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US Postal Service Moves To GNU/Linux
twitter writes "The US Postal Service has moved its Cobol package tracking software to HP machines running GNU/Linux. 1,300 servers handle 40 million transactions a day and cost less than the last system, which was based on a Sun Solaris environment." The migration took a year. The USPS isn't spelling how big the savings are, except that they are "significant."
we don't have to ask if it runs Linux.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
that's pretty damn good time to move a system.
Now f they could drop tues, thurs and sat mail service they would save a bundle.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Except it's GNU/Linux running COBOL code.
I'm sure I could get a dramatic speed improvement running Apple II 6502 code on an emulator on a Mac Pro simply because the emulator can run faster than the original hardware.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
With all those "savings" are we going to see a decrease in the cost of postage?
Oh wait...
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Someone needs to get the facts!
If they switched to Windows instead, they'd probably see twice the savings.
Just ask the London Stock Exchange.
They moved their package tracking system to Linux? I wonder if, when you ask it where your shipment is, it will tell you to find it yourself in a condescending manner.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Submitted with the headline "Linux Penguin goes postal."
Tracking's going to waste a lot of time playing around with Compiz instead of working.
QamuIs Heg qaq law' lorvIs yInqaq puS
Will shipment tracking still be 4 days behind? Currently, it is a total waste to pay extra for tracking. My package is received with USPS still says it has been scanned but not shipped yet.
I see they used the Micro Focus COBOL compiler, which is not FOSS by a long shot.
Now they can run a couple of Postfix servers and put themselves out of business!
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
If you're 30-something, you rely on email.
If you're in your 20s, you use IM
If you're 13 like me, it's all Twitter, all the time. Bonus: I have no need to receive packages because I shoplift everything.
Article: "...which was based on a Sun Solaris environment." Me: You should pay attention before posting. Me: Oh, ok.
Are they going to switch to the new, object oriented Cobol,
Add 1 to Cobol
That was my thought, too. That's pretty impressive. If it's true, whoever coordinated the move really knew what they were doing. Maybe we should elect them to the highest office in 2012 ;)
I don't think they should drop any service, tho. But then I've never understood why Sundays were considered a "day off", even. It's just another day, no matter what religious people or anyone else consider it to be. The sun rises, the sun sets, there's nothing to differentiate it from any other day, outside of some superstitious people who happen to have had influence.
Hey, it's a capitalistic society we live in, right? We should all be working 24/7/365+1/4, right? For the greater good?
Pardon my sarcasm. Or don't. I do my penance on my days off. Like today. Penance being doing laundry, housework, cleaning out the cat boxes, working on the peace treaty with my SO, fixing odds and ends, etc. It's enough. Tomorrow will be another twelve hours of busting my ass saving people from the errors of their ways*. ;)
*I speak literally, there. I make most of my money being a maintenance person for apartment buildings.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
I used the USPS online system for creating my own package postage. I overestimated everything and the person who received the package still owed postage. If Linux can't do simple addition, I don't want my tax dollars paying for it. I'll just FedEx everything from now on...at least then I'm not wondering if I'm getting screwed or not. It's a given.
[CLICK] That was the sarcasm filter turning off for those of you who didn't notice.
Hopefully the new system is better than the last but if they're already using it then I don't notice any improvements.
I rank the USPS tracking somewhere between "pointless" and "worthless". Often I get packages before the tracking system ever registers anything at all. Even if it does update it's usually 2 days behind the actual status of the package. Pretty stupid.
With that said, USPS is pretty decent as far as speed versus cost. I rank them just slightly faster than FedEx and way faster than UPS when using the lower-end and economy methods.
1300 servers, processing 40 million transactions a day... that's about 30,800 transactions per server. Or one transaction every 2.8 seconds or so. With an entire Linux box dedicated to it.
I work in the scan processing group at FedEx. At peak, we see over 100,000,000 transactions a day. And that's handled on 45 linux boxes, and 12 more for the database, doing upwards of 6000 transactions per second during bursts. That's a peak of about 133 transactions per second, per box. That's a little better than 0.3 TPS for the Post Office. So we have about 400 times the performance with 5% of the hardware. By that margin, I could do their processing with about 25 boxes total. That would mean another 98% savings on hardware alone.
For some reason, I fail to be really impressed that they've gone from "Crappy performance and Expensive" to "Crappy performance and less expensive."
I wonder if I can get the bazillion dollar contract to rewrite their system... No, wait, my name isn't "Boeing" or "Lockheed" or Ken Murtha.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
This will be helpful the next time I have a COBOL package which I want tracked.
Now multiply by ~40 or so, and we have a real twitter submi$$ion.
Wow you took an awful lot of time to write this and demonstrate the power of fail on the internet. Lets give a round of apploses fellow slashdotters with the Slashdot Award of Troll.
Well, look on the bright side...
Now we can say, with all confidence, that the world's largest mail server runs Linux
No sig for the moment.
cost less than the last system, which was based on a Sun Solaris environment.
Two thoughts:
Advice: on VPS providers
"Sauce code" FTW!
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
What I want to know is what distro did they use?
points and laughs at Microsoft :)
I would expect the major part of the savings is the fact that they got a new software system which offers more of the savings then what ever license cost windows has to pay for.
Now remember they were using Solaris before so the IT Guys were a bunch of Unix geeks anyways so switching to Linux is a very small learning curve. I think the choice to go to Linux was different then a way to try to directly save money with license costs or even have the availability of Linux source. But more to the fact that...
A. You have a Unionized work force who knows Unix any ways. If you switched to Windows you will need to get windows administrators and keep the Unix guys doing nothing, because Unions make it hard for you to get employees to change.
B. Linux has a wider and more stable drivers and works on more hardware then other Unix venders, so it assures that they are not necessarily stuck with HP.
C. New hires, you have a better chance of Linux Experience then Unix experience nowadays.
That said if a couple of factors had changed they could have run their system off of windows with probably with just as much savings as with Linux. Choosing Linux is mostly an HR issue not a technical one.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
thing. OpenSolaris is just as expensive as linux (as in free). and last time I looked OpenSolaris runs on HP hardware as well as linux. Now if you need technical support it's going to cost you either way.
I may not be a smart man, but I know what an inode is.
1,300 servers handle 40 million transactions a day
come one, i've seen systems where a single server handles 40M transactions / day.
why the hell 1300 ???
I don't know why the USPS wishes to cut cut costs. Postage hasn't gone up, it is still just 2 cents a day.
If they're running RedHat, now they owe RH $349/year/box instead of paying Sun. That's not any cheaper.
If they've switched to CentOS or something else that costs nothing (and comes with no support), they could have switched to OpenSolaris, had an easier migration and lower retraining costs, and saved just as much money.
If they were paying Sun's extortion for hardware support, they were stupid. With the number of servers they have, they could easily come out ahead by buying some shelf spares.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out they were running a bunch of Sun E10Ks before and paying gigantic support bills and gigantic electric bills, and now they've switched commodity hardware and, guess what, it's cheaper! They probably could have switched to 650 (that's 1300/2, for those of you not paying attention) Sun T5120s and saved a bunch of rack space and a bunch of electricity compared to the Linux boxes.
Now we know what Ballmer does when he runs out of chairs...
;)
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
Why not move to OpenSolaris?
- oZ
// i am here.
postgre?
rewriting history since 2109
They started using it 12 years ago for scanning destination addresses with OCR software. http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2985 I already know someone is going to say something about that is why their mail got lost, got redirected to /dev/null, etc...
Will this allow them to improve their tracking system?
UPS has had an amazing tracking system for years. FedEx has improve theirs, to the point they have good estimated delivery dates and can show you what's going on with your package pretty well, like UPS.
When dealing with the post office, their system works but is... antiquated. When paying for any kind of fast shipping (overnight, two day) I can receive my package before the tracking number pulls up a package. It's not every time, but it's enough to make me not care much. What I really care about is estimated delivery dates. I want to know when I'll get my package. I usually don't care if my package is in NYC, Duluth, or San Antonio. It will get where it needs to go. I would rather have the step-by-step tracking information show up later and have things like estimated TOA show up fast.
I remember as a kid (I'm 26) you could order something from a catalog and you had basically no idea when it would show up from UPS, etc. Today I can find out where my UPS package was last scanned, nearly up to the minute. Very cool.
That would make a neat visualization. They should put that on their site, little packages moving along their correct routes around the country.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I hope all of their terminals run Linux because their history with mixed systems is horrible. If the number of packages I've lost after FedEx hands my SmartPost packages over to USPS is any indication I'd hate to see what happens if they run their software the same way.
Was Cobol left over from a Mainframe that was migrated over to Sun Boxes? Generally speaking Solaris is not a platform that one chooses for Cobol.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2985
Linux has been sorting the US Mail for over a decade, and doing it faster, cheaper, and more accurately than it ever did before.
Haven't you heard of W.A.S.T.E.?
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
I'm sure the libertarians will chime in that they could do that much cheaper if the (subsidized) USPS weren't in the way...
I am happy with the USPS, and, coincidentally, it happens to be mandated by the US Constitution.
Now if the Federal government would stop doing things that it is NOT constitutionally authorized to do, maybe those things would run smoother.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Right, because having system in Solaris, they could not migrate to OpenSolaris, hence chose Linux instead...
Divide by around 4 for a standard working week and then add a bit more for peak times and expansion, plus the fact that those machines are probably doing something a bit different to your inhouse workflow. Also do they call a transaction everything dealing with an envelope and does FedEx do the same?
COBOL is actually 50 years old. Commander Grace Hopper was the principal inventor of the language, starting in 1959. More on Grace Hopper at http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/hopper.htm
I'm in the middle of porting an accounting system that's currently Cobol-based, and running on an RS6000/AIX, to Linux using OpenCOBOL . OpenCOBOL is GPL'ed too. The machine hardware I'm porting to is an HP Proliant DL380 and the distro is Red Hat Enterprise 5 64-bits. So far everything is going great. I'm not even a Cobol programmer, and had to alter very little of the application source code to compile and run under OpenCOBOL on Linux, mostly just some raw unix file I/O code, and it took me less than a day to learn enough Cobol to fix the source code and recompile it to work under Linux.
Good move considering Oracle's pricing models. Wonder how much more expensive Solaris/Sparc will cost in the future.
If this in any way farks my former useless employer whose name rhymes with "eFunds", and who sucks horribly for soul-crushing beurocratic reasons, and who had a history of hiring abusive and useless leadership, then, yay GNU, and FARK YOU, eFunds. apologize for posting anonymously but, those arrogant bastards are the type to hunt down and sue the fark out of people who quit because of the now fired manglement. Fark you, Jonathan and Big Gay Tom the HR guy. Before you flag this as flamebait or abusive, please, please consider your worst possible workplace scenerio, square that, add a bazillion to it, and then please consider that my point of view may just be reflected by 9 months or so of working there, the worst 10 years of my life. Let those who have never had a bad job cast the first bad karma rating.
As others have pointed out, stamp prices are quite reasonable. They've even solved the hassle of makeup stamps by issuing the "forever" series. Why would I want to buy any other kinf of stamp?
No, if there's one thing that bothers me about the USPS, it's bulk mail. I send all of it straight to the recycling bin, often without even opening. It's a horrible waste.
Of course, without bulk mail the stamps would cost even more since apparently bulk is a proft center. I'd be willing to pay extra for 1st class if I could opt out of bulk though.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I was under the impression that COBOL was a programming language and not an operating system.
From memory, this is the routing the letter took.
1) Road Vehicle, Post Box to Airport
2) Helicopter - Scilly Isles to Mainland (Penzance) (Scheduled Service)
3) Road Vehicle to Airport (approx 80 miles)
4) Plane (1) to East Midlands (Mail Charter)
5) Plane (2) to Edinburgh(Mail Charter)
6) Plane (3) to Kinross (Mail Charter)
7) Road Vehicle to Inverness ( at least 30 miles)
8) Plane (4) to Kirkwall (Mail Charter)
9) Road Vehicle to Destination
All in less than 24 hours. Ok, the distnce (approx 850 miles) does not stack up against the distances in North America but for the number of steps the mail took I think it is pretty impressive.
When it works, Royal Mail does good work but all too often the 'posties' are out on Strike often over trivial things. When I was a student and worked delivering the Christmas poat, the locl sorting office went on strike for a day. The reason? The Canteen (works restaurant) had decided to limit the number of Tomato Sauce sachets that were given away free with a full breakfast to two instead of three. Total Stupidity if you ask me.
That said, the people who deliver the mail as opposed to those who sort it in the back office are far more in touch with the real world and often (like their USPS bretheren) got to extra ordinary length to deliver the post.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
I think the summary and the TFA are a bit confusing. It probably would have been better had the summary linked not just to the TFA but also directly to the gcn.com article which is linked to from TFA, or maybe better yet, just to the gcn.com article. What I get from that gcn.com article is this:
a) There is a mainframe that is talking to ~1300 "midrange" servers.
b) The mainframe is an IBM Z-series which has been shifted over from an IBM proprietary OS to Novell SUSE Linux.
c) The COBOL code is running on the *mainframe*, not the ~1300 servers! (TFA summary is wrong on this)
d) Because the mainframe is now running Linux, and because of a USPS IT decision to standardize on Linux (this is why OpenSolaris was never an option - sorry OpenSolaris fans), they're now converting the servers to Linux as well for better interoperability between the mainframe environment and server environments.
e) As for what this system is actually tracking:
Events are transactions that occur at the service's retail counters, such as shipping and picking up packages or the delivery of priority mail by carriers to businesses and residences. The mail is scanned to confirm delivery, and that information is sent to the PTS database. ...
âoeWe're inserting like 40 million events a day,â he added. ...
The PTS has 56 transaction types, such as acceptance scans and delivery confirmations, that have now all been migrated to Linux.
The gcn.com article has more info, but even it is confusing to me. Questions:
What is an "HP Linux Environment" (Does HP have its own version of Linux? What distro is HP using?)
Any Z-series gurus reading this want to chime in and explain what the IFL actually is (Page 2 of article)?
Yes, I know, I could Google for those answers, but I'm already worn out just doing what the original story submitter should have done. Just consider the above an "improved summary". :)
I imagine the savings have more to do with switching from Sun hardware to HP hardware than switching to Linux.
No you do not understand so have the wrong numbers.
To put things simply they are not a 24/7/365 operation even if you are so the number of transactions per second is going to be different for a the same number of transactions per day (idle or reduced capacity at night remember). Then there is the consideration that what you call a transaction may be very different to what they call a transaction. The text seems to imply one per item delivered.
Anyway, I have had no contact with FedEx since a forklift tine shaped hole magically appeared in the side of one of my servers in transit with apparently no involvement by FedEx. I know it's huge but my point here is real world estimates of values should be shaped by the conditions that constrain then instead of a rough transactions per day divided by 86400 = transactions per second. That's MBA thinking and nowhere near a model of the real world as defined by when you can get people to feed stuff into the machines.
http://gcn.com/Articles/2009/07/13/Update2-USPS-open-source-Product-Tracking-System.aspx?p=1
The service is moving 1,300 Sun Solaris midrange servers to a Hewlett-Packard Linux environment. USPS is using Novellâ(TM)s SUSE Linux on the mainframe and distributed computing platforms to forge greater interoperability between the two environments, Byrne said.
Yet Socrates himself is particularly missed.
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.
So it's like when someone has ingrown toenails, but at least he's finally bought himself some spiffy new shoes.
....all I can think is how lame the Sun salesman must have been.
Yeah, Chip sucks at computer. emailed from my Macwheel.
Well, couple of things.
First, part of their applications are using Java. Migration from Solaris to Linux is straightforward :)
Second, did they used a migration tool such as NACA (GPL) ?
http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/07/cobol-to-java
Typical: one publication writes a shitty article, another publication does a shitty job of summarizing it, then a /. submitter does a shitty job of summarizing the shitty summary of the shitty article, then hundreds of posters babble about the cost of postage.
I like de new def of soia... I'm saying greenpurplewhiteetcism "it's a business running in a market, and managing to hang on by its teeth despite an especially burdensome regulatory millstone around its neck"
COBOL handles with ease big volumes of data, because normally the data is organized in a very methodical fashion (more often than not DBMS are the direct replacement of old COBOL systems).
People deriding COBOL for its speed simply don't know what they are talking about.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"I couldn't imagine anyone using COBOL to write a game or a utility or any complex application."
And then
"I learned it on a mainframe type of environment and used it essentially as a report generation language."
Well. Duh!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In which kind of Communist country do you live?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Because it provides a social necessity.
If the service was not socialized then small communicates will either not be served or would have to pay more to send (or even receive) a letter.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Yay, now this icon I made some years ago has become more relevant: http://www.linuxcentral.com/_v3/_site_components/html/data_box/left_gray_box/hdr-newsletter.gif
so they can ship more junk mail. That's pretty much what the PO do nowadays since online billing is widely available.
My cell provider (Turkcell) has an excellent offer for digital signatures which is actually embedded in sim card itself. It can be used dynamically for realtime signing, logins (single login) etc.
Details in this pdf http://www.turkcell.com.tr/c/docs/bultenler/20081219_Turkcell_Mobile_Signature.pdf
Just before I jumped to it, I remembered I use OS X only and wondered what happens to actual signed mail (govt. accepted), pdf signing, login extensions... Guess what? No support even on such device independent (e.g. no Win Mo) solution. Absolutely nothing.
I think the digital signature schemes suffer from windows dependence these days especially if you think about iPhones (Unix) and Nokia. I don't know about Win Mobile scene, I wouldn't be surprised if they basically work.
What is the situation on Linux?
It's called "copy and paste" baby, "copy and paste"
To the educated stupid ONEist anti-intelligent, if you will come to my lecture on a Spiraling 4 Corner 4 Day Harmonic Time Cube Quad Helix Principle Created Earth,& Life on it, I will prove you criminally worship a Queer deified as fake God. Godism Organized Crime is a gotohell Mom & Dad.
Normal communication? You're right, probably not. :)
However, moving around physical merchandise (in my case trading cards), yes. Can't email that stuff quite yet.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
FedEx already does a lot of the back-end processing/moving-of-stuff for the USPS's Express Mail options
A more visible-to-the-end-user sign of this may be FedEx drop boxes right next to a Post Office location, maybe because the FedEx people are making pickups anyway?
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
http://xkcd.com/281/
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Well, it is not practical to name it GNU/Linux but when people forget the "GNU" part, they poison the decade+ old legendary Debian with MS patents and behave like nothing interesting happened.
Read the F'n Mail!
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Don't use a separator that requires a delimiter on the system you're discussing.
GNU/Linux => GNU-Linux
That was mildly amusing, but not exactly a gut-buster.
... my neighbor post office worker is smirking, I wonder if they will start wearing a penguin badge.
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The GCN article this is based on has many significant factual errors. HP is not really involved. The migration is to IBM's ZLinux, which is SuSE Linux running on the Z-Os platform, as virtual servers. Hewlett-Packard has nothing to do with it other than managing hardware. It certainly isn't "HP Linux". The number of servers quoted is not how many are used for tracking. More like the total number being migrated. Sadly, the part about the COBOL stuff is true, though only chunks of the app were written in COBOL (i.e. those that ran on the mainframes). Mostly it's the stuff that relates to finances, not surprisingly.
In the darkness of future past, The magician longs to see. One chants between two worlds, "Fire, walk with me!"