Watch out everyone - the big bad cyberterrorists are gonna get ya. You need good ol' Uncle Sam to Save You and Protect You from the Bad Guys of the world. BOOGA BOOGA!!!
Next they'll be telling us it needs to be done to Protect The Children. Oh wait, they've already done that:-P.
I hope the knuckle draggers over at the NSA and the FBI get absolutely swamped with people using free encryption software. In fact, I hope they choke on it.
I can tell you that DHCP/BOOTP/TFTP are not the be-all and end-all to your network management woes. Not all applications and network management software/systems play nice in a dynamically addressed environment. We have a rule of thumb that works pretty well:
If it's a desktop/server, it gets a static address since those machines do not leave their physical location. If it's a laptop, it gets DHCP. If it's a router/gateway/firewall/etc., it gets statics (don't even get me started on the security implications involved in running your router plant with DHCP/BOOTP - it's more trouble than it's worth, believe me). Stick your plant behind a translating firewall setup of some kind and don't wash your internal network laundry in public.
As I said, no silver bullets, YMMV, past history is no guarantee of future performance, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it, etc.
What is more convient that putting your finger on the scanner imbeded in your keyboard and nothing else to login? How is that insecure? You cant steal my finger.
Let's face it, most people who can work their way around a computer wouldn't trust MS software in an environment requiring high security.
Yet, we see in the NYT article that even the systems that reside on the Secret / Most Secret "air gap" networks are running MS software. WHY IN THE HELL ARE THEY DOING THAT?!?!? These people are supposed to know better, but they do it anyway. More than likely they were "ordered" to do it by someone who doesn't know any better, and doesn't have the common sense to trust the people that were hired because they know better.
Running MS software within a designated secure environment should result in charges of high treason.
Sure, AIX packs some neat features, but c'mon, "solid as a (sic) Mac truck"? Yeah, the NFS implemenatation that shipped with the 4.3 release was solid as a Mac - like pudding. It made unfsd under Linux look good.
I've worked with AIX off and on since 1991. I remember the 3.1.5 debacle. Believe me, AIX can't point fingers at anyone without having three pointing back at itself. I remember the joys of ODM corruption, I remember the text config files (there for backward compatibility) that did not reflect the true (odm) config of the system, I remember when they took away the ability for an admin to edit the ODM database directly so that you could fix the screwups caused by some of the install and system config utilities, I remember creeping JFS corruption, LVM management utils that would allow you to shoot yourself in the foot...
Geez, AIX - why did you get me started? The only thing that would make me rant more are my years with the ultimate "Crappix" - SCO EunuchsWare. I will *never* look back. The only thing that could compete with it on the Crappix scale was HP/UX 8.x (and you thought 9.x was bad... boy, have I got some stories for you).
Christ, somebody get me to alt.sysadmin.recovery before I go nuts and piss on the mains...
I was wondering... I seem to recall that the Mindcraft tests utilized the processor affinity settings that one can make in the registry under NT. If that is the case, the test results make a lot of sense. It would be a simple matter of assigning processor affinity to services in such a way that the more critical (i.e. performance hog) services would have dedicated CPUs and wouldn't step on each other.
I don't recall any utilities being available under Linux to assign processor affinity to a PID etc. while utilizing SMP support. Does such a beast exist? If so, great! If not, that may be something nifty to have as a feature...
Hmm, that part of the evaluation was incorrect. We've been using the Linux client for Legato Networker with great success for some time now. Also, Arkeia is an excellent package for enterprise backup which supports Linux (better still, you can make Linux the backup server, not just a client).
Otherwise, a well-written article. Too bad we couldn't see the numbers on the SMB tests - I suppose you have to have permission from Microsoft in order to do that:-(.
Database vendors have warmed to Linux, but the Unix clone simply doesn't have the software support yet from large business software companies such as ERP software vendors, Gardner said.
What do you call SAP R/3, bonehead? Don't people at Compaq know how to read the friggin' news?
So let's see... I can get SAP R/3, plus Oracle for the back end. I can get quad processor systems, 1GB+ RAM configurations, terabytes of RAID storage, tape jukeboxes, etc.
Looks like enterprise computing to me. But then, what do I know, I'm just a paying customer:-P.
The ever-dreaded "dualing interview"
on
CNN on "hackers"
·
· Score: 1
Why push all the work on the coder? That's why Sequent and SGI use ccNUMA - your apps take advantage of the inherit parallelism and scalability of the system, without having to be explicitly aware of it.
Actually, Cray invented all of this, but hey, why nitpick:-P.
"The amount of openly available published research in the RISC compiler community is significant, and Intel has the bucks to hire more gurus on the topic if they need them."
That would be all well and good, if we were actually discussing a RISC architecture. But we aren't - we're discussing VLIW.
With the i960 and crew, Intel has all the RISC expertise that they ever wanted (or needed). Finding someone who can write compilers and tools for VLIW is a horse of a different color, however. There isn't much experience in the industry when dealing with VLIW; not only that, coding for RISC isn't going to help you with this type of architecture. Hence, the hair-pulling and delays from the compiler/tools group. This isn't a problem you throw money at to make it go away faster - it's a first run, and everyone on the team is learning as they go.
If that doesn't convince you, keep in mind that Intel is partnered with a company that has deep experience with RISC architectures (HP). If HP and Intel together are having a rough time of it, I would submit that this can't be an easy design to work with - especially given that no one has done it before.
Either way, the horse is dead and ends up as glue. I fail to see your point.
How about, "You favorite horse, one you raised from birth, is being sold by your father to be used as glue. Would you drive out to the badlands in the middle of the night and set it free to run with the wild horses, never to see it again, or would you let your father sell it?".
jwz raised the horse, put a bullet in it, then bitched that it was going to end up as glue. Whatever. The guy isn't into OS, he isn't into money, he's into jwz and jwz alone. So what if a few bridges get burnt on the way? We'll always have jwz.
... that costs a lot of money when fully licensed for your site. We recently priced out an SMS roll-out for our company (about 330+ people) for SMS. The price tag was around $30,000 US.
Of course, given that the competition in this space is Unicenter TNG and Tivoli TME 10 (which cost much more to purchase and deploy), I can see where some people would say that isn't a lot of money. What they fail to realize is that a skilled group of admins can design and implement similar functionality for practically nothing (yes, nothing, you're going to pay their salaries whether they implement SMS or not). Given that SMS doesn't scale to 5000+ nodes like TNG and TME do is something else to consider.
The bottom line is:
You pay extra
You still have to pay admin salaries
You're locked in to MS when you are done
SMS doesn't do heterogeneity at all
It doesn't scale
Your support comes from MS (shudder)
All you really care about is software distribution anyway - you can do that yourself with a little planning
I would submit that, given the awesome array of tools available to the typical UNIX/Linux admin, purchasing something like SMS is a waste of time and money.
... is in the Linux kernel, and has been for some time. It's the EQL driver - this is used to support serial line load balancing. What you have is balancing across 16 GSM links.
The catch is the other end has to support your setup - either with a Linux box with 16 inputs, or with something like Livingston Portmaster 2e (as taken from the kernel help file for the driver). Read drivers/net/README.eql under the source tree for more details.
Slashdot Mirror
I though people had their troll detectors running while reading this site. Silly me ;-).
Next they'll be telling us it needs to be done to Protect The Children. Oh wait, they've already done that :-P.
I hope the knuckle draggers over at the NSA and the FBI get absolutely swamped with people using free encryption software. In fact, I hope they choke on it.
If it's a desktop/server, it gets a static address since those machines do not leave their physical location. If it's a laptop, it gets DHCP. If it's a router/gateway/firewall/etc., it gets statics (don't even get me started on the security implications involved in running your router plant with DHCP/BOOTP - it's more trouble than it's worth, believe me). Stick your plant behind a translating firewall setup of some kind and don't wash your internal network laundry in public.
As I said, no silver bullets, YMMV, past history is no guarantee of future performance, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it, etc.
Anyone in the house have a pocket knife?
Yet, we see in the NYT article that even the systems that reside on the Secret / Most Secret "air gap" networks are running MS software. WHY IN THE HELL ARE THEY DOING THAT?!?!? These people are supposed to know better, but they do it anyway. More than likely they were "ordered" to do it by someone who doesn't know any better, and doesn't have the common sense to trust the people that were hired because they know better.
Running MS software within a designated secure environment should result in charges of high treason.
I've worked with AIX off and on since 1991. I remember the 3.1.5 debacle. Believe me, AIX can't point fingers at anyone without having three pointing back at itself. I remember the joys of ODM corruption, I remember the text config files (there for backward compatibility) that did not reflect the true (odm) config of the system, I remember when they took away the ability for an admin to edit the ODM database directly so that you could fix the screwups caused by some of the install and system config utilities, I remember creeping JFS corruption, LVM management utils that would allow you to shoot yourself in the foot...
Geez, AIX - why did you get me started? The only thing that would make me rant more are my years with the ultimate "Crappix" - SCO EunuchsWare. I will *never* look back. The only thing that could compete with it on the Crappix scale was HP/UX 8.x (and you thought 9.x was bad... boy, have I got some stories for you).
Christ, somebody get me to alt.sysadmin.recovery before I go nuts and piss on the mains...
I don't recall any utilities being available under Linux to assign processor affinity to a PID etc. while utilizing SMP support. Does such a beast exist? If so, great! If not, that may be something nifty to have as a feature...
Why bring up Linux, when it wasn't even part of the test (c'mon, why troll why)?
Why are Macheads the most technically illiterate piles of dog feces I've ever had the displeasure to deal with? (heh, my turn to troll now)
Where are the complete system specs? Where are the cost figures for the tested systems? Where's the science???
Otherwise, a well-written article. Too bad we couldn't see the numbers on the SMB tests - I suppose you have to have permission from Microsoft in order to do that :-(.
What a strange quote. I'm visualizing playing tic-tac-toe with a big hairy computer named Vinny in order to prevent nuclear holocaust.
Weird. I need another beer.
Great, that means I paid twice for all this NT that eats up all my time. Uhhh...
What do you call SAP R/3, bonehead? Don't people at Compaq know how to read the friggin' news?
So let's see... I can get SAP R/3, plus Oracle for the back end. I can get quad processor systems, 1GB+ RAM configurations, terabytes of RAID storage, tape jukeboxes, etc.
Looks like enterprise computing to me. But then, what do I know, I'm just a paying customer :-P.
Try "dueling".
Actually, Cray invented all of this, but hey, why nitpick :-P.
SGI's ccNUMA white paper can be found here
That would be all well and good, if we were actually discussing a RISC architecture. But we aren't - we're discussing VLIW.
With the i960 and crew, Intel has all the RISC expertise that they ever wanted (or needed). Finding someone who can write compilers and tools for VLIW is a horse of a different color, however. There isn't much experience in the industry when dealing with VLIW; not only that, coding for RISC isn't going to help you with this type of architecture. Hence, the hair-pulling and delays from the compiler/tools group. This isn't a problem you throw money at to make it go away faster - it's a first run, and everyone on the team is learning as they go.
If that doesn't convince you, keep in mind that Intel is partnered with a company that has deep experience with RISC architectures (HP). If HP and Intel together are having a rough time of it, I would submit that this can't be an easy design to work with - especially given that no one has done it before.
From this angle, it looks like a big tits-up to me... maybe he should stop doing so many 'favors' for us :-P.
How about, "You favorite horse, one you raised from birth, is being sold by your father to be used as glue. Would you drive out to the badlands in the middle of the night and set it free to run with the wild horses, never to see it again, or would you let your father sell it?".
jwz raised the horse, put a bullet in it, then bitched that it was going to end up as glue. Whatever. The guy isn't into OS, he isn't into money, he's into jwz and jwz alone. So what if a few bridges get burnt on the way? We'll always have jwz.
Of course, given that the competition in this space is Unicenter TNG and Tivoli TME 10 (which cost much more to purchase and deploy), I can see where some people would say that isn't a lot of money. What they fail to realize is that a skilled group of admins can design and implement similar functionality for practically nothing (yes, nothing, you're going to pay their salaries whether they implement SMS or not). Given that SMS doesn't scale to 5000+ nodes like TNG and TME do is something else to consider.
The bottom line is:
I would submit that, given the awesome array of tools available to the typical UNIX/Linux admin, purchasing something like SMS is a waste of time and money.
The catch is the other end has to support your setup - either with a Linux box with 16 inputs, or with something like Livingston Portmaster 2e (as taken from the kernel help file for the driver). Read drivers/net/README.eql under the source tree for more details.
Sucks to be you.
Now, people with logins...