* AIX often takes >30 minutes to boot on older hardware.
What are you using? I have a couple of C-10's in the lab that have some fairly intense applications running by default, and I can still re-boot them in approximately 5 minutes.
* Smit and the ODM database are not pluses for AIX. They create frustration and configuration problems when smit doesn't work right.
Well, if you don't like smit, you don't have to use it. It is only a front-end to the command line. Unfortunately, the more advanced features have very obscure and complex commands chained together, and it is much simpler to use smit.
As for the ODM, it can be a pain. In some ways, flat files are easier to work with. But once you understand how the ODM works, it is not difficult to write some perl scripts to parse the ODM and update it as needed.
I agree with much of what you have said. I suspect that IBM will eventually fork their own Linux kernel that is specially tuned to run on IBM hardware. I think when the time is right, they will do this and it will sell.
Uh huh. The registry concept works oh so well for Microsoft.
Dude, the only thing that works well for micro$oft is the reset button. I have had this jobe for more than three years, and we have managed between 50 and 70 AIX servers running 24x7 and the availability on those servers is >99.9%. This is hardly the windows registry. Although I have heard rumours that the ODM is where microsoft got the idea in the first place...
How is having configuration information in the ODM any better than keeping it plaintext files? At best, it seems like it would be as reliable but more difficult to manipulate.
Many people have a love/hate relationship with AIX and the ODM can be a problem to manage.
The previous postings did not explain the ODM really well. The ODM contains routes, settings, drivers for the hardware present on the system, etc. Retrieving information from the ODM is generally a faster process than reading a flat file. Furthermore, it is more complicated to alter/edit the ODM than it is to vi a file, protecting the integrity of the information.
Re:$ is made from support contracts!
on
IBM Wants Linux
·
· Score: 1
In my opinion, IBM can support Linux as successfully as supporting AIX because of how open it is
But the open-ness of Linux is part of the problem. From a hardware perspective, RS/6000 is closed. All the hardware comes from IBM. AIX only needs to have drivers for a relatively small set of peripherals. OTOH Linux has to have drivers for all sorts of peripherals from many different vendors. I suspect that AIX development and support is less costly as a result.
IBM could also leverage the rest of the world's contributions to Linux instead of doing it all themselves!
I definitely see where you are coming from, but from what I understand about the relationship between IBM and it's customers, it would be an easier sell if they could get IBM Linux. Red Hat/Mandrake/SuSE/Debian are all cool in their own right, but they do not have an IBM label...
well, will those quite familiar with aix please enlighten us with what linux could be missing? it's got xfs, lvm, ppc support. and that's about the end of what i know aix and linux now share.
Well, as a SysAdmin who manages 50 AIX servers and 20 Solaris servers I can try to offer some info.
As has been written in a couple of posts already, AIX is designed to run on enterprise-level hardware. The bonus is that since the OS and hardware all come from IBM, there is a single point of contact for those problems. There are some really cool things that separate AIX from other UNIX's:
* Most of the critical OS functions can be controlled via the SMIT interface.
* Unlike other flavours of UNIX, AIX does not use flat files to define parameters for daemons. AIX has all the relevant information stored in an internal database (The ODM).
* AIX ships with a journaled file system and file systems can be grown on the fly.
* AIX gives way more control over disk management than other flavours of UNIX. It is easy to implement the various type sof RAID. AIX also lets you control where certain files can be physically located on your disk, and during off-peak hours the system can move files around to re-organize the disks.
* It is trivial to create a complete image of the system on a bootable tape, so disaster recovery is a snap.
There are some downsides to AIX:
* AIX takes >5 minutes to boot.
* If the ODM gets corrupted, your system can be toast.
* Sometimes it is necessary to modify the ODM directly, and this can be a bit risky (see above)
* Third-party support for AIX is sketchy. It is better to use IBM applications where possible.
* IBM hardware is more expensive than the alternatives. You pay a premium for Big Blue.
Of the downsides, the last is the most significant. Not many non-IBM vendors write applications for it, and even if they do, Solaris, and Linux get more attention.
Sorry for sounding like a commercial for IBM, but I like AIX. It does some things very well, and is quite stable. My team manages a lot of mission-critical servers and AIX is nice to work with. We have talked briefly about Linux, the perception is that Linux is not yet ready for enterprise-class workload.
$ is made from support contracts!
on
IBM Wants Linux
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
It also makes sense for IBM from a financial perspective. Instead of having a building full of programmers/managers and other overhead that eats up corporate profits just to support AIX, why not outsource that dependency to the open-source users of the world. Big blue then reduces their expenses, increases their income and the open-source community gets a juggernaut pulling for their team. A win-win situation if I've ever heard one.
Do you honestly think that if IBM were to ditch AIX for linux that this would happen? The value of running IBM hardware and software is that IBM is there to fix it right away. Find a bug in AIX? IBM gets on it in a timely fashion. If anything, I would wager that IBM will fork their own version of Linux if they decide to forgo AIX. Large corporations like the track history and reputation of IBM and are frightened by the lack of the same for Linux. IMHO that seems to be what stops large-scale deployment of Linux in the corporate world - who is going to take ownership of this problem and provide us with patches?
BTW - from what I have seen, (as an IBM'er) the revenue and profits come from annual support and maintenance contracts, not from hardware and software sales per se.
The creation of free AI is the one true threat to the survival of humanity (or will be once we get a few viable colonies off-planet); nothing else would hunt people into remote areas or through space. No preventative measure is too extreme.
You name would not happen to be Sarah Connor, would it?
This is a social problem, not a technical problem, and it requires a social solution.
While I agree that there is a social element to this problem, I think that there is definitely a technical solution: firewalls. Personally, I would never attach a computer to the internet unless it was a firewall, or was protected by a firewall. It does not have to be a hardware solution (although that is preferable, and those black-box firewall devices are ideal for home use), PCs can run personal firewall code as well.
Being behind a firewall is no guarantee that you won't get 0wned, and is no substitute for secure-by-default operating systems, but it is an important part of securing your system.
AOL now realizes it is becoming a monopoly in its own right, so they don't need to advertise anymore, so they don't need a marketing department, so they're laying all those guys off. Makes sense to me.
It is more likely to be the case that they are firing their technical staff. Sales and marketing generate revenue, everyone else is overhead...
Obviously not. But their stock price probably went up when news of the layoffs hit the streets.
Yes, but how much difference?
on
ATi Radeon 8500
·
· Score: 1
Also, ATI... please get *proper* linux drivers if you want to improve your market share....
I will probably get flamed mentioning this - but - how many more of these cards is ATI likely to sell if they have robust linux drivers than if they do not?
What I'd really like to see is a goal-free 3D world like the Snowcrash Metaverse, but it will take games to get there;)
Maybe it will take games to get there, but it will probably take some time. While you are waiting, perhaps you could try this
game instead?
Re:Stop addressing Code Red
on
Code Red III
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· Score: 1
Microsoft (or any other software company) should be responsible for selling defective products
Read the EULA. Their products are sold without any sort of warranty (real or implied) and by clicking I accept the user agrees not to hold micro$oft liable for anything.
User Friendly gets bashed for being too pro-geek (or whatever), which may or may not be a valid criticism.
Personally, I think that User Friendly rocks! AFAIK it is the only comic book that I know of published by O'Reilly
But Sluggy is just getting forgotten? What gives?
I have read Sluggy, and it is not very consistent. Sometimes it is hilarious, other times it was a total waste of bandwidth. But that's just my opinion.
how can MS promote it's whole.NET/Passport philosophy if the very same services are proven to be insecure
Because the average (L)user has only had experiences with crappy micro$oft offerings. This is typical of their experiences. And, quite frankly, there are not many alternatives out there for the typical user. Linux is not ready for the corporate desktop or the average home user - yet.
For those of us who run UNIX or Linux, we know that systems should not crash or BSOD daily. Hey, I have some AIX-based mail servers that have not been re-booted in 5 months, and the last time they were down was because I needed to add more disk. If the average home user can go a day or so between crashes, they are satisfied and happy with that.
That is the market that micro$oft sells to. The (L)users and pointy-haired bosses of the world are their audience. Not the informed techies. Their target audience completely accepts that the evil hackers are to blame.
And why hasnt MS been made accountable at all?
Because their PR firms do an amazing job of making sure that a micro$oft-friendly version of the problem gets reported. There are not many reporters out there who have the technical know-how to be able to see through the obfuscation. Unfortunately, most of the (L)users get their technical news from ZDNET and other micro$oft-friendly sites.
are people truly that blind to the insecurities and downfalls of MS software?
Most people probably are. From what I have seen, the people who recognize the risks of using micro$oft products on critical systems run UNIX variants.
For example, ISP's may want to reject incoming port 80 connections. becuase of the Code Red worm. Is this action so legally clear cut?
Absolutely, IMHO. The ISPs own the network. They are entitled to run it as they see fit. Nobody is obligated to purchase their services after all.
What about the home user who needs to run a server now?
How many home users actually need to run a server? Some might want to, but few really need to. If that is a requirement, then the solution is to purchase a dedicated line.
Napster was NOT fair use. It was plain and simple theft of copyrighted material. (Duh!)
If only downloaded MP3s from which were ripped from CD's I had already purchased, that would be (IMHO) fair use. If I downloaded MP3s from CD's I have not purchased, that would be theft.
Slashdot Mirror
* AIX often takes >30 minutes to boot on older hardware.
What are you using? I have a couple of C-10's in the lab that have some fairly intense applications running by default, and I can still re-boot them in approximately 5 minutes.
* Smit and the ODM database are not pluses for AIX. They create frustration and configuration problems when smit doesn't work right.
Well, if you don't like smit, you don't have to use it. It is only a front-end to the command line. Unfortunately, the more advanced features have very obscure and complex commands chained together, and it is much simpler to use smit.
As for the ODM, it can be a pain. In some ways, flat files are easier to work with. But once you understand how the ODM works, it is not difficult to write some perl scripts to parse the ODM and update it as needed.
I agree with much of what you have said. I suspect that IBM will eventually fork their own Linux kernel that is specially tuned to run on IBM hardware. I think when the time is right, they will do this and it will sell.
Uh huh. The registry concept works oh so well for Microsoft.
Dude, the only thing that works well for micro$oft is the reset button. I have had this jobe for more than three years, and we have managed between 50 and 70 AIX servers running 24x7 and the availability on those servers is >99.9%. This is hardly the windows registry. Although I have heard rumours that the ODM is where microsoft got the idea in the first place...
How is having configuration information in the ODM any better than keeping it plaintext files? At best, it seems like it would be as reliable but more difficult to manipulate.
Many people have a love/hate relationship with AIX and the ODM can be a problem to manage.
The previous postings did not explain the ODM really well. The ODM contains routes, settings, drivers for the hardware present on the system, etc. Retrieving information from the ODM is generally a faster process than reading a flat file. Furthermore, it is more complicated to alter/edit the ODM than it is to vi a file, protecting the integrity of the information.
In my opinion, IBM can support Linux as successfully as supporting AIX because of how open it is
But the open-ness of Linux is part of the problem. From a hardware perspective, RS/6000 is closed. All the hardware comes from IBM. AIX only needs to have drivers for a relatively small set of peripherals. OTOH Linux has to have drivers for all sorts of peripherals from many different vendors. I suspect that AIX development and support is less costly as a result.
IBM could also leverage the rest of the world's contributions to Linux instead of doing it all themselves!
I definitely see where you are coming from, but from what I understand about the relationship between IBM and it's customers, it would be an easier sell if they could get IBM Linux. Red Hat/Mandrake/SuSE/Debian are all cool in their own right, but they do not have an IBM label...
well, will those quite familiar with aix please enlighten us with what linux could be missing? it's got xfs, lvm, ppc support. and that's about the end of what i know aix and linux now share.
Well, as a SysAdmin who manages 50 AIX servers and 20 Solaris servers I can try to offer some info.
As has been written in a couple of posts already, AIX is designed to run on enterprise-level hardware. The bonus is that since the OS and hardware all come from IBM, there is a single point of contact for those problems. There are some really cool things that separate AIX from other UNIX's:
* Most of the critical OS functions can be controlled via the SMIT interface.
* Unlike other flavours of UNIX, AIX does not use flat files to define parameters for daemons. AIX has all the relevant information stored in an internal database (The ODM).
* AIX ships with a journaled file system and file systems can be grown on the fly.
* AIX gives way more control over disk management than other flavours of UNIX. It is easy to implement the various type sof RAID. AIX also lets you control where certain files can be physically located on your disk, and during off-peak hours the system can move files around to re-organize the disks.
* It is trivial to create a complete image of the system on a bootable tape, so disaster recovery is a snap.
There are some downsides to AIX:
* AIX takes >5 minutes to boot.
* If the ODM gets corrupted, your system can be toast.
* Sometimes it is necessary to modify the ODM directly, and this can be a bit risky (see above)
* Third-party support for AIX is sketchy. It is better to use IBM applications where possible.
* IBM hardware is more expensive than the alternatives. You pay a premium for Big Blue.
Of the downsides, the last is the most significant. Not many non-IBM vendors write applications for it, and even if they do, Solaris, and Linux get more attention.
Sorry for sounding like a commercial for IBM, but I like AIX. It does some things very well, and is quite stable. My team manages a lot of mission-critical servers and AIX is nice to work with. We have talked briefly about Linux, the perception is that Linux is not yet ready for enterprise-class workload.
It also makes sense for IBM from a financial perspective. Instead of having a building full of programmers/managers and other overhead that eats up corporate profits just to support AIX, why not outsource that dependency to the open-source users of the world. Big blue then reduces their expenses, increases their income and the open-source community gets a juggernaut pulling for their team. A win-win situation if I've ever heard one.
Do you honestly think that if IBM were to ditch AIX for linux that this would happen? The value of running IBM hardware and software is that IBM is there to fix it right away. Find a bug in AIX? IBM gets on it in a timely fashion. If anything, I would wager that IBM will fork their own version of Linux if they decide to forgo AIX. Large corporations like the track history and reputation of IBM and are frightened by the lack of the same for Linux. IMHO that seems to be what stops large-scale deployment of Linux in the corporate world - who is going to take ownership of this problem and provide us with patches?
BTW - from what I have seen, (as an IBM'er) the revenue and profits come from annual support and maintenance contracts, not from hardware and software sales per se.
The creation of free AI is the one true threat to the survival of humanity (or will be once we get a few viable colonies off-planet); nothing else would hunt people into remote areas or through space. No preventative measure is too extreme.
You name would not happen to be Sarah Connor, would it?
Exactly when did the Soviets destroy the West? I must have missed that.
I guess all their preparations were for nothing...
This is a social problem, not a technical problem, and it requires a social solution.
While I agree that there is a social element to this problem, I think that there is definitely a technical solution: firewalls.
Personally, I would never attach a computer to the internet unless it was a firewall, or was protected by a firewall. It does not have to be a hardware solution (although that is preferable, and those black-box firewall devices are ideal for home use), PCs can run personal firewall code as well.
Being behind a firewall is no guarantee that you won't get 0wned, and is no substitute for secure-by-default operating systems, but it is an important part of securing your system.
Right now there aren't any non-proof-of-concept Linux viruses.
I can just see it:
Hi! How are you?
I send you this perl script that must be run as root in order to have your advice
See you later. Thanks
I'm sure other distros do this, but Mandrake is the only one I've ever installed, likewise to other unix-based OSs
/. links, the site can be found at http://www.openbsd.org)
If you are interested in an OS that is secure by default, check out OpenBSD.
(For those of you who fear
Compare the number of security advisories that affect OpenBSD versus the number that affect m$ products, and the value of a secure OS is obvious.
AOL now realizes it is becoming a monopoly in its own right, so they don't need to advertise anymore, so they don't need a marketing department, so they're laying all those guys off. Makes sense to me.
It is more likely to be the case that they are firing their technical staff. Sales and marketing generate revenue, everyone else is overhead...
Does getting rid of workers increase *revenue*?
Obviously not. But their stock price probably went up when news of the layoffs hit the streets.
Also, ATI... please get *proper* linux drivers if you want to improve your market share....
I will probably get flamed mentioning this - but - how many more of these cards is ATI likely to sell if they have robust linux drivers than if they do not?
Is the linux power-gamer market that significant?
What I'd really like to see is a goal-free 3D world like the Snowcrash Metaverse, but it will take games to get there ;)
Maybe it will take games to get there, but it will probably take some time. While you are waiting, perhaps you could try this game instead?
Microsoft (or any other software company) should be responsible for selling defective products
Read the EULA. Their products are sold without any sort of warranty (real or implied) and by clicking I accept the user agrees not to hold micro$oft liable for anything.
one of the greatest sci-fi films EVER
Just imagine how cool The Matrix would have been if they had cast a real actor for the film instead of Keannu Reeves.
The guy has all the depth of a puddle in the middle of a heat-wave.
Every movie out these days has "Matrix-like" moves and it is just getting old.
I thought that those "matrix-like" moves were ripped-off from Hong Kong films and had been used there for some time. The matrix was not the first.
Can anyone confirm/deny that?
User Friendly gets bashed for being too pro-geek (or whatever), which may or may not be a valid criticism.
Personally, I think that User Friendly rocks! AFAIK it is the only comic book that I know of published by O'Reilly
But Sluggy is just getting forgotten? What gives?
I have read Sluggy, and it is not very consistent. Sometimes it is hilarious, other times it was a total waste of bandwidth. But that's just my opinion.
how can MS promote it's whole .NET/Passport philosophy if the very same services are proven to be insecure
Because the average (L)user has only had experiences with crappy micro$oft offerings. This is typical of their experiences. And, quite frankly, there are not many alternatives out there for the typical user. Linux is not ready for the corporate desktop or the average home user - yet.
For those of us who run UNIX or Linux, we know that systems should not crash or BSOD daily. Hey, I have some AIX-based mail servers that have not been re-booted in 5 months, and the last time they were down was because I needed to add more disk. If the average home user can go a day or so between crashes, they are satisfied and happy with that.
That is the market that micro$oft sells to. The (L)users and pointy-haired bosses of the world are their audience. Not the informed techies. Their target audience completely accepts that the evil hackers are to blame.
And why hasnt MS been made accountable at all?
Because their PR firms do an amazing job of making sure that a micro$oft-friendly version of the problem gets reported. There are not many reporters out there who have the technical know-how to be able to see through the obfuscation. Unfortunately, most of the (L)users get their technical news from ZDNET and other micro$oft-friendly sites.
are people truly that blind to the insecurities and downfalls of MS software?
Most people probably are. From what I have seen, the people who recognize the risks of using micro$oft products on critical systems run UNIX variants.
For example, ISP's may want to reject incoming port 80 connections. becuase of the Code Red worm. Is this action so legally clear cut?
Absolutely, IMHO. The ISPs own the network. They are entitled to run it as they see fit. Nobody is obligated to purchase their services after all.
What about the home user who needs to run a server now?
How many home users actually need to run a server? Some might want to, but few really need to. If that is a requirement, then the solution is to purchase a dedicated line.
They can't take away our freedom to innovate.
Bill Gates could not have said it any better.
Napster was NOT fair use. It was plain and simple theft of copyrighted material. (Duh!)
If only downloaded MP3s from which were ripped from CD's I had already purchased, that would be (IMHO) fair use. If I downloaded MP3s from CD's I have not purchased, that would be theft.
So will all the names being used be apologzing?
He promised not to do that sort of thing anymore. Would an editor lie?
More to the point, will he have the nads to acknowledge the aliases he used?
1. He got caught
2. People get upset
3. He gave a semi-apology
4. We all continue on with life as if nothing had happened.
Well, that is the strategy Bill Clinton used several times, and it worked out pretty good for him.