Slashdot Mirror
Red Hat Network for the Masses
Outland Traveller writes: "A few months ago I sent some feedback to RedHat concerning their then $30/month RHN subscription service. I asked them to consider offering a $5/month low end version more suitable for home users with multiple computers. I'm sure that a plenty of other people offered the same suggestion, but I was still surprised when I opened my email this morning and found that the exact service I asked for is not only being offered, but that fast access to iso images has been added as well, among other improvements. I guess I now have to put my money where my mouth is :) Seriously though, this should be good news for people who download RedHat's .iso images but want to financially support RedHat in a way that makes sense."
If I want fast downloads, I'd paypal them a buck or two for a day or two of access to high-speed servers with ISOs. But a monthly fee whether or not I get anything of use to me?
was "Outdated Systems View". Looks cool, you hit a button and your floppy drive starts spitting out ticker tape and the screen shrinks and displays in monochrome "Insert card, face down, 9 edge first"
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
Instead of a small LAN with a few computers at home, I have a Beowulf cluster. Would this service be of value to me?
Thank you.
If I use Debian, I obviously won't pay 5$/month to RedHat.
If I use RedHat, I obviously won't report anything to the Debian bug tracking system.
Also, you seem to equate 1 minute to 1 dollar.
If that was true, 5$/month for RedHat Network would be a nice investment, since it's very likely that a subscription would save you at least 5 minutes a month (searching, downloading and installing updates manually can take a lot of time sometimes).
Mandrake has something similar. It is called Mandrake Users Club and you can sign up as low as $5/month. I bet this is where RedHat got the idea.
http://mandrakelinux.com/en/club/
Why do slashdot editors feel the need to undermine the stories they post with comments such as "real-men-use-apt". If a user posted a comment with that title it would rightly be moderated as flamebait.
I don't know what the current costs of bandwidth are for RedHat, but assuming everyone who pays the $5 downloads all four CD iso's of 7.2, that's a good 2.6 GB. Sure, it's better than not getting anything for it, but the increase in traffic their going to have might hit them pretty hard. I've NEVER downloaded anything from the RedHat servers simply because the mirrors are so much less busy and a whole lot faster.
Personally, I'd much rather see the in-store retail versions of RedHat drop in price to the $10-15 range for the latest version. I'd be more than happy to pick up a copy (can't have too many Linux install CD's lying around). Most of the documentation can be found online, and there are probably a lot of people like many that just want the CD's and don't really care so much about support. Right now, the current list price for RedHat 7.2 is $59.95, and it can be bought for $48.95 at buy.com. This company really ought to think their strategy. The distro market is pretty competitive right now, and 59.95 is a hell of a lot of money to spend on a free OS.
The future isn't what it used to be.
I wonder when someone will reverse enigeer up2date and make an open source up2date server. So you could just pay $60 to redhat to download the update full speed, then turn around and at as a server to your lan to update all the others. The source is avaiable for rhn_register and up2date, both GPL, so it wouldn't be that hard.
Havoc Penington, the bane of my Linux desktop.
I use debian. I love apt. But I'm considering moving some of the machines I support to red hat. For $5/mo/machine, it is really nice to have a single place where I can check on the status of packages and patches for every machine I manage. I don't know of a way to do this (currently) in debian.
Of course, I imagine it's only a matter of time before someone writes a post-install plugin to apt that will allow for an installation update to be written to a db or web page. So it's not inconceivable that debian gets a similar feature. But for now it doesn't exist, and it makes red hat very attractive for managing a non-small numbers of linux boxen.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
This seems like a very solid move on redhat's part. The RHN is a well run system that fits in perfectly with the open source philosophy, and the only thing that kept me from getting all my machines on it was the cost. But now, I'll probably go ahead and subcribe. Also seems like a good financial move, since locking people into a monthly subscription-for-service type contract is a great way to make a lot of money, and seems to be what most companies are striving for nowadays (especially MS). Hmmm, I wonder what kind of transfer rate I can get now on the ISO images from the T3 at work?
You hate M$, you love Open Source, you think Linux Roolz, you probably have $60 bucks somewhere. Just send them the money,
RH puts out a decent product and will probably be the last Linux standing tall at the end. Just give'em the $60 bucks and prove that you are more than a 1337 h4x0r and someone who actually cares about this whole Open Source, anti M$ thing.
This
It's unfortunate that Red Hat has not offered this service sooner. I moved my home systems to FreeBSD only last week as it's much easier to upgrade to the latest release version (or even to the latest CVS version) or to get a package of a recently-released application. Similar benefits can be obtained from Debian GNU/Linux as well. Both can be upgraded at no cost.
From my experience of Red Hat, even if I did want to upgrade to a more recent version of Red Hat Linux, I wouldn't trust it to an automated system. I upgraded a Red Hat 6 production server to Red Hat 7 last year, and so many things broke I was quite disappointed.
I guess this service will be useful for those home users who want to automatically pull down the latest security patches, tho.
(For those who don't know, the quote is from Red Dwarf, a British comedy.)
Just bought my subscription today, didn't even know about the recent price reduction. The system views are nice. One of the features I like the best so far is the ability to compare systems.
Update the dev server, test, compare with production, and schedule an update...
mmmm.. nice.
On the other hand, I haven't even been able to *start* a download from the supposed fast servers. I wonder if everybody is download extraneous isos for fun now.....
Not that I think that Debian can't be a better distribution in some ways, but have you looked at APT for RPM?
Read the site.
But for the lazy, the $30 is really targeted at Enterprise customers. It offers support for things like multiple admins, grouping systems to perform updates on a group, etc... It's suited for running more than 4 or 5 machines in your apartment. Think hundreds, or even thousands, in the workplace.
I`m using Ximian Red Carpet for almost half a year now, and I`m wondering what`s the difference between these. Seems to me that all the advantages (fast servers, package control,...) are also available in Red Carpet, for free. PLUS when you use RC, you don`t only have the RedHat Channel, there`s also Ximian Gnome`s own channel, Staroffice, Loki Games, Codeweavers, ... I`d like to support RedHat in some way, but there must be something I can`t get elsewhere.
I upgrade RedHat twice a year - I always run the most current. I look at the $60/machine as 2 purchases of a $30 edition (do they even make the $30 edition still). To have the machine update itself with a click of the mouse, even if I am away from the box out of town is a nice benefit as well.
Also the Instant ISO program. I hope they have the bandwidth, because I intend to take full advantage of it on release day. Saves me from a trip to the store, 2 or 3 weeks later.
I've come to love RedHat over the last 4 years of using it since switching from Slackware at RH 5.1. I'm pleased with the convenience this service offers, and I am quite happy to give them $5 a month to keep my server running well.
... but does anyone see anything about $5, or even any lowered prices at all? Maybe I'm misunderstanding what the poster is getting at, but all I see is $60/year for RHN, and $240/year for the new Workgroup service. Sure, there are improvements, but I don't see anything making this better for the home user...
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
Open source is not about being anti-Microsoft (OK, for some people it is). I have no love of Microsoft but Open Source is more than that, it's a whole new way of doing things. I expect to see Microsoft and Open Source co-existing for quite some time yet. They are not direct competitors.
Suck figs.
Done
350 machines. Need to track the package status of 350 machines. How exactly, are you going to tell me the status of 350 machines using that technique without going to each of the individual machines? Right now, you either:
The point is that the red hat network (allegedly) manages large numbers of machines better than debian. Of course, this is untested by me, right now. But it's an attractive feature.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
At home though, I have a 10 machine lab, most of which run Redhat on them. But still, if I want to get RHN, that's $240 per year. Like I told Redhat, I can get a Windows license cheaper than that, and that includes free use of the Windows update service. So if I have a two year upgrade cycle, I've paid $440 to Redhat, while paying about $200 to Microsoft. The difference being that if I remember correctly, that $240 annually to Redhat covers up to 10 machines, while the Windows fee only covers one. Still though, it's not like I grant myself a large IT budget for home.
Now that the cost for a home user to sign up has come down, I can definitely see myself using it. It makes updating much easier, and it allows me to do my part in supporting the Linux distribution that I prefer.
I finally managed to get to the Red Hat Network site, where it is described like this:
Red Hat Network is an Internet solution for managing one or more Red Hat Linux systems. All Security Alerts, Bug Fix Alerts, and Enhancement Alerts (collectively known as Errata Alerts) can be retreived directly from Red Hat. You can even have updates automatically delivered directly to your system as soon as they are released.
So this service does not actually offer the ability to upgrade to the next Red Hat Linux version; it only offers patches for your current version.
Does this mean Red Hat still has no upgrade facility other than rebooting the server and booting from the install media? If so, then despite the RHN being a useful service, it seems that Red Hat still doesn't provide the functionality I want.
If I could do a live minor upgrade (such as 7.1 -> 7.2) of a Red Hat system it would definately be a step in the right direction.
I also wonder how a major upgrade (such as 6.2 -> 7.2) could be made smoother, considering the substantial changes between major versions.
The Red Hat Network is a good start, but some more tools are needed to ensure that upgrades are easier to perform, and are more likely to succeed.
This works out to $60/year. Consider that a home user with a single computer spends about $90 every 2 years to upgrade his/her version of windows. That's buying very upgrade that comes along. Drop that to every four years, and a windows person spends about $20/year.
For these people, RedHat costs 3x more to keep updated than windows. Granted, more software comes with RedHat, even in the stripped down versions.
Still, I think more reasonable support contracts for individuals can only help these distro companies. I've been asking the same from Mandrake every chance I get, but to no avail.
Where do I submit the "stable is taking forever to release, why don't you guys just give up" bug report on bugs.debian.org? Seriously, Debian isn't a viable alternative for an up to date linux server which many people need. If a stable release comes out every 5 years what is the point? I like running Debian unstable on my laptop but stable on servers? No way...
I guess those "real men" don't have to work at a company that makes any money.
Simple - I can install RedHat for free. I have to buy M$ at a cost of $100-$200 every year or two for each machine. Too expensive for me for what I get.
Thats why I never used RHN - too expensive for my little LAN of 5 or 6 machines. But $60/year for the service seems like a great deal. And I can't help but feel lik ewhen $ goes to RedHat its almost a donation where money sent to M$ feels like gettin grobbed - can't explain why though :)
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
I've used both Ximian's redcarpet updater and RHN. Ximian's client is very slick looking, and I like how you can subscribe to different channels. I also like you there's an option to install RPMs from a directory- this makes Redcarpet useful as a general RPM frontend.
Red Hat Network doesn't look as elegent, but it has more functionality overall. RHN gives you emails of critical updates and errata tailored to your actual systems. It gives you a single point of management for multiple computers. One thing that I tried yesterday was to schedule the install of new RPM packages on one of my tower systems from my laptop. It worked great! Also, I love how you can exclude packages from being upgraded. It's very annoying to have to click on every individual update manually in red carpet just because if you hit "update all" it will update a package you want left alone (usually replacing a more up to date version with a downgraded ximian version).
I'm used to periodically checking for updates manually, and then pushing them down to each system as needed. This saves a lot of time if you can spare 60$ a year for each additional system (you get one system free).
That might not be totally bad. Microsoft's installation process is a breeze and it usually works. So is Red Hat's. Can't say the same thing about certain "pure" distros.
There's really no need to pay for this sort of thing. Searching for "redhat update" on Freshmeat reveals 5 GPLed update tools. I even wrote one myself to meet my university's specific needs. Download it, run it with -writeconfig, edit the config file to point to your favorite mirror, copy the script to /etc/cron.daily, and you're set for automatic update retrieval.
Beyond basic "rpm -Fvh" functionality, it can be configured to send mail to a specific address when updates arrive, ignore certain packages (with regexp support), and write a script which performs the updates when run.
It's called HURL (Hurl Updates Redhat Linux), and you can get a copy here. Drop me some mail if you like it or have suggestions.
what's the difference between this kind of subscription and Microsoft's ?
If you don't pay Red Hat, you can still use the software you have, and you can get new software off rpmfind. If you don't pay Microsoft, on the other hand, you lose your right to use the software because under a rental agreement, you are not the owner of a copy, and in the United States, 17 USC 117 states that the owner of a copy can dictate terms of use.
Will I retire or break 10K?
FWIW, I recently upgraded a RH6.2 machine to 7.2 (actually 7.2.x, since there are several packages that have been released since 7.2) using up2date and had no problems. up2date finds all the dependancies and gets everything you need. Granted, I did have to reboot when it was done in order to load the new kernel, but it was much easier (and had less downtime) than upgrading from the CD.
Enigma
1) RHN would NOT store my machine configuration on their servers. I see no reason this can't be stored on my machine.
2) Red Hat would coordinate with Ximian so that their releases coincide. Let's say $9/mo for Red Carpet and RHN combined. This would cover all system and basic desktop updates; both RH and Ximian might want to keep a level or two of premium service beyond this basic service.
Maybe even offer different desktop subscriptions, so that $9 might get you RH+GNOME, or RH+KDE.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
It would be really cool if the Redhat Network supported the Content-Addressable Web so that we could automatically download our ISOs from the closests avaliable mirrors, and even download from multiple mirrors in parallel.
Stay tuned for the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference where we will be unveiling a companion set of technologies to the CAW that will change distribution of open source content forever!
If anyone wants to know more about CAW before the conference, please contact me at justin_at_onionnetworks_dot_com
--
Justin Chapweske, Onion Networks
Have 350 Deb machines to manage? Check out FAI. We're using it with about 20 machines, and it works OK. Initial setup is a pain, but once that's done, it's quite powerful and flexible.
Mandrake has done something similar. The download version now no longer comes in a box, it's just $5 per cd. It's simply not worth the effort for the distro companies to make these cheap versions, which is why they are now making various types of subscription services.
Red Hat has never (okay, I take that back, maybe at some point they did, but not for very long) expected to make money selling their distro to consumers. Where they make their money is selling to corporations, and the home version is basically just advertising.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Or just create your own deb mirror for your network and have 350 machines sync to it auto-magically and use a pilot machine to test updates. Then all you have to do is manage your master mirror since all it's subordinates would be identical, or nearly identical in theory. Export current package information with various permutations of dpkg and mangle it so it looks pretty on the intranet. Granted this is probably more difficult than paying redhat to do it for you but in the long run it's probably more cost effective. Wasn't progeny supposed to be doing something along these lines with NOW (network of workstations)?
...is their insistence on making FAM and sunrpc portmap *ABSOLUTELY MANDATORY* to run KDE. FAM (File Alteration Monitor) is a daemon that monitors files for changes. I guess that the "logic" behind it is that it's less cpu-intensive to have one daemon constantly strobing files on your harddrive than half-a-dozen programs doing it simultaneously.
/etc/fam.conf, and have it readable by any programs that want to talk to FAM. Or howsabout a sunrpc clone and FAM that bind to interface lo, rather than eth0 ? Make it secure and closed to the outside world out-of-the-box, and force people to port-forward via ssh if they *REALLY* want the rest of the planet to be able to monitor their file activity.
Since FAM is not a "well known service", the only way for the system to work is to...
1) fire up ye olde sunrpc portmap on port 111 listening to the whole world (ARRRGH!!! Hello Lion/Ramen) and have FAM register itself with portmap.
2) FAM is then assigned a random port (could be above or below 1024) and listens to the whole world (ARRRGH!!!) on that port. Other programs can query portmap to find out which port to talk to FAM on. Oh yeah, the "-L" (local listen only) commandline option *IS IGNORED IN THE DEFAULT LAUNCH MODE* (i.e. xinetd). So *OTHER COMPUTERS CAN MONITOR YOUR FILE CHANGES*. ARRRGH!!!
Linux users have long laughed at Windows where *DESKTOP CLIENT PROGRAMS* are security holes. But here comes Redhat with a "feature" that, out-of-the-box, makes your filesystem activity viewable by the entire internet as well as exposing two open ports. WTF were they thinking when they did that ? More succinctly... were they thinking when they did that ? Planet earth calling Micro^H^H^H^H^H Redhat; isn't it time your boss man sent out a memo telling his programmers to put security ahead of features ?
How many newbie end-users are going to know how to properly update portmap and hosts.deny and hosts.allow and iptables to protect themselves? Redhat should've set the port number in
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
And I can't help but feel lik ewhen $ goes to RedHat its almost a donation where money sent to M$ feels like gettin grobbed - can't explain why though :)
Because they release everything (or most) as open source?
As long as what you want to install is offered through Red Carpet. That's the problem. Until a user can subscribe to the "Freshmeat" channel on Red Carpet and select any package available there, it won't be enough.
load "linux",8,1
Up2date keeps breaking. It's been awhile since it actually damaged my system (that was an early version), but it's currently (after only a week or two) gotten to the point where I can't use it because of segment violation. This isn't the first time, either.
Red Hat is a basically quite good product, and I like it a lot. But based on past experience I wouldn't pay a nickel for up2date. (Ok, maybe I'd pay a dollar [but NOT a dollar / month!].)
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The whole RPM thing is dead as far as I'm concerned. I've used RH since version 5 and I'm leaving it now (in stages) in favour of Debian, although I'm going to try Sorcery on one machine to see how it goes.
/install / update" for RPMs. With GUI (rpmdrake or MandrakeUpdate) and CLI (urpmi)interfaces. Works with RPMs located on a local / exported directory (hint! NFS server on your network!) or from http / ftp servers.
The reason is obvious: dependancy hell. I've had enough of it. Any system which uses RPMs is simply too hard to maintain.
Then, Try Mandrake Linux 8.1 and urmpi.
This is an "apt-get
Pretty cool. It works. Really. Give it a try. I love it.
Dependency Hell?
/uninstall / upgrades .
Difficulty to install stuff?
Gamming issues?
Try Mandrake Linux Gamming Edition:
WineX for your gamming needs.
Nice GUI/CLI for unified install
urpmi (the CLI) solves "dependency hell". The front-end "rpmdrake / MandrakeUpdate" is the nice GUI front-end.
In two words: it works.
I don't know enough about this, but it seemed to me that Ganymede could be extended to manage everything, not just directories. Ganymede 1.0.9
Bush's education improvements were
Why would people pay $5/month per machine to keep software updated when a well-designed free solution already exists? "What's that?" you say. (Oh no.. another Debian zealot..) Just consider this a moment:
1.) As a sys admin, if you're smart and value your time, you'll be using mostly diskless workstations to begin with. No, I don't mean what Sun calls diskless workstations. I mean ordinary full-featured PC's with no hard disks. Or if they do have hard disks, it's only for a cache of the networked filesystems. So there, right off the start, you don't need this RHN silliness because by very nature, diskless workstations don't need updated, only the server does.
2.) So lets say you're a home user with only 3 machines, making it silly to set up diskless workstations. There's still a better way. First, you use Debian. One machine is your 'test box.' Use both the Debian testing and unstable sources. (unstable is rather misleading if you think that implies the kinda useless mess that is Mandrake's 'cooker' tree. Debian unstable is quite stable enough for all but heavy production systems) So anyways, once a week, on your test box, you do:
apt-get update; apt-get upgrade
This will upgrade *everything* installed on the machine as packages. Most likely everything is fine, but if you're worried, use the test box for a couple days to make sure everything is stable. All other machines should have a weekly cron job that uses your test box as a package source and performs the same operation.. but 2-3 days after the test-box upgrade, just in case something broke.
It's that simple. The RH people need to wake up and realize that they need to sell an actual solution if you're going to make money. Repackaging free software is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
Jon, earlier you told me that Ganymede could not easily be extended to manage software configurations, because of its lack of ability to cause execution.
Disclaimers and cautions: I respect whatever you say. You certainly know more than I about management of large networks. I know that it is possible that I could be wrong because of insufficient appreciation of how things work.
Now that I have said that, I have an opinion:
I think that we should want only ONE repository of information about each computer. I think that, philosophically, a repository should not be anything else than a repository. We don't want the database of information to go out and start changing things. We don't want this because of a realization that the program that takes action based on information should be different than the program that contains the information.
I think it is far better that each supplier of software write a configuration routine that queries the Ganymede repository and makes the necessary changes. This routine would be a plug-in to Ganymede. Potentially there would be thousands of plug-ins.
This, to me, seems like the only sensible division of labor. The software supplier has his or her own preferred language and ways of accomplishing things, and the configuration repository should not interfere with that.
Once software configuration is managed by Ganymede, it is only another step toward using Ganymede to manage pre-installation information.
What attracts me to Ganymede is that there seems to be very high quality of infrastructure. Ganymede has the extensibility to thousands of machines that is necessary. If we get started down a road toward improving open OS management the new methods must be extremely extensible.
Conceivably, a software installation routine could do anything it liked, any way it liked, but it would not get started until it had queried the Ganymede repository and would not be considered completely finished until what it did was entered into Ganymede.
There needs to be ONE place for ALL information about each computer on a network. There needs to be a GUI tool for having a quick look at this information. Is there a better infrastructure already available than Ganymede? Ganymede may not be very close to being able to do this, but can you mention a better starting point?
I think modesty is fine, but not when it becomes misleading. The facts seem to be that Ganymede is an excellent start on something that needs to be everywhere.
To make all of this work, Ganymede would have to be such that it could easily manage any number of computers, from 1 to 100,000.
Is anything here in error?
Bush's education improvements were
There needs to be ONE place for ALL information about each computer on a network. There needs to be a GUI tool for having a quick look at this information. Is there a better infrastructure already available than Ganymede? Ganymede may not be very close to being able to do this, but can you mention a better starting point?
Michael, if you want to see a system designed more along the lines I think you are suggesting, do take a look at Caldera's Volution network management product.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Jon, I know you might think I am being hasty, but I had a look at the Volution web pages. My strong impression is that this product is going nowhere. Those people are not up to the considerable intellectual challenge of making Volution popular. Also, there needs to be a free product that is shipped with every distribution of Linux.
Bush's education improvements were
This is probably OT, because there must be something I'm missing since I really cannot understand what this fuss is all about?
/pub/linux/distributions/redhat or alike from any of your nearby university ftp site and get overwhelmed with the bandwidth)
:)
The RedHat ISO images have been available for downloads for years. Numerous ftp sites around the world mirror them. (check
I understand the interest for 'update -u' (which is the RedHat equivalent of the Debian 'apt-get upgrade'), but that's been also running for over a year now and having used that on a dozen or so boxes I've never payed a dime for that.
Besides, the rpms and srpms are always available on numerous ftp mirrors in the redhat directories, and will continue doing so. After all they cannot charge for the software, only for the service. And ftp mirrors around the world is also something that they cannot charge for, which actually is the kind of service I'd be willing to pay for...
For the record, the RedHat up2date service has been well worth the $5 a month, even $30 for a bit older (i.e. working) users.
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW