Slashdot Mirror
German Alta Vista Servers on Red Hat
Fionn tells us that
German computer magazine c't is
reporting that Altavista's
German Server (in Germany) runs Red Hat Linux instead
of Digital Unix as the US front-end server does. Netcraft
confirms the story.
Original:
Altavista lernt Deutsch
Digitals Internet-Suchmaschine Altavista soll offensichtlich einen deutschen Ableger bekommen. Seit einigen Tagen läuft der Testbetrieb auf http://beta.altavista.de. Anders als bei http://www.altavista.de, wo der Besucher auf den amerikanischen Server landet, ist das neue Angebot komplett in Deutsch gehalten und auch in Deutschland beheimatet. Ein interessantes Detail am Rande: Während auf dem US-Server Digital Unix läuft, arbeiten die Frontends der neuen Suchmaschine mit Red Hat Linux.
Translated by Altavista:
Alta Vista learns German
Digitals Internet search machine Alta Vista is to get obviously a German folder. For some days the test operation runs on http://beta.altavista.de. Differently than with http://www.altavista.de, where the visitor lands on the American server, is the new supply completely in German held and also resident in Germany. An interesting detail at the edge: While on the US server digitally Unix runs, operates the Frontends of the new search machine with talks has Linux.
Take some valium, dude!
I find this interesting, and of use in discussions with management about the feasibility of Linux in our data center.
If it's not what you wanted to read, go read something else!
Stop shooting from the hip and produce a REAL answer.
No wonder everyone calls FreeBSD users loosers!
Very nice indeed!
Now we just need something that could beat the famous ftp.cdrom.com machine... Those FreeBSD devils needs a lesson =)
On the other hand, not every can spare a 100mbit internet connection and a couple of discs in a neat rack.
How about naming a few then? FreeBSD users are just people who think they are too good to run Linux.
the yahoo 'peeps' Filo & Chang evaluated Linux years ago, when it was not ready for prime time. freebsd was more 'mature' (think 4.4bsd, not bsd as a project) and got the vote from the suits. if it were to run again today, my bets would be on linux all the way. freebsd ppl seem to have a serious problem with infighting and immaturity with the -core team (core team split - 4 people walked away in july, massive driver removal in december because of a spat on the -core mailing list, etc.). imho freebsd is not ready for the corporate world prime time, regardless of the antiquated 'stats' on the freebsd site showing 700+ businesses using it (not that you should trust thost stats anyhow... probably just ppl who evaluated freebsd).
those systems are massively multiprocessor, have more then 6 gigs of physical memory *each*.
uh, can you say 'scalable'?
uh, can you say 'rock solid performance'?
sorry, but cdrom.com serving up static content all day long is not impressive.
most of the services on that page are actually running linux.
fleabsd ppl probably recorded every business that sent in a registration card saying theyre evaluating fleabsd.
ahaha.
http://www.os2ss.com/warpcast/wc3041.html
Linux is not everything in this world!
Very surprising to me that a large German outfit would be running Redhat instead of SuSE since this is a far more popular distro in Germany (rightly so in my opinion).
joss (without his cookies)
Do you have any idea of why Digital spends a large amount of money on Altavista?
It's a techonology showroom, where Digitals use to say "See what you can do with our wonderfull technology".
Now it could be turning into "See what you could do with a free OS". -Still don't get it?
-Me
what's the difference?
i don't get why you people get so excited about your pet POSIX kernel being used instead of another one. In fact i'll bet you'd have a _lot_ of trouble telling the difference between Linux or BSD or Digital Unix or whatever if it didn't display its name for you.
...only because, at first glance, it looks like :)
CT (Connecticut, USA), which is where I live.
Now this is what Slashdot.org is all about. :)
Who reads slashdot that doesn't know that Linux is good, its the best, blah blah blah? Really, whats the point in telling nerds about Linux running on another computer? Is it because of Digital making their own UNIX, yet running Linux on their own servers? Big deal. What happens if we find out the person who maintains linux.org uses Windows98 to play games? This is the exact same. You use what gets the job done. I've never used Digital UNIX, but if Linux can perform better at the task, so what? Its not our business what they use to do what. I don't go through your desk in your office to find out what you use to get the job done, why should Slashdot and the German magazine?
# nmap -p 80 -O beta.altavista.de
Starting nmap V. 2.03 by Fyodor (fyodor@dhp.com, www.insecure.org/nmap/)
Interesting ports on (194.112.94.250):
Port State Protocol Service
80 open tcp http
TCP Sequence Prediction: Class=truly random
Difficulty=9999999 (Good luck!)
Remote operating system guess: Linux 2.0.35-36
Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 4 seconds
# nmap -p 80 -O www.altavista.de
Starting nmap V. 2.03 by Fyodor (fyodor@dhp.com, www.insecure.org/nmap/)
Interesting ports on www.altavista.de (194.195.226.67):
Port State Protocol Service
80 open tcp http
TCP Sequence Prediction: Class=random positive increments
Difficulty=28539 (Worthy challenge)
Remote operating system guess: Solaris 2.6 - 2.7
Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 10 seconds
This is quite bizarre... maybe I need an updated version of nmap?
$ nslookup beta.altavista.de
Server: bvpxy02.ne.mediaone.net
Address: 24.128.64.6
*** bvpxy02.ne.mediaone.net can't find beta.altavista.de: Non-existent host/domain
uhh, what happend?
slashdot effect ?
Erm, because the types of machines that run altavista are SERIOUS machines. They CAN'T run Windows NT, because they can't run on only 4 gig of addressbale memory. They physically have over 6 gig each (Last time I checked) And that's actual RAM. Windows NT, being 32 bit memory addressed even on Alphas, simply couldn't handle this. If Linux can handle the type of load generated by altavista, its a very impressive acheivement. This is NOT the type of system you just run on any old OS that is convenient.
And while we're at it, someone by ME a TurboLaser (the systems AV runs on) for my house... (:
Heh, american airlines uses windows 95 on the computers that check your ticket at the gate. That's about the worst tool for the job I can think of...
To be fair, although it is not a search engine
in itself, Yahoo does use a search engine to
index its own pages. It currently uses Inktomi
for this purpose.
Ehmm, so I haven't used FreeBSD???
I've been using both FreeBSD and Linux (and Solaris too) for about 2.5 years now. I haven't really found that FreeBSD would be much better then Linux.
On the other hand, those boxes haven't ever crashed (unless once when I screwed up *bad*).
FreeBSD people usually claim that Linux sucks, I could use some proof for that...
Uh, clue: www.dejanews.com runs Linux! And it is a LOT more impressive than cdrom.com serving up static files. Any half-decent PC can do do that. Dejanews has forever changing content and requires much more horse power.
No, the guy is right. So what if Altavista/.de decides to use Linux instead of Digital Unix?
Digipaq has pledged full support of Linux on their upper-end AlphaServer systems, so this move should bring no surprises to anybody.
Just another day in the life of an OS with world domination on the brain.
Tucows also has alot of mac and even a very good linux site (linuxberg.tucows.com).
Secondly, those windows sites hosted by others then themselves have no saying in the hosts systems most of the time, and i don't thing win95.com cares much...win95 is not a server platform anyways....
maarten@hetnieuws.net
Disclaimer: This is not an official press release of Compaq Corp, and Compaq is not at all responsible for its content.
Hi folks --
As one of the engineers responsible for helping put together the AltaVista.de site mentioned in this article, I figured I'd clear up some of the confusion.
Yes, indeed the servers are running Linux, more specifically Red Hat 5.2. We are using kernel 2.0.36 rather than 2.2.x because we needed a stable platform which has been out long enough to be thoroughly tested.
There is a very good reason why the machines are appearing and disappearing at different times you go to test them. The site is still in BETA stage; it still has not officially been opened to the public, and is still undergoing stress testing and modifications internally. The site will not go "live" until it has the same dependability as the AltaVista.com site in Palo Alto.
The AltaVista.de site uses a combination of technologies... currently, the Linux part of it handles Web serving only, while the crawling and indexing is still being done on Tru64 Unix (AKA Digital Unix). Pending further testing, the site is scheduled to switch over to a pure Linux solution based around our AltaVista Search Intranet product within the next few months.
Our "Intranet" product is a superset, rather than a subset of the Palo Alto site's technology. It runs on many platforms, handles many different filetypes rather than just HTML, and scales cleanly and efficiently from a departmental server to the global scope of the AltaVista.com site. It is packaged up cleanly to make for easy installation, customization, and maintanance, and is available at reasonable prices for your company today. Of important note for you Slashheads is the fact that version 2.3a which just went to press last week is free (although not open source) for indexes of up to 3000 documents.
Anyway, just thought the community deserved to know what was going on in the world of AltaVista.
Div.
(Yes, I'm posting as an A.C. because I've forgotten my password again, dangit.)
Then why do the freebsd peeps claim to have their
OS running on yahoo?
No, we shouldn't hear about every one. :-)
The ones I'd like to hear about are the big-name Fortune 500 companies that nearly everyone recognizes. It would help me a lot when designing Linux-based solutions with corporate suits of large organizations to say "And your competitor, blah blah blah relies on Linux for all of it's corporate intranet."
A little jealousy and competition is a good thing
http://maps.altavista.com/ (in Palo Alto, CA) is running RedHat 5.2
you should try fyodor's
... good.
% RIPCK=E%UCK=E%ULEN=134%DAT=E)
Nmap
# nmap -sT -p80 -O -vv 194.112.94.251
Starting nmap V. 2.08 by Fyodor (fyodor@dhp.com, www.insecure.org/nmap/)
Host (194.112.94.251) appears to be up
Initiating TCP connect() scan against (194.112.94.251)
Adding TCP port 80 (state Open).
The TCP connect scan took 1 seconds to scan 1 ports.
For OSScan assuming that port 80 is open and port 42349 is closed and neither ar
e firewalled
Interesting ports on (194.112.94.251):
Port State Protocol Service
80 open tcp http
TCP Sequence Prediction: Class=truly random
Difficulty=9999999 (Good luck!)
Sequence numbers: 85F8984B 390BA429 F5B7DF23 FDC0076C 3DB9689F 1D11DFE1
Remote operating system guess: Linux 2.0.35-36
OS Fingerprint:
TSeq(Class=TR)
T1(Resp=Y%DF=N%W=7FE0%ACK=S++%Flags=AS%Ops=ME)
T2(Resp=N)
T3(Resp=Y%DF=N%W=7FE0%ACK=S++%Flags=ASF%Ops=ME)
T4(Resp=Y%DF=N%W=0%ACK=O%Flags=R%Ops=)
T5(Resp=Y%DF=N%W=0%ACK=S++%Flags=AR%Ops=)
T6(Resp=Y%DF=N%W=0%ACK=O%Flags=R%Ops=)
T7(Resp=Y%DF=N%W=0%ACK=S%Flags=AR%Ops=)
PU(Resp=Y%DF=N%TOS=C0%IPLEN=164%RIPTL=148%RID=E
Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 1 second
I think we Slashdot'd Netcraft...
I can ping it, port 80 doesn't refuse connection,
but it just sort of sits there.
I think it would have more to do with Red Hat having an Alpha dist. SuSE is working on one and I'm not sure it's done yet.
Compaq thinks True64 (formerly Digital Unix) is the best thing since sliced bread. For the longest time Altavista owed its exsistance to the fact that it SOLD DU as a Internet platform. Running Altavista on Linux is HUGE deal.
http://www.netcraft.com/cgi-bin/Survey/whats?host= www.compaq.de
:))
yupz..
maarten@hetnieuws.net
more power to 'em.
This reminds me of a funny/sad story. About 6 years ago, our company was going through a tough internal battle between two mail systems; WordPerfect (at the time) GroupWise and Digital Mailworks.
Mailworks was a dog, cost over $300 per client license and oh yeah, required Digital PathWorks as the NOS which oh yeah, required a Digital VAX to run. PathWorks (4 I think) was also a piece of trash. Bascially cost over $200,000 to run a 300 user LAN with performance that stunk.
The groups using GroupWise in turn used mostly NetWare so this was a double battle really.
MailWorks and PathWorks were nothing but problems especially on the Mac clients and required constant phone calls to the local Digitals Tech support.
What did the Digital Tech support group use internally? Novell NetWare and GroupWise.
Yes, Digital sells their own Unix but there must be reasons why it isn't used. Cost? Performance? Security?
Don't think Digital has anything to do with AltaVista anymore but anyway...
No, real programmers use cat > a.out
$ /sbin/queso beta.altavista.de :)
:-)
194.112.94.251:80 * Linux 2.0.35 to 2.0.9999
That should tell you all. It's great to see Linux used in a server you'd expect to run some other operating system. Maybe they should upgrade to Linux 2.2 sometime
Kudos to Altavista's German server!
Can you say sour grapes from the Microsoft supporters? Sure you can. Remember how these guys were boasting that how linux would never really amount to anything less than a year ago?
If the world's fastest seach engine is running on the fastest processor under Linux, the point may be subtle, but it is indeed a triumph. This would prove Compaq's commitment to AlphaLinux.
/* MAGIC THEATRE
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
MADMEN ONLY */
heh look at this one
All Free XXX Videos -- Adult Entertainment - More than 100 free streaming video clips.
---
Everyone knows Yahoo is the number one search engine and I don't care what OS it uses.
---
Seriously, what are some situations in which FreeBSD is a better choice than Linux? I have a mixed systemV'ish background and have found Linux to far outshine any of the SV based OS's I've used. I have limited experience with the BSD variants. I do have some recent BSDi experience and find that I like Linux better than that in many ways.
Thanks,
Steve
Yeah, I've found it hard to get into too - for the time being, grab it from here. (Please! No
Adding on to that, the people who run TUCOWS are Unix gurus. TUCOWS was started to serve users of an ISP Internet software. Guess what OS most users use?
Of course, it has exploded since then...
[root@zeus /root]# queso beta.altavista.de:21 /root]# queso beta.altavista.de:23 /root]# queso beta.altavista.de:25 /root]# queso beta.altavista.de:110 /root]# queso beta.altavista.de:8080 /root]# queso beta.altavista.de:98 :)
194.112.94.251:21 *- Not Listen, try another port
[root@zeus
194.112.94.250:23 *- Not Listen, try another port
[root@zeus
194.112.94.251:25 *- Not Listen, try another port
[root@zeus
194.112.94.250:110 *- Not Listen, try another port
[root@zeus
194.112.94.251:8080 *- Not Listen, try another port
[root@zeus
194.112.94.250:98 * Linux 2.0.35 to 2.0.9999
They left the port for linuxconf open!
Slashdot seems to be at least partially about Linux advocacy. Due to this fact, you might reasonably expect to see articles on positive Linux-related events here. If you aren't comfortable with this idea, don't read the stuff here.
THe glorious meept hopes that the German server won't try to invade a machine room next door.
MEEPT!!