Anonymous Coward writes "The ChangeLog as well as a readme for Slackware 7 are out and ready. Proceed with caution, ftp.cdrom.com's server has a new limit on the number of simultaneous user's (5000)... " It's out apparently - I cannot get on the servers though. Have fun!
I just talk'ed one of the three developers of Slackware (we're both students at Georgia Tech, he lives within walking distance.;-)
The website WAS NOT hacked, they went thru various pages as a hoax to keep people from bugging them while they put the finishing touches on Slack 7.0. It is being moved over as we speak.
No they didn't die.... they're getting Slackware 7, duh!:)
-- -Tom
Re:Slackware was hacked today
by
leonids
·
· Score: 2
Heck I think this "hacked Slackware.com" is probably a joke. At the time of writing Attrition.org's Mirror Index says 10-28 for the newest entry, whereelse URL in the post above says 10-29.
Could be Attrition.org noticed this weird change and is trying to mirror it, and IIS kinda supply a default page for them first.
Volkerding (sp?) has shown excellent judgment, methinks. While glibc 2.0 was very nice, and indeed very stable, it was never meant to be put to such wide use as it has. People have bitched at the glibc team for breaking compatibility between 2.0 and 2.1, but that's entirely their prerogative, especially since there were warnings attached to 2.0 anyways. The blame really belongs with all the distros that put what they knew (or at least should have known) to be pre-release software into such heavy use.
I understand this is the same reason the XFree team has closed their development process as well...
Steve 'Nephtes' Freeland | Okay, so maybe I'm a tiny itty
ISO's are handy if you're burning a CD and don't care about wasting bandwidth.
If you're downloading the entire distribution, how is it a waste of bandwidth to grab the ISO image instead? You're still downloading the same amount of data. Actually, downloading the ISO image will use less total bandwidth than downloading the individual files because of all the extra GETs, etc., involved when you're doing the latter.
Sounds like a waste of time to me. For those of us with CD-ROM burners, if I'm going to spend the time to download 300MB, I might as well just grab the whole thing so that I can use it on any computer and can make copies for friends, thereby helping the spread of Slackware. Seems pretty short-sighted on Slackware or CDROM.com's part.
IMHO, Red Hat (NASDAQ:RHAT) is hardly a quality distribution. In my experiences with RHAT, it is buggy and always rushed out the door. 6.1 is a good example.
Just check out the RHAT 'errata' page on their web site. The Slackware maintainers do not have a fetish for installing the latest (and sometimes buggy) packages. Hence, Slackware is the most stable distribution around.
While RHAT, SuSE, Caldera, et al rushed out distributions based on the beta version of glibc (2.0.x), Slackware stood firm and waited until glibc was production (the 2.1.x versions). As it turns out, Slackware is the wiser because of the decision of the glibc maintainers to break compatibility between 2.0.x (beta) and 2.1.x (production). This forced RHAT users to quickly upgrade when 2.1 went live.
This is why I have run Slackware for the past 4 years. It is stable and reliable. Only the best packages make it into the distribution, unlike SuSE or RHAT.
This is why I think Slackware has the highest quality of any distribution. Later.
--
-- "You're gonna need a bigger boat."
- Chief Brody
Hey as some have mentioned above no hacking was done! Look at the new Slackware site. It got a refreshing new look, but I actualy prefer the previous black background. White background gives me a headache with all the glare.
Regarding the IIS pages, did Patrick and friends actually bought NT and fooled around with it for this page? Or they just rip it off a NT hosted site elsewhere? Anyway nice joke.
I've consistently used Slackware for the last few years, and have grown comfortable with it. It runs on both my desktop and laptop. However, one of Slackware's biggest shortcomings is the difficulty in upgrading system components. The only "sure-fire" way I've found to do this is with a complete re-install, then copy back my stuff.
Since the rest of the world is moving away from libc5 and toward glibc, I'm going to have to upgrade at some point. It's for these reasons that I've been flirting with Debian and RetHat, which appear to be a bit friendlier with their package management. Nevertheless, since I'm most familiar with Slackware, I'd prefer to upgrade what I already have.
So. Can anyone offer any hints/suggestions as to how to make this process as painless as possible? (Yes, I read the Slackware upgrade HOWTO, and it's depressing. Isn't there a better way? If moving to Debian/RedHat turns out to be the best way, then so be it...)
What you do is you get all the current packages on your filesystem ( your older running slackware version ) off the ftp. tar tvfz them to look to see that they're not overwriting anything important. There is one script that 'installpkg' runs after it has uncompressed and unarchived the.tar.gz. I think it's tarred in to an/install directory, I forget exactly. You might want to look at the to make sure it doesn't do anything strange. It is a regular sh shell script. then finally installpkg [name of file].
I've successfully upgraded a slack 3.1 install to 3.5 over the net from accross the country. Didn't even have to reboot. Gotta love unix. Furthermore after checking each package briefly to see if it installs any files I don't want, I didn't have to skip any packages. Please be aware though that since slack 7 is all based on glibc 2.1, if you use this method to upgrade from a libc 5 based system to a libc 6 based one ( libc is located in the 'a' disk set, see below ) it could possibly bring your box down and you may need to choose your fate with the almighty boot disk
One note though. You might not want to install the a disk set this way unless you really know what you're doing.. but then if you -really- know what you're doing you'd compile and upgrade the critical libs yourself.
word up kids!!!! Slackware 7.0 is out! Maybe this release will make those glibc2 junkies chill out;) I am happy to see slackware 7 finally stable, I have been working with slack 7 for weeks, and weeks. At least Pat lets everyone in the beeding edge community/wanna be beta testers stay in touch with whats happening... Slackware 7.0 (dont mind the meth induced version number change) is out with a vengence with glibc, the MOST updated, and secured deamons. Pat maynot have a crew of linux heavyweights to make kernel patches every 10 minutes, but it is still one of the best distros ever!
cheers!!
-- Stupid people do stupid things... Smart people outsmart each other...
--System of a Down
Re:another ftp.cdrom.com question
by
NovaX
·
· Score: 2
CRL provides the internet connection. They run SunOS boxes, and I assume FreeBSD PCs (many ISPs have that mix, especially ones that aren't startups.. CRL has been around since the early 80s). I never had a problem with CRL... my old ISP which I really aught to get around to stopping the account.
--
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
Slackware IRC Discussion
by
TrbleClef
·
· Score: 2
Slackware.Net, an unofficial Slackware site (with Slackware Linux news and information, along with other features) is currently running an IRC server at irc.slackware.net. Slackware discussion is in #Slackware. Feel free to come stop by and chat.
Nothing would make me happier then to see a port of slackware to the alpha...
After being forced to install debian onto my AS200, I tried to port slackware 4 over... with some sucess, but it was just too time-consuming...
Has anyone else heard of or actually created a port of slackware for the alpha? Or maybe Pat will be looking into something like this for the future...
Maybe if I ever get time I'll finish the job...:P
Seems to me mirroring should be First Priority...
by
Christopher+B.+Brown
·
· Score: 5
There's a need, on this sort of thing, to forbid public access for a few hours, denying to all other than those that are formally mirroring the site.
At this point, you've probably got:
A thousand people doing non-Slackware-related stuff,
400 guys with cable modems doing online installs,
3600 guys doing installs at 53K, and
15 annoyed sysadmins that are trying to set up mirrors but that can't because ftp.cdrom.com is out of connections.
There otta be a protocol...
-- If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Slackware was hacked today
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3
ftp.cdrom.com had a 3600 user limit before they upgraded to a Xeon 500 with 4 gigs of RAM, then they went to 5000 users. Then, they went to 6000 for awhile, and they're back at 5000. Don't know why they went back down (speed?)
version increase justified?
by
leonids
·
· Score: 4
I see lots of people now despising Slackware just because Patrick increase the version big time from 4 to 7. But hey everything has to have a reason. So I quote this post by Patrick himself from the slackware.com forum:
===== Author: Patrick J. Volkerding Date: 10-10-1999 21:43
I've stayed out of this for now, but I do think I should lend a little justification to the version number thing.
First off, I think I forgot to count some time ago. If I'd started on 6.0 and made every release a major version (I think that's how Linux releases are made these days, right?;), we would be on Slackware 47 by now. (it would actually be in the 20s somewhere if we'd gone 1, 2, 3...)
I think it's clear that some other distributions inflated their version numbers for marketing purposes, and I've had to field (way too many times) the question "why isn't yours 6.x" or worse "when will you upgrade to Linux 6.0" which really drives home the effectiveness of this simple trick. With the move to glibc and nearly everyone else using 6.x now, it made sense to go to at least 6.0, just to make it clear to people who don't know anything about Linux that Slackware's libraries, compilers, and other stuff are not 3 major versions behind. I thought they'd all be using 7.0 by now, but no matter. We're at least "one better", right?:)
Sorry if I haven't been enough of a purist about this. I promise I won't inflate the version number again (unless everyone else does again;)
Pat ====
Meaning? We are seeing more sad people who have been dumb down by other brain dead over commercialised distributions. Not that they should not commercialise, but they are overdoing it.
Bandwith actually. They were doing fine on the Pentium Pro, but they were filling the pipe. When they upgraded the pipe, they also upgraded the machine to make sure it could handle it (I remember it was origionally going to scale to 10,000 users). The first day they broke the record, which they had set, for the most bandwith in 24 hours. They're well over 1 terrabyte a day. It would have been nice ti have 10,000 users, but its already to slow at times with 5,000.
Actually, it was 4.0 to 7.0, and Patrick has said it's because everyone else is doing it and he's tired of fielding questions about when he's "going to upgrade Slackware to -insert latest RH version here-"
Look at Slackware's versioning though...
3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 -- I started here. 3.6 3.9 4.0 7.0
Then look at RedHat's...
4.0 4.1 4.2 5.0 5.1 5.2 6.0 6.1
If Patrick were to version like RH, we'd already be 7.0+ anyway. He's just catching up.
NFS has always been supported. It's my favourite method, too. The entire distribution isn't too large to mirror on my small network.
As for FTP, I'm not sure...
Since the distribution is quite small, downloading it and doing it over NFS would be a good bet. If you have a cable modem, leave it on your server and let all of your other cable friends install it from yours. I'm sure they'd appreciate the speed.
To set it up is simple. You only have to mirror the "slakware" directory and provide the network boot and the appropriate root disks (colour, almost always).
Re:Why egcs-1.1.2?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3
If you spend a little time reading the kernel mialing list archive you'll see that most of the kernel developers consider it bad form to compile your kernel with 2.95. Some talk that there is some strange intereactions between binutils and gcc-2.95 that create kernels that don't run right. There are also a few kernel folk that think gcc-2.95. is just plain buggy. Who knows but in almost every instance that someone built a kernel with 2.95 and it fell over, once they built one with an older compiler it would work. I don't know that this is the full reason for egcs but I imagine Patrick took it into account when he was putting things togeather. gcc-2.95.1 and gcc-2.7.2.3 are in the contrib directory.
I have to say something about the philosophys that distributions follow. Slackware's philosophy is driven from the 'do it yourself, no bull shit' ideology. That's why I love it so much.
I saw another poster saying that 'while he doesn't have a dozen people under him to update kernels, blah blah it's still a good distribution.' This is quite true, it is a good distribution, but he doesn't need tons of people to help him out. This comes from the philosophy that people out there should not depend on him or the distribution to get them through their entire existance while using linux. You're supposed to compile new kernels yourself, etc. Why do you think you don't see slackware 'tgz' packages floating around rabidly every where like rpms ( well you do see them sometimes like on kde's site i think ) ? Because slack users know how to get by on their own knowledge. This might also be why there isn't a good way to upgrade through the install process.. because most people only need to install slack once and they can then maintain their own box. hell, my box is a slack 3.4 install and it has been glibc 2.1 since that version of the GNU C library came out. Ok well it took a bit of time to recompile everything gradually.
A word for the newbies.
the philosophy that a distribution uses is very significant to those that are picking out a distribution for the first time. It should probably be one of the most significant things actually. How do you wish to live your life in the world of linux ? you should be picky as it is your environment that you will be playing/working in for a while. Second to that should be the packages it comes with. Weigh everything out before investing your time ( notice i didn't say money ) into a distribution.
Yeah, but I'm really waiting for OpenBSD version 564.3 - it's supposed to be really good.
Seriously, what happens when you get past version 9? You could go to 10, but I think versions over 10 sound stupid. Like Emacs 20.blah.blah -- it just looks dumb. I hate to say it, but I think MS had the right idea of dropping the version numbers on Office after 6.0. I don't know how I feel about the years replacing them, but it's better than Office 10.0
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Slashdot Mirror
I just talk'ed one of the three developers of Slackware (we're both students at Georgia Tech, he lives within walking distance. ;-)
The website WAS NOT hacked, they went thru various pages as a hoax to keep people from bugging them while they put the finishing touches on Slack 7.0. It is being moved over as we speak.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
I sure hope you don't do that to warez and mp3 servers.. hammering SUCKS.
-Warren
No they didn't die.... they're getting Slackware 7, duh! :)
-Tom
Heck I think this "hacked Slackware.com" is probably a joke. At the time of writing Attrition.org's Mirror Index says 10-28 for the newest entry, whereelse URL in the post above says 10-29.
Could be Attrition.org noticed this weird change and is trying to mirror it, and IIS kinda supply a default page for them first.
Shrugs
I understand this is the same reason the XFree team has closed their development process as well...
Steve 'Nephtes' Freeland | Okay, so maybe I'm a tiny itty
If you're downloading the entire distribution, how is it a waste of bandwidth to grab the ISO image instead? You're still downloading the same amount of data. Actually, downloading the ISO image will use less total bandwidth than downloading the individual files because of all the extra GETs, etc., involved when you're doing the latter.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Check out the www.slackware.com home page (as of 16:18 PDT):
"The site is currently down while we eat dinner. If anyone wants to join 50% of the Slackware team and you are in Atlanta,
come to:
El Torero Mexican Restaurant
2484 Briarcliff Rd NE
Atlanta, GA 30329 "
Now look at their website. www.slackware.com
:)
Everybody just chill until we've released 7.0
Anyone else get the feeling that they're just messing with our minds?
agreed, a very interesting index...
oh the irony.
+&x
IMHO, Red Hat (NASDAQ:RHAT) is hardly a quality distribution. In my experiences with RHAT, it is buggy and always rushed out the door. 6.1 is a good example.
Just check out the RHAT 'errata' page on their web site. The Slackware maintainers do not have a fetish for installing the latest (and sometimes buggy) packages. Hence, Slackware is the most stable distribution around.
While RHAT, SuSE, Caldera, et al rushed out distributions based on the beta version of glibc (2.0.x), Slackware stood firm and waited until glibc was production (the 2.1.x versions). As it turns out, Slackware is the wiser because of the decision of the glibc maintainers to break compatibility between 2.0.x (beta) and 2.1.x (production). This forced RHAT users to quickly upgrade when 2.1 went live.
This is why I have run Slackware for the past 4 years. It is stable and reliable. Only the best packages make it into the distribution, unlike SuSE or RHAT.
This is why I think Slackware has the highest quality of any distribution.
Later.
--
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
Hey as some have mentioned above no hacking was done! Look at the new Slackware site . It got a refreshing new look, but I actualy prefer the previous black background. White background gives me a headache with all the glare.
Regarding the IIS pages, did Patrick and friends actually bought NT and fooled around with it for this page? Or they just rip it off a NT hosted site elsewhere? Anyway nice joke.
You started out late on both Slackware and Redhat.
I remember using Slackware 2.x. I believe it started it's version numbering quite normally.
The first Red Hat I heard about (and installed as well) was 3.0. I believe it started around there to catch up with Slackware.
Patrick is perfectly justified in his jump since he's been around much longer than any other currently popular distribution.
I've consistently used Slackware for the last few years, and have grown comfortable with it. It runs on both my desktop and laptop. However, one of Slackware's biggest shortcomings is the difficulty in upgrading system components. The only "sure-fire" way I've found to do this is with a complete re-install, then copy back my stuff.
Since the rest of the world is moving away from libc5 and toward glibc, I'm going to have to upgrade at some point. It's for these reasons that I've been flirting with Debian and RetHat, which appear to be a bit friendlier with their package management. Nevertheless, since I'm most familiar with Slackware, I'd prefer to upgrade what I already have.
So. Can anyone offer any hints/suggestions as to how to make this process as painless as possible? (Yes, I read the Slackware upgrade HOWTO, and it's depressing. Isn't there a better way? If moving to Debian/RedHat turns out to be the best way, then so be it...)
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
word up kids!!!! ;)
Slackware 7.0 is out!
Maybe this release will make those glibc2 junkies chill out
I am happy to see slackware 7 finally stable, I have been working with slack 7 for weeks, and weeks. At least Pat lets everyone in the beeding edge community/wanna be beta testers stay in touch with whats happening... Slackware 7.0 (dont mind the meth induced version number change) is out with a vengence with glibc, the MOST updated, and secured deamons. Pat maynot have a crew of linux heavyweights to make kernel patches every 10 minutes, but it is still one of the best distros ever!
cheers!!
Stupid people do stupid things... Smart people outsmart each other... --System of a Down
CRL provides the internet connection. They run SunOS boxes, and I assume FreeBSD PCs (many ISPs have that mix, especially ones that aren't startups.. CRL has been around since the early 80s). I never had a problem with CRL... my old ISP which I really aught to get around to stopping the account.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
Slackware.Net, an unofficial Slackware site (with Slackware Linux news and information, along with other features) is currently running an IRC server at irc.slackware.net. Slackware discussion is in #Slackware. Feel free to come stop by and chat.
Nothing would make me happier then to see a port of slackware to the alpha...
After being forced to install debian onto my AS200, I tried to port slackware 4 over... with some sucess, but it was just too time-consuming...
Has anyone else heard of or actually created a port of slackware for the alpha? Or maybe Pat will be looking into something like this for the future...
Maybe if I ever get time I'll finish the job...:P
At this point, you've probably got:
There otta be a protocol...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
go here to see the mirror at attrition.org
ftp.cdrom.com had a 3600 user limit before they upgraded to a Xeon 500 with 4 gigs of RAM, then they went to 5000 users. Then, they went to 6000 for awhile, and they're back at 5000. Don't know why they went back down (speed?)
I see lots of people now despising Slackware just because Patrick increase the version big time from 4 to 7. But hey everything has to have a reason. So I quote this post by Patrick himself from the slackware.com forum:
;), we would be on Slackware 47 by now. (it would actually be in the 20s somewhere if we'd gone 1, 2, 3...)
:)
;)
=====
Author: Patrick J. Volkerding
Date: 10-10-1999 21:43
I've stayed out of this for now, but I do think I should lend a little justification to the version number thing.
First off, I think I forgot to count some time ago. If I'd started on 6.0 and made every release a major version (I think that's how Linux releases are made these days, right?
I think it's clear that some other distributions inflated their version numbers for marketing purposes, and I've had to field (way too many times) the question "why isn't yours 6.x" or worse "when will you upgrade to Linux 6.0" which really drives home the effectiveness of this simple trick. With the move to glibc and nearly everyone else using 6.x now, it made sense to go to at least 6.0, just to make it clear to people who don't know anything about Linux that Slackware's libraries, compilers, and other stuff are not 3 major versions behind. I thought they'd all be using 7.0 by now, but no matter. We're at least "one better", right?
Sorry if I haven't been enough of a purist about this. I promise I won't inflate the version number again (unless everyone else does again
Pat
====
Meaning? We are seeing more sad people who have been dumb down by other brain dead over commercialised distributions. Not that they should not commercialise, but they are overdoing it.
Bandwith actually. They were doing fine on the Pentium Pro, but they were filling the pipe. When they upgraded the pipe, they also upgraded the machine to make sure it could handle it (I remember it was origionally going to scale to 10,000 users). The first day they broke the record, which they had set, for the most bandwith in 24 hours. They're well over 1 terrabyte a day. It would have been nice ti have 10,000 users, but its already to slow at times with 5,000.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
Actually, it was 4.0 to 7.0, and Patrick has said it's because everyone else is doing it and he's tired of fielding questions about when he's "going to upgrade Slackware to -insert latest RH version here-"
Look at Slackware's versioning though...
3.0
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5 -- I started here.
3.6
3.9
4.0
7.0
Then look at RedHat's...
4.0
4.1
4.2
5.0
5.1
5.2
6.0
6.1
If Patrick were to version like RH, we'd already be 7.0+ anyway. He's just catching up.
NFS has always been supported. It's my favourite method, too. The entire distribution isn't too large to mirror on my small network.
As for FTP, I'm not sure...
Since the distribution is quite small, downloading it and doing it over NFS would be a good bet. If you have a cable modem, leave it on your server and let all of your other cable friends install it from yours. I'm sure they'd appreciate the speed.
To set it up is simple. You only have to mirror the "slakware" directory and provide the network boot and the appropriate root disks (colour, almost always).
If you spend a little time reading the kernel mialing list archive you'll see that most of the kernel developers consider it bad form to compile your kernel with 2.95. Some talk that there is some strange intereactions between binutils and gcc-2.95 that create kernels that don't run right. There are also a few kernel folk that think gcc-2.95. is just plain buggy. Who knows but in almost every instance that someone built a kernel with 2.95 and it fell over, once they built one with an older compiler it would work. I don't know that this is the full reason for egcs but I imagine Patrick took it into account when he was putting things togeather. gcc-2.95.1 and gcc-2.7.2.3 are in the contrib directory.
I have to say something about the philosophys that distributions follow. Slackware's philosophy is driven from the 'do it yourself, no bull shit' ideology. That's why I love it so much.
.. irc.aye.net:6667
I saw another poster saying that 'while he doesn't have a dozen people under him to update kernels, blah blah it's still a good distribution.' This is quite true, it is a good distribution, but he doesn't need tons of people to help him out. This comes from the philosophy that people out there should not depend on him or the distribution to get them through their entire existance while using linux. You're supposed to compile new kernels yourself, etc. Why do you think you don't see slackware 'tgz' packages floating around rabidly every where like rpms ( well you do see them sometimes like on kde's site i think ) ? Because slack users know how to get by on their own knowledge. This might also be why there isn't a good way to upgrade through the install process.. because most people only need to install slack once and they can then maintain their own box. hell, my box is a slack 3.4 install and it has been glibc 2.1 since that version of the GNU C library came out. Ok well it took a bit of time to recompile everything gradually.
A word for the newbies.
the philosophy that a distribution uses is very significant to those that are picking out a distribution for the first time. It should probably be one of the most significant things actually. How do you wish to live your life in the world of linux ? you should be picky as it is your environment that you will be playing/working in for a while. Second to that should be the packages it comes with. Weigh everything out before investing your time ( notice i didn't say money ) into a distribution.
Catatonic
rm -rf ~/.signature
Seriously, what happens when you get past version 9? You could go to 10, but I think versions over 10 sound stupid. Like Emacs 20.blah.blah -- it just looks dumb. I hate to say it, but I think MS had the right idea of dropping the version numbers on Office after 6.0. I don't know how I feel about the years replacing them, but it's better than Office 10.0
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Does the installer support FTP or NFS installs?
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.