporting this card under 2.6, since I haven't seen a new driver for quite some time now.

However, all is not lost! This morning I discovered dmraid, which uses Linux's software raid implementation to make cards like this work. If you run Gentoo, there is an option for genkernel that will build dmraid into the initrd, which auto-discovers the raid arrays on boot. Magic!

So, despite Promise's dismal lack of support, their cards can be quite functional. I'm not sure I'd get another one though - I'd at least try and find a manufacturer that provides decent linux drivers first.

Late reply I know, but here we go.

First point: Service Pack 2.

Service Pack two was available on many magazine coverdisks soon after it came out, so there is no need to download 200mb at all. Updates since have been quite small, I can't remember how small but certainly only a few megabytes. Now I purchased my XP for real money. Shocking concept I know for the average visitor here, but the genuine OEM disk purchased with my machine came with service pack 2 already on it. So there was no need to download it at all.

Thank god Fedora comes with packages, because if I had to download it all it simply wouldn't be an option for me on dialup. I dread to think of the hassle involved in downloading all the different components required for a system. I would kill for setup.exe software installation ease on linux, installer package size be damned.

The is plenty of software available for Windows that will bring it up to the same level of functionality as Fedora. Some of it is even free and the same as you will find on Linux (Fedora, OpenOffice etc.). Guess what, it's even easier to install it.

Understand that I have no problem with Open Source Software, in fact I prefer it. I am merely pointing out the difficiencies in some of the attitudes towards the poor bod who actually ends up using it and in one particular product, Fedora itself.

3 Points to Windows.

3:0

Second Point: SATA problems

OK so I forgot to put in the .6, so shoot me. Some responses on here have just been shooting me down for that minor brain fade. This shows the attitude problem some Slashdotters have clearly. Rather than just correct me (as you have done), some piss taking allowed, ridicule the poster for a minor error in an attempt to make them look silly and not challenge them about the point they were trying to make. I am not a machine, sometimes I make still errors, get over it. Not that I expect better on Slashdot mind you :)

You wanted bugzilla entries, try here and here. Not a lot that would help the average user. You shouldn't need to be a programmer to install an operating system anyway. Infact not many answers at all, just silently fixed in 2.6.10. Please don't assume I haven't already posted it to Bugzilla next time.

Argument: Fedora won't even install, XP has no problems and didn't even need a driver disk. Pretty simple eh?

1 Point to Windows

1:0 - Ah can't be bothered with the silly scoring any more.

rhgb: It happens without fail. My main problem is with it freezing and not just giving up and allowing you to boot in text mode. Also why haven't they added a non rhgb startup option to the bootloader anyway if it is unreliable.

We all know Microsoft and a secure computer don't sit well together. But they are working on it at last. I've had no problems at all - yet - cross fingers sacrifice first born. Mind you I do keep the patches up to date, use the firewall and keep my virus checker up to date.

My installation media came with service pack two and my virus checker was installed before connnecting to the internet. Some common sense is required here however...

Mind you I'd rather clean a virus attack off a doze box than a linux box. God knows what would get changed, what back doors would be left around. If linux ever catches up with windows, I would be really supprised if it didn't suffer the same level of attacks, virus infections etc.

udev may be nice, but my first priority is a system that works. If it isn't broke then don't fix it ;). Actually thats not quite true, if you are going to break it in a way that will affect an awfull lot of users at least disp

Then please let have your certification number. That way, we can verify it at http://www.redhat.com/training/certification/verif y

You can use apt with Fedora (although yum is the package manager that's being developed actively to fit in with Fedora).

Same thing:

apt-get install
yum install

Wait a few months for Fedora Core 4, I'm sure you'll like it

I just took the RCHE two weeks ago (and passed with a high score). The current RCHE exam is on RHEL3. Basicially the test goes as follows:

First part is 2.5 hours. You have that much time in front of a box to fix 10 problems. 5 of them are mandatory to fix. They cover many things, and when I took this part, I had no need to really ever use RedHat specific tools.

Second part is 3 hours, and is a network install and configuration of RHEL3. Here you need to know about the installer (duh), and package managment, but that pretty much ends the Red Hat specific part once again. If you admin Linux, and sit down for a few hours with RHEL 3 and the checklist. and you can pass it.

Honestly, it is one of the better certificaiton exams I have taken, due to it being practical. If they throw you a mail server setup situation, you can use your choice of server if it is in RedHat. You have to be aware of security, but they don't demand a specific method. The end result is you pass if you get the job done, it doesn't matter how.

Now, RCHE is a good first step, however as someone said, it isn't specificially a certificate to prove someone can hand full data center control to you. And let me explain:

RCHT: This is their lowest certification. It means "Hi, I can install Linux and configure some things, but not really do much on the network side". The test for this is embedded in the RCHE test now. Basicially if you don't pass the RCHE, you may still walk away with an RCHT

RCHE: This is the median certification. It means "Hi, I can install Linux, and get basic networking services up and secure. I can also integrate the box into the directory if it is simple".

RCHA: This is the highest level one Red Hat takes, and I would advise to get RCHE first. It is "Hi, I can install Linux, configure network services, design the directory services, secure and tune the box, and expand the box when the time comes. I can layout plans for an entire data center."

Or in Red Hat's words:

RHCEs provide the technical leadership for managing Linux servers and network services, as well as escalation of issues from the larger group of RHCTs. A smaller number of RHCAs provide leadership for technical planning, design and integration of an organization's worldwide open source architecture.

Uninformed Bullshit.

Yeah, Windows is all alone too.

As to foreign input, Fedora is supposed to be moving to IIIMF. You may want to check out the Internationalization Project

7 years of official support, actually.

https://www.redhat.com/security/updates/errata/

I don't see mono SRPMs in the lastest set, but then I don't see them in core 1, 2 or 3 either.

I'm not impressed if they leave mono out just for that :-/