Bright Cluster Manager is quite nice, but still lacking loads of things. The shell is powerful but very cryptic, the graphical interface doesn't allow certain operations to be done on a range of selected nodes for instance...
Also the 'integration' with for instance Sun Grid Engine (which is supported) is not very thorough (specially with regard to setting up queues, something the Sun tools already suck at) I still need Bright Cluster Manager + the SGE tools + Sun ARCo to get almost everything done, and at times it feels like a lot of duplicated effort and some good old *NIX handywork is still required to really get things moving.
However the development team is very receptive to constructive feedback and much has changed over the past 6 months.
We're not talking about the average desktop, where apparently loads of bling is 'needed' these days. A cluster is usually for processing loads and loads of data. Most in-house software usually compiles just fine on CentOS/RHEL/Suse , getting the compiler suites to work might even be easier than under Ubuntu (10.04 with Intel V11.1 libstdc++5 anybody?) , much professional software isn't even supported under Ubuntu (and specially with scientific software such things DO matter)
Trying to claim Ubuntu is more secure because it's more recent shows nothing but ignorance.
What people want in an HPC environment is that it processes data; month after month, always with 100% predictable result and without downtime. A proper enterprise distro gives you that. The 0.01% performance gain in a HPC environment of a newer kernel doesn't make sense compared to the pains of having to roll your own updates because the distro maker stopped the updates. Just look at Ubuntu 8.04 LTS right now to see what I mean, compared to RHEL5 (which is older, but sees much more maintenance) And remember; you don't 'just upgrade' a cluster's distro after a year or two. The OS that you install after it's rolled in usually lasts for the lifetime of the cluster, or has to last for at least 2-3 years.
I've worked with various clusters over the past year. The distro doesn't really matter, mostly it's what you feel most comfortable with. I'd slightly favor RedHat Enterprise or a respin of it, since it's easiest in terms of drivers for commercial cluster hardware and commercial software support, but Debian would be just as fine. I would choose a 'stable' distro though, so no Fedora, no Ubuntu (even their LTS isn't exactly enterprise grade compared to RedHat / Suse or even Debian stable) You don't want to have to update every week since this usually requires quite some work (making new images and rebooting all nodes)
What I found out matters a lot more is the scheduler you will use; Sun Grid Engine, PBS, Torque or slurm to name a few. Every scheduler comes with it strong and weak points, be sure to look at what matters most to you.
If you are unfamiliar with all of these things, pick a complete bundle like Rocks (it's based on RedHat Enterprise Linux), which makes setting up a cluster quite easy and still allows you to choose which components you want. That'll greatly improve your chance of success. But be warned; it's still a steep learning curve building and specially configuring a cluster. The most time is spent tuning queuing parameters to maximize the performance of your cluster.
UCS looks nice on paper, but for instance the CPU (core) density/rack UCS offers doesn't compare favorably compared to other platforms. And the initial investments are way too high for most small to medium companies as well.
Even worse; if you manage to find the cause it almost always comes down to some Sony-only part, which is impossible to buy in any regular (web)shop.
And if you then have the nerve to call Sony tech support, asking for a specific part... let's not even go there:(
After 2 TV sets with such issues I've stopped buying Sony, at least some other brands still have decent consumer service (Technics and Philips to name a few)
Why should you respin for every update? The (S)RPM's are available so a simple yum update gives you 5.6 just fine.... and if you're working offline a simple USB stick/disk/DVD with all the updates works just fine as well.
CentOS is too stuck in their ways to keep up with RedHat it appears. The 5.6 release took WEEKS for the CentOS team to be finished... so I wouldn't boast too much with that CentOS 5.6 release, judging by the posts on the centos-dev mailing list I wasn't the only one 'disappointed' in the 5.6 slowdown.
Fluke/Philips used to do nice analog scopes too.
If the topicstarter wants it for audio or low-freq Atmel/PIC stuff (under 10MHz) there are loads of nice Fluke/Philips scopes out there.
For my PIC work I've got an older analog PM-3055 which shouldn't cost more than $100-200. A nice digital one like the 33XX line would set you back around $500-1500 depending on features (2 or 4 channel, 50 or 100MHz, samplerate) They're well built, easy to operate and service-friendly. But they lack features like protocol debugging which more modern scopes have.
All in all, it boils down to what you need...
I've been in the same position a few times... refused a few times, which gave me a somewhat hard time for a bit but last time decided to play it different. Went to the media safe, grabbed the CD set, tossed it on the manager's desk and told him to do it himself, since I didn't feel like dirtying my hands. That made him wake up...
First of all Swiss Army knives are highly overrated... get a proper knive just to cut stuff, and some mini-tools for the other jobs. Those "Swiss" knives tend to break when you need them most. Also note that hunting knives and such are not always allowed, specially in Europe.
As for voltages... most modern laptop PSUs take both 50Hz and 60Hz and anything between 110V and 230V. My Toshiba (bought in the Netherlands) worked fine in the USA with just a plug convertor. Same for my current IBM Thinkpad. But indeed, I wouldn't take either with me... too big and bulky for backpacking. PDA and imagetank sound much better, or just more flash cards.
But if you are already taking one anyway, pick up a proper GPS somewhere (waterproof, NMEA compatible, PC link cable and stand-alone operation being issues to look for, still love my Garmin GPS V) Handy to later remember how you got somewhere, to remember where pictures were taken etc etc. And if you really get lost they can be lifesavers. Get the proper maps and check if the basemap is OK!
Last would be a proper flashlight... I've always loved Maglite's build quality, but DO replace the bulb with a LED model to save power and to make it more sturdy.
Buying software for Linux isn't as bad as you descibed, IF you are already running a big supported distro. At work we use CentOS, which is pretty much RHEL with the trademarks stripped. I run a copy of Extend System's Advantage database on it for our ERP software (client is Windows based though) Installation was quite easy, apart from some bugs in their PERL scripts.
Getting the free dev version of Oracle running at home was something that took time and a good reading, but that seems to be typical for Oracle looking at all the Q's about Oracle on Windows as well... The LSB standards are pretty solid and cover most of the important basics. All modern big distro's follow these standards.
As for PC-BSD, they too get their windows manager, desktop enviroment and such elsewhere, just like the Linux distros do. So what's the major difference? KDE is KDE, under BSD or under Linux.
I won't go into the GPL debate, suffice to say that looking at the current state the various licenses have their own goals and have both accomplished a lot. No sense to keep whining about it, it's every authors right to choose the license he/she sees fit. All you need to do is comply or leave it.
As for me, I like both the Ubuntu family and RedHat with deratives like CentOS. My desktop favorite is Kubuntu, for workstations/servers I prefer RHEL or CentOS. Both because of support and stability. I've had a look at OpenBSD but at least for the desktop it just feels like taking 10 steps back. NetBSD seems to be stagnant given recent postings by its own developers leaving only FreeBSD and PC-BSD. MacOSX doesn't suit my needs due to it's license and tie-in with Mac hardware which is very overpriced, so it's no option.
The Ubuntu family are great for people getting into Linux, great for the desktop but it needs to mature more to be truly usable on the server. Hardware support between Linux distros varies, but it's getting there... no driver hunting so far for my IBM Thinkpad R50 and Logitech webcam, all in the repo's.
But then again, all is just IMHO ofcourse and you know what they say about opinions...
The author seems to be quite ill-informed, a-technical and opiniated...
I'll only talk about KDE, as that's what I use :
KDE's new "under-the-hood" technologies are showing signs of progress. Anybody reading Aaron Seigo's blog, following the blogs of the Amarok developers or visiting Planet KDE regularly have seen how far certain technologies have already evolved. Qt4 is allowing a lot of cool new things, such as different method of shaping text, allowing VNC-like sessions and much more.
Developers of apps like KOffice are already hard at work using the advantages from these core technologies... anybody following the Krita developer blogs can see what amazing things await us. The first two alpha's of KDE are very promising, but one has to want to see the changes so far, as most of KDE4 stuff is still in kdebase and kdelibs
Most Linux software updates aren't revolutionary, it's the nature of the development model. So you won't see shocking new things, however if you look over time (The KDE 3.x branch has been running for some years now) the results are spectaculair. Any time I need to logon to a stock RHEL 3 desktop system I'm droppped in a KDE 3.0.5 enviroment, which feels so outdated compared to my 3.5.5 desktop setup... that's serious progress. It just comes in little steps.
Recovery is for idiots that forgot backups
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USB Drives — Recovery?
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· Score: 2, Informative
Why bother waisting time with recovery procedures? Do a proper backup and make a quick install CD, containing needed drivers/apps and such... I made a DVD with my favorite Linux distro, in a subdir a list of RPM's and the important config files , all the extra RPM packages needed are in a private repository online.
So these days just the fact that a developer tries to make some $$$ out of his hard work, most of which so far he donated to the community for free is already evil?
I'll agree that he's a bit of an odd duck, but the reactions of some here are way out of line. Sure, Debian can and did fork, end of story.
Any workplace is the possible home to a BOFH...
It depends on management if the sysadmin turns out to be a BOFH (trust me, I know;) )
As for the original poster : if you can take the risk, join a young small company. Pay and promotion might not be as good as with large corporations, but the work will be more fun and diverse. Also you'll most likely have a good working enviroment since everybody still wants to strike gold.
No, I suspect she's looking for another job and doing this to polish up her past at least a bit. Going after single moms, retired folks and the like doesn't exactly make you look good in an interview;)
This perfectly shows that sometimes the BSD folks can be even bigger zealots than the Linux groups... glad not to be a BSD user! No way will I ever infest my PC with crap such as qmail (software with an attitude.... the kind of attitude you usually beat into submission with a clue-by-four)
As for the references to the bat book : even v2 is still very useable, it's just lacking a few things which got added after v8.8 (such as advanced anti-spam features)
First of all, there's no single Linux... with the big differences between distro's (not to mention Linux vs *BSD) it's hard to target any major Linux group.
Even if they all ran distro Linux-XYZ, some will run a plain XYZ, others patch it, some stay up-to-date, others never update. Linux is a much more moving target to hit... exploits are patched rapidly, and it's already more secure by design.
For any serious damage you'll need (local) root. Hardly anybody is stupid enough to run under root all the time, so if user X get's infected, only stuff user X owns gets nuked (again, unless he IS root, in which case he deserves to die; as unpleasant as possible even) So anybody that adheres to the common safety rules that have been part of the UNIX world for dozens of years already has one major defense layer up and running.
But even though, I agree the BSD/*NIX world needs to be pro-active wrt security, and have anti-spam/virus measures / firewall and such in place anyway. Better safe than sorry!
This might have been an issue years ago, but these days there isn't any serious "dependancy hell" anymore. Tools like yum sort that out. As long as you pick a sane combination of repositories things will "just work"
For Fedora (only one I'm familiar with), there's freshrpms , Dag and a few others that work great. For the distro I use (CentOS) I maintain my own repository, so all other users just have to click to get what they need.
And if you want one-click install, have a look at Klik, which is now available for many distro's already. Although I personally prefer RPM's (since it's easier to clean/upgrade) it's a good idea for novice users.
Things like LSB and freedesktop ARE making a difference, although some of it might not (yet?) be visible on the surface.
As a non-US citizen (I'm in the Netherlands) I like to keep informed on what's going on around the world. I love the BBC's newsservice, CNN gives me US-specific stuff and some nice background info and even Al-jazeera ain't half bad.
My work (part-time Linux sysadmin) means I participate in mailing lists, browse web sites from all over and email with many people around the world.
In my hobies I find the internet a great tool as well. Inspiration for my cooking, finding guitar tabs, chatting and swapping idea's with fellow LEGO fans and the list just goes on and on.
In my bookmarks I expect around 75% to be from sites not (hosted in) the EU. My addressbook shows around 30% as non-EU.
All of the above activities imply global communication. That is one of the biggest gifts the internet brought us. So why get rid of that? Because of spam? Because of some 419 scammers and the likes? Some of the recent virii?
All those things are small nuisances, which can be fixed technically if certain parties would get their act together, something we as consumers can stimulate by spending our money differently.
Slashdot Mirror
Bright Cluster Manager is quite nice, but still lacking loads of things. The shell is powerful but very cryptic, the graphical interface doesn't allow certain operations to be done on a range of selected nodes for instance...
Also the 'integration' with for instance Sun Grid Engine (which is supported) is not very thorough (specially with regard to setting up queues, something the Sun tools already suck at) I still need Bright Cluster Manager + the SGE tools + Sun ARCo to get almost everything done, and at times it feels like a lot of duplicated effort and some good old *NIX handywork is still required to really get things moving.
However the development team is very receptive to constructive feedback and much has changed over the past 6 months.
We're not talking about the average desktop, where apparently loads of bling is 'needed' these days. A cluster is usually for processing loads and loads of data.
Most in-house software usually compiles just fine on CentOS/RHEL/Suse , getting the compiler suites to work might even be easier than under Ubuntu (10.04 with Intel V11.1 libstdc++5 anybody?) , much professional software isn't even supported under Ubuntu (and specially with scientific software such things DO matter)
Trying to claim Ubuntu is more secure because it's more recent shows nothing but ignorance.
What people want in an HPC environment is that it processes data; month after month, always with 100% predictable result and without downtime. A proper enterprise distro gives you that. The 0.01% performance gain in a HPC environment of a newer kernel doesn't make sense compared to the pains of having to roll your own updates because the distro maker stopped the updates. Just look at Ubuntu 8.04 LTS right now to see what I mean, compared to RHEL5 (which is older, but sees much more maintenance) And remember; you don't 'just upgrade' a cluster's distro after a year or two. The OS that you install after it's rolled in usually lasts for the lifetime of the cluster, or has to last for at least 2-3 years.
I've worked with various clusters over the past year.
The distro doesn't really matter, mostly it's what you feel most comfortable with. I'd slightly favor RedHat Enterprise or a respin of it, since it's easiest in terms of drivers for commercial cluster hardware and commercial software support, but Debian would be just as fine. I would choose a 'stable' distro though, so no Fedora, no Ubuntu (even their LTS isn't exactly enterprise grade compared to RedHat / Suse or even Debian stable) You don't want to have to update every week since this usually requires quite some work (making new images and rebooting all nodes)
What I found out matters a lot more is the scheduler you will use; Sun Grid Engine, PBS, Torque or slurm to name a few. Every scheduler comes with it strong and weak points, be sure to look at what matters most to you.
If you are unfamiliar with all of these things, pick a complete bundle like Rocks (it's based on RedHat Enterprise Linux), which makes setting up a cluster quite easy and still allows you to choose which components you want. That'll greatly improve your chance of success. But be warned; it's still a steep learning curve building and specially configuring a cluster. The most time is spent tuning queuing parameters to maximize the performance of your cluster.
UCS looks nice on paper, but for instance the CPU (core) density/rack UCS offers doesn't compare favorably compared to other platforms. And the initial investments are way too high for most small to medium companies as well.
Even worse; if you manage to find the cause it almost always comes down to some Sony-only part, which is impossible to buy in any regular (web)shop. And if you then have the nerve to call Sony tech support, asking for a specific part... let's not even go there :(
After 2 TV sets with such issues I've stopped buying Sony, at least some other brands still have decent consumer service (Technics and Philips to name a few)
Why should you respin for every update? The (S)RPM's are available so a simple yum update gives you 5.6 just fine.... and if you're working offline a simple USB stick/disk/DVD with all the updates works just fine as well. CentOS is too stuck in their ways to keep up with RedHat it appears. The 5.6 release took WEEKS for the CentOS team to be finished... so I wouldn't boast too much with that CentOS 5.6 release, judging by the posts on the centos-dev mailing list I wasn't the only one 'disappointed' in the 5.6 slowdown.
Fluke/Philips used to do nice analog scopes too. If the topicstarter wants it for audio or low-freq Atmel/PIC stuff (under 10MHz) there are loads of nice Fluke/Philips scopes out there. For my PIC work I've got an older analog PM-3055 which shouldn't cost more than $100-200. A nice digital one like the 33XX line would set you back around $500-1500 depending on features (2 or 4 channel, 50 or 100MHz, samplerate) They're well built, easy to operate and service-friendly. But they lack features like protocol debugging which more modern scopes have. All in all, it boils down to what you need...
I've been in the same position a few times... refused a few times, which gave me a somewhat hard time for a bit but last time decided to play it different. Went to the media safe, grabbed the CD set, tossed it on the manager's desk and told him to do it himself, since I didn't feel like dirtying my hands. That made him wake up...
Vacuum tubes ALWAYS emit light when working, because of they way they are built. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_tube for the details.
As for voltages... most modern laptop PSUs take both 50Hz and 60Hz and anything between 110V and 230V. My Toshiba (bought in the Netherlands) worked fine in the USA with just a plug convertor. Same for my current IBM Thinkpad. But indeed, I wouldn't take either with me... too big and bulky for backpacking. PDA and imagetank sound much better, or just more flash cards.
But if you are already taking one anyway, pick up a proper GPS somewhere (waterproof, NMEA compatible, PC link cable and stand-alone operation being issues to look for, still love my Garmin GPS V) Handy to later remember how you got somewhere, to remember where pictures were taken etc etc. And if you really get lost they can be lifesavers. Get the proper maps and check if the basemap is OK!
Last would be a proper flashlight... I've always loved Maglite's build quality, but DO replace the bulb with a LED model to save power and to make it more sturdy.
Buying software for Linux isn't as bad as you descibed, IF you are already running a big supported distro. At work we use CentOS, which is pretty much RHEL with the trademarks stripped. I run a copy of Extend System's Advantage database on it for our ERP software (client is Windows based though) Installation was quite easy, apart from some bugs in their PERL scripts.
Getting the free dev version of Oracle running at home was something that took time and a good reading, but that seems to be typical for Oracle looking at all the Q's about Oracle on Windows as well... The LSB standards are pretty solid and cover most of the important basics. All modern big distro's follow these standards.
As for PC-BSD, they too get their windows manager, desktop enviroment and such elsewhere, just like the Linux distros do. So what's the major difference? KDE is KDE, under BSD or under Linux.
I won't go into the GPL debate, suffice to say that looking at the current state the various licenses have their own goals and have both accomplished a lot. No sense to keep whining about it, it's every authors right to choose the license he/she sees fit. All you need to do is comply or leave it.
As for me, I like both the Ubuntu family and RedHat with deratives like CentOS. My desktop favorite is Kubuntu, for workstations/servers I prefer RHEL or CentOS. Both because of support and stability. I've had a look at OpenBSD but at least for the desktop it just feels like taking 10 steps back. NetBSD seems to be stagnant given recent postings by its own developers leaving only FreeBSD and PC-BSD. MacOSX doesn't suit my needs due to it's license and tie-in with Mac hardware which is very overpriced, so it's no option.
The Ubuntu family are great for people getting into Linux, great for the desktop but it needs to mature more to be truly usable on the server. Hardware support between Linux distros varies, but it's getting there... no driver hunting so far for my IBM Thinkpad R50 and Logitech webcam, all in the repo's.
But then again, all is just IMHO ofcourse and you know what they say about opinions...
The author seems to be quite ill-informed, a-technical and opiniated... I'll only talk about KDE, as that's what I use : KDE's new "under-the-hood" technologies are showing signs of progress. Anybody reading Aaron Seigo's blog, following the blogs of the Amarok developers or visiting Planet KDE regularly have seen how far certain technologies have already evolved. Qt4 is allowing a lot of cool new things, such as different method of shaping text, allowing VNC-like sessions and much more. Developers of apps like KOffice are already hard at work using the advantages from these core technologies... anybody following the Krita developer blogs can see what amazing things await us. The first two alpha's of KDE are very promising, but one has to want to see the changes so far, as most of KDE4 stuff is still in kdebase and kdelibs Most Linux software updates aren't revolutionary, it's the nature of the development model. So you won't see shocking new things, however if you look over time (The KDE 3.x branch has been running for some years now) the results are spectaculair. Any time I need to logon to a stock RHEL 3 desktop system I'm droppped in a KDE 3.0.5 enviroment, which feels so outdated compared to my 3.5.5 desktop setup... that's serious progress. It just comes in little steps.
Why bother waisting time with recovery procedures? Do a proper backup and make a quick install CD, containing needed drivers/apps and such... I made a DVD with my favorite Linux distro, in a subdir a list of RPM's and the important config files , all the extra RPM packages needed are in a private repository online.
So these days just the fact that a developer tries to make some $$$ out of his hard work, most of which so far he donated to the community for free is already evil? I'll agree that he's a bit of an odd duck, but the reactions of some here are way out of line. Sure, Debian can and did fork, end of story.
It depends on management if the sysadmin turns out to be a BOFH (trust me, I know
As for the original poster : if you can take the risk, join a young small company. Pay and promotion might not be as good as with large corporations, but the work will be more fun and diverse. Also you'll most likely have a good working enviroment since everybody still wants to strike gold.
No, I suspect she's looking for another job and doing this to polish up her past at least a bit. Going after single moms, retired folks and the like doesn't exactly make you look good in an interview ;)
This perfectly shows that sometimes the BSD folks can be even bigger zealots than the Linux groups... glad not to be a BSD user!
No way will I ever infest my PC with crap such as qmail (software with an attitude.... the kind of attitude you usually beat into submission with a clue-by-four)
As for the references to the bat book : even v2 is still very useable, it's just lacking a few things which got added after v8.8 (such as advanced anti-spam features)
First of all, there's no single Linux... with the big differences between distro's (not to mention Linux vs *BSD) it's hard to target any major Linux group. Even if they all ran distro Linux-XYZ, some will run a plain XYZ, others patch it, some stay up-to-date, others never update. Linux is a much more moving target to hit... exploits are patched rapidly, and it's already more secure by design. For any serious damage you'll need (local) root. Hardly anybody is stupid enough to run under root all the time, so if user X get's infected, only stuff user X owns gets nuked (again, unless he IS root, in which case he deserves to die; as unpleasant as possible even) So anybody that adheres to the common safety rules that have been part of the UNIX world for dozens of years already has one major defense layer up and running. But even though, I agree the BSD/*NIX world needs to be pro-active wrt security, and have anti-spam/virus measures / firewall and such in place anyway. Better safe than sorry!
For Fedora (only one I'm familiar with), there's freshrpms , Dag and a few others that work great. For the distro I use (CentOS) I maintain my own repository, so all other users just have to click to get what they need.
And if you want one-click install, have a look at Klik, which is now available for many distro's already. Although I personally prefer RPM's (since it's easier to clean/upgrade) it's a good idea for novice users.
Things like LSB and freedesktop ARE making a difference, although some of it might not (yet?) be visible on the surface.
As a non-US citizen (I'm in the Netherlands) I like to keep informed on what's going on around the world. I love the BBC's newsservice, CNN gives me US-specific stuff and some nice background info and even Al-jazeera ain't half bad.
My work (part-time Linux sysadmin) means I participate in mailing lists, browse web sites from all over and email with many people around the world.
In my hobies I find the internet a great tool as well. Inspiration for my cooking, finding guitar tabs, chatting and swapping idea's with fellow LEGO fans and the list just goes on and on.
In my bookmarks I expect around 75% to be from sites not (hosted in) the EU. My addressbook shows around 30% as non-EU.
All of the above activities imply global communication. That is one of the biggest gifts the internet brought us. So why get rid of that? Because of spam? Because of some 419 scammers and the likes? Some of the recent virii?
All those things are small nuisances, which can be fixed technically if certain parties would get their act together, something we as consumers can stimulate by spending our money differently.
Print to PDF would also work, pretty much available on any recent Linux distro.
You don't want anybody who doesn't "get" basic networking to install stuff like a webserver on his/her machine, PERIOD. So try again...