My text covers Red Hat 6. It is a bit dated - I've been yelling at the publisher for a revision, but they are not very responsive.
The book assumes basic UNIX knowledge, so you will want to use this in tandem with one of the basic texts by Sobol or the equivalent.
The text lacks a chapter on sendmail (which I regret), and I included material on the Gimp which people have found to be superfluous.
I also have some older articles that I published on UnixWorld Online - I have made them available on my website. My tutorial on PHP and Postgres had great critical acclaim (hearing about this review was my introduction to Slashdot). I will formally GPL the contents of these articles if you like - use them as you wish.
I am actually hoping that my text goes out of print so the rights revert back to me. I will GPL it at that time.
I do feel at the moment that I chose the wrong route in publishing a book - I turned down too many opportunities to do great documentation because I had such a large commitment.
As for the other things they should have included: they HAVE 2.4 kernel RPMS. I ask
again, have you even looked at RH7? I installed the RPMS and gave them a whirl. So
what distrib are you using? ReiserFS is not in the distrib, but can easily be added to
RedHat.
Do me a small favor. Look at the list of RPMS in 7.0. Do you see a 2.4 kernel? Neither do I. Obviously, what is not included in the distribution is not integrated into the installer.
The decision to support USB and X4, and not ReiserFS, was arbitrary. Red Hat did this before with KDE, but at that time they had good reason. This time they do not.
I have done more to advocate Red Hat than you could probably comprehend. Pardon me if I take your vitriol with a grain of salt.
Red Hat is making arbitrary decisions regarding what beta/development features to include in their distributions, and what to leave out.
I like Red Hat 7 (and I may be the only one), but I have run into the 2gig filesystem limit too many times, and I would have preferred the file system to be an area of concentration. Instead, I am forced into the arms of Solaris x86 for certain applications.
Red Hat has always been progressive. I just wish they were a little more attentive to the needs of their customers. It appears to me that the new packages in Red Hat 7 were developed in a vacuum - it is an interesting solution in search of a problem. It adds nothing to my server toolset.
Red Hat 7 should have included:
ReiserFS, or at least the ext2 patches in tux
2.4 kernel preview RPMs (with an installer option for these or 2.2)
my pet peeves: OpenMotif with dynamic Netscape and also the real mccoy ksh
Today, Red Hat's stock price is a little over $8/share, which is almost below the IPO offering. Talk to us, guys, or it will only get worse.
Really, there's no excuse for not using ksh93 on any system anymore; ATT has released it open-source, and it is hundreds of times more powerful than anything else.
This whole dtksh/cde thing, where most commercial vendors install both ksh88 and ksh93, is total brain-damage. But I guess you expect this from commercial UNIX.
If Red Hat were all about money, they would have used KDE rather than (assisting in) developing Gnome, they would have included MySQL long before now, and there would be closed-source components.
Red Hat has a moral dedication to Open Source and Free software, which is to be lauded. No, they are not perfect, but they have fought harder for their customers than any other vendor.
Anybody remember the end-users under NDA about the memory problem?
My employer told me that I had to learn more about solaris, so I installed x86. If there is UNIX in hell, this is it. Name any other OS that requires a separate partition just to hold the boot manager, I dare you!
Since Linus has effectively endorsed reiserfs as the next native file system for Linux, support for it will be required in the near future. Suse and Mandrake support it already, albeit in an "experimental" form. In any case, we will all shortly begin migrating.
If Red Hat releases now without reiserfs, we will have to wait for another release cycle. If they do release reiserfs now, it might damage their reputation as the rock-solid business Linux.
HP and Sun put a lot of effort into journaling file systems... Sun developed their own journaling extensions to UFS in Disksuite (in addition to Veritas), and HP simply liscensed Veritas as an HP-UX core component.
Red Had needs to show that it is expending the same level of consideration and care in bringing reiserfs into the installer and integrating it tightly into the OS.
The optimum time to do this would be 7.0. This is premature.
Against my advice, my management and the usurping geeks in my office decided to purchase TurboCluster server.
My company has an unnatural and incestuous addiction to Compaq hardware, and it is frightfully important that the distribution support the Compaq SMART Raid controller. Red Hat supports the controller very well (not that Red Hat has seen a dime from these cheapskates).
Well, TurboCluster arrived and barfed on the controllers, despite the fact that the salesperson had assured us that the hardware was supported. My genius coworkers disabled the SMART controllers and installed Adaptec (worst controller on the market). Shortly after that news broke that TurboLinux fired half their staff.
These people still won't admit that I was right, and that the cluster market for Linux remains premature.
Pride is the first of the seven deadly sins. My boss probably thinks TurboLinux is the second.
The only fault that you can find with VA in this is sending the server back minus a few parts. I'm sure VA has much more profound problems as a company.
How about if you post an interview with a disgruntled employee who is willing and eager to trash the reputation of the company?
Speaking of that, is Raster ready to quit yet?
It wouldn't suprise me if the RIAA funded this...
on
Gnutella Vs. SPAM
·
· Score: 1
These people are desperate to stop file sharing of any kind.
Will the RIAA remain clueless about this technology forever? Will they attack it only through the courts or legislation? Is it unthinkable that they would stoop to sabotage or other subversive measures?
There were days when a Pentium 133 cost hundreds of dollars - but today pricewatch.com reports that you can get a Pentium 133 for $17.
I'm sure that Intel would love to continue charging hundreds of dollars for this part, but it's value has depreciated, and they would be laughed out of the market if they tried.
It seems to me that Processors and CDs have a similar structure to the cost of production - a large up-front cost, and a much smaller recurring cost in producing new batches of product.
Unlike processors, music cds do not have a substantial market depreciation cycle. Perhaps this depreciation should be addressed by law.
Record companies continue to charge large dollar amounts for works by artists who are dead. They also charge the same amounts for works by artists who have signed away all rights to their works.
Perhaps copywright law should require a depreciation schedule for product pricing, and should require works produced by deceased artists to enter the public domain.
Or, then again, maybe we could just declare Napster legal and have done with the whole batch of crooks. I think I like this way.
...for what I do, which is take 1.6 million http hits a day.
Yes, the gnome was a little weak, but not unreasonable. But hey, I sill get the nfs termination messages in RH62.
I think RH6 was the first to include support for Compaq's raid controllers - that stuff is great.
Really, Red Hat did a magnificent job with 6.0 as compared to 5.0. There were lots of problems with glibc under 5.0 that really got under my fingernails.
The problems with 6.0 were cosmetic. The problems with 5.0 were structural.
When you have Sybase configured properly, you can have only a single UNIX process acting as your database server (if you don't run the backupserver when you aren't running backups). If you have SMP, you run one more Sybase server process per processor and they communicate with standard IPC. Installation is tricky for a novice, but the tools work as advertised. Sybase uses the RPM format for their Linux installations.
The Oracle installer (written in Java so you must have the blackdown JRE - it is just sick and wrong) commonly fails when configuring a database instance. Yes, there are workarounds available, but why not write an installer that works properly? When you have Oracle running, it lights up your process table like a Christmas tree - at least 4 server processes, plus some sundry rubbish.
A UNIX admin who admires efficiency will be happier with Sybase.
I've had great luck with 11.0.3.3 on Linux, but I'm not doing anything serious with it yet.
The original 11.0.3.3 could use both files in the file system and raw hard drive partitions to store data. Do not use files in the file system for your large database, because the limit is still 2Gig for a single file. Use fdisk to allocate a large block, then format it with Sybase.
A fresh release of 11.0.3.3 is available at linux.sybase.com that addresses all sorts of bugs and caching issues. I suggest that you start with this product. If you can make it work with a free product, you have lots more options - you can have two backups on the free version, and one on the 11.9 supported version.
I really dislike the lack of in-line evaluation, so you can't do things like while(fgets(fp,...)){}. What could be the motivation for such brain-damage?
Slashdot Mirror
My text covers Red Hat 6. It is a bit dated - I've been yelling at the publisher for a revision, but they are not very responsive.
The book assumes basic UNIX knowledge, so you will want to use this in tandem with one of the basic texts by Sobol or the equivalent.
The text lacks a chapter on sendmail (which I regret), and I included material on the Gimp which people have found to be superfluous.
I also have some older articles that I published on UnixWorld Online - I have made them available on my website. My tutorial on PHP and Postgres had great critical acclaim (hearing about this review was my introduction to Slashdot). I will formally GPL the contents of these articles if you like - use them as you wish.
I am actually hoping that my text goes out of print so the rights revert back to me. I will GPL it at that time.
I do feel at the moment that I chose the wrong route in publishing a book - I turned down too many opportunities to do great documentation because I had such a large commitment.
Do me a small favor. Look at the list of RPMS in 7.0. Do you see a 2.4 kernel? Neither do I. Obviously, what is not included in the distribution is not integrated into the installer.
The decision to support USB and X4, and not ReiserFS, was arbitrary. Red Hat did this before with KDE, but at that time they had good reason. This time they do not.
I have done more to advocate Red Hat than you could probably comprehend. Pardon me if I take your vitriol with a grain of salt.
Under ext2, each file is limited to a size of 2 gig. This limit is awkward for database files, http log files, and many other things.
Most other UNIXen had the same problem at some time or another. Sun solved it by patching UFS. HP solved it by integrating Veritas into HP-UX.
Red Hat is making arbitrary decisions regarding what beta/development features to include in their distributions, and what to leave out.
I like Red Hat 7 (and I may be the only one), but I have run into the 2gig filesystem limit too many times, and I would have preferred the file system to be an area of concentration. Instead, I am forced into the arms of Solaris x86 for certain applications.
Red Hat has always been progressive. I just wish they were a little more attentive to the needs of their customers. It appears to me that the new packages in Red Hat 7 were developed in a vacuum - it is an interesting solution in search of a problem. It adds nothing to my server toolset.
Red Hat 7 should have included:
Today, Red Hat's stock price is a little over $8/share, which is almost below the IPO offering. Talk to us, guys, or it will only get worse.
<p>If enough people scream for ASP and Access, then NT needs to be a part of the solution.</p>
<p>The art is guiding and convincing otherwise.</p>
Really, there's no excuse for not using ksh93 on any system anymore; ATT has released it open-source, and it is hundreds of times more powerful than anything else.
This whole dtksh/cde thing, where most commercial vendors install both ksh88 and ksh93, is total brain-damage. But I guess you expect this from commercial UNIX.
I love to ramble...
If Red Hat were all about money, they would have used KDE rather than (assisting in) developing Gnome, they would have included MySQL long before now, and there would be closed-source components.
Red Hat has a moral dedication to Open Source and Free software, which is to be lauded. No, they are not perfect, but they have fought harder for their customers than any other vendor.
Anybody remember the end-users under NDA about the memory problem?
My employer told me that I had to learn more about solaris, so I installed x86. If there is UNIX in hell, this is it. Name any other OS that requires a separate partition just to hold the boot manager, I dare you!
Since Linus has effectively endorsed reiserfs as the next native file system for Linux, support for it will be required in the near future. Suse and Mandrake support it already, albeit in an "experimental" form. In any case, we will all shortly begin migrating.
If Red Hat releases now without reiserfs, we will have to wait for another release cycle. If they do release reiserfs now, it might damage their reputation as the rock-solid business Linux.
HP and Sun put a lot of effort into journaling file systems... Sun developed their own journaling extensions to UFS in Disksuite (in addition to Veritas), and HP simply liscensed Veritas as an HP-UX core component.
Red Had needs to show that it is expending the same level of consideration and care in bringing reiserfs into the installer and integrating it tightly into the OS.
The optimum time to do this would be 7.0. This is premature.
When you fire up the server for the first time, the sa password is blank.
Can we burn down their corporate headquarters too?
Yes, this is where I'd like to work. Too bad I don't know anything about wax.
More photos available here and here. These pictures really don't do it justice, though.
Form and function are one.
Against my advice, my management and the usurping geeks in my office decided to purchase TurboCluster server.
My company has an unnatural and incestuous addiction to Compaq hardware, and it is frightfully important that the distribution support the Compaq SMART Raid controller. Red Hat supports the controller very well (not that Red Hat has seen a dime from these cheapskates).
Well, TurboCluster arrived and barfed on the controllers, despite the fact that the salesperson had assured us that the hardware was supported. My genius coworkers disabled the SMART controllers and installed Adaptec (worst controller on the market). Shortly after that news broke that TurboLinux fired half their staff.
These people still won't admit that I was right, and that the cluster market for Linux remains premature.
Pride is the first of the seven deadly sins. My boss probably thinks TurboLinux is the second.
The biggest server advantage would be the inclusion of ReiserFS. Second to that would be the pentium optimizations for all binaries.
I am a Red Hat fanatic, but these are powerful reasons to think of Mandrake for a server. They should not be discounted in such a cavilier manner.
The only fault that you can find with VA in this is sending the server back minus a few parts. I'm sure VA has much more profound problems as a company.
How about if you post an interview with a disgruntled employee who is willing and eager to trash the reputation of the company?
Speaking of that, is Raster ready to quit yet?
These people are desperate to stop file sharing of any kind.
Will the RIAA remain clueless about this technology forever? Will they attack it only through the courts or legislation? Is it unthinkable that they would stoop to sabotage or other subversive measures?
I think not.
There were days when a Pentium 133 cost hundreds of dollars - but today pricewatch.com reports that you can get a Pentium 133 for $17. I'm sure that Intel would love to continue charging hundreds of dollars for this part, but it's value has depreciated, and they would be laughed out of the market if they tried.
It seems to me that Processors and CDs have a similar structure to the cost of production - a large up-front cost, and a much smaller recurring cost in producing new batches of product.
Unlike processors, music cds do not have a substantial market depreciation cycle. Perhaps this depreciation should be addressed by law.
Record companies continue to charge large dollar amounts for works by artists who are dead. They also charge the same amounts for works by artists who have signed away all rights to their works.
Perhaps copywright law should require a depreciation schedule for product pricing, and should require works produced by deceased artists to enter the public domain.
Or, then again, maybe we could just declare Napster legal and have done with the whole batch of crooks. I think I like this way.
...for what I do, which is take 1.6 million http hits a day.
Yes, the gnome was a little weak, but not unreasonable. But hey, I sill get the nfs termination messages in RH62.
I think RH6 was the first to include support for Compaq's raid controllers - that stuff is great.
Really, Red Hat did a magnificent job with 6.0 as compared to 5.0. There were lots of problems with glibc under 5.0 that really got under my fingernails.
The problems with 6.0 were cosmetic. The problems with 5.0 were structural.
When you have Sybase configured properly, you can have only a single UNIX process acting as your database server (if you don't run the backupserver when you aren't running backups). If you have SMP, you run one more Sybase server process per processor and they communicate with standard IPC. Installation is tricky for a novice, but the tools work as advertised. Sybase uses the RPM format for their Linux installations.
The Oracle installer (written in Java so you must have the blackdown JRE - it is just sick and wrong) commonly fails when configuring a database instance. Yes, there are workarounds available, but why not write an installer that works properly? When you have Oracle running, it lights up your process table like a Christmas tree - at least 4 server processes, plus some sundry rubbish.
A UNIX admin who admires efficiency will be happier with Sybase.
I've had great luck with 11.0.3.3 on Linux, but I'm not doing anything serious with it yet.
The original 11.0.3.3 could use both files in the file system and raw hard drive partitions to store data. Do not use files in the file system for your large database, because the limit is still 2Gig for a single file. Use fdisk to allocate a large block, then format it with Sybase.
A fresh release of 11.0.3.3 is available at linux.sybase.com that addresses all sorts of bugs and caching issues. I suggest that you start with this product. If you can make it work with a free product, you have lots more options - you can have two backups on the free version, and one on the 11.9 supported version.
Why didn't the author even mention up2date (the Red Hat RPM update agent) or corresponding utilities in other distributions?
A great many of his arguments evaporate when these automated utilities are considered.
This sort of solution is something I'd expect of BASIC. It's just not pretty.
Ok, that's great. Now what if the file has 1 million or so lines? The readlines() method reads everything in at once, so I am told.
I guess I am too used to being able to do something like
if(!(fp = fopen("afile.txt","r"))) exit(1);
So call me a small-time coder. At least I'm honest. I like inline evaluations. I miss them.while(fgets(s, sizeof(s), fp)) printf("%s\n", s);
fclose(fp);
I really dislike the lack of in-line evaluation, so you can't do things like while(fgets(fp,...)){}. What could be the motivation for such brain-damage?
AFAIK, the mp3 encoding technique relies upon the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), which is also used in JPEG.
An implementation of the algorithm can be found in the source code for mpg123. This is available in SRPMS in any Red Hat mirror.
This spins down after 5 minutes of inactivity:
Time is in seconds, of course. Note that this isn't accomplished with apmd.