2. The question I want to raise is this: Could this be bad news for Debian? Is a more friendly installer going to end up with a more bloated distribution as well?
How does distribution bloat logically follow from a better installer? The new installer addresses some serious problems in the old b-f system. Making custom installation CDs won't be as much of an ordeal now, since the new system uses debconf. Also, there are some features which make life a lot easier for sysadmins, like a http backend for default configuration information, support for kickstart-like automated installs, etc.
The fact that the new installer is modular and therefore able to have nicer frontends is the icing on the cake.
What the hell does distribution bloat mean, anyway? I love Debian, but if I have to I can install a stripped-down RedHat pretty easily. Just don't select any of the package groups. It's true that Debian's basic install is still smaller, but not by that much.
So, how is this bad news? Did you really think about the question before you posted it?
We should provide radiotherapy patients with a hospital-issued ID so they do not have to suffer through security checks.
... Thereby defeating the purpose of installing those millions of dollars' worth of radiation-detecting equipment.
Don't you think that if someone (with the resources to get fissionables in the first place) were truly determined to get into the subway system that the matter of obtaining one of those IDs would be relatively trivial?
I think one thing that really started to kill 3dfx was the fact until Voodoo5, 3dfx acceleration required you buy a separate board in addition to the main graphics card...
That's not true. I had a Voodoo3 in my computer until only a few months ago, and it did 2D/3D all by its own self.
Now I have a GF4 Ti4200, but I think I need to get a faster proc than the 800MHz Athlon that's in there now.
/me reluctantly plods along on the upgrade treadmill...
> While you're blowing me, are there any other > imperial decrees you'd like to make? Why is it > every little admin thinks they've > discovered "The Way It Should Be Done"? > lol
> I admin 47 servers and over 300 linux > workstations: every damn one of them has a > compiler. > That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard.
> All code gets compiled by me and > tested. > You don't have much of a life, do you? I'll bet you're going to claim that you read through each line of code before you compile it, too. Bullshit.
> If you can't handle admin'ing 30 > systems don't call your self a system > administrator. You're a hobbiest who may or may > not get paid. Hell, my home network has 11 > machines with 9 of them headless; think you can > handle running that? > Ooh... 9 headless machines! So let me get this clear: Because I have better things to do with my time than sitting around waiting for software to compile, and I make use of certain tools available to me to increase my productivity (package managers, in this case), I'm a hobbiest? 'Real Admins' compile all software by hand on every single box they own?
That's one of the stupidest arguments I've ever heard.
If a package doesn't do what I want, I recompile it on a machine which is not in production, and then test it on machines which aren't in production. Once I'm satisfied that it's working properly, it gets installed on production machines. One compile, multiple installs.
Do you actually work with anyone else? When you're 'compiling and testing all code' for those 47 servers and over 300 workstations, do you document what you're doing? If you get hit by a bus tomorrow, is your replacement going to find systems that have a uniform set of packages and configurations, or a bunch of haphazardly-maintained machines with mostly similar configurations and slightly screwed-up installations?
> Security is a science not a form of Zen. If you > don't understand the technical details you can > at least quit making up arbitrary rules. > There is more to most System Administrators' lives than sitting in front of a console 24/7. I don't believe that you keep every single one of your over 347 machines current, not if you're compiling new software by hand on each machine. If you somehow are, I applaud you while shaking my head and wondering why some people seem to love doing things the difficult way.
My guess is that you haven't been at this for very long. I started out with Slack, back in the 1.x days. I was a hobbiest then, and for a few years crafted my systems from hand. It was fun. Then I got into IT jobs, and by the time I started doing Systems Administration, I'd seen the package management light. Now I run a department, and I see that the less-experienced people sometimes get irritated by my package management mandate (because it's slightly more work up front to build a package and make sure it installs correctly), but our production systems are stable, documented, and easily reproducible (by someone other than me).
Unless ofcourse you don't have GCC.... So the point's pretty moot hey?
My point is that if you have a production web server (i.e. you're running a company's web site on it), you should not have GCC installed. If you're big enough to be hosting company web sites, you're damn well big enough to have at least one other box on which to (re)build packages for the production server.
>> Hmm hands up who installs a compiler on WEB >> SERVER?!... sheesh > > Ummm...Most people?
Not anyone who runs a real website. Your vanity domain running off your DSL/Cable Modem doesn't count.
I have roughly 30 machines under my direct control, and I can guarantee you that the production machines don't have gcc installed, unless they're build machines. If you admin more than one machine, you don't have time to compile everything from source. You use package management. I use both dpkg and rpm, depending on the server. Anyone in my group who tries to install something unpackaged gets hit with a heavy stick.
You should try it sometime. I really can't understand why people wouldn't use packages. Even if you don't like the way the package maintainer compiled the software, you have the option of rebuilding the package with the options you like. Then you have a documented and consistent build/installation for your software.
If you're going to go through the trouble of documenting the options you use to build the software and then tarballing it up to put on all your servers, you've already gone through most of the work of using package management, without all of the nice features of a package management system such as dependency and conflict checking, or automatic install/uninstall scripts, etc.
I Haven't tried a Gnome setup yet that didn't crash my box in less than 10 minutes, and get permanently ignored from then on.
So... Do you assume that everyone who uses GNOME has the same experience as you, and uses the software anyhow? Did it ever occur to you to wonder if perhaps the problem is just that you're incompetent or perhaps that your hardware sucks? Probably not. Judging by the incoherent nature of your post, you're either mentally ill or fucked up on something.
This is not a GNOME vs. KDE vs. TWM flame... Just a flame against stupid people.
For the reading impaired, these guys sell IDE-based NAS units. They have some custom hardware which allows regular IDE disks to be hot-swapped and shiz, as well as getting around the normal IDE bus limitation.
I don't work for 'em or sell 'em. I bought one for work a year ago. It uses 10 100GB drives in RAID5 + 1 hotspare to give me 738GB usable.
I paid about $12k for 738GB of hot-swappable raid5 NAS with snapshots. Not bad.
Exhibit A: Of course I'm using 'unstable' cause that's where the fairly recents stuff is.
Exhibit B: Excellent attitude for something supposedly stable and 'lie' proof. Is that 'truism' plastered anywhere on the debian site? "might need to run apt-get upgrade 4 times for some packages" as a warning label might be nice.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have before us a troll, or a moron. Possibly both.
Debian stable is STABLE! It's for servers. No one uses stable for desktops. Admittedly, potato is quite long in the tooth these days, but you can't accuse it of being unstable. Woody is pretty much stable these days (has been for months), and I use it in production.
Please don't badmouth the distribution because you don't understand what the word unstable means. Go use Red Hat, or Mandrake, or something else whiz-bang flashy for your desktop. I use RH 7.3 for my desktop, because I don't care as much about stability there as I do on my servers (about 20 in production).
Perhaps Elmore is transgendered? Observe (from http://www.omegapunx.org):
My brother's girlfriend Danyel gave me this purply long skirt thingy. It is soo cool. I would wear it to school tommorow, but there are these kids in the loccer room who hate gay people. They say things like "Man, if you are gay I am going to kick your ass." And stuff like that. So, they would probably think I am gay or something and kick my ass. Welp, what are you going to do in this world these days.
Has anyone gotten libnss-ldap (and/or libpam-ldap) to use SSL on Woody? I spent several days trying different things to get it to use either straight SSL on 636 or STARTTLS, but to no avail. I know that I need to recompile it, but even though other ssl-ized things compile fine, neither of those libraries work. They work fine without, but when I add any ssl config directives they just hang.
I've given up for now on trying to get it to work and am using pam_krb5 for authentication, but I'd rather use pam->ldap->kerberos for simplicity on the client side.
Hmm... Well, like I said, I was making six figures at 23. I'm smart enough and flexible enough (and maybe lucky enough) to get myself into the right place at the right time. I'll never be hurting for money. Not with my resume. Perhaps if I were limited to massive organizations with inane hiring requirements and clueless managers I'd be more worried. I'm not, though.
I am planning on finishing up, starting this Spring, but I'll be doing something more interesting to me than CS.
You seemed to skip over the last paragraph of my post entirely. You think that developers make lots of $? I wonder how long you've been working, or if you are even out in the real world.
If all you want is to be a Sysadmin, even a Sr. Sysadmin, you don't need a CS degree if you're willing to learn a lot on your own. I am the Sr. Sysadmin for a very cool software company. Most of what I use day-to-day has been stuff I learned the hard way. I dropped out of a mediocre CS program after my junior year. I probably should have finished it just to have finished it, but it certainly hasn't hurt my career. Some of the programming, DB, and network theory I learned in college has come in handy for solving problems more quickly, but in general it was a waste of time as far as my job is concerned.
On the other hand, college was a place to meet interesting people and screw around without worrying about stuff like the outside world. Some would say that college is a good place to learn research and problem-solving skills, but nothing teaches you crisis-handling skills like being a Jr. Sysadmin thrown into the fray with not much guidance.:) "Think quickly! Several thousand people are unable to dial in to the modem banks, and the support lines are starting to light up with frightening rapidity! What do you do??"
Always be willing to learn new things. Always. It's how you move around, both vertically and laterally. I somehow became head sysadmin/oracle admin at my last job and was making a six-figure salary at the tender age of 23. I left that place after a year and a half because the money wasn't enough to offset my irritating employers and the lack of pride for my company (advertising startup), and have been working for a kickass company for over a year. Not as much money, but money isn't everything. Remember that last bit.
We used to build vehicles and smash them into eachother. The goal was to build a vehicle that would outlast everyone elses vehicles structuraly.
YES! My sister and I used to have demolition derbies that lasted for hours. We had a long hallway with a cheapo linoleum floor that was perfect for wheel-less vehicles. Each match would last until the pilot was ejected from the vehicle, at which point the design would be modified or scrapped in favor of a new one.
I used to mix Legos and GI Joe and Transformers for epic battles which spanned the length and breadth of my bedroom. I often used window caulk (enough so that my parents started buying me my own rolls so that I'd stop removing it from the windows!) to 'glue' non-lego pieces together.
I don't know if any of that helped me later in life (I'm a sysadmin at an awesome company and about to get married to a beautiful woman), but it sure made for some nice childhood memories.
I don't know how to do this... I'm not a programmer, I'm a sysadmin.
Two thoughts:
1. How can you be a sysadmin without knowing how to compile software? How do you install software which isn't pre-packaged? Lord help us if "sysadmins" today are dependant on RH or Debian packages. That's almost as bad as NT "admins". Don't get me wrong... My preferred OS is Debian, but I wind up recompiling stuff fairly often because the packaged binaries don't do what I need them to.
2. LEARN HOW TO DO IT! It's not as if you need a 4-year CS degree to run less README;./configure; make install... No one asked you to write your own shell from scratch.
Sorry if this comes off as harsh... It's just troubling to hear someone call themselves a sysadmin when they openly admit to not being able to compile something as simple as bash. We all started somewhere, but most of us didn't have the chutzpah to call ourselves something we weren't.
I really don't like Gnome. It looks too much like Windows.
So, um... Install a different theme from the default.
Hey, look! CDE themes for sawmill, you silly monkey.
Why be different just for the sake of being different? I think that today's desktop is the result of an evolutionary process. The two main results are the Windows UI, and the Mac UI. GNOME and KDE are free to crib from both, and do (well, I can't speak for KDE. I haven't used it in two years).
What's the difference between someone having a cellphone conversation in line, and just having a conversation with a friend in line? It's still a conversation that doesn't involve you.
Don't confuse the issue with logic. This is slashdot, after all!:>
Ah, Robotech... I _LOVED_ that show... That and Starblazers.
Some of my earliest memories are of running home from playing with friends so that I could watch Starblazers. I don't think many kids my age got it. My mom certainly couldn't figure out why I liked Robotech so much. "This isn't funny. Why do you watch cartoons that aren't funny?"
Weird to hear that those shows had such an effect on others, as I've never met any other people who were into them.
The dog gets quite delighted and will pick up her Furby and try to get it to say 'wheee!' by running around and shaking it but it is pretty screwed up and only make strange noises.
Slashdot Mirror
1. WTF is this "Insightful"?
2. The question I want to raise is this: Could this be bad news for Debian? Is a more friendly installer going to end up with a more bloated distribution as well?
How does distribution bloat logically follow from a better installer? The new installer addresses some serious problems in the old b-f system. Making custom installation CDs won't be as much of an ordeal now, since the new system uses debconf. Also, there are some features which make life a lot easier for sysadmins, like a http backend for default configuration information, support for kickstart-like automated installs, etc.
The fact that the new installer is modular and therefore able to have nicer frontends is the icing on the cake.
What the hell does distribution bloat mean, anyway? I love Debian, but if I have to I can install a stripped-down RedHat pretty easily. Just don't select any of the package groups. It's true that Debian's basic install is still smaller, but not by that much.
So, how is this bad news? Did you really think about the question before you posted it?
I think I strained something from laughing at this... One of the more amusing /. posts I've read in a long time.
Don't you think that if someone (with the resources to get fissionables in the first place) were truly determined to get into the subway system that the matter of obtaining one of those IDs would be relatively trivial?
http://www.savekaryn.com/
http://www.dontsavekaryn.com/
That's not true. I had a Voodoo3 in my computer until only a few months ago, and it did 2D/3D all by its own self.
Now I have a GF4 Ti4200, but I think I need to get a faster proc than the 800MHz Athlon that's in there now.
Call me a 'troll' a million times, but you *still* lack decent evidence OOP is objectively better
Is this a pun? I'm drunk as hell, so I'm not sure.
Harpoon I.P.A., you're my best friend.
> While you're blowing me, are there any other
> imperial decrees you'd like to make? Why is it
> every little admin thinks they've
> discovered "The Way It Should Be Done"?
>
lol
> I admin 47 servers and over 300 linux
> workstations: every damn one of them has a
> compiler.
>
That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard.
> All code gets compiled by me and
> tested.
>
You don't have much of a life, do you? I'll bet you're going to claim that you read through each line of code before you compile it, too. Bullshit.
> If you can't handle admin'ing 30
> systems don't call your self a system
> administrator. You're a hobbiest who may or may
> not get paid. Hell, my home network has 11
> machines with 9 of them headless; think you can
> handle running that?
>
Ooh... 9 headless machines! So let me get this clear: Because I have better things to do with my time than sitting around waiting for software to compile, and I make use of certain tools available to me to increase my productivity (package managers, in this case), I'm a hobbiest? 'Real Admins' compile all software by hand on every single box they own?
That's one of the stupidest arguments I've ever heard.
If a package doesn't do what I want, I recompile it on a machine which is not in production, and then test it on machines which aren't in production. Once I'm satisfied that it's working properly, it gets installed on production machines. One compile, multiple installs.
Do you actually work with anyone else? When you're 'compiling and testing all code' for those 47 servers and over 300 workstations, do you document what you're doing? If you get hit by a bus tomorrow, is your replacement going to find systems that have a uniform set of packages and configurations, or a bunch of haphazardly-maintained machines with mostly similar configurations and slightly screwed-up installations?
> Security is a science not a form of Zen. If you
> don't understand the technical details you can
> at least quit making up arbitrary rules.
>
There is more to most System Administrators' lives than sitting in front of a console 24/7. I don't believe that you keep every single one of your over 347 machines current, not if you're compiling new software by hand on each machine. If you somehow are, I applaud you while shaking my head and wondering why some people seem to love doing things the difficult way.
My guess is that you haven't been at this for very long. I started out with Slack, back in the 1.x days. I was a hobbiest then, and for a few years crafted my systems from hand. It was fun. Then I got into IT jobs, and by the time I started doing Systems Administration, I'd seen the package management light. Now I run a department, and I see that the less-experienced people sometimes get irritated by my package management mandate (because it's slightly more work up front to build a package and make sure it installs correctly), but our production systems are stable, documented, and easily reproducible (by someone other than me ).
Unless ofcourse you don't have GCC.... So the point's pretty moot hey?
My point is that if you have a production web server (i.e. you're running a company's web site on it), you should not have GCC installed. If you're big enough to be hosting company web sites, you're damn well big enough to have at least one other box on which to (re)build packages for the production server.
>> Hmm hands up who installs a compiler on WEB ... sheesh
>> SERVER?!
>
> Ummm...Most people?
Not anyone who runs a real website. Your vanity domain running off your DSL/Cable Modem doesn't count.
I have roughly 30 machines under my direct control, and I can guarantee you that the production machines don't have gcc installed, unless they're build machines. If you admin more than one machine, you don't have time to compile everything from source. You use package management. I use both dpkg and rpm, depending on the server. Anyone in my group who tries to install something unpackaged gets hit with a heavy stick.
You should try it sometime. I really can't understand why people wouldn't use packages. Even if you don't like the way the package maintainer compiled the software, you have the option of rebuilding the package with the options you like. Then you have a documented and consistent build/installation for your software.
If you're going to go through the trouble of documenting the options you use to build the software and then tarballing it up to put on all your servers, you've already gone through most of the work of using package management, without all of the nice features of a package management system such as dependency and conflict checking, or automatic install/uninstall scripts, etc.
Hopefully the admin(s) for those machines will have disabled boot from cdrom/floppy in BIOS and set a password on the BIOS.
Anyone with half a brain who's ever run public machines does this, because monkeys like you like to screw with them.
So... Do you assume that everyone who uses GNOME has the same experience as you, and uses the software anyhow? Did it ever occur to you to wonder if perhaps the problem is just that you're incompetent or perhaps that your hardware sucks? Probably not. Judging by the incoherent nature of your post, you're either mentally ill or fucked up on something.
This is not a GNOME vs. KDE vs. TWM flame... Just a flame against stupid people.
http://www.raidzone.com/
For the reading impaired, these guys sell IDE-based NAS units. They have some custom hardware which allows regular IDE disks to be hot-swapped and shiz, as well as getting around the normal IDE bus limitation.
I don't work for 'em or sell 'em. I bought one for work a year ago. It uses 10 100GB drives in RAID5 + 1 hotspare to give me 738GB usable.
I paid about $12k for 738GB of hot-swappable raid5 NAS with snapshots. Not bad.
Exhibit B: Excellent attitude for something supposedly stable and 'lie' proof. Is that 'truism' plastered anywhere on the debian site? "might need to run apt-get upgrade 4 times for some packages" as a warning label might be nice.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have before us a troll, or a moron. Possibly both.
Debian stable is STABLE! It's for servers. No one uses stable for desktops. Admittedly, potato is quite long in the tooth these days, but you can't accuse it of being unstable. Woody is pretty much stable these days (has been for months), and I use it in production.
Please don't badmouth the distribution because you don't understand what the word unstable means. Go use Red Hat, or Mandrake, or something else whiz-bang flashy for your desktop. I use RH 7.3 for my desktop, because I don't care as much about stability there as I do on my servers (about 20 in production).
Perhaps Elmore is transgendered? Observe (from http://www.omegapunx.org):
My brother's girlfriend Danyel gave me this purply long skirt thingy. It is soo cool. I would wear it to school tommorow, but there are these kids in the loccer room who hate gay people. They say things like "Man, if you are gay I am going to kick your ass." And stuff like that. So, they would probably think I am gay or something and kick my ass. Welp, what are you going to do in this world these days.
My organization chose OpenLDAP after doing extensive testing with IPlanet and DC Directory.
Can you post any details as to why your org came to this decision? Also, OpenLDAP 1.x or 2.x?
Thanks!
Has anyone gotten libnss-ldap (and/or libpam-ldap) to use SSL on Woody? I spent several days trying different things to get it to use either straight SSL on 636 or STARTTLS, but to no avail. I know that I need to recompile it, but even though other ssl-ized things compile fine, neither of those libraries work. They work fine without, but when I add any ssl config directives they just hang.
I've given up for now on trying to get it to work and am using pam_krb5 for authentication, but I'd rather use pam->ldap->kerberos for simplicity on the client side.
$
Hmm... Well, like I said, I was making six figures at 23. I'm smart enough and flexible enough (and maybe lucky enough) to get myself into the right place at the right time. I'll never be hurting for money. Not with my resume. Perhaps if I were limited to massive organizations with inane hiring requirements and clueless managers I'd be more worried. I'm not, though.
I am planning on finishing up, starting this Spring, but I'll be doing something more interesting to me than CS.
You seemed to skip over the last paragraph of my post entirely. You think that developers make lots of $? I wonder how long you've been working, or if you are even out in the real world.
If all you want is to be a Sysadmin, even a Sr. Sysadmin, you don't need a CS degree if you're willing to learn a lot on your own. I am the Sr. Sysadmin for a very cool software company. Most of what I use day-to-day has been stuff I learned the hard way. I dropped out of a mediocre CS program after my junior year. I probably should have finished it just to have finished it, but it certainly hasn't hurt my career. Some of the programming, DB, and network theory I learned in college has come in handy for solving problems more quickly, but in general it was a waste of time as far as my job is concerned.
On the other hand, college was a place to meet interesting people and screw around without worrying about stuff like the outside world. Some would say that college is a good place to learn research and problem-solving skills, but nothing teaches you crisis-handling skills like being a Jr. Sysadmin thrown into the fray with not much guidance. :) "Think quickly! Several thousand people are unable to dial in to the modem banks, and the support lines are starting to light up with frightening rapidity! What do you do??"
Always be willing to learn new things. Always. It's how you move around, both vertically and laterally. I somehow became head sysadmin/oracle admin at my last job and was making a six-figure salary at the tender age of 23. I left that place after a year and a half because the money wasn't enough to offset my irritating employers and the lack of pride for my company (advertising startup), and have been working for a kickass company for over a year. Not as much money, but money isn't everything. Remember that last bit.
YES! My sister and I used to have demolition derbies that lasted for hours. We had a long hallway with a cheapo linoleum floor that was perfect for wheel-less vehicles. Each match would last until the pilot was ejected from the vehicle, at which point the design would be modified or scrapped in favor of a new one.
I used to mix Legos and GI Joe and Transformers for epic battles which spanned the length and breadth of my bedroom. I often used window caulk (enough so that my parents started buying me my own rolls so that I'd stop removing it from the windows!) to 'glue' non-lego pieces together.
I don't know if any of that helped me later in life (I'm a sysadmin at an awesome company and about to get married to a beautiful woman), but it sure made for some nice childhood memories.
Two thoughts:
1. How can you be a sysadmin without knowing how to compile software? How do you install software which isn't pre-packaged? Lord help us if "sysadmins" today are dependant on RH or Debian packages. That's almost as bad as NT "admins". Don't get me wrong... My preferred OS is Debian, but I wind up recompiling stuff fairly often because the packaged binaries don't do what I need them to.
2. LEARN HOW TO DO IT! It's not as if you need a 4-year CS degree to run less README; ./configure; make install ... No one asked you to write your own shell from scratch.
Sorry if this comes off as harsh... It's just troubling to hear someone call themselves a sysadmin when they openly admit to not being able to compile something as simple as bash. We all started somewhere, but most of us didn't have the chutzpah to call ourselves something we weren't.
--
A host is a host from coast to coast...
So, um... Install a different theme from the default.
Hey, look! CDE themes for sawmill, you silly monkey.
Why be different just for the sake of being different? I think that today's desktop is the result of an evolutionary process. The two main results are the Windows UI, and the Mac UI. GNOME and KDE are free to crib from both, and do (well, I can't speak for KDE. I haven't used it in two years).
--
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Don't confuse the issue with logic. This is slashdot, after all! :>
--
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Some of my earliest memories are of running home from playing with friends so that I could watch Starblazers. I don't think many kids my age got it. My mom certainly couldn't figure out why I liked Robotech so much. "This isn't funny. Why do you watch cartoons that aren't funny?"
Weird to hear that those shows had such an effect on others, as I've never met any other people who were into them.
--
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Wow, I miss my dog. Thanks for the chuckle.
--
A host is a host from coast to coast...
I Like Judge Dredd in Spanish. I am the law!
Too bad I failed high school Spanish.
This comment is © _xeno_ and may not be used without prior permission.
Hey, _xeno_ ... I'm using your comment without prior permission. Whatcha gonna do about it?
--
A host is a host from coast to coast...