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Yellow Dog for RS/6000
An anonymous coward wrote in with this gem: "Terra Soft Solutions, makers of Yellow Dog Linux, today announced that they are working with IBM to bring Yellow Dog to selected IBM RS/6000 servers and workstations. Champion Server 1.1 will be the first version to support RS/6000 and will begin shipping next week. " I'm glad to see Yellow Dog becoming more prolific, and that Linux is running on some very nice machines these days.
In what way does Linux on the Sun run better than Solaris does?
Did you even use LVM?
;)
It's probably the biggest feature of AIX as compared to any other Unix, and you leave it out.
AIX's implementation of LVM is one of the best IMO. Granted, you can't shrink lvs or fs's, but you can increase their size while in full multiuser mode.
AIX can also perform many kernel reconfig tasks without rebooting, as it has a dynamic kernel. The ODM is necessary to support this.
The reason you run AIX is because you absolutely never want to _have_ to reboot for anything, and AIX is closest to that ideal among all the unices I've had admin privs on (AIX, Solaris, SunOS, HPUX, Digital Unix 4, Linux). From what I hear, only DGUX is more serious about uptime and availability, and they're not as well supported as AIX in terms of free software (Solaris/Linux/*BSD #1, HPUX/AIX/SGI/DEC #2, DGUX/Sequent/et al. #3)
Remember... 'Use the right tool for the job'... Platform-agnosticism is a feature, not a bug... As in other areas of life, bigotry reveals ignorance...
(And please don't consider this a flame, merely a counterpoint. Work on whatever you love, just be careful about other people's loves.....
Yep, sounds like an S70 to me..
I do like RS6ks quite a bit, but not at the prices IBM is asking.. Though the situation was different when I was an IBM internal: we got new stuff for 40 cents on the dollar.. Used stuff we inherited, cobbled together, or got for almost nuthin..
AIX is more plug-and-playable than any M$ crud, is relatively stable (don't forget fixdist!), and has lots of cool features. It's price/performance sucks, yes, but many corps place uptime and features above price/performance on the tasks they buy RS6ks for...
'Use the best tool for the job'...
AIX's implementation of LVM is one of the best IMO. Granted, you can't shrink lvs or fs's, but you can increase their size while in full multiuser mode.
Indeed. The Logical Volume Manager is AIX's best feature. It's really good.
AIX can also perform many kernel reconfig tasks without rebooting, as it has a dynamic kernel. The ODM is necessary to support this.
I've found that Linux's kernel has as many, if not more, dynamic features. Installing a newer device driver under AIX does a "bosboot" (which rebuilds the kernel and the boot area) and requires a reboot to take effect. Under Linux, if your kernel is modular, you can recompile a device driver module and then unload and reinsert it without rebooting. Solaris has a similar feature. Also, Linux has a /proc file system (assuming your kernel was compiled with it -- it's the default) which permits on-the-fly parameter reading and writing. AIX does a lot of nifty magic for you, but it's all behind the scenes -- you can't get status information from the kernel through any normal, documented procedures as far as I know.
I don't understand why you think the ODM is necessary for the kernel to do things dynamically. Linux and Solaris have no registry (which is what ODM is -- a binary database of system parameters) and they're just as dynamic as AIX.
'Use the right tool for the job'
Amen.
Aside from the evident ignorance of the original
poster on this thread (addressed by previous
respondents) there is the question of flexibility.
I work for a dev firm that does some AIX/RS6K
stuff. We'd like our customers to slide on over
to Linux (for various reasons), and the presence
of a Linux/RS6K port makes them more likely to do
so. Which is a big ol' win for me, since Linux
talent is vastly easier to find than AIX folks,
and cheaper too (IBM AIX support is circa $250/hr).
Moreover, it means that if a customer has two
RS6Ks, and then one of them becomes redundant and
unnecessary, they can repurpose the hardware with
a new OS. There are just some things that AIX is
sort of too heavy for . . . I mean, if you're
just gonna run basic commodity services, why
bother with SMIT?
Right now, if a customer decides they don't need
that extra RS6K, they don't repurpose it, they
resell it, because they know that if they DO
repurpose the hardware, the software support costs
will wipe out any likely benefit.
Finally, Linux on RS/6000 gives people an easy
"out". If they find themselves needing to abandon
AIX, they can do it without simultaneously
throwing away their hardware investment.
We should all be supporting that kind of thing.
Sorry, you won't see VMWare or WINE working on an RS/6000. Both require an x86 processor.
--JZ
If you are a linux weenie, you assume everything that runs CDE sucks.
I wish Linux could run on my model 220 rs6k
Have you ever used AIX on an RS/6000? I did--as an app developer for a Wall Street firm--and let me tell you that thing was hanging more often than my Winblows 3.1 machine did at home. Granted, this wasn't a production machine, but we were just app writers. It wasn't like we were doing anything funky, just building Motif apps for PHBs (pointy-haired brokers). At least the thing booted up pretty quickly (quicker than my Winblows box did!).
Actually, IIRC, the production machines crashed quite often as well...
-----------------------
To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.
The guy never said anything about NT. Just because Linux is not suited (perfectly) to enterprise servers now --doesn't mean that NT is either. Jeez, it's not nessasarily a linux or NT fight here.
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
The RS/6000 line has been around for a number of years but new models with enhanced features and faster chips continue to come out each year.
For a list of IBM's current offerings go to:
http://www.rs6000.ibm.com/hardware
Please, someone port Linux to the old models. It would be great to run Linux on the one I have.
The PS/2 lines of systems (IBM's idea of where PCs should have gone back in the late 80s early 90s) were almost all "Micro Channel" systems. The fact that they were MCA is one of the main reason credited for them being pretty much a flop.
hey, uh, who in the world would buy an RS/6000 just to stick linux on it?
i mean.. it's not like there's hordes of AIX admins screaming "we want linux on our AS/400 midrange systems! give us linux or give us death!"
people like that are stupid. so are people who buy sun ultra10's to run linux. duh?
Within the next few months you'll see dual GhZ processors on the same chip.
IBM will be back in the race.
NetBSD/powerpc,perhaps ? I looked at netbsd-ports@ mailing list archive to see if there was ever asked a question about NetBSD port to RS6000..
any other source of information ?
Heh, you would like to think that nuclear power plants update hardware / software. The one I consulted for had a P100 running BSDI/2.1 for a mail server.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
486's was (and is) run by single individuals and maybe small companies - and not heavy industries.
This is demonstrably false. I've administered 486-based Unix systems at major corporations in the past. At one site, they had a Sequent with 12 486DX2-50 processors in it. Yes, twelve. At another site, they had a dual-processor 486 NCR system (but I don't know the clock speed).
These were LARGE manufacturing/distrubtion companies. If you live in the USA, I guarantee you've heard of both of them; in one case, their influence is global. But I can't name them due to privacy considerations, contractual issues, professional courtesy, etc.
Of course, I also realize you're only talking about the server side (even though you didn't explicitly say so). If you count desktop, then I can pretty much guarantee that 95% or more of ALL corporations who have been in business for the last 5 years have, or had, some 80486 processors in house. Most of them probably still have them in service in desktop systems. Where I'm currently working, there are a whole truckload of IBM PS/2 486SX systems still in service. They've got the "Y2K OK" stickers with the black magic marker "X" over top of them to indicate that they're on death row -- but they're still in use! (And a worse piece of desktop equipment you've not seen in many a year, I promise you.... But that's what you get when you're a contractor -- the leftover trash.)
Like it was mentioned, Wine and Vmware probably won't work. But if you don't have anything against Mac applications, maybe Mac-On-Linux or even SheepShaver (a commercial product) may work, if a port can be done. Anyone out there knowledgeable about the various PPC architectures have an idea on how feasible this would be?
They are the ones we have here at the labs. If (after Linux is able to run those damn Windoze apps -- is vmware enough in place of NT4SP4?) we can put Linux on all of them, we'll be able to use something better than NIS (NIS+,some custom-made PAM module, or even rdist/rsync/custom sync scripts) and avoid another lame scr1p1 k1dd13 rm -rf'ing the whole NFS server.
This topic is interesting. At Motorola Computer Group, we offer AIX on a variety of our PPC machines. However, people want a migration path away from AIX since it is an inflexible closed source UNIX...that path is Linux. Linux runs circles around AIX on the same hardware (lmbench, etc.), applications are plentiful and easily ported to Linux/PPC. I run Debian/PowerPC on most of our systems and it provides 3000+ packages right at my fingertips.
Matt Porter
Motorola Computer Group
mporter@mcg.mot.com
There are a good couple of reasons to run Linux instead of AIX on those machines... Examples? Sure!
- You run mainly Linux on your machines, but want to have that RS/6000 (my case - A SparcStation 5, a Pentium and a RS/6000 model 570) - I know that Yellow Dog doesn't run on that model, but I wish some day a flavor of Linux will...
- You prefer free software to propietary solutions, even if the cost is the same (as you say, the license travels with the hardware)
- You like Gnome. You like WindowMaker. You like linuxconf. You hate CDE. You hate the AIX admin utils.
etc.
I got some old RS 6000 machines and would like to contribute to porting linux to them in my spare time. Are there any existing projects for this? If not, I can try it myself, but I've never ported an os before, anyone care to guide me through the process? First I have to cart the 530 upstairs to my office - it's heavy. I suppose the next step after that is for me to identify the hardware in the RS6000 and see what other ports come close. I don't have a 24-hour connection to the internet, does anyone care to host a project page or mailing list? Hmm, I can't get my preferred login at slashdot (it seems to be taken) so i'd better give you my address: it's bjb@achilles.net.
Its good to see linux runnning on more platforms. But, doesn't Yellow Dog make a linux distribution for Macs?
Quick note: LinuxPPC also runs on PPC based RS/6000 machines. Check this.
Think of all the RS6000 servers out there that are sitting idle and out of date. By supporting Linux, these old machines can be given a new lease as a stable mail/news/ftp/nfs/samba/web server.
Think of how handy all those 486's have become with the use of Linux and FreeBSD. The same theory applies to the RS6000. However because these are enterprise server orientated systems, it will give Linux the opportunity to "sneak" into the enterprise market.
It's a good tactic for World Domination! Even if it was not even considered :
No, but a red hat yes.
The RS/6000 family of computers feature IBM RISC-based microprocessors and run AIX, IBM's UNIX operating system. RS/6000 delivers the industry's most complete UNIX offerings by combining applications with hardware, software, service and support for unmatched high availability, scalability, system management, and performance.
If you can afford RS/6000 in the first place (and they're not cheap) then it's presumably because you need these facilities - and the AIX license (IIRC) travels with the hardware, like SunOS or NeXTStep. Now, I agree that linux has a lot going for it on x86 hardware (it makes a great cheap desktop X terminal for example), but what compelling advantage does it offer that makes it superior to AIX?
IMHO, the linux community needs to guard itself against bandwagonneering. (is that a word?!) Porting to a new platform for it's own sake is cool, but when corporates see linux on RS/6000 and realise how inferior it is to AIX, it will long-term reinforce the view held by many that linux is just a toy.
Now, why is sql*kitten, known anti-open-source advocate saying these things? Simply because strength comes from conflict and competition - nothing would make me happier than for linux to be a serious threat to NT, because the only outcome of that situation is a better NT (or a better AIX or whatever). Linux's push towards the enterprise is premature.
that's not newz. I mean, the PPC kernel version works on the machines mentioned, big deal. That's been possible for quite some time, Yellow dog just packaged it and is reselling it.
I'd like to see a REAL RS/6000 port that will run on the older RISC processors found in the commonly and cheaply available hardware like the 300 and 500 series. There's TONS of those suckers floating around, and they still run pretty fast.
Haven't ya ever heard of a Yellow Lab? And of course there are yellow Golden Retrievers...
It's great to see so many different Linux variants on the market. This shows the business community what a vibrant community we are, and how easy it is to make your own Linux OS customized to specific customer needs. None of this one-size-fits-all crap.
Old? Methinks not. I saw a very attractive one yesterday in a computer room - a tall rack, encased in black metal mesh standing on a purplish pedestal. At first I thought it was a big SGI machine. It's a recent installation.
D.
umm like, there's new PowerPC's and many different RS6000 models.. old ones from a 4-5 years ago, and new ones today.
Please, god, port to the 500-series RS/6K!
Especially the 504s. I realize that the POWER/2
isn't exactly a popular chip, but this would be
an outrageously useful port (well, for me).
I would give all those AIX 3.2.5 machines
something new and useful to do.
Tell ya what, if someone ports to the 500-series,
I might be able to send 'em a complete
PowerServer 950 system as a "donation". 'Course,
it's 6ft tall, but it sure looks impressive.
A port to the 500 series would be extremely
useful -- there are zillions of them floating
around, and they're all running miserable old
AIX 3.2.5 or thereabouts.
And they're still useful systems, I mean,
they're not *that* old . . . The people who
use them are really comfortable with the
hardware, so a nice Linux port would give them
an easy way into the modern Linux world. Then
a few months later they'd buy new hardware . . .
As you might guess, I speak from experience here.
Linux running on older AIX hardware would be
outrageously useful in persuading certain folks
I know to use something other than AIX 3.2.5.
It seems to me that a prime reason for putting Linux onto an RS/6000 is access to the emerging market for PPC Linux apps - while there are nowhere near as many as Intel Linux, they are coming along (even games, as recently announced). And porting from Linux/x86 to Linux/PPC should be pretty easy if the code's been written properly.
Probably the biggest advantage is access to skills - administrators, developers, etc.