I'd disagree with your assertion that large companies are rarely going to Sun. The company I work for is a software supplier and Sun is selling extremely well. Their offerings were starting to look tired and aged, but the new[ish] Sun Fire range is very good, especially with the lowend V240. Combined with a D2 disk array, you have a competatively priced server that stands up well against Wintel hardware running Windows 2000.
Solaris is very mature, and has several advantages over Linux (simple example: built in filesystem backup/restore that won't corrupt your data).
We're also supporting Linux, and like it a lot, but it's not as mature as Solaris on SPARC and won't be for some time.
I'm surprised at the level of ignorance shown in some of these posts. Deploying Linux in the enterprise is different from installing it on your own machine. The company I work for has several Linux installs including 6.2, 7.2, 7.3 and 8.0. The rapid release cycle just doesn't work for us. We have enough things to do (such as running a business) to keep updating multiple servers to the latest release.
The Red Hat Advanced Server product is just what we want. It is stable, well tested and has a long support life. The cost goes towards an annual support contract which removes the fear that Linux has no backup when there's problems. Knowing that pay for, commercial software (such as Oracle) and specific hardware models are certified for this platform makes life very easy. You need to think how some of our customers who are used to Sun or Microsoft feel about using a "toy" operating system. To them, the financial costs are not the issue, having a mature, stable and supported platform on which to run their applications is all that counts.
We've standardised on Red Hat Advanced Server ES for our Linux customers, but we're still using 8.0 internally. We have enough UNIX experience to manage our own boxes, but for customers, Advanced Server is perfect.
Red Hat may not be the most hardcore distribution, but it is the most respected in the business world. That's why we are happy to use and recommend it.
The ORA book on Network Printing is pretty good. I'll admit that I found (and probably still find) UNIX printing a pretty arcane setup, and the differences between SysV and BSD don't make life any easier.
It's interesting to note that Sun has dropped all the printing coverage from the Solaris 8 System Administrators course (it was in Solaris 7). Where I work, we do all our printing through JetDirect which takes a lot of the pain out of manually tweaking interface files.
I have been using an Iiyama 17" for the last 5 years and it is still near perfect. It cost about twice as much as a 17" today but the quality has been unsurpassed. All my recommendations to friends have been Iiyama monitors and none of them have had problems.
At work, we recently replaced all our CRTs with LCD screens and I pushed for Iiyama. Now the 15 of us in our department are running AS4314UT 17" flat screens which are stunning.
The one thing to be careful about though is that the quality of the screen is often determined by the output of the graphics chip. If you have a Compaq/HP or Dell PC with onboard graphics, you can expect to get a nasty fuzz on the screen. We drive our laptops through external displays and I recently had the opportunity to use a Toshiba Satellite Celeron with a Trident CyberBlade XP or a faster Satellite Pro P4 with Nvidia GeForce on board. The fuzz from the GeForce was terrible and I opted for the lower spec model (I am running it at 1280x1024).
So get a decent monitor, but make sure you have a high quality graphics card (at home I am still using Matrox and don't plan on changing).
If I understand correctly, the GPL doesn't force Red Hat to make the code available to everyone. They have to provide it, or make it available to people with their binaries (ie, paying customers). By including source CDs with their binary CDs, they are complying with the requirements of the GPL.
The GPL also allows any customers to distribute the source for free without restriction.
It doesn't to my knowledge, force companies to give the source to people who haven't got their binaries, and doesn't make them give the binaries away.
I'm working on pushing Linux as a viable server operating system alongside our Solaris and AIX servers and while I recognise that Red Hat are still finding their feet with regards to the enterprise, our experience so far is making a serious deployment quite difficult.
The reason is that our first systems for web usage used Red Hat 7.3, some of which we have updated to 8.0. Along the way, Red Hat announced that these systems would not have long term support, and servers should be using Advanced Server (at significantly more cost, but ultimately not a problem, just a bit of a shock for the PHB who thought that Linux was "free" (as in cost)). So we bought a copy of AS to do our testing on. Now we are faced with an upgrade and our test cycle is still at its initial stage.
Now AS is being replaced by ES and AS is the new high spec version. I am in favour of these more business focused ideas as I think it will help Linux adoption, but all these changes are hurting us trying to push the server product as being rarely changing (comparable with Solaris etc).
Yeah, I know we can still support our older systems, blah, blah, blah, but if you think that's how the business world works (and wants to work), you're mistaken.
I've been doing some Safari reading since the Slashdot review a couple of weeks ago, and one book I'm reading is Solaris Internals: Core Kernel Components. One very interesting feature of Solaris is the concept of "scheduler classes". The Solaris kernel is fully pre-emptive and multithreaded. Threads are executed as one of four classes:
Timeshare scheduling class (the default) attempts to evenly share process time across threads.
Interactive class is used for improving performance with windowing applications.
System class is used by the kernel.
Real Time class is used for fixed priority, fixed quantum scheduling.
Now I'm no kernel hacker and couldn't explain the hardcore details if pressed, but this sounds pretty clever and Solaris is a very neat operating system. These scheduler classes are loaded as modules which strongly suggests that they can be plugged in and replaced if necessary.
In 2.4 there were patches that provided realtime and low latency scheduling for the kernel. The new O(1) scheduler is getting positive vibes from the developers from what I've read, but does it cover these bases or are patches still required? In other words, does Linux now scale from realtime embedded to low latency desktop to [whatever NUMA systems require]?
It's been a long time...
on
Fresco M1 Released
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I have watched the Berlin project for several years, remembering the initial idea to create a graphical system written in Assembler, a change of project leaders and the decision to use CORBA.
I don't think that Fresco will replace X anytime soon, if ever, but it's an interesting technology demo that will surely influence other projects. Playing around with the Quartz technology in MacOS X has convinced me that better and more interesting ways of doing graphics are possible - the Fresco project, by using device independent rendering (OpenGL / Postscript) and an ORB merges some of the advantages of X and DPS / Display PDF.
Although it's nice to think that Nvidia are porting their drivers to FreeBSD because they are keen on supporting open solutions, the number of users is [relatively] tiny, and I don't find it particularly convincing.
What is more interesting is the possibility that Nvidia are contracted to develop drivers for a company that is developing a product that will run a BSD variant. What better way for Nvidia to test their new drivers than allow a public beta.
Pure speculation though, we'll have to wait to see whether anything comes of this.
128MB of memory is your problem. A 333Mhz chip will be fast enough, but I'm guessing you're swapping. Memory is cheap - get another 128MB and you should see much better performance.
Does this (and display postscript in the X server) present a security risk? As I understand it, X under Linux runs SUID, enabling stuff like DRI to access the hardware directly. Would it be possible for someone to write malicious code that ran in this environment as root?
I'm pleased to see the debate being postponed because it will give my MP enough time to read my letter and understand it (I hope). This is what I sent:
Wednesday 12 June 2002
Dear Mr David Drew,
I am writing to you because I am very disturbed about the proposed 'Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Communications Data: Additional Public Authorities) Order 2002' which will grant additional Government departments, Local authorities, the NHS and other agencies access to my personal data, including the source and destination of emails sent to and from myself, logs of the websites that I visit, and details of my mobile phone usage (including times and dates of calls, and the locations where calls were made).
While I understand the need to protect national security and prevent crime, I am becoming increasingly unhappy about the infringements of civil liberties (including the right to privacy) that the government is taking under the guise of 'preventing terrorism'. These are issues that are rightly handled by the police and security services and not the organisations mentioned above.
Although Ministers are claiming that there will be safeguards put in place to protect the public from any abuse, I have yet to see anything convincing that explains why Government should have the right to invade my (and your) privacy in the first place, when the police already have those powers.
As a supporter of the Labour party in the last two General Elections, I have become increasingly concerned that the opinions of the electorate are being ignored, and that issues such as this that affect the public at large are being pushed though Parliment due to the massive majority that the government currently has.
I ask that as my elected representative, you will oppose these proposals.
Yours sincerely.
etc etc.
IF YOU ARE IN THE UK, YOU HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS!!!!!!! (IMHO)
I've no idea about the cost issue, but as a UNIX geek, the more versions of UNIX the better. I like the subtle differences and would hate it if there were only a single version.
Knowing that (as an example) AIX has a pretty self tuning kernel, that Solaris has a modular kernel, and that UnixWare needs a recompile (relink) for any minor changes forces the admin to think about the operating system instead of just drooling on the keyboard.
The biggest differences are still SysV vs BSD. Understanding those is vital in a mixed OS environment. Beyond that, there are usually differences in disk layout (and filesystems), but they just add to the rich diversity that is my favourite OS.
At my work, we are big users of Solaris, but because we develop software for multiple platforms, I've also had exposure to AIX, UnixWare, Sequent Dynix/PTS, HP-UX and DRS/NX. These days we've dropped Dynix/PTS (EOL anyway I think), HP-UX (too expensive for our customers), and DRS/NX (dead?) but we're looking to port to OpenUnix 8 and Red Hat Linux, so things are still pretty mixed. I just think it's a shame that I don't get to work with HP-UX and that Unixware is dying (yes - I like it!).
We also port to NT/2000, which is good to compare - it's a nightmare to work with when used to UNIX.
Regretably that has been moderated as funny - it should be insightful. That's my experience as well (I've not had 10 years IT experience, but the people I work with on the whole have little idea how UNIX really works - neither do I, but I'm determined to learn).
We used to store our root passwords on printouts that the sysadmins kept in their top drawer - obviously not secure.
The solution I came up with was to build a dedicated Linux password server. Each user has a login and is a member of certain UNIX groups. Their "shell" is a custom C program that when the user logs in, prompts for a machine and username combination. This input is only displayed as asterisks (so people looking over the shoulder won't know what machine the user is looking up). The program then tries to read a text file for that machine and user. If the permissions are such that the logged in user is a member of the right group, then the contents are displayed for 5 seconds and then the screen is blanked.
This allows us to restrict who has access to what machines. The password server is pretty secure with no unnecessary daemon processes running, root cannot login through telnet (you need to login using a second account to get a prompt to su), there is a bios password and lilo password and the box is physically secure in the server room.
In the case of fatality, a paper backup is stored in a secured envelope and kept locked away with human resources who have permission to give it to a select few only (managing director, director of operations and IT managers).
It's working well for us and has been live for about three months now.
Such companies do exist - we use www.messagelabs.com and point our domain's MX records to it and relay it out to them. This gives us virus filtering in both incoming and outgoing mail. When a virus is caught, the postmaster (or whoever we specify) is sent an email explaining what happened.
It works very well and adds an extra level of security.
I'm a standard ($60) club member and I'm not at all bothered that Mandrake are not providing StarOffice 6.0 for free. I'm a big fan of the Mandrake distribution, but I'm somewhat concerned about the future of Mandrakesoft - hence my joining the club.
Personally, I'd like to see Mandrakesoft stop offering free ISOs of their distribution to non-members (yeah, I know the GPL insists the source must be available, and it should be, but Mandrakesoft shouldn't make it easy for people to take and not give back).
Secondly, I wish they would give more incentives to join the club, such as making the popular Mandrakeforum site club members only.
I'm sure there are a lot of people running Mandrake that haven't paid for it and haven't joined the club. Legally, there is nothing wrong with that, but if the distribution is to survive, then perhaps some incentives may encourage people to part with their money.
Maybe those poor folks in Afghanistan should have thougt about all these bad things Americans might do to their country before they helped Bin Laden knock over our little sky scrapers.
I'm willing to bet that most of the civilian casualties in Afghanistan killed by US military action had nothing to do with Bin Laden.
How I wish I had moderation points! This is the most insightful post I've read for weeks. Someone please moderate the parent up.
The problem is the US is too big and powerful, and it knows it. Add in the mix the fact that a lot of George W Bush's advisors are "Cold War Enthusiasts" and you can understand statements like these.
Very sad, very worrying, and if the USA is the best example of a free loving democratic nation, then God help us all.
Slashdot Mirror
The Sun website is inconsistent:
Look here
I'd disagree with your assertion that large companies are rarely going to Sun. The company I work for is a software supplier and Sun is selling extremely well. Their offerings were starting to look tired and aged, but the new[ish] Sun Fire range is very good, especially with the lowend V240. Combined with a D2 disk array, you have a competatively priced server that stands up well against Wintel hardware running Windows 2000.
Solaris is very mature, and has several advantages over Linux (simple example: built in filesystem backup/restore that won't corrupt your data).
We're also supporting Linux, and like it a lot, but it's not as mature as Solaris on SPARC and won't be for some time.
I'm surprised at the level of ignorance shown in some of these posts. Deploying Linux in the enterprise is different from installing it on your own machine. The company I work for has several Linux installs including 6.2, 7.2, 7.3 and 8.0. The rapid release cycle just doesn't work for us. We have enough things to do (such as running a business) to keep updating multiple servers to the latest release.
The Red Hat Advanced Server product is just what we want. It is stable, well tested and has a long support life. The cost goes towards an annual support contract which removes the fear that Linux has no backup when there's problems. Knowing that pay for, commercial software (such as Oracle) and specific hardware models are certified for this platform makes life very easy. You need to think how some of our customers who are used to Sun or Microsoft feel about using a "toy" operating system. To them, the financial costs are not the issue, having a mature, stable and supported platform on which to run their applications is all that counts.
We've standardised on Red Hat Advanced Server ES for our Linux customers, but we're still using 8.0 internally. We have enough UNIX experience to manage our own boxes, but for customers, Advanced Server is perfect.
Red Hat may not be the most hardcore distribution, but it is the most respected in the business world. That's why we are happy to use and recommend it.
The ORA book on Network Printing is pretty good. I'll admit that I found (and probably still find) UNIX printing a pretty arcane setup, and the differences between SysV and BSD don't make life any easier.
It's interesting to note that Sun has dropped all the printing coverage from the Solaris 8 System Administrators course (it was in Solaris 7). Where I work, we do all our printing through JetDirect which takes a lot of the pain out of manually tweaking interface files.
I have been using an Iiyama 17" for the last 5 years and it is still near perfect. It cost about twice as much as a 17" today but the quality has been unsurpassed. All my recommendations to friends have been Iiyama monitors and none of them have had problems.
At work, we recently replaced all our CRTs with LCD screens and I pushed for Iiyama. Now the 15 of us in our department are running AS4314UT 17" flat screens which are stunning.
The one thing to be careful about though is that the quality of the screen is often determined by the output of the graphics chip. If you have a Compaq/HP or Dell PC with onboard graphics, you can expect to get a nasty fuzz on the screen. We drive our laptops through external displays and I recently had the opportunity to use a Toshiba Satellite Celeron with a Trident CyberBlade XP or a faster Satellite Pro P4 with Nvidia GeForce on board. The fuzz from the GeForce was terrible and I opted for the lower spec model (I am running it at 1280x1024).
So get a decent monitor, but make sure you have a high quality graphics card (at home I am still using Matrox and don't plan on changing).
My login description simply says "Technomage".
If I understand correctly, the GPL doesn't force Red Hat to make the code available to everyone. They have to provide it, or make it available to people with their binaries (ie, paying customers). By including source CDs with their binary CDs, they are complying with the requirements of the GPL.
The GPL also allows any customers to distribute the source for free without restriction.
It doesn't to my knowledge, force companies to give the source to people who haven't got their binaries, and doesn't make them give the binaries away.
I'm working on pushing Linux as a viable server operating system alongside our Solaris and AIX servers and while I recognise that Red Hat are still finding their feet with regards to the enterprise, our experience so far is making a serious deployment quite difficult.
The reason is that our first systems for web usage used Red Hat 7.3, some of which we have updated to 8.0. Along the way, Red Hat announced that these systems would not have long term support, and servers should be using Advanced Server (at significantly more cost, but ultimately not a problem, just a bit of a shock for the PHB who thought that Linux was "free" (as in cost)). So we bought a copy of AS to do our testing on. Now we are faced with an upgrade and our test cycle is still at its initial stage.
Now AS is being replaced by ES and AS is the new high spec version. I am in favour of these more business focused ideas as I think it will help Linux adoption, but all these changes are hurting us trying to push the server product as being rarely changing (comparable with Solaris etc).
Yeah, I know we can still support our older systems, blah, blah, blah, but if you think that's how the business world works (and wants to work), you're mistaken.
I've been doing some Safari reading since the Slashdot review a couple of weeks ago, and one book I'm reading is Solaris Internals: Core Kernel Components. One very interesting feature of Solaris is the concept of "scheduler classes". The Solaris kernel is fully pre-emptive and multithreaded. Threads are executed as one of four classes:
Timeshare scheduling class (the default) attempts to evenly share process time across threads.
Interactive class is used for improving performance with windowing applications.
System class is used by the kernel.
Real Time class is used for fixed priority, fixed quantum scheduling.
Now I'm no kernel hacker and couldn't explain the hardcore details if pressed, but this sounds pretty clever and Solaris is a very neat operating system. These scheduler classes are loaded as modules which strongly suggests that they can be plugged in and replaced if necessary.
In 2.4 there were patches that provided realtime and low latency scheduling for the kernel. The new O(1) scheduler is getting positive vibes from the developers from what I've read, but does it cover these bases or are patches still required? In other words, does Linux now scale from realtime embedded to low latency desktop to [whatever NUMA systems require]?
I have watched the Berlin project for several years, remembering the initial idea to create a graphical system written in Assembler, a change of project leaders and the decision to use CORBA.
I don't think that Fresco will replace X anytime soon, if ever, but it's an interesting technology demo that will surely influence other projects. Playing around with the Quartz technology in MacOS X has convinced me that better and more interesting ways of doing graphics are possible - the Fresco project, by using device independent rendering (OpenGL / Postscript) and an ORB merges some of the advantages of X and DPS / Display PDF.
Everyone who uses Yahoo! uses FreeBSD... ...but won't make use of any 3D graphics!
I was referring to desktop use - not servers.
Although it's nice to think that Nvidia are porting their drivers to FreeBSD because they are keen on supporting open solutions, the number of users is [relatively] tiny, and I don't find it particularly convincing.
What is more interesting is the possibility that Nvidia are contracted to develop drivers for a company that is developing a product that will run a BSD variant. What better way for Nvidia to test their new drivers than allow a public beta.
Pure speculation though, we'll have to wait to see whether anything comes of this.
128MB of memory is your problem. A 333Mhz chip will be fast enough, but I'm guessing you're swapping. Memory is cheap - get another 128MB and you should see much better performance.
Does this (and display postscript in the X server) present a security risk? As I understand it, X under Linux runs SUID, enabling stuff like DRI to access the hardware directly. Would it be possible for someone to write malicious code that ran in this environment as root?
There was a time when Red Hat were seemingly pushing Linuxconf as the system admin tool. Now they have developed their own. Anyone know why?
I'm pleased to see the debate being postponed because it will give my MP enough time to read my letter and understand it (I hope). This is what I sent:
Wednesday 12 June 2002
Dear Mr David Drew,
I am writing to you because I am very disturbed about the proposed 'Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Communications Data: Additional Public Authorities) Order 2002' which will grant additional Government departments, Local authorities, the NHS and other agencies access to my personal data, including the source and destination of emails sent to and from myself, logs of the websites that I visit, and details of my mobile phone usage (including times and dates of calls, and the locations where calls were made).
While I understand the need to protect national security and prevent crime, I am becoming increasingly unhappy about the infringements of civil liberties (including the right to privacy) that the government is taking under the guise of 'preventing terrorism'. These are issues that are rightly handled by the police and security services and not the organisations mentioned above.
Although Ministers are claiming that there will be safeguards put in place to protect the public from any abuse, I have yet to see anything convincing that explains why Government should have the right to invade my (and your) privacy in the first place, when the police already have those powers.
As a supporter of the Labour party in the last two General Elections, I have become increasingly concerned that the opinions of the electorate are being ignored, and that issues such as this that affect the public at large are being pushed though Parliment due to the massive majority that the government currently has.
I ask that as my elected representative, you will oppose these proposals.
Yours sincerely.
etc etc.
IF YOU ARE IN THE UK, YOU HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS!!!!!!! (IMHO)
Knowing that (as an example) AIX has a pretty self tuning kernel, that Solaris has a modular kernel, and that UnixWare needs a recompile (relink) for any minor changes forces the admin to think about the operating system instead of just drooling on the keyboard.
The biggest differences are still SysV vs BSD. Understanding those is vital in a mixed OS environment. Beyond that, there are usually differences in disk layout (and filesystems), but they just add to the rich diversity that is my favourite OS.
At my work, we are big users of Solaris, but because we develop software for multiple platforms, I've also had exposure to AIX, UnixWare, Sequent Dynix/PTS, HP-UX and DRS/NX. These days we've dropped Dynix/PTS (EOL anyway I think), HP-UX (too expensive for our customers), and DRS/NX (dead?) but we're looking to port to OpenUnix 8 and Red Hat Linux, so things are still pretty mixed. I just think it's a shame that I don't get to work with HP-UX and that Unixware is dying (yes - I like it!).
We also port to NT/2000, which is good to compare - it's a nightmare to work with when used to UNIX.
Regretably that has been moderated as funny - it should be insightful. That's my experience as well (I've not had 10 years IT experience, but the people I work with on the whole have little idea how UNIX really works - neither do I, but I'm determined to learn).
We used to store our root passwords on printouts that the sysadmins kept in their top drawer - obviously not secure.
The solution I came up with was to build a dedicated Linux password server. Each user has a login and is a member of certain UNIX groups. Their "shell" is a custom C program that when the user logs in, prompts for a machine and username combination. This input is only displayed as asterisks (so people looking over the shoulder won't know what machine the user is looking up). The program then tries to read a text file for that machine and user. If the permissions are such that the logged in user is a member of the right group, then the contents are displayed for 5 seconds and then the screen is blanked.
This allows us to restrict who has access to what machines. The password server is pretty secure with no unnecessary daemon processes running, root cannot login through telnet (you need to login using a second account to get a prompt to su), there is a bios password and lilo password and the box is physically secure in the server room.
In the case of fatality, a paper backup is stored in a secured envelope and kept locked away with human resources who have permission to give it to a select few only (managing director, director of operations and IT managers).
It's working well for us and has been live for about three months now.
Such companies do exist - we use www.messagelabs.com and point our domain's MX records to it and relay it out to them. This gives us virus filtering in both incoming and outgoing mail. When a virus is caught, the postmaster (or whoever we specify) is sent an email explaining what happened.
It works very well and adds an extra level of security.
This sounds a bit like Cooltown which is HPs project to get everything connected. It's pretty Linux-centric too. The UK magazine has Cooltown as it's cover feature this month.
I'm a standard ($60) club member and I'm not at all bothered that Mandrake are not providing StarOffice 6.0 for free. I'm a big fan of the Mandrake distribution, but I'm somewhat concerned about the future of Mandrakesoft - hence my joining the club.
Personally, I'd like to see Mandrakesoft stop offering free ISOs of their distribution to non-members (yeah, I know the GPL insists the source must be available, and it should be, but Mandrakesoft shouldn't make it easy for people to take and not give back).
Secondly, I wish they would give more incentives to join the club, such as making the popular Mandrakeforum site club members only.
I'm sure there are a lot of people running Mandrake that haven't paid for it and haven't joined the club. Legally, there is nothing wrong with that, but if the distribution is to survive, then perhaps some incentives may encourage people to part with their money.
I thought the new SGI Fuel workstations are quite interesting. How do they compare with the Blade 2000?
Maybe those poor folks in Afghanistan should have thougt about all these bad things Americans might do to their country before they helped Bin Laden knock over our little sky scrapers.
I'm willing to bet that most of the civilian casualties in Afghanistan killed by US military action had nothing to do with Bin Laden.
How I wish I had moderation points! This is the most insightful post I've read for weeks. Someone please moderate the parent up.
The problem is the US is too big and powerful, and it knows it. Add in the mix the fact that a lot of George W Bush's advisors are "Cold War Enthusiasts" and you can understand statements like these.
Very sad, very worrying, and if the USA is the best example of a free loving democratic nation, then God help us all.