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May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-) Softpanorama Search

Advanced Linux Administration

The biggest recent development in commercial Unixes space is that Oracle pledged to support Red Hat Enterprise Linux -- charging less than half of Red Hat's support prices ($99 for minimal level -- patches and RPMs only).

See:

• Oracle OpenWorld Keynote: Larry Ellison unveils Oracle Unbreakable Linux
• Oracle Unbreakable Linux: FAQ, Data Sheet, Press Release, Consulting / Migration, and Customer and Partner Endorsements
• Now Until January 31, 2007: Free Trial for Oracle Customers; 50% off Purchase for Everyone
• Data sheet: Oracle on Linux (PDF)
• Technical resources: Visit the Linux Technology Center page on the Oracle Technology Network
• Free magazine: Read the Oracle Magazine Special Edition for Linux (2006)

As a news this was certainly on par with Google buying UTube for $1.6B hoax, which might be Sequoia capital trick of selling one of its properties to the other making 2 billions on 15 million investment in the UTube and helping Google to maintain its exorbitant share price a bit longer; or for a change with IBM hoax of buying ISS for over a billion. Still this is was an interesting development that reminds dot-com bubble mergers and acquisitions. Reminds us that the traditional Open Source (GPL-based Open Source), is a very problematic business model. It is often used as a smoke screen for the VCs to get software engineers to work for free, NOT EVEN Minimum Wage, but for free!  Then they take their hard work, pump $20M in marketing and either sell the resulting company to one of their other portfolio companies or take it public and dump the shares on the public. Meanwhile the software engineers that worked to develop that software for FREE, aka Slave Labor, get $0.00 for their hard work while the VCs and Investment Bankers make a killing. And of course then they get their buddies in Big Media hype the GPL-based Open Source id the best thing after sliced bread.

Oracle will also supply a RHEL clone. Oracle pledged Linux support from its own army of employees--including several Linux kernel programmers. Internally Linux is used by Oracle as a development platform along with Solaris. That makes the move somewhat similar to Sun buying Star Office: cutting internal costs. 

Anyway a good news is that the price of Linux support will be 50% lower and RHEL AS support model with its fat margins essentially died by quick painless death: customers now have a viable way to drive down the cost of maintaining RHEL and are likely to use this information in contract negotiations, even if they don't switch.

Eventually this move might divert major part of Red Hat's support subscription revenue stream into Oracle coffers.

Along with Red Hat, Novell is also under new pressure.  There is no longer much sense to use Suse as an enterprise distribution as its main selling point was lower support costs in comparison with Red Hat.

Subsystems to be deleted/disabled for a server to increase stability of Suse 10 SP1/SP2.

1. iptables (Firewall, can affect stability of network layer, especially on high network traffic loads; in such cases a separate appliance-based firewall is a safer bet)
2. AppArmor (security framework for applications)
3. cups (printing subsystems)
4. Samba (Microsoft filesharing)
5. Alsa (Sound subsystem)
6. power management
7. ReiserFS (ext3 should be used instead)
8. synaptic modules (laptop only)

Old News ;-)

Oracle's Technical Contributions to Linux

Yet Another Setup Tool (YaST)

Yet Another Setup Tool (YaST) helps make system administration easier by providing a single utility for configuring and maintaining Linux systems. Available under GPL, this code can be freely accessed by anyone. The Oracle Linux Engineering team ported the Yast tool to OEL from SUSE. Oracle Unbreakable Linux support customers have access to the YaST functionality integrated with the Oracle Management Pack for Linux, thereby gaining a fully supported, easy to use, feature-rich system management environment for their Linux servers.

[Apr 20, 2009] Sun goes to Oracle for $7.4B

Oracle+Sun has the power to seriously harm IBM. Solaris still has the highest market share among proprietary Unixes. And AIX is only third after HP-UX. Wonder if Solaris will become Oracle's main development platform again. Oracle is a top contributor to Linux and that might help to bridge the gap in shell and  packaging. Telecommunications and database administrators always preferred Solaris over Linux.

Yahoo! Finance

Oracle Corp. snapped up computer server and software maker Sun Microsystems Inc. for $7.4 billion Monday, trumping rival IBM Corp.'s attempt to buy one of Silicon Valley's best known -- and most troubled -- companies.

... ... ...

Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's CEO, predicted the combination will create a "systems and software powerhouse" that "redefines the industry, redrawing the boundaries that have frustrated the industry's ability to solve." Among other things, he predicted Oracle will be able to offer its customers simpler computing solutions at less expensive prices by drawing upon Sun's technology.

... ... ...

Yet Oracle says it can run Sun more efficiently. It expects the purchase to add at least 15 cents per share to its adjusted earnings in the first year after the deal closes. The company estimated Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun will contribute more than $1.5 billion to Oracle's adjusted profit in the first year and more than $2 billion in the second year.

If Oracle can hit those targets, Sun would yield more profit than the combined contributions of three other major acquisitions -- PeopleSoft Inc., Siebel Systems Inc. and BEA Systems -- that cost Oracle a total of more than $25 billion.

A deal with Oracle might not be plagued by the same antitrust issues that could have loomed over IBM and Sun, since there is significantly less overlap between the two companies. Still, Oracle could be able to use Sun's products to enhance its own software.

Oracle's main business is database software. Sun's Solaris operating system is a leading platform for that software. The company also makes "middleware," which allows business computing applications to work together. Oracle's middleware is built on Sun's Java language and software.

Calling Java the "single most important software asset we have ever acquired," Ellison predicted it would eventually help make Oracle's middleware products generate as much revenue as its database line does.

Sun's takeover is a reminder that a few missteps and bad timing can cause a star to come crashing down.

Sun was founded in 1982 by men who would become legendary Silicon Valley figures: Andy Bechtolsheim, a graduate student whose computer "workstation" for the Stanford University Network (SUN) led to the company's first product; Bill Joy, whose work formed the basis for Sun's computer operating system; and Stanford MBAs Vinod Khosla and Scott McNealy.

Sun was a pioneer in the concept of networked computing, the idea that computers could do more when lots of them were linked together. Sun's computers took off at universities and in the government, and became part of the backbone of the early Internet. Then the 1990s boom made Sun a star. It claimed to put "the dot in dot-com," considered buying a struggling Apple Computer Inc. and saw its market value peak around $200 billion.

[Apr 17, 2009] Ashutosh Sharma Adobe Reader 9 released - Linux and Solaris x86

Tabbed viewing was added

Adobe Reader 9.1 for Linux and Solaris x86 has been released today. Solaris x86 support was one of the most requested feature by users. As per the Reader team's announcement, this release includes the following major features:

    - Support for Tabbed Viewing (preview)
    - Super fast launch, and better performance than previous releases
    - Integration with Acrobat.com
    - IPv6 support
    - Enhanced support for PDF portfolios (preview)

The complete list is available here.

Adobe Reader 9.1 is now available for download and works on OpenSolaris, Solaris 10 and most modern Linux distributions such as Ubuntu 8.04, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva 2009, SLED 10, Mint Linux 6 and Fedora 10.

See also Sneak Preview of the Tabbed Viewing interface in Adobe Reader 9.x (on Ubuntu)

[Apr 4, 2009] 10 open source books worth downloading

Apr 3, 2009 | www.tectonic.co.za

LPI 101 and 102 study notes

http://www.ledge.co.za/software/lpinotes/
Download: Around 2MB per document
Format: PDF and OpenOffice.org
The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) certification is one of the most widely-used distribution-neutral qualifications in the open source world. Studying to sit for the LPI exams is a whole lot easier with these study guides produced by South African trainers Leading Edge. The notes, which cover the 101 and 102 set of LPI exams are available as both PDFs as well as for OpenOffice.org and are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation Licence.

[Mar 24, 2009] SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 released - LinuxWorld

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 was released on March 24, 2009 and include Linux kernel 2.6.27, Oracle Cluster File System 2, support for the OpenAIS cluster communication protocol for server and storage clustering, and Mono 2.0.

Meanwhile, Novell is also hoping to rev up the application market around its OS, with SUSE Linux Enterprise JeOS (just enough operating system), which ISVs can use along with a set of tools called Suse Studio, to package their products as virtual appliances.

Novell has a "supportability algorithm" for vetting appliances; those that pass muster will receive technical support from Novell

[Feb 12, 2009] FSlint - Utility to clean up your File System in openSUSE SUSE & openSUSE

FSlint is a simple yet very easy to use utility to find and clean various forms of lint on a filesystem. i.e., unwanted or problematic cruft in your files or file names. For example, one form of lint it finds is duplicate files. FSlint operates in both GUI and Command Line mode and the GUI is very straight forward to use especially there isn’t much of hidden menu options.

FSlint basically checks if sizes are same, files are not hardlinked to each other, md5sums are the same, sha1sums are the same (in case of md5 collisions).

[Sep 19, 2008] A Comparative Look at Compact Sysadmin Distributions

Things go wrong. Hard disks fail and whole servers crash. Luckily, many Linux-based distributions are available to help systems administrators handle minor catastrophes. We looked at four of the most portable, all of which fit on a 210MB mini CD -- SliTaz, Parted Magic, GParted, and RIPLinuX.

Each of these distributions is easy to use -- just insert the CD or plug in the USB drive on which it's installed, then boot. Each gives you access to a variety of open source tools that you can use to manage disks, partitions, and files and perform diagnostics and network troubleshooting. These distributions provide most of the tools that you might need in an emergency situation.

To choose the most appropriate sysadmin distribution, you have to consider several factors. One is the supported boot devices. Most distributions can boot and run from a live CD, but you may want the flexibility of being able to boot from a USB device or even network Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE). Another factor is size: can it fit onto a 128MB USB drive or a mini CD, or do you need a DVD? If you like a smaller distribution, make sure that it holds all the tools and utilities you need. Lastly, consider usability. Does the distro offers tools that have a GUI, or only those you can use from the command line? The CLI may not pose a problem for system administrators, but a GUI may expedite the solution and increase the user base of the distribution, often resulting in greater support and more frequent updates.

Parted Magic

 ,,, ,,, ,,.

Parted Magic is a Linux From Scratch (LFS) distribution, and only 45MB in size. The latest version, 3.0, runs on the 2.6.26 kernel. You can boot and run it using a live CD, USB, or even PXE. It features an aesthetically pleasing GUI based on Xfce. However, be wary of its memory requirements. The latest version removed the live boot option, so the whole distribution is loaded into memory. You must have at least 300MB of RAM. Failure to meet this minimum requirement will result in problems loading Parted Magic. You may not be able to load all the programs, and even if you can, you might not have access to the graphical desktop.

This distribution's primary component is the popular GParted tool, but it also includes the data recovery tools TestDisk and PhotoRec, as well as a disk imaging program called Partition Image. Other tools include Xarchiver for viewing and extracting archives,

• Xfburn for CD burning,
• ISO Master for creating ISO images.
• Use the graphical Leafpad for text editing,
• the latest version of Firefox (3.0.1) for Internet browsing,
• Grsync for backing up data.

Parted Magic includes several command-line tools; most are disk related and include dd, ddrescue (for disk recovery), cfdisk, and fdisk. The variety of disk tools enables Parted Magic to support many file systems, including ext2, ext3, ext4, FAT16, FAT32, HFS, HFS+, JFS, Linux swap, NTFS, ReiserFS, Reiser4, and XFS. It includes some advanced network tools too, such as tcpdump.

Parted Magic is a great distribution for its intended purpose: filesystem and partition management, manipulation, and recovery. Its GUI makes it easy for average users and system administrators alike to perform disk-related tasks.

GParted Live

GParted Live is a Debian-based distribution from the GParted team. The latest version is 0.3.7-7, running on the 2.6.24 kernel, and is only 90MB in size. You can boot and run it via live CD, USB, or PXE, and you can even install it on a hard disk. You will need a Pentium II or higher and at least 64MB of RAM, with 128MB recommended.

GParted's boot menu is simple and mostly related to the type of video display. Like other live CD sysadmin distributions, it offers Memtest86+ as a choice in the boot menu. Upon boot, it asks you about the keyboard type you'll be using.

GParted Live's graphical desktop is simple and shows a shortcut to the GParted tool on the desktop. It utilizes a Fluxbox menu in which you can run other disk programs and editing tools. The Fluxbox menu has a limited set of tools:

• Vim and nano for text editing,
• GNU Midnight Commander for file management,
• Partition Image for imaging,
• TestDisk for partition recovery, and PhotoRec for file recovery.

As with Parted Magic, you can access other disk tools using the CLI. An extensive collection of tools enables GParted Live to support the same filesystems as Parted Magic, and a shortcut for live USB creation is also available on the desktop. However, unlike Parted Magic, GParted Live doesn't have network support. This means it's missing Internet browsers, commands like ping and netstat, and features like rsync and Grsync, because they're dependent on a network connection. Likewise, the distribution offers no CD-burning software.

With no network support or ability to burn data on a CD, GParted is designed solely for partition management and manipulation on a local machine. You can recover data, but you need a locally accessible device, such as another hard disk or an external drive, to save the recovered data.

If you're concerned only with disk partitioning and related tasks, GParted Live is easy enough to use for both system administrators and average users. However, if you're able to meet its higher memory requirements, Parted Magic may be a better way to go.

[Sep 11, 2008] The LXF Guide 10 tips for lazy sysadmins Linux Format The website of the UK's best-selling Linux magazine

A lazy sysadmin is a good sysadmin. Time spent in finding more-efficient shortcuts is time saved later on for that ongoing project of "reading the whole of the internet", so try Juliet Kemp's 10 handy tips to make your admin life easier...

1. Cache your password with ssh-agent
2. Speed up logins using Kerberos
3. screen: detach to avoid repeat logins
4. screen: connect multiple users
5. Expand Bash's tab completion
6. Automate your installations
7. Roll out changes to multiple systems
8. Automate Debian updates
9. Sanely reboot a locked-up box
10. Send commands to several PCs

[Aug 29, 2008] Hans Reiser Sentenced to 15-to-Life Threat Level from Wired.com

OAKLAND, California – Linux guru and convicted murdered Hans Reiser was handed a prison sentence of 15-to-life Friday, putting a final capstone on a case that began as a murder mystery, and ended with Reiser leading police to a makeshift grave a short distance from where he strangled his wife.

"I wish to humbly apologize to society for my crime," Reiser said in a statement before his sentence was pronounced. "Every human life is sacred. I took the life of a human being and I'm very sorry for that."

Hans Reiser killed his wife, Nina, at about 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 3, 2006, according to the belated confession Reiser wrote as part of his deal, said prosecutor Paul Hora after the sentencing. He first punched her in the mouth, cutting his hand, then strangled her to death.

He briefly stored the body in the bathroom, then moved it to his car, where it stayed for two days while he searched for a place to bury her.

 Nina Reiser, at age 31, was last seen alive at Hans Reiser's house in the Oakland hills on the day of her murder, when she dropped off the once-happy couple's two young children to stay with him the Labor Day weekend. The couple were in the middle of a heated divorce.

The developer of the ReiserFS file system becomes eligible for parole in about 13 years, having already served two years since his October 2006 arrest.

The 44-year-old defendant's jury trial here concluded in April this year with Reiser's first-degree murder conviction. That carries a 25-to-life term, but the authorities, in a backroom deal, later offered him 15-to-life if he produced his wife's body and waived any rights to appeal his conviction.

[Aug 21, 2008] Intel on Quad-core vs. UltraSPARC Linux Magazine

December 13th, 2006

I’m pleasantly surprised at how much I’m enjoying the IT@Intel blog. Over the past couple of weeks we’ve seen posts about how the culture of Intel — and IT in general — is too focused on performance and Eleanor Wynn’s attempt to explain information technology themes in the context of Martin Heidegger (That is, once you get past her largely inaccessible first paragraph. “xtreme weight loss program and reappending appendages from one place to another” Huh?) All-in-all it’s considerably more interesting than one would think an official Intel blog would be.

As an added bonus, they’ve opened up comments and that’s where something interesting came up on a quad-core post by Sudip Chahal.

The post itself doesn’t really shed any new light on quad-core technology but Sudip does a excellent job of responding when someone asks him to compare Intel’s quad-cores with SUN’s UltraSPARC processors with CoolThreads technology, 8 cores, and 32 accessible threads on a single chip.

b. Additionally, if the application is not very multi-threaded e.g., some batch jobs or optimizer solvers, then the Sun solution is simply not competitive as its cores are very simple and much lower performance on an individual core basis as compared with the Intel Clovertown Core 2 micro-architecture based cores.

That, it turns out, is pretty easy to verify. AnandTech put Intel Duo Woodcrest Xeons up against SUN’s 8-core UltraSPARCs back in June and Intel whipped SUN handily in Apache/PHP/MySQL processing, Java webserving, and every other category where they compared the two processors.

Sudip also had something to say about software.

c. While the Sun solution can deliver good performance for �throughput� applications (heavily multi-threaded applications) - the point remains that the applications have to be SPARC applications and not x86 applications which is where the vast majority of the software market is.

And that’s a pretty big point. SUN can pack as many threads as they like into a chip but if the apps aren’t written to take full advantage of the infrastructure, it’s moot.

Take Linux, for example. I talked with SUN engineers at OracleWorld earlier this year about their Fire servers and their comment was Linux in it’s current form probably couldn’t use all the threads on even one of the UltraSPARC chips.

Which is another way of saying Linux would probably run better on something else.

While this looks like a post comparing processors, that was just the set-up. It’s really about software development and the challenges facing developers next year on the new infrastructure available. A sentence in the AnandTech article linked above sums that idea up well when talking about the UltraSPARC T1s.

PostGreSQL and MySQL scale better on Solaris than they do on Linux, but both RDBMS have trouble scaling over multiple cores.

Do you know how to scale your application across multiple cores?

The shift in thinking required to go from traditional programming to multi-threaded programming was described to me by one vendor recently as “Herculean” and will make the challenge that developers faced of moving from procedural to Object-Orientated Programming several years back “look like child’s play.”

And it’s a challenge that you may not be able to avoid like some were able to with OOP. Because while some platforms will run multi-threaded apps better, some practically demand threading.

What do you think? Is multi-threading where application development is headed? Should we not be so quick to discount SPARC since they opened up the spec earlier this year? If you’re doing multi-threaded programming, what tools are you using? Drop me a note.

Comments

Sun has bought up MySQL. They will be rewriting parts of their database to better perform on the UltraSPARC processors. Sun has got the technical people of getting this out the door in a very reasonable period of time. This will make use of almost all the processing power available on their chips.

The chip design itself is also open source. I expect it will evolve quickly to fill in required missing pieces for attracting a number of other high end applications.

In the meantime SUN can also provide Intel processors in the boxes they are selling. The buyer chooses the machine that best fits their application. The money still goes to SUN….

I am forcasting SUNny skies in six to 12 months.

[Jul 30, 2008] scdbackup 0.9.0

scdbackup is a simplified CD/DVD backup program for Linux. It can back up large amounts of data on one or more media, with no special tools needed for reading the backup. It supports ISO9660 filesystems and afio archives. Its special features are automatic division of data into multiple volumes, verification of write success, incremental backups, a search and restore helper for large ISO9660 backups. CDs get written via cdrecord, wodim, cdrskin, or xorriso. DVDs and BDs get written via growisofs, cdrskin, or xorriso.

Changes: The configuration now allows the choice of xorriso as the ISO9660 formatter and as the burn program. This enables scdbackup to split oversized files without needing a large disk buffer. Remote scdbackup installations may be used via SSH instead of a burn program. Regular expressions can exclude files from the backup if their leafnames match. Media types BD-R and BD-RE are permitted but have not been tested yet.

[Jun 20, 2008] BitRock Download Web Stacks

BitRock Web Stacks provide you with the easiest way to install and run the LAMP platform in a variety of Linux distributions. BitRock Web Stacks are free to download and use under the terms of the Apache License 2.0. To learn more about our licensing policies, click here.

You can find up-to-date WAMP, LAMP and MAMP stacks at the BitNami open source website. In addition to those, you will find freely available application stacks for popular open source software such as Joomla!, Drupal, Mediawiki and Roller. Just like BitRock Web Stacks, they include everything you need to run the software and come packaged in a fast, easy to use installer.

BitRock Web Stacks contain several open source tools and libraries. Please be sure that you read and comply with all of the applicable licenses. If you are a MySQL Network subscriber (or would like to purchase a subscription) and want to use a version of LAMPStack that contains the MySQL Certified binaries, please send an email to sales@bitrock.com.

For further information, including supported platforms, component versions, documentation, and support, please visit our solutions section.

[Feb 28, 2008] Mk-boot-usb a Script to Create Multiple-Bootable USB Sticks

Mk-boot-usb is a perl script to create multiple-bootable usb sticks (usb keys / usb flash drives). It wipes out an entire usb stick, partitions it, creates file systems on it, installs grub, and installs a minimal linux on it. Mk-boot-usb is meant to speed up and lower the barrier of entry for creating bootable usb sticks. The usb stick will immediately become bootable (using the minimal linux), and more useful distributions can then be installed into other partitions manually simply by (1) copying any Live CD into each partition (2) modifying grub's configuration file.

This program will destroy all of your data in the usb stick. It may even destroy all of your data in the harddisk and/or those on any storage device attached to it if you are not careful! Additionaly, this program is written with absolutely no security consideration in mind. Please use it at your own risk.

A snapshot of the most current version is here: mk-boot-usb.tgz

This program is distributed under the terms of GNU General Public License, version 3 or later.

The following utilities are used by mk-boot-usb: perl, sfdisk, mkfs (mkfs.vfat and mkfs.ext2), grub, wget.

In addition, it will use wget to download ttylinux into its working directory the first time it is executed.

It is recommended that you also install qemu so that the usb stick can be immediately tested after it is processed.

This program is written with absolutely no security consideration in mind

Interactive Usage

Say you have a 1GB usb stick and you want to put into the usb stick Damn Small Linux 4.2.5 and slax 6.0.0 (other than the default ttylinux). Mk-boot-usb's default grub boot menu happens to contain entries for these two distributions, and therefore they require the least of your efforts. These are recommended to users who try mk-boot-usb the very first time.

So we will allocate rougly 60MB and 240MB for them, respectively, leaving about 700MB for your usb as an ordinary storage device.

First make sure that this usb stick is _not_ attached to the computer. Then extract mk-boot-usb.tgz, cd into the directory, and run mk-boot-usb as follows:

        ./mk-boot-usb

Mk-boot-usb will ask you to insert the stick. Please do so, and wait a few seconds for the lcd on the stick to flash and stop flashing. Also make sure to close all file managers that popped up after the insertion if your version of linux auto mounts usb sticks. Now press enter to continue. Mk-boot-usb compares your /dev/sd* before and after the insertion to figure out which stick you want to wipe out.

Next mk-boot-usb will display a partial listing of the files it finds in your usb stick. Make sure that this is indeed the stick you want to wipe out. It then determins the true size of the usb stick (in MB) and ask you to type in a list of numbers that add up to the true size exactly. It will refuse to proceed if the sum does not equal to the total size exactly. This is to ensure that you are wiping out the right usb stick. (or at least one that happens to have exactly the same size :-) ) Let's say it shows 968 for the 1GB stick. Then you would type something like:

        668 60 240

Leading and/or trailing spaces are ignored. Once you agree to proceed, it will create a primary vfat partition of size 668MB, where it will install grub and ttylinux, plus two ext2 partitions of sizes 60 and 240 each. (Ext3 is too slow for usb sticks.)

Now you can test your bootable usb stick by typing qemu -usb /dev/sdz (or whichever device you are processing) if you have qemu installed. ttylinux's login id is 'root' and password 'root' (both without quotes).

Batch Usage

Please read the first page of the source code, where the options are commented. Be very careful in batch mode, especially with the -d option. Dangerous!

Installing Live CD's into Other Partitions

For DSL 4.2.5 just copy everything on the live CD into one of the appropriate empty partition of the usb stick, and modify /boot/grub/menu.lst in the first partition of the usb stick. Note that with grub syntax, the first primary partition is called (hd0,0) when this very stick is being booted, and its first logical partition is called (hd0,4). This is about all that you need to modify.

Ditto for slax 6.0.0. BTW, slax automatically records any changes you make during the session into the /slax/changes directory of its partition. Think about it: you copied from a live CD which packs 400MB worth of software into 200MB space, and yet now it works like it cared nothing about having had to deal with a read-only device in its prior incarnation! Slax just rocks!

For other live CD's, you have to translate syslinux's configuration file syntax into grub's. Use DSL and slax entries as successful translation examples.

Installing a Live System into the USB Stick

Let's say you use Ubuntu daily on your desktop and you would like to install it to a usb stick. First of all you need a usb stick with large enough memory since such a live system is not compressed like DSL and slax are. Secondly you have to boot from some other device (maybe from a live CD, or maybe from the slax partition of the usb stick you just created!) and copy everything from your Ubuntu partition into one of the stick's empty partitions. By now you also know that /boot/grub/menu.lst on the usb stick's first partition has to be modified.

Here are a few additional important steps to take:

1. Modify /etc/fstab on the target partition of the usb stick. Root device should be specified by UUID or LABEL since you don't know its true name in a mobile environment. Add 'noatime' to the options. Remove most static entries. Mount /var and /tmp as tmpfs.
2. Anything else? Your comments please.

[Feb 19, 2008] Discover the possibilities of the -proc directory by Federico Kereki

February 15, 2008  | Linux.com

The /proc directory is a strange beast. It doesn't really exist, yet you can explore it. Its zero-length files are neither binary nor text, yet you can examine and display them. This special directory holds all the details about your Linux system, including its kernel, processes, and configuration parameters. By studying the /proc directory, you can learn how Linux commands work, and you can even do some administrative tasks.

Under Linux, everything is managed as a file; even devices are accessed as files (in the /dev directory). Although you might think that "normal" files are either text or binary (or possibly device or pipe files), the /proc directory contains a stranger type: virtual files. These files are listed, but don't actually exist on disk; the operating system creates them on the fly if you try to read them.

Most virtual files always have a current timestamp, which indicates that they are constantly being kept up to date. The /proc directory itself is created every time you boot your box. You need to work as root to be able to examine the whole directory; some of the files (such as the process-related ones) are owned by the user who launched it. Although almost all the files are read-only, a few writable ones (notably in /proc/sys) allow you to change kernel parameters. (Of course, you must be careful if you do this.)

[Jan 24, 2008] freshmeat.net Project details for cgipaf

The package also contain Solaris binary of chpasswd clone, which is extremely useful for mass changes of passwords in corporate environments which include Solaris and other Unixes that does not have chpasswd utility (HP-UX is another example in this category).   Version 1.3.2 now includes Solaris binary of chpasswd which works on Solaris 9 and 10.

cgipaf is a combination of three CGI programs.

• passwd.cgi, which allow users to update their password,
• viewmailcfg.cgi, which allows users to view their current mail configuration,
• mailcfg.cgi, which updates the mail configuration.

All programs use PAM for user authentication. It is possible to run a script to update SAMBA passwords or NIS configuration when a password is changed. mailcfg.cgi creates a .procmailrc in the user's home directory. A user with too many invalid logins can be locked. The minimum and maximum UID can be set in the configuration file, so you can specify a range of UIDs that are allowed to use cgipaf.

[Dec 21, 2007] LXER interview with John Hull - the manager of the Dell Linux engineering team

The original sales estimates for Ubuntu computers was around 1% of the total sales, or about 20,000 systems annually. Have the expectations been met so far? Will Dell ever release sales figures for Ubuntu systems?

The program so far is meeting expectations. Customers are certainly showing their interest and buying systems preloaded with Ubuntu, but it certainly won't overtake Microsoft Windows anytime soon. Dell has a policy not to release sales numbers, so I don't expect us to make Ubuntu sales figures available publicly.

[Dec 21, 2007] Red Hat to get new CEO from Delta Air Lines Underexposed - CNET News.com

"When you take them out of the big buildings, without the imprimatur of Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Oracle, or HP around them, they just didn't hold up."

Szulik, who took over as CEO from Bob Young in 1999 just a few months after its initial public offering, said he's stepping down because of family health issues.

"For the last nine months, I've struggled with health issues in my family," and that priority couldn't be balanced with work, Szulik said in an interview. "This job requires a 7x24, 110 percent commitment."

Szulik, who remains chairman of the board, praised Whitehurst in a statement, saying he's a "hands-on guy who will be a strong cultural fit at Red Hat" and "a talented executive who has successfully led a global technology-focused organization at Delta."

On a conference call, Szulik said Whitehurst stood "head and shoulders" above other candidates interviewed in a recruiting process. He was a programmer earlier in his career and runs four versions of Linux at home, he said.

Moreover, Szulik said he wasn't satisfied with more traditional tech executives who were interviewed.

"What we encountered was in many cases was a lack of understanding of open-source software development and of our model," he said. During the interview, he added about the tech industry candidates, "When you take them out of the big buildings, without the imprimatur of Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Oracle, or HP around them, they just didn't hold up."

The surprise move was announced as the leading Linux seller announced results for its third quarter of fiscal 2008. Its revenue increased 28 percent to $135.4 million and net income went up 12 percent to $20.3 million, or 10 cents per share. The company also raised estimates for full-year results to revenue of $521 million to $523 million and earnings of about 70 cents per share.

[Dec 1, 2007]  Linux Initial RAM Disk (initrd) Overview

developerWorks

The initial RAM disk (initrd) is an initial root file system that is mounted prior to when the real root file system is available. The initrd is bound to the kernel and loaded as part of the kernel boot procedure. The kernel then mounts this initrd as part of the two-stage boot process to load the modules to make the real file systems available and get at the real root file system.

"The initrd contains a minimal set of directories and executables to achieve this, such as the insmod tool to install kernel modules into the kernel..."

[Nov 30, 2007] Got more than a gig of RAM and 32-bit Linux Here's how to use it By Bruce Byfield

September 21, 2007 | Linux.com

Nowadays, many machines are running with 2-4 gigabytes of RAM, and their owners are discovering a problem: When they run 32-bit GNU/Linux distributions, their extra RAM is not being used. Fortunately, correcting the problem is only a matter of installing or building a kernel with a few specific parameters enabled or disabled.

The problem exists because 32-bit Linux kernels are designed to access only 1GB of RAM by default. The workaround for this limitation is vaguely reminiscent of the virtual memory solution once used by DOS, with a high memory area of virtual memory being constantly mapped to physical addresses. This high memory can be enabled for up to 4GB by one kernel parameter, or up to 64GB on a Pentium Pro or higher processor with another parameter. However, since these parameters have not been needed on most machines until recently, the standard kernels in many distributions have not enabled them.

Increasingly, many distributions are enabling high memory for 4GB. Ubuntu default kernels have been enabling this process at least since version 6.10, and so have Fedora 7's. By contrast, Debian's default 486 kernels do not. Few distros, if any, enable 64GB by default.

To check whether your kernel is configured to use all your RAM, enter the command free -m. This command gives you the total amount of unused RAM on your system, as well as the size of your swap file, in megabytes. If the total memory is 885, then no high memory is enabled on your system (the rest of the first gigabyte is reserved by the kernel for its own purposes). Similarly, if the result shows over 1 gigabyte but less than 4GB when you know you have more, then the 4GB parameter is enabled, but not the 64GB one. In either case, you will need to add a new kernel to take full advantage of your RAM.

Managing Initscripts with Red Hat's chkconfig

This article was EXTREMELY useful! Thanks for writing it!

[Oct 31, 2007] freshmeat.net Project details for fio

fio 1.17.2
 by axboe - Tue, Oct 30th 2007 10:39 PDT

About: fio is an I/O tool meant to be used both for benchmark and stress/hardware verification. It has support for 12 different types of I/O engines (sync, mmap, libaio, posixaio, SG v3, splice, null, network, syslet, guasi, and more), I/O priorities (for newer Linux kernels), rate I/O, forked or threaded jobs, and much more. It can work on block devices as well as files. fio accepts job descriptions in a simple-to-understand text format. Several example job files are included. fio displays all sorts of I/O performance information. It supports Linux, FreeBSD, and OpenSolaris.

Changes: ETA display fixes. A new psync I/O engine. A man page has been added. There are documentation improvements. I/O verification fixes have been made. A --readonly option has been added. There are vmsplice() improvements. CPU burn engine fixes. Updated to the newest syslet kernel support.

 

[Aug 26, 2007] How To Use NTFS Write Support (ntfs-3g) On Fedora 7

Write access to NTFS permits some using it virtual machines

"Normally Linux systems can only read from Windows NTFS partitions, but not write to them which can be very annoying if you have to work with Linux and Windows systems. This is where ntfs-3g comes into play. ntfs-3g is an open source, freely available NTFS driver for Linux with read and write support. This tutorial shows how to use ntfs-3g on a Fedora 7 desktop to read from and write to Windows NTFS drives and partitions.

See also:

How To Use NTFS Drives/Partitions Under Ubuntu Edgy Eft
Our-Picks: Access Your Linux Partitions Under Windows(Mar 05, 2007)

zfs_linux

data=writeback While the writeback option provides lower data consistency guarantees than the journal or ordered modes, some applications show very significant speed improvement when it is used. For example, speed improvements can be seen when heavy synchronous writes are performed, or when applications create and delete large volumes of small files, such as delivering a large flow of short email messages. The results of the testing effort described in Chapter 3 illustrate this topic.

When the writeback option is used, data consistency is similar to that provided by the ext2 file system. However, file system integrity is maintained continuously during normal operation in the ext3 file system.

In the event of a power failure or system crash, the file system may not be recoverable if a significant portion of data was held only in system memory and not on permanent storage. In this case, the filesystem must be recreated from backups. Often, changes made since the file system was last backed up are inevitably lost.

[Aug 7, 2007] Linux Replacing atime

[Aug 7, 2007] Expect plays a crucial role in network management  by Cameron Laird

31 Jul 2007 | www.ibm.com/developerworks

If you manage systems and networks, you need Expect.

More precisely, why would you want to be without Expect? It saves hours common tasks otherwise demand. Even if you already depend on Expect, though, you might not be aware of the capabilities described below.

Expect automates command-line interactions

You don't have to understand all of Expect to begin profiting from the tool; let's start with a concrete example of how Expect can simplify your work on AIX® or other operating systems:

Suppose you have logins on several UNIX® or UNIX-like hosts and you need to change the passwords of these accounts, but the accounts are not synchronized by Network Information Service (NIS), Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), or some other mechanism that recognizes you're the same person logging in on each machine. Logging in to a specific host and running the appropriate passwd command doesn't take long—probably only a minute, in most cases. And you must log in "by hand," right, because there's no way to script your password?

Wrong. In fact, the standard Expect distribution (full distribution) includes a command-line tool (and a manual page describing its use!) that precisely takes over this chore. passmass (see Resources) is a short script written in Expect that makes it as easy to change passwords on twenty machines as on one. Rather than retyping the same password over and over, you can launch passmass once and let your desktop computer take care of updating each individual host. You save yourself enough time to get a bit of fresh air, and multiple opportunities for the frustration of mistyping something you've already entered.

The limits of Expect

This passmass application is an excellent model—it illustrates many of Expect's general properties:

• It's a great return on investment: The utility is already written, freely downloadable, easy to install and use, and saves time and effort.
• Its contribution is "superficial," in some sense. If everything were "by the book"—if you had NIS or some other domain authentication or single sign-on system in place—or even if login could be scripted, there'd be no need for passmass. The world isn't polished that way, though, and Expect is very handy for grabbing on to all sorts of sharp edges that remain. Maybe Expect will help you create enough free time to rationalize your configuration so that you no longer need Expect. In the meantime, take advantage of it.
• As distributed, passmass only logs in by way of telnet, rlogin, or slogin. I hope all current developerWorks readers have abandoned these protocols for ssh, which passmasss does not fully support.
• On the other hand, almost everything having to do with Expect is clearly written and freely available. It only takes three simple lines (at most) to enhance passmass to respect ssh and other options.

You probably know enough already to begin to write or modify your own Expect tools. As it turns out, the passmass distribution actually includes code to log in by means of ssh, but omits the command-line parsing to reach that code. Here's one way you might modify the distribution source to put ssh on the same footing as telnet and the other protocols:
Listing 1. Modified passmass fragment that accepts the -ssh argument                   

            ...
         } "-rlogin" {
            set login "rlogin"
            continue
        } "-slogin" {
            set login "slogin"
            continue
        } "-ssh" {
            set login "ssh"
            continue
        } "-telnet" {
            set login "telnet"
            continue
           ...
     

In my own code, I actually factor out more of this "boilerplate." For now, though, this cascade of tests, in the vicinity of line #100 of passmass, gives a good idea of Expect's readability. There's no deep programming here—no need for object-orientation, monadic application, co-routines, or other subtleties. You just ask the computer to take over typing you usually do for yourself. As it happens, this small step represents many minutes or hours of human effort saved. 

[Jul 30, 2007] Due to problems on high loads in Linux 2.6.23 kernel the Linux kernel process scheduler has been completely ripped out and replaced with a completely new one called Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS) modeled after Solaris 10 scheduler. 

This is will not affect the current Linux distributions (Suse 9, 10 and RHEL 4.x) as they forked the kernel and essentially develop it as a separate tree.

But it will affect any future Red Hat or Suse distribution (Suse 11 and RHEL 6 respectively).

How it will fair in comparison with Solaris 10 remains to be seen:

The main idea of CFS's design can be summed up in a single sentence: CFS basically models an "ideal, precise multi-tasking CPU" on real hardware.

Ideal multi-tasking CPU" is a (non-existent) CPU that has 100% physical power and which can run each task at precise equal speed, in parallel, each at 1/n running speed. For example: if there are 2 tasks running then it runs each at exactly 50% speed.

[Jul 11, 2007] Tectonic Text freedom with Red Hat's Liberation fonts

[Jun 14, 2007] developerWorks AIX and UNIX Technical library view

Linux tip: Bash parameters and parameter expansions Do you sometimes wonder how to use parameters with your scripts, and how to pass them to internal functions or other scripts? Do you need to do simple validity tests on parameters or options, or perform simple extraction and replacement operations on the parameter strings? This tip helps you with parameter use and the various parameter expansions available in the bash shell.		Articles		16 May 2007
Writing endian-independent code in C Architectures, processors, network stacks, and communication protocols all have to define endianness at some point. This article explains how endianness affects code, how to determine endianness at run time, and how to write code that can reverse byte order and free you from being bound to a certain endian.		Articles		15 May 2007
Setting up a multicluster environment using General Parallel File System Learn how to construct and deconstruct a simple multicluster of System x(TM)and System p(TM) computers using the General Parallel File System (GPFS). You can remotely add an existing GPFS cluster to another cluster. See how to mount a file system from the remote cluster using the GPFS secure communication protocol.		Articles		11 May 2007
UNIX tips and tricks for a new user, Part 4: Some nifty shell tricks When writing a shell program, you often come across some special situation that you'd like to handle automatically. This tutorial includes examples of such situations from small Bourne shell scripts. These situations include base conversion from one string to another (decimal to hex, hex to decimal, decimal to octal, and so on), reading the keyboard while in a piped loop, subshell execution, inline input, executing a command once for each file in a directory, and multiple ways to construct a continuous loop. Part 4 of this series wraps up with a collection of shell one-liners that perform useful functions.		Tutorial		20 Feb 2007
Linux tip: Bash test and comparison functions Are you confused by the plethora of testing and comparison options in the Bash shell? This tip helps you demystify the various types of file, arithmetic, and string tests so you will always know when to use test, [ ], [[ ]], (( )), or if-then-else constructs.		Articles		20 Feb 2007
Linux tip: Printing DVI files with CUPS Have you ever tried to print DVI or other files in Linux and gotten an "unsupported format" message? This tip shows you how to combine existing tools to make a CUPS print filter for printing DVI files.		Articles		07 Feb 2007
Create uniform namespace using autofs with NFS Version 3 clients and servers Do you have trouble accessing data exported from multiple file servers? If so, try using open source implementations of autofs and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), with Network File System (NFS) Version 3, to access data under the same global mount point. In this article, study and compare five different methods to create a uniform namespace using autofs. A handy table with a comparative evaluation is available to help you choose the best technique for your scenario.		Articles		30 Jan 2007
Delve into UNIX process creation Examine the life cycle of a process so that you can relate what you see happening on your system to what's going on within the kernel. System administrators must know how processes are created and destroyed within the UNIX(R) environment in order to understand how the system fits together and how to manage misbehaving processes. Similarly, developers must understand the UNIX processes model in order to write solid applications that run unattended and won't cause problems for system administrators.		Articles		03 Jan 2007
IBM Cluster Systems Management: Installing the Webmin tool for Web access Learn to install and use the Webmin UNIX(R) system administration tool so you can use a standard Web interface to remotely manage a clustered environment This article is an update to the 2005 developerWorks article about the IBM Cluster Systems Management tool.		Articles		22 Dec 2006
System Administration Toolkit: Get the most out of zsh Examine key parts of the Z shell (zsh) and how to use it's features to ease your UNIX(R) system administration tasks. zsh is a popular alternative to the original Bourne and Korn shells. It provides an impressive range of additional functionality, including improvements for completing different commands, files, and paths automatically, and for binding keys to functions and operations.		Articles		19 Dec 2006
System Administration Toolkit: Get the most out of bash Ease your system administration tasks by taking advantage of key parts of the Bourne-again shell (bash) and its features. Bash is a popular alternative to the original Bourne and Korn shells. It provides an impressive range of additional functionality that includes improvements to the scripting environment, extensive aliasing techniques, and improved methods for automatically completing different commands, files, and paths.		Articles		12 Dec 2006
UNIX tools for exploring object files The programs that run on a UNIX(R) system follow a careful design known as the object file format. Learn more about the object file format and the tools that you can use for exploring object files found on your system.		Articles		21 Nov 2006
System Administration Toolkit: Swap space management and tricks Configure your swap space (including adding space in an emergency) to get the most out of your system. In this article, you'll learn how to monitor your system to determine an effective swap space figure as well as examine methods for using swap space for more than just secondary random access memory (RAM).		Articles		31 Oct 2006
Tunneling with SSH Use OpenSource tools, such as Secure Shell (SSH), PuTTY, and Cygwin, to create secure connections to almost any resource you need to access. Current information on SSH tunneling and setup is fragmented and limited to specific applications, or it is written at a system administrator's level. With increasing security needs, the addition of boundary firewalls, and tightening of the number of allowed network ports, users need a method that is simple to configure, easy to operate and, above all, secure to accomplish day-to-day tasks and access the services that they have become accustomed to. This article describes the setup of a simple SSH client connecting to an AIX(R)- or Linux(R)-based SSH server that allows a typical, technically literate individual the ability to set up, configure, and operate a flexible means of tunneling data and services over the SSH service.		Articles		17 Oct 2006
Run commands sequentially across a cluster from a UNIX server, Part 1: Secure Shell (SSH) Configure Secure Shell (SSH) on IBM System p(TM) and System x(TM) computers so the UNIX(R) server can access a remote server without a password.		Articles		21 Sep 2006
Get to know NetBSD NetBSD runs on more hardware platforms than any other UNIX(R) derivative due to smart design decisions and a commitment to portable code. Whether you're porting an operating system to a proprietary embedded system or looking for stability and compatibility across hardware platforms in the lab, NetBSD and its open license is a compelling alternative to Linux(R) and the GNU Public License (GPL).		Articles		29 Aug 2006
Port Fortran applications Discover how to port Fortran-based High Performance Computing applications, such as computational fluid dynamic (CFD) modeling, weather modeling, and linear algebra packages, using IBM XL compilers and gnu compilers on large clusters. The solutions in this article are equally applicable in all types of porting work in Fortran or any UNIX(R)- or Linux-based systems. Though C/C++ and other programming languages are popular, with strong features and widespread use, Fortran is still the favorite for the scientific and engineering community because of its performance.		Articles		29 Aug 2006
System Administration Toolkit: Standardizing your UNIX command-line tools Examine methods for standardizing your interface to simplify movements between different UNIX(R) systems. If you manage multiple UNIX systems, particularly in a heterogeneous environment, then the hardest task can be switching between the different environments and performing the different tasks while having to consider all of the differences between the systems. This article does not cover specific differences, but you'll look at ways that can provide compatible layers, or wrappers, to support a consistent environment.		Articles		22 Aug 2006
System Administration Toolkit: Backing up key information Most UNIX(R) administrators have processes in place to back up the data and information on their UNIX machines, but what about the configuration files and other elements that provide the configuration data your machines need to operate? This article provides detailed information on techniques for achieving an effective and efficient backup system for these key files.		Articles		15 Aug 2006
Take a closer look at OpenBSD OpenBSD is quite possibly the most secure operating system on the planet. Every step of the development process focuses on building a secure, open, and free platform. UNIX(R) and Linux(R) administrators take note: Without realizing it, you probably use tools ported from OpenBSD every day. Maybe it's time to give the whole operating system a closer look.		Articles		08 Aug 2006
System Administration Toolkit: Managing NIS services for authorizations Examine how to set up, configure, and update a Network Information System (NIS) installation for sharing information, and learn how NIS can be merged with other solutions, such as files and Domain Name System (DNS), to provide subnet, network, and worldwide data sharing facilities. In a large UNIX(R) network, the ability to share information among the many systems helps to alleviate many problems, such as sharing permissions across different systems with Network File System (NFS), or simply providing a single login for the entire network.		Articles		01 Aug 2006
System Administration Toolkit: Migrating and moving UNIX directory trees Occasionally, you need to copy around an entire UNIX(R) directory tree, either between areas on the same system or between different systems. There are many different methods of achieving this, but not all preserve the right amount of information or are compatible across different systems. This article discusses the various options available for UNIX and how best to make them work.		Articles		25 Jul 2006
System Administration Toolkit: Migrating and moving UNIX filesystems Learn how to transfer an entire file system on a live system, including how to create, copy, and re-enable the new file system. If you have a UNIX(R) disk or system failure or simply fill up your file system, then you need to create a new partition and file system and copy over the contents. You might even need to mount the new partition in place to preserve the location of vital files and components. To add further complications, you need to do this on a live system, where you'd need to preserve file permissions, ownership, and possibly named pipes and other components. Effectively transferring these components and retaining all of this information is a vital part of the migration process.		Articles		03 Jul 2006
System Administration Toolkit: Monitoring disk space and usage Look at methods for determining disk usage across multiple UNIX(R) systems and how to create a simple warning system to alert you of potential problems. Keeping an eye on your file systems and ensuring they don't fill up is a trivial, but vital, process in the day-to-day management of your UNIX systems. In this article, you'll look at methods for keeping an eye on disk space, discovering which files, users, or applications are using up the most space, and how to make use of quotas and other solutions to find the information you need.		Articles		13 Jun 2006
IBM DB2 Enterprise 9 performance with POWER5+ and AIX 5L multipage support Learn how IBM DB2 9 automatically exploits the 64-kilobyte page support in AIX 5L to deliver high performance for database applications on this platform. This article talks about the DB2 9 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows exploitation of multiple page sizes, and shares some performance results as measured on IBM POWER5+ processor-based systems running IBM AIX 5L.		Articles		08 Jun 2006
System Administration Toolkit: Monitoring a slow system When your UNIX(R) system runs slow, it is vital that you discover what the problem is as quickly as possible so you can get your system back into the normal operating mode. There are many causes for a slow system, but actually identifying the problem can be exceedingly difficult. In this article, study examples of how to identify and diagnose the cause of your slow running UNIX system to get your machine running properly again.		Articles		07 Jun 2006
Basic UNIX filesystem operations Take advantage of the readdir() and stat() functions to run through the entries of a directory. Because of the plethora of files and directories on a UNIX(R) system, you're going to need to know how to process directory entries using the readdir() function and extract information about those entries using the stat() function. These basic file system operations can serve you well in your UNIX programming career, allowing you to easily discover and read files, directories, and symbolic links on your UNIX system.		Articles		23 May 2006
Fun with strace and the GDB Debugger Programming a UNIX system can be fun as well as educational. With the UNIX strace tool and GDB, the GNU Project Debugger, you can really dig deep into the functionality of your system and learn a lot about the various programs that comprise it. Using both tools in concert can be a rewarding experience as you look under the hood of your UNIX machine.		Articles		11 May 2006
Performance tuning UNIX systems Be nice to your computers and examine some general guidelines for tuning server performance. A computer is like an employee who does tasks for you -- it's a good idea to keep from overburdening them. One way to keep this from happening is to carefully tune the processes that run on it. This article provides some simple performance tuning steps using the UNIX nice commands.		Articles		03 May 2006
System Administration Toolkit: Time and event management Automating your administration tasks can save you a lot of time, and UNIX(R) incorporates systems to automate the process for you. In this article, you'll look at the best methods for using these systems, including how to monitor and track their execution and output and how to schedule complex events.		Articles		02 May 2006
Make UNIX and Linux work together Examine how to use the Network Information Service (NIS) to share core databases between Linux(R) and UNIX(R), and how to use the Network File System (NFS) to share file systems, both with direct links and through the automounter. Although UNIX and Linux are similar, there are some differences between the two that can complicate the process of integrating the two systems. Both, for example, share the same authentication system, but most systems are also standalone. Sharing this authentication information enables you to provide a single sign-on (SSO) functionality to any of the servers in your network.		Articles		18 Apr 2006
Using ReiserFS with Linux Take a look at the ext2 (second extended file system), ext3 (third extended file system), and Reiser4 file systems and discover how to create your own Reiser4 file system. The most commonly used file system, ext2, is a traditional UNIX(R)-style file system that doesn't mix well with modern hard drive sizes. The ext3 file system adds journalling, but not much else. If you want something really advanced, you might want to check out the current Reiser4 file system.		Articles		04 Apr 2006
Retool your Linux skills for commercial UNIX Examine how to best migrate your Linux(R) skills to take advantage of AIX(R) and Solaris. Linux is all the rage, but what if you have experience in Linux and need to apply it to a commercial UNIX(R) environment? UNIX and Linux are similar, and many of the same principles exist; there is a shell, root is still all powerful, and many of the tools and applications are the same. But how do you cope with understanding the nuances and differences?		Tutorial		30 Mar 2006
Advanced techniques for using the UNIX find command Explore the vast terrain of the UNIX(R) file system with the find command. One of the most powerful and useful commands in the UNIX programmer's repertoire is find. All flavors of UNIX have file systems that can contain thousands of files of many different types. With so many choices, locating a specific file, or set of files, can be difficult. The find command makes this task easier in many ways.		Articles		28 Mar 2006
Solve application problems with tracing Peer into the behavior of an application with truss. When an application doesn't work as expected, you typically look at application and system logs as a first recourse. But when logs don't help, UNIX(R) provides a powerful set of tools that you can use to trace the application while it runs. Armed with these traces and a bit of knowledge about UNIX, you can easily solve your application problems.		Articles		21 Mar 2006
Build UNIX software with Eclipse Become more productive with your own code and others by utilizing Eclipse's syntax highlighting, code completion, and other amenities. Eclipse is an excellent open source IDE and has many helpful features. It runs on any UNIX(R) platform with a Java(TM) Runtime Environment (JRE) (Version 1.4 or newer) and an SWT port, such as Linux(R), Solaris, AIX(R), and HP-UX. It's easy enough to start a new project using Eclipse or to import an existing Eclipse project, but how do you bring existing code into the IDE? And what if you need to get an existing project compiling right away without modifying its existing makefile or configure script -- the most common ways of building UNIX software? Read along for the answer to all of these questions.		Articles		14 Mar 2006
Differentiating UNIX and Linux Investigate the areas where UNIX(R) and Linux(R) converge in terms of functionality, environment, usability, and also those areas where UNIX and Linux differ. Many refer to Linux as a UNIX-like operating system. It is an open source operating system that has many of the same principles and ideals as UNIX, but it is not a true UNIX operating system like Solaris, AIX(R), HP-UX, and others. This article covers a range of aspects, from the core technical elements, such as kernel and filesystem support, to application tools, availability, and the differences in how to administer them.		Articles		14 Mar 2006
Effective management of system logs Provide solid information resources to decision makers. Discover a simple, but useful, application of the combined processing capabilities of awk and XML that you can use to present UNIX(R) system data in a reader-friendly form suitable for posting to the company intranet or Internet. UNIX generates useful system performance, usage, cost, and related data that management and other interested stakeholders can use.		Articles		07 Mar 2006
nmon performance: A free tool to analyze AIX and Linux performance This free tool gives you a huge amount of information all on one screen. Even though IBM doesn't officially support the tool and you must use it at your own risk, you can get a wealth of performance statistics. Why use five or six tools when one free tool can give you everything you need?		Articles		27 Feb 2006
IBM NFS/DFS Authentication Gateway Take advantage of the new features Network File System Version 4 (NFS Version 4) now has to offer. With the ever-growing storage needs in large enterprises and NFS implementations offering more and more features, it makes business sense for enterprises to migrate to NFS Version 4. In this article, we discuss the need and various strategies for migrating from the IBM Distributed Computing Environment (DCE)/Distributed File System(TM) (DFS(TM)) infrastructure to NFS Version 4 on AIX(R) and Linux(R).		Articles		26 Jan 2006
A comparison of security subsystems on AIX, Linux, and Solaris Learn how to apply a strategy for implementing a single identification and authentication (I and A) framework across a heterogeneous, multi-platform environment. An I and A system provides a layer of abstraction between a user application and the implementation of any authentication or identification functions it needs to perform.		Articles		13 Oct 2005
How to install AIX 5L Get step-by-step instructions for a number of generic AIX(R) system setup procedures. These instructions should work for any of the AIX(TM) 5L releases. Variations, if any, should be minor.		Articles		31 Aug 2005
Split mirror using suspended I/O in DB2 Universal Database Looking for a high availability solution for DB2 UDB? This article provides a visual explanation of split mirror using suspended I/O for a DB2 UDB database and explains the details of various implementation scenarios. Learn how suspended I/O works and how it can be used to implement reliable high availability database solutions.		Articles		25 Aug 2005
POWER5 virtualization: How to set up the IBM Virtual I/O Server Get more information on the virtualization capabilities of IBM(R) POWER5(TM) servers. Follow along as Nigel Griffiths illustrates how to set up and use the IBM Virtual I/O Server (VIO Server). In his previous article, "POWER5 Virtualization: How to set up the SUSE Linux Virtual I/O Server", he described the benefits of the IBM POWER5 servers and provided examples on how to set up the environment for pSeries(R) p5 and eServer(TM) OpenPower(TM) systems.		Articles		29 Jun 2005
Guide to porting from Solaris to Linux on x86 Solaris is considered one of the closest flavors of UNIX to Linux, but for migration purposes, there can be differences between the two in the areas of memory mapping, threading, or natural language support (to name just a few). This porting guide gives you advice on planning for the port to Linux/x86, and helps you understand the differences in the development environment and architecture.		Articles		29 Apr 2005
Dual boot Linux and AIX There may be times when you find it necessary to develop in both the Linux and AIX operating environments. This article describes dual booting Linux and AIX on the same IBM eServer pSeries (including eServer p5), eServer i5, or eServer OpenPower server.		Articles		25 Apr 2005
Serving X from a Windows laptop This article is an update to a previous article about working on UNIX(R) through your laptop. The author describes how to run the same environment from your laptop as you do when directly connected to a UNIX server's console terminal. The article discusses how to use X clients, installing uwin, and running X clients through a VPN.		Articles		27 May 2004
Using Samba as a primary domain controller Open source Samba turns a UNIX(R) or Linux(R) system into a file and print server for Microsoft(R) Windows(R) network clients. Tom Syroid dishes up a juicy tutorial that shows you how to configure Samba as the primary domain controller on an xSeries(R) server.

 

Red Hat What me worry Between the Lines ZDNet.com

Dan Farber & Larry Dignan

December 21st, 2006

Red Hat: What me worry?

When Red Hat holds court with financial analysts later today to discuss the company's fiscal third quarter results the conversation is likely to go like this:

Analyst: What is the impact on Oracle's Unbreakable Linux on your business? How can you compete?

Red Hat exec: We're not seeing any direct threat. Billings are looking up.

Analyst: What about this Microsoft-Novell partnership?

Red Hat exec: Can't we talk about our quarter just a little here?

And then you'll get a lot of questions about Red Hat's forecast for future billings so analysts can surmise the answers on their own. Red Hat, which provides Linux and open source software, is expected to report earnings of 12 cents a share on sales of $104 million.

The competition is circling around Red Hat, but it's too early to see the effects. Are folks going to jump from Red Hat? Possibly, but it won't be this quarter. Or the next.

How do I know? Let's evaluate what those aforementioned Red Hat killers are saying lately. Oracle said it had 9,000 downloads of Unbreakable Linux in the first 30 days after announcing it. Big question is what happened beyond that 30 days and were the downloads front-end loaded indicating waning interest.

As for the Microsoft-Novell deal, the two parties announced that three financial services firms are getting SUSE Linux Enterprise Subscription certificates from Microsoft.

What's all of this mean for Red Hat? Probably a decent quarter after a lot of worrying. What's it mean for technology buyers? Some serious leverage as Red Hat subscriptions expire in a few months.

UBS analyst Heather Bellini said it will take about six months to see any dent in Red Hat's business.

"Our conversations with Linux channel partners indicate that Red Hat's business in the third quarter was largely unaffected and any impact will take at least six months to play out. While the resellers were equally split on whether Red Hat will have to lower prices, we believe pricing pressures are inevitable as customers will at the very least use Oracle's pricing to negotiate deeper discounts."

WR Hambrecht analyst Robert Stimson said in a research note that Red Hat's products are "sticky and deeply embedded within its enterprise customers."

"We are expecting a roughly in-line quarter to both our and Street estimates, as we believe recent concerns over competitive pressures from Oracle and Novell/Microsoft have been overblown. We believe investors will be most closely focused on billings growth as the most meaningful metric to determine any negative effect from competition, as well as management's commentary on the JBoss integration process."

In fact, the integration of open source software maker JBoss is the more immediate worry about Red Hat. Rumors have swirled for weeks about Marc Fleury leaving, but thus far no formal announcement.

The skinny from Stimson:

"Comments from JBoss head Marc Fleury in late November regarding a perceived lack of investment from Red Hat raised investors' concerns about the integration of the JBoss business into the Red Hat stack. Shortly after, Fleury took paternity leave, which some investors read into as a sign of discord. Although we believe these concerns are overblown, we will be looking closely at commentary from management regarding the progress of the JBoss integration."

[Dec 21, 2006] Linux Today - OSNews Has the Desktop Linux Bubble Burst

Linux Today is not responsible for the content of the message below. Don Ferguson - Subject: Excellent Points ( Dec 21, 2006, 17:07:53 ) I am no fan of glossier, fancier and more processor and memory intensive user interface graphics. But a lot of people are. More importantly, there is real movement on the Mac and Windows front from a user interface perspective and these changes will define computing experiences and desires. I do not think Windows Vista is a Linux killer. But, Leopard is. Apple has proven you can do *nix and make it a visually pleasing, easy to use, and productive environment for people. Macs run Linux programs, Mac programs, and Windows in VMs or as a dual boot option. Apple has created everything that Linux ever wanted to be but couldn't achieve because it was unable to attract enough people to the KDE and/or Gnome. I almost wonder if what we are seeing with KDE and Gnome is symptomatic of "open source". The movement relies on coolness to bring in new, young coders, and its anti-establishment exture to bring in rebels. Linux, KDE or Gnome are getting less cool by the day. And Linux and several open source projects are so tied into corporations that the work of rebels is simply being used to increase the fortunes of billionare wannabees.

Slashdot Oracle and Red Hat begin battle for the Enterprise

[Oct 28, 2006] Perspective: Sending the penguins out with a hot foot

This rates as a stroke of cruel genius--right up there with Bill Gates' decision to gut his Borland nemesis Philippe Kahn in the early 1990s. Old-timers may recall that Borland once was a high-flier in the software business. But when Microsoft slashed prices on its Excel spreadsheet and Access database programs, Borland stumbled. The company failed to find a way to compete against a bigger, better financed rival that could afford to pursue a beggar-thy-neighbor strategy.

Hand it to Ellison for taking a page out of his arch-rival's playbook. Oracle's offer of free support for Red Hat Linux was designed to inflict maximum pain on Red Hat. So it did. One day after the announcement, Red Hat shares lost 24 percent of their value. After watching his stock take a tumble, Red Hat's CEO Matthew Szulik is in a bind. He has just absorbed the equivalent of a cyber-kick in the groin from a bigger, badder bully.

"This is capitalism, we are competing," Ellison later said during the question-and-answer session following his announcement. "We are trying to offer a better product at a lower price."

It's also a veiled threat to any open-source software vendor within earshot that Oracle's declaring a support price-war. Outside of an IBM, I don't know of any open-source supplier with the financial wherewithal to absorb that kind of profit margin punishment.

[Oct 28, 2006] Will Red Hat Survive#16621552

• Has anyone looked at the pricing?

  (Score:2)
  by Ian.Waring (591380) on Saturday October 28, @08:25AM (#16621364)
  (http://www.minsystems.co.uk/)
  Premium pricing indeed. This side of the pond, Red Hat costs:
  
  AS (4-16 CPU servers), 24/7/365 support, 1 hour response, £1,388/year ($2,636 at todays spot $ rate)
  AS (4-16 CPU servers), working hours Mon-Fri, 4 hour response, £833/year ($1,582)
  ES (1-2 CPU servers), working hours Mon-Fri, 4 hour response, £444/year ($843)
  ES (1-2 CPU servers), 30 days install support then just updates, £195/year ($370)
  
  and those are unlimited incidents, and no CALs for each user (put as many on as you wish with no further charge).
  
  If Oracle were smart, there's nothing stopping them having the billing relationship with the customer and subcontracting back. They could even afford to throw that in free of charge with most Oracle DB licenses without denting their profits too much. That way, customer still get their updates in a timely fashion, and Oracle have no CentOS type infrastructure to set up that (a) costs money and (b) delays the updates.
  
  Still, Oracle are fairly well embedded in large customers at the very top end, and do not have the reach to address Red Hat's base in any significant way. Even MySQL lap the total size of Oracle's installed base twice every day of the week.
  
  It's almost if someone's thrown their rattles out of the pram when Red Hat spurned a "we'll buy you" proposal. If it were true, the clever bit is that Larry managed to get the share price to dip, when most attempted takeovers have the opposite effect!
  
  Ian W.
   

• Re:They Don't Get It

  (Score:2)
  by Marsala (4168) on Saturday October 28, @09:12AM (#16621552)
  (http://www.spoonix.org/blog/)
   
  I absolutely agree with you on that last point: credit where credit is due. At the end of the day, RH's products are open sourced and the do a lot of good work to protect open source as it's key to their business model.

  But this doesn't change the fact that RH is a pain in the ass to deal with as a customer. I'm trying hard to remember one single conversation with them that didn't start off with the assumption that I was a drooling imbecile or where I got back a prompt and useful answer instead of an attempt to redirect blame for the problem back on me. I can't recall any. What I do recall is a vibe of total disdain, being made to feel like I was wasting their precious time with my stupid questions, and what can only be described as a feedback event horizon where bug reports and patches just disappeared into bugzilla never to be responded to nor seen or heard from again.

  And it wasn't just me that got that impression. My bosses did, too. I could tell when they'd talked with RH recently because they always swung by my office to ask, "Hey, what do you think about SuSE?"

  From a customer service standpoint, RH makes their money because they're the only large company who supports RH products. Aside from Ximian's weak effort to extend support of RH 7-9, they have no competition. While Oracle isn't known for its customer service either, all they really have to do is offer less frustration than RH and suddenly their offering becomes a very, very attractive alternative. And while RH does indeed employ some outstanding technical talent, they've only got a fraction of the bright folks in the open source community... if Oracle plays it right and demonstrates a Googlish atmosphere of encouraging open source innovation in their Linux division they could easily build up their own talent pool.

  So, yeah. A lot of "if"s in that equation. If I was RH, I wouldn't be losing sleep just yet.

  But I would also be asking what I could to do build customer loyalty and prepare for a day when I'm no longer the only game in town for supporting RHEL in the next quarterly strategy meeting.
   

• Re:You Don't Get It

  (Score:0)
  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 28, @09:35AM (#16621670)
   

  They do not have the same kind of support.

  I don't even know what that means. I'm sure Oracle, with its massive number of support people can figure out how to offer the same, if not better level of support.

  They have kernel and application programers.

  Yeah, and what happens when Oracle offers these people double or triple what they are getting now. Sure some diehard open source people might stay, but they can't do it alone. Redhat will be gone within a year.

[Oct 26, 2005]  Oracle as new Robin Hood

#16594350)

That Unfakeable page is act of desperation...
Red Hat spreading FUD about another open source product, how noble! And let's not forget how they sent that cease-and-desist letter for CentOS for stating they're based on RHEL...

Let's see what they have to say:

Q: Does Oracle's announcement include support for the Red Hat Application Stack, JBoss, Hibernate, Red Hat GFS, Red Hat Cluster Suite, Red Hat Directory Server, or Red Hat Certificate System?
A: No. Oracle does not support any of these leading open source products.
-
Uhm, that doesn't matter.

The point is this: for any any Unbreakable Linux bug that is submitted to Oracle and can be duplicated on "golden" RHEL 4 system in Oracle's office (for which Oracle has valid support contract), Oracle can submit it to Red Hat Support as Red Hat bug and require quick fix. Then, as RH fixes it, they can fix it in their own Unbreakable Linux.

Q: Oracle says their Linux support includes the same hardware compatibility and certifications as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Is this true?
A: No. Oracle has stated they will make changes to the code independently of Red Hat. These changes will not be tested during Red Hat's hardware testing and certification process, and may cause unexpected behavior. Hence Red Hat hardware certifications are invalidated.
--
Well, yes. They don't say that Red Hat h/w certs will be considered valid (actually, they don't care, to be exact) - as long as you've got one, they'll support your RH cert on their Unbreakable Linux. The same goes for ISVs. And Oracle isn't that stupid to screw things up so that they don't work.

Q: Oracle says they will provide the same updates as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Can they do this?
A: There are multiple requirements to building binary compatible software. One piece is the source code; another is the build and test environment. While Oracle may be able to take the source code at some point after a Red Hat update release, obviously their build and test environment will inherently be different than that for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For similar reasons, there is no guarantee that the source code for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux update will work correctly when integrated into Oracle's modified Linux code base.
--
Hah, this one is hilarious! So this is Red Hat's secret sauce - the unreproducible build environment. Are they trying to say that their build environment is different from what's available to everyone else (which wouldn't be too good for compatibility which they emphasize all the time)?

Q: Does Red Hat allow you to tailor your support level to your workload?
A: Yes. Many customers match their Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription level to their application SLA requirements. For example, customers may choose a Basic subscription for non-mission critical file and print servers, while selecting Premium subscriptions for database servers. Oracle does not allow this flexibility - their support policy reads: "If acquiring Enterprise Linux Premier Support, all of your Oracle supported systems must be supported with Enterprise Linux Premier Support."
---
Nice try. On the other hand Oracle's Linux is free and updates only are $99/year. Match that, Red Hat! Basic support for RHEL Workstation is $279.
As for Oracle DB servers - yes, you'd probably want to have premium Linux support for those.
BTW, did RH mention that their support agreement requires that support must be purchased for all copies of OS used by the customer?
Self-tuning SLAs can also be achieved by using CentOS (community and basic support), RHEL and UL.

Q: Can Oracle produce timely security updates to Red Hat Enterprise Linux as they stated?
A: No. There will be a delay between the time a Red Hat Enterprise Linux update is issued, and the time the source code makes its way to Oracle. And there is no guarantee that the source code for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux update will work correctly when integrated into Oracle's Linux code base; this integration and test may take additional time. In the case where the update corrects critical security flaws, Oracle customers may be exposed to additional risk.
--
Yes, if the bug is submitted to Red Hat, there might be a delay of 1-2 hours.
If it's submitted to Oracle or to CentOS, RH and Oracle, there's no reason why Oracle couldn't issue their own fix before RH and, if change doesn't require reboot, re-issue RH's update after they get it from Red Hat. It's great to know that Linux requires timely security updates because it seems prone to frequent critical security problems, though.

Q: Will Oracle's Linux customers have the same degree of influence over Oracle's Linux as Red Hat's customers do with Red Hat Enterprise Linux?
A: The support we provide for Red Hat Enterprise Linux starts when Red Hat and its customers collaborate in the design of new versions. This collaboration extends through the development, test, and production deployment of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Vendors of a derivative distribution are simply not positioned to provide their customers the same collaboration opportunity.
-
Oh yes, Red Hat is well-known for their excellent collaboration with ISVs and IHVs... And they're very easy to work with...

Q: Hardware vendors such as Dell, HP, and IBM provide support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. How is Oracle's support offering different?
A: Red Hat's hardware partners provide front line support to customers, backed by Red Hat. Red Hat has a close contractual relationship with these partners, which requires training, well defined escalation paths, Red Hat back-line support, and cooperative customer issue management. Our joint customers enjoy the same degree of collaborative participation as any Red Hat customer.
--
According to HP's stats (you can google news.com for that article) in 2005 about 4,000 Linux support issues escalated to the HQs, less than 100 had to be escalated to Linux vendors.
Besides, all major OEMs endorsed Oracle's Unbreakable Linux, see today's news.com article on UL.
Maybe they don't give a damn but hey - why not get yourself in a position which helps you get a better price for RHEL :-)

In any case, each dollar invested in UL makes RH cheaper by more than one dollar, so this is a nice move by Larry. So far, so good - (http://finance.google.com/finance?q=RHAT - not a pretty sight).

And isn't it great that someone can take the Fedora -> RHEL model, where RH profits from work done by others (open source community, in RH's case) and make it work for the enterprise customer (RHEL -> UL) while profiting only from the rich. Unbreakable Linux = Robin Hood Linux :-)

[Sep 14, 2005] Dr. Dobb's Red Hat Releases Enterprise Linux 5 Beta September 13

... The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Beta 1 release contains virtualization on the i386 and x86_64 architectures as well as a technology preview for IA64.

... ... ...

Aside from Xen, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Beta 1 features AutoFS and iSCSI network storage support, smart card integration, SELinux security, clustering and a cluster file system, Infiniband and RDMA support, and Kexec and Kdump, which replace the current Diskdump and Netdump. Beta 1 also incorporates improvements to the installation process, analysis and development tools SystemTap and Frysk, a new driver model and enablers for stateless Linux.

IBM Redbooks Linux Client Migration Cookbook A Practical Planning and Implementation Guide for Migrating to Desktop Linux

The goal of this IBM Redbook is to provide a technical planning reference for IT organizations large or small that are now considering a migration to Linux-based personal computers. For Linux, there is a tremendous amount of “how to” information available online that addresses specific and very technical operating system configuration issues, platform-specific installation methods, user interface customizations, etc. This book includes some technical “how to” as well, but the overall focus of the content in this book is to walk the reader through some of the important considerations and planning issues you could encounter during a migration project. Within the context of a pre-existing Microsoft Windows-based environment, we attempt to present a more holistic, end-to-end view of the technical challenges and methods necessary to complete a successful migration to Linux-based clients.

Jun 24th, 2004 Open Source Blog: Open Sourcery by Blane Warrene

I recently spent some time speaking with a popular Yankee Group analyst who covers the enterprise sector in the US, focusing in on open source and where the movement may go in the next few years.

Just to be clear, I differentiate, as most industry watchers do, between Linux and open source. While Linux is open source, the primary Linux distributors have caught on to how they need to position themselves for success and are starting to run their businesses just as any proprietary software company does.

Red Hat and SUSE make prime examples, realizing the path to long term success and revenue streams resided in proving themselves enterprise worthy to larger businesses and institutions, have shifted business models or been acquired by organizations with roots in the enterprise.

Her views, while not always popular in the open source community. are right on point if open source seeks widespread adoption and a permanent seat at the table for longer term financial success.

There are a few obstacles open source proponents need to accept and move forward on:

1. It will be more costly for a company to migrate away from Windows to Linux, even in light of slightly reduced ongoing maintenance and improved security and uptime. While I have not always agreed that the costs are higher, having migrated corporate systems to Linux in the past, their research showed it to be true in many cases -- especially when migrating beyond standard web hosting and email systems. The costs are higher when factoring in re-certifying drivers, application integrity and training.
2. To truly become entrenched as a viable financially-rewarding option (meaning open source companies make money and create jobs), a shift toward commercial software models is necessary. This does not mean forgoing open source, however, what it does mean is developing a structure for development, distribution, patching and support that passes muster with corporate IT managers who could be investing substantial amounts of money in open source.

What it boils down to is that while open source has definitely revolutionized software, and it is found internationally in companies large and small, businesses still pick software because it provides a solution not just because it is open source.

The fact that it is cheaper or free simply means the user will save money, but this does not win the favor of those buyers who could be injecting millions into open source projects rather than proprietary software makers.

I would use Firebird as a model. In an interview with Helen Borrie, forthcoming in my July column on SitePoint, she noted that since many Fortune 500 companies are using an open source database like Firebird speaks volumes to the maturing of their project and open source at large.

The reason as I see it, is due to the treatment of Firebird like an enterprise scale proprietary software project. They have a well managed developer community and active support lists, commercial offerings for support through partnerships with several companies, and commercial development projects for corporate clients.

If more open source projects looked at Borrie's team model and discipline in development and support, we just might see more penetration that attracts longer and more profitable contracts and work for those like us in the SitePoint community.

(Post a comment)

Comments

It will be more costly for a company to migrate away from Windows to Linux, even in light of slightly reduced ongoing maintenance and improved security and uptime. You mean relative to staying with Windows? Does this include recurring costs of Windows licensing / upgrades?

The costs are higher when factoring in re-certifying drivers, application integrity and training.

On the drivers front, that assumes (if we're saying Linux cf. Windows) that systems need upgrades as frequently. There's generally less need to keep upgrading Linux, when used as a server.

Re application integrity, think thats very hard to research accurately - kind of a wooly comment that needs qualification.

On the training side, it's an interesting area where it's kind of like comparing Apples with Pears.

Windows generally hides administrators from much of what's really happening, so it's probably easier to train someone to the point where they're feeling confident but given serious problems, who do you turn to?

*Nix effectively exposes administrators to everything so more time is required to reach the point where sysadmins are confident. Once they reach that point though, they're typically capable of handling anything. The result is stable systems. I'd also argue that a single *Nix sysadmin is capable of maintaining a greater number of systems (scripts / automation etc.) although no figures to back that.

Firebird is an interesting example. The flip side of Firebirds way of doing things seems to be the Open Source "community" is largely unaware of it (compared to, say, MySQL).

  Posted by: HarryF from phppatterns.com Jun 24th, 2004 @ 8:03 AM MDT

Comment

Yes - on costs - Linux was actually found to be more expensive in numerous cases compared to staying with Windows. This is unfortunate as I am a proponent of finding migration paths from Windows to Linux for stability and administration automation. However, the research did show the total cost of ownership eventually balances out, it simply is much more expensive at the outset than staying on a Windows upgrade path.

This survey (partially on site with staff and others via questionnaire) - 1000 companies with 5000 or more employees - found that they did have to certify drivers at the initial migration, certify all new disk images, provide training or certification to adhere to corporate policy, buy indemnification insurance, perform migrations, test, establish support contracts and finally, pay about a 15 percent premium when bringing in certified L:inux staff.

The benefit if the company decided to take the financial hit: over an extended period they experienced the benefits of Linux - uptime, experienced admins and flexibility of the platform.

Application integrity was ambiguous in the study - however - managers cited it constantly when trying to retire commercial Unix and move apps to Linux, needing certification that an entire applications runs exactly as before.

Perhaps it is time for the open source community to begin establishing central organizational points that act as clearinghouses - like Open Source Development labs does for Linux - to certify open source applications on a major scale.

  Posted by: bwarrene from practicalapplications.net Jun 24th, 2004 @ 1:12 PM MDT

Comment

I beg to differ on Harry's view about Firebird. Firebird is not as popular as MySQL because 1) it's a newer project (project, not software) and 2) MySQL support comes built into PHP; no need for additional software. Firebird requires either recompilation or loading this DLL into the extension space.

  Posted by: andrecruz Jun 24th, 2004 @ 9:37 PM MDT

Comment

It was nice to read about your chat with L... DiD... (why are we keeping her name secret?).

Second, I don't understand your distinction between Linux and Open Source. Maybe I'm slow or something, but what it seems to boil down to is:

"Open Source = unprofessional Proprietary = professional (unstated) Linux = open source, but starting to become professional despite itself by acting like proprietary."

Well I'll grant you there are a lot of unprofesssional Free Software projects out there; but the same is true of proprietary. Bad proprietary programs are slightly less likely to see the light of day, but there's still a bevy of them out there.

Now, on the assertion that Linux companies are succeeding by acting like proprietary companies: there's truth and non-truth to it. On the one hand, Red Hat and SuSE have no doubt learned a lot about management, marketing, and good business practices from established companies. On the other hand, an effective open source player does not act the same as an effective proprietary player: there are all kinds of issues with dealing with the developer community that are not an issue in the proprietary world: they bring plusses and minuses, but have to be dealt with rather than ignored.

And I will note that Red Hat, the most successful Linux distributor, is a pure-play Open Source vendor: they do not ship proprietary code. In fact, they devote a lot of developer time to a community distribution that they make no direct money on (but do get free testing from). Likewise, one of the first things Novell did after its so-far successful acquisition of SuSE was to GPL SuSE's proprietary installer. This suggests that while good management is indispensible in anythin, Open Source ventures should not be running off and trying to ape proprietary vendors blindly.

Finally, there's a big difference between the way mass-market shrinkwrapped proprietary software and the way big-iron stuff is. With big-iron stuff you often have consultants in the field, lots of direct customer feedback, maybe even code sharing under NDA with the client: in short, it works a lot like an Open Source project. And that's where Open Source has shined: *nix boxes, web servers, network infrastructure, compilers, developer tools, and increasingly RDMSes. With mass shrinkwrap you have to do much more seeking out of customer needs on your own and also be prepared to tell customers to shove it and wait for the next release. On stuff like this (desktop guis and apps) Open Source has been less successful.

At least one high-profile OSS desktop project (Mozilla) was a legendary quagmire for a long time and is only beginning to claw its way back. Many of the mistakes came from not being open to community input ("dammit, we don't need a whole platform, just a good browser") as any good project of any kind should be. Thing is, no one has a clear idea of how to be usefully open to community input on a mass-market OSS project yet: the twin dangers of adding every requested feature or my-way-or-the-highway-ism have been so far hard to avoid.

Personally, I think the question of the Open Source desktop is given too much importance. Windows server shipments still account for 60% of the market, so it's not like that area is all sewn up. A company that wants to avoid vendor lock-in would do best to migrate its server infrastructure first - that's gonna be least painful and probably highest long-term benefit. Then maybe desktop apps, the maybe desktop operating system.

On MySQL vs. Firebird: yes, MySQL is more widespread, but they're used for entirely different things.

  Posted by: jmcginty Jun 25th, 2004 @ 12:34 PM MDT

Comment

I'm a bit confused to why you want to differentiate between Linux (eg. Red Hat) and Open Source.

Red Hat releases source packages and contributes largely to Open Source projects, both in resources as in code. Improvements by Red Hat are included in SuSE and vice versa. Everybody wins.

This ensures that Red Hat will have to be the best on its own merits. Competition will always be lurking around the corner to take over. Despite that, Red Hat is doing a good job.

You cannot compare this to proprietary vendors were your money goes into the big company bucket being used for the next version that you have to pay for again.

If I can choose I'd rather pay for services, if it guarantees that the money is used for Open Source development. If my Open Source vendor goes belly-up, its work is still available for anyone to use.

Paying for Open Source just guarantees you that you have freedom and are never tight to any vendor. Red Hat is just one example to show that the money is used for the good of the public.

And if you don't have deep pockets, there's still Fedora, CentOS, TaoLinux or Whitebox. Plenty of competition in the same vendor segment. Hard to beat IMO.

  Posted by: Dag Wieers from dag.wieers.com Jun 26th, 2004 @ 3:57 AM MDT

Comment

One thing I notice that is never mentioned when talking about Windows vs. Linux TCO is virus & worm costs. Both the cost of AV s/w and clean-up after an infection sneaks into the corporate LAN. That *huge* expense will never be borne by a Linux shop.

Posted by: Ron Johnson Jun 26th, 2004 @ 7:56 AM MDT

HP Throws Weight Behind MySQL, JBoss

HP Throws Weight Behind MySQL, JBoss
By Clint Boulton

HP (Quote, Chart) stepped up its commitment to open source software Monday by pledging to offer and support the MySQL database server and JBoss application server software in its servers.

The Palo Alto, Calif. systems vendor said it has inked agreements with those open source purveyors to certify and support MySQL and JBoss software on its servers.

Jeffrey Wade, manager of Linux Marketing Communications at HP, said the certifications factor in the company's Linux reference architecture is a software stack that covers everything from the hardware to the operating system, drivers and management agents.

Deployed on HP ProLiant servers, the open source Linux Reference Architectures are based on software from MySQL, JBoss, Apache, and OpenLDAP. The company's commercial Linux Reference Architectures are based on product from Oracle, BEA and SAP.

Both MySQL and JBoss will join the HP Partner Program and receive joint testing and engineering support on HP's hardware systems.

Wade told internetnews.com the added layer of MySQL and JBoss support addresses one of the largest concerns customers have today in opting to pick open source technology over mainstay proprietary products such as Microsoft (Quote, Chart)Windows, Sun Microsystems' (Quote, Chart) Solaris or UNIX.

"We can provide support for that entire solution stack and we're also now giving our customers flexibility in choice and the types of solutions they want to deploy whether that's a commercial or open source application," Wade said.

Bob Bickel, vice president of strategy and corporate development at JBoss, said commercial use remains somewhat constrained because a CIO doesn't know whom they can turn to for support.

"They don't know who they can turn to for indemnification," Bickel told internetnews.com. "Yeah, it works great and it's cheap but what happens in the middle of their big selling season if something goes down. Who do they turn to and get it from. What HP's doing is taking an all encompassing view of this with certification and testing."

Testing keeps customers from guessing what version of a Java virtual machine, operating system, MySQL or JBoss product can all work together in a guaranteed way, Bickel explained.

MySQL Vice President of Marketing Zack Urlocker said companies such as Sabre are using an open source stack for business applications. Partnering with HP, then, provides great validation for MySQL and JBoss software.

"A couple of years ago the big knock on open source was that it might be good on the periphery or Web applications, but was not quite ready for business critical applications," Urlocker told internetnews.com. "Now, the No. 1 issues have been support. People who have had a lot of success with Linux are now looking at how to use a whole open source stack."

The deal is truly symbiotic. While MySQL and JBoss get backing from a technology driver such as HP, HP gets the added credibility of being cozy with open source, a label many enterprises and HP rivals, such as IBM (Quote, Chart) and Dell (Quote, Chart), are working toward.

Linux sales are trending tall regardless; according to recent hardware server and database software studies from high-tech research outfit Gartner.

Despite legal threats from SCO Group and competition from Microsoft, Gartner said Linux continued to be the growth powerhouse in the operating systems server market, with a revenue increase of 57.3 percent in the first quarter of 2004.

Gartner also found that Linux siphoned market share from UNIX in the relational database management system (RDBMS) market, a niche that grew 158 percent from $116 million in new license revenue in 2002 to nearly $300 million in 2003.

We're aware of each other, but the PHP project has no intention of moving to some sort of GPL license.

In other news, I need to go to the ATM machine and punch in my PIN number

[Jul 16, 2004] Fished out of Slashdot by Oleg Polyakov:

ABC of Unix:

A is for awk, which runs like a snail
B is for biff, which reads all your mail
C is for cc, as hackers recall
D is for dd, the command that does all
E is for emacs, which rebinds your keys
F is for fsck, which rebuilds your trees
G is for grep, a clever detective
H is for halt, which may seem defective
I is for indent, which rarely amuses
J is for join, which nobody uses
K is for kill, which makes you the boss
L is for lex, which is missing from DOS
M is for more, from which less was begot
N is for nice, which really is not
O is for od, which prints out things nice
P is for passwd, which reads in strings twice
Q is for quota, a Berkeley-type fable
R is for ranlib, for sorting a table
S is for spell, which attempts to belittle
T is for true, which does very little
U is for uniq, which is used after sort
V is for vi, which is hard to abort
W is for whoami, which tells you your name
X is, well, X, of dubious fame
Y is for yes, which makes an impression, and
Z is for zcat, which handles compression

Deft Code Every Language War Ever

Idiot 1: Your Favorite Language is bad at doing arbitrarily chosen task X, which it was never designed to do. This just happens to be a field in which My Favorite Language excels.
Idiot 2: Ah yes, but YFL is bad at doing Y, which MFL is great at.
I1: Plus YFL is slow. MFL is fast.
I2: But MFL is faster to develop in than YFL. Besides, Moore’s Law. Mooooooore’s Laaaaaaw.
I1: I’ve never really used YFL, but I’ve read it’s much worse to support.
I2: A programmer can write unmaintainable code in any language. Let’s compare a carefully prepared code snippet from MFL with a horrifically bad snippet from YFL written by a drunken monkey.
I1: Yeah, but strong typing, which MFL supports, prevents many common programming errors.
I2: Strong typing, which MFL doesn’t support, is for weak minds!
I1: YFL is ugly!
I2: You just aren’t used to it!

CausticTech The Open Source Zealot -- slightly censored ;-)

ignorance
n: the lack of knowledge or education
-WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University

zealot
n: a fervent and even militant proponent of something
-WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University

(can you imagine the damage that can ensue when the above two words decide to get together...)

Over the years there has been much written about the rather, shall we say...enthusiastic nature of the Open Source Zealot. Hopefully i will be able to contribute something original to literature...

Open source software is like anything else on the goddamn planet. Some of it is good, and some of it just sucks. I see no difference between this and any other kind of software. However, I am fascinated (and always amused) by the people who are so utterly engrossed with this staff. They really are a breed apart.

First off, what many people don't know is that there are actually several different kinds of Open Source Zealots. While not being comprehensive, I thought we'd go over a few of the more prominent subspecies (there is also plenty of overlapping):

The Guru

Kind, sagely, wise...these are the guys that are usually the most prominent and visible of the Open Source Zealots. they also feel the need to be the self-appointed "voice of the community." Personally, i think any community would be pretty suspect if one of their own self-appointed gurus can't even get his printer working. In addition to apparently having problems with their computer peripherals, they feel the need to spew and pontificate by writing books that have such grand titles as The Art of Unix Programming and the The Cathedral and the Bazaar. BTW have you ever even been to a bazaar? They are dirty, noisy, full of shady characters, and anybody selling anything is just out to screw you out of your money.  This is going to be the software development model of the future? You're kidding me, right? Where to do these self-aggrandizing analogies come from? Another very important aspect of The Guru is to frame all this dorkness into a zen like semi-spiritual framework (and thereby unknowingly given even more credence to the term zealot).

This approach has several advantages to The Guru, because any logical, rational, or valid argument against his tenets can easily be brushed aside with stock phrases such as, "you just don't understand the spirit of it.", or a particular favorite, "you're not grokking it."  These pseudo-philosophical dodges of any contrary viewpoint are just some of the standard techniques employed by the Guru. They also provide a sugar-coating for hiding the real subversive nature of their underlying message which almost always is something along the lines of, "how can you not obviously see how much we are better than them?" Another annoying technique the Guru uses is the Aunt Tilly metaphor. This is the euphemism used to describe the "unwashed masses" who are not part of the techgeek/wank/dork elite, who do not "grok it." ... ... ... The Guru uses to create a system between those who are part of the cult, and those worthless imbeciles who for whatever reason STILL don't see the One True Way. Ok, now that The Guru has revealed his new clothes, why don't we move right along with the...

The Moralist (aka The Anti-Microsoft Bigot)
Unlike The Guru, The Moralist doesn't necessarily need to have any (supposedly) advanced technical skills. (which actually makes them more dangerous.) These suckers acquire their zealotry through good ol'  fundamentalist ignorance. It's amazing that anything these people say is being listened to on any level. It usually covers the same tired, ceaselessly beaten to death ideas:

• Microsoft is the root of all evil
• Bill Gates is the anti-Christ
• Microsoft makes shitty software
• Microsoft software is not secure

First off, if you think Microsoft is the root of all evil... I know, I know...you also hold them responsible for world hunger, the plight of the third world country, the increase in reality TV programming, Janet Jackson's superbowl stunt, and the increase of aids in the porno industry. Maybe Microsoft is involved in a nefarious plot that all 55,000 of it's employees, millions of people who use their products, and a tremendous amount of businesses all over the world are just ignorant of.

Next, as far as Bill Gates is concerned, he has on a personal level AND as part of a corporation done more for computing and humanity than you ever will....

Microsoft makes xxxx software...and guess what, that is your opinion. I have no problems with opinions, but don't confuse your ignorant, misinformed, half-baked opinions with actual facts. That is truly the realm of the close minded (which fits you to a T).

Finally, Microsoft products are insecure...and your point is?? So is every other operating system out there. It doesn't take one iota of intelligence to realize that since Microsoft products are the most deployed in the world, that they are going to hit up against the most scrutiny. However, I've always found it so convenient that when any open source products are found to have security holes, the entire community pretends that nothing is there. I guess you must have some secret clandestine deal with Ziff Davis media and Slashdot to just keep quiet in these circumstances. You can generally spot these guys a mile away because every time they spell Microsoft they replace the 's' with a '$'. yeah, real clever... Like we haven't seen that before, you paragon of originality. Listen, nobody gives a dime that you think that Microsoft "broke the law." actually, nobody gives a dime about what you think, period. get a life! you mean you don't have anything better to do than spread your moral stance on corporations and "big business?" what makes this all worth while is that when I calmly ask, "well...what exactly has Microsoft done to you?" the only thing that comes out of that hypocrisy is, "oh, well ah...hmmm......ah..." exactly. Ok, let's move on, or I'll really start ranting...

The Slashkiddie
These pre-pubescent, acne ridden, illiterate, kids are generally the most harmless of the bunch. I mean, how dangerous can somebody be, if all they do all day is hope that their latest masterpiece of exquisitely written prose called a comment on whatever bullshit pseudowank story gets modded to the fabled "+5 insightful" level. .... They also have a herd mentality with The Guru as the sheepdog providing guidance and telling them just what to do next. You can also tell that your dealing with one of these suckers because of their incredibly gifted spelling skills. spelling words with z instead of s (as in their favorite phrase "mad skillz"), using abbreviations like r instead of are or u instead of you. in addition to having world class spelling skills, they also seem to have a uncanny mastery of the rules of capitalization. however i have noticed a slight dyslexic tendency to confuse the number 3 with the capital letter E. they also like to use these incredible skills to give themselves really cool names like haXXor, aZZmaZt3r, and cod3mast3r.. When push comes to shove, once you take their computer and anonymity away from them, they become nothing more than any other pimply-faced teen...

Aside from these three there is also The Hacker, The Cheap Bastard, and The Crusader (aka The Preacher). Fortunately enough for them, they aren't visible enough to merit their own sections. There is also a little bit of The SourceForge Enthusiast in all of them

By the way, Rory Blythe wrote up a hilarious post after having a run in with his very own Open Source Zealot (it's actually better and funnier than anything i can write as well...definitely check it out!)

Google recruits eggheads with mystery billboard CNET News.com

Paul Ardos' famous quote: "A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." 

It can be extended to "A programmer is a device for turning coffee into the source code."

Quotes about Bugs

I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones. ("Dr Who")

One: demonstrations always crash. And two: the probability of them crashing goes up exponentially with the number of people watching. (Steve Jobs)

Their rumpled clothes, their unwashed and unshaven faces, and their uncombed hair all testify that they are oblivious to their bodies and to the world in which they move. These are computer bums, compulsive programmers. (Joseph Weizenbaum 1976)

Anyone who has attended a USENIX conference in a fancy hotel can tell you that a sentence like "You're one of those computer people, aren't you?" is roughly equivalent to "Look, another amazingly mobile form of slime mold!" in the mouth of a hotel cocktail waitress. (Elizabeth Zwicky)

June

RE GNU Emacs keybindings

The most outrageous act of Stallmanism is trying to usurp the key that God intended for backspace to make it into a help key.

Yahoo! Groups decentralization Messages Message 1255 of 6696

The most "open" thing about "open source" is the mouths.

May

Sun, IBM Should Quit Open-Source Posturing -- a very nice, althouth probably unintended unintended humor ("Red Hat os twice the open source company you are or are ever likely to be") by  Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (to realize the subtleness of humor,  readers are encouraged to read Red Hat Enterprise license ;-)

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols :

Red Hat is twice the open-source company you are or are ever likely to be. Proprietary does not equal Red Hat Enterprise Linux to anyone except your new best friend, Microsoft.

Red Hat enterprise license:

4. REPORTING AND AUDIT. If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed System, then Customer will purchase from Red Hat additional Services for each additional Installed System. During the term of this Agreement and for one (1) year thereafter, Customer expressly grants to Red Hat the right to audit Customer's facilities and records from time to time in order to verify Customer's compliance with the terms and conditions of this Agreement. Any such audit shall only take place during Customer's normal business hours and upon no less than ten (10) days prior written notice from Red Hat. Red Hat shall conduct no more than one such audit in any twelve-month period except for the express purpose of assuring compliance by Customer where non-compliance has been established in a prior audit. Red Hat shall give Customer written notice of any non-compliance, and if a payment deficiency exists, then Customer shall have fifteen (15) days from the date of such notice to make payment to Red Hat for any payment deficiency. The amount of the payment deficiency will be determined by multiplying the number of underreported Installed Systems or Services by the annual fee for such item. If Customer is found to have underreported the number of Installed Systems or amount of Services by more than five percent (5%), Customer shall, in addition to the annual fee for such item, pay liquidated damages equal to twenty percent (20%) of the underreported fees for loss of income and administration costs suffered by Red Hat as a result.

Linux Today - Linux Journal The Penguin Driven Church Office

"Every church faces challenges. Ours is growth. Thanks to a donation of 19 computers, we now have more computers than church members. Like church members who simply keep the pews warm, some of these machines need refurbishing. Several do work rather nicely, however. So when I tell you that one of our most active church members is a friendly little penguin who manages our church's data, I'm being quite honest. We call him Saint Tux.

"Why should churches let penguins into the Pastor's study? That's a fair question. We considered our options rather carefully. Cost, choice, freedom, ease of use and ability to customize the software were our main issues..."

Slashdot Why Does SCO Focus On A Minix-to-Linux Link

ESR's Halloween XI -- Get the FUD

ESR, again. (Score:1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23, @11:01AM (#9507225)

Sorry there, but besides Fud, what has ESR brought to the Open Source community ?

[ Reply to This ]

Re:ESR, again. (Score:5, Insightful) by JohnTheFisherman (225485) on Wednesday June 23, @11:17AM (#9507424)

What has ESR brought to the Open Source community? Stunningly accurate predictions, like MS's monopoly collapsing in 2001, and Windows becoming obsolete when computer prices dipped below $350. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/12/13/216237 &mode=thread&tid=99 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/02/28/132424 8&mode=thread&tid=163 He's got a knack for predicting the future. You can rest assured that MS really is getting *DESPERATE* now, especially now that they're obsolete and their monopoly had collapsed years ago. :)

Corrections in the ESR documents. (Score:5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23, @11:09AM (#9507316)

I just emailed ESR about the gross misreference to GNU/Linux as linux in his article.

I made a little chart... (Score:5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23, @11:42AM (#9507738)

...to show who says what. Stallman    GNU/linux       Free Software    Bearded         Chaotic Good Linus       linux           Open Source(?)   Unbearded       True Neutral Eric        linux           Open Source      Hitler Mustache Chaotic Evil Bruce P     GNU/linux       Free Software    Beardless       Lawful Good Alan Cox    GNU/lin(mostly) Free Software    Mighty beard    Chaotic Good

[June 1, 2004] Slashdot Dealing with the Unix Copy and Paste Paradigm

But wait... (Score:5, Funny) by gillbates (106458) on Wednesday June 02, @05:12PM (#9319250) (http://www.angelfire.com/il/macroman | Last Journal: Thursday September 18, @01:31PM)

Wasn't this the very thing that open source was supposed to avoid? You don't like the copy and paste works? Fine - you've got the source code, so just change the key codes and recompile.... right? After a few frustrating hours of digging through source code, you finally find the keybindings. You change them, do a make.... and make crashes. So then you debug the make script and realize that you _ALSO_ need the source code to an obscure set of libraries. So you Google it, download the source, and it ALSO won't compile, because you've got the wrong compiler version. So you figure, what the heck, it's time to upgrade gcc anyway. You download the sources, compile it, only to find that you also need to download the sources for the shared libraries as well. Tomorrow, you'll resume. Well the weekend is coming up, and you've finally got the compiler and all its dependent sources together, and you start the compile. It actually compiles and installs just fine... And then you try to compile those obscure libraries and the compiler crashes. Turns out there's a kernel bug which means the new version of the compiler won't work with older kernels. You think, well heck, I'll just upgrade my kernel, and you ftp the sources. So you configure your kernel and then type 'make clean; make dep; make install' and kick off the process; it dies - once again, your compiler segfaults. So now you've got an older kernel with no way to compile the new one... So next weekend you decide that you're just going back to the old compiler. You rpm -i the compiler, and start the kernel compile process again... but the new kernel won't compile with the older compiler, and the newer compiler won't run on an older kernel.... You take a walk. It's nice to see the sunshine, and feel the breeze for a change. It's Tuesday and you've figured out that you can apply a few patches to your current compiler source, compile that, and then you'll be able to compile the most recent version of the compiler. So you do that. After you've built your intermediate version, you install it, build your kernel, and then recompile the newest compiler sources. After a reboot, you're able to successfully compile those obscure shared libraries, and rebuild your application. Then you fire up your modified ctrl-c, ctrl-v enhanced software.... It segfaults. For no apparent reason. So you Google the newsgroups, and lo and behold, someone else is having the same problem! But they don't know what the problem is. Next week, your newsgroup buddy has found the problem. It turns out that a change in the way gcc handles memory allocation causes your obscure libraries to crash when compiled with the newer versions. They recommend using an older version of the compiler to build the software. So you go back to the intermediate version, recompile, and finally, everything works great. For a few days, you've been enjoying the benefits of ctrl-c ctrl-v copy and paste. Life is good. And then, you notice that KDE starts crashing at random for some unknown reason...

[May 27, 2004] http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/27/2333247&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=163

eh, statistics (Score:3, Insightful)
by stratjakt (596332) on Thursday May 27, @10:55PM (#9274042)
(Last Journal: Sunday September 29, @02:10PM)
To say linux server sales are up 27% means little if the volume is low.

If I sold one last year, and three this year then I can talk about 300% growth, but that number is meaningless.

Yeah, linux is gaining ground, but has a long way to go.
[ Reply to This ]

Mod Parent Down (Score:5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 27, @11:00PM (#9274073)

He speaketh against our penguin overlord. Without Tux what will we worship? CowboyNeals nutsack?

Linux Servers Booming?! (Score:3, Funny)
by Pan T. Hose (707794) on Thursday May 27, @11:12PM (#9274142)
(http://plato.stanford.edu/ | Last Journal: Saturday April 17, @07:23AM)
Oh my God, I'll better watch out for my server, I don't want it to suddenly boom! I'll better check the water cooling system...

Re:Gartner (Score:5, Insightful) by NonSequor (230139) on Friday May 28, @12:01AM (#9274367) (Last Journal: Tuesday April 29, @09:44PM)

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentis (I do not trust the Greeks, even bearing gifts) --Vergil, The Aeneid

[ Reply to This | Parent ]

• Re:Gartner by Too Much Noise (Score:2) Friday May 28, @01:13AM

Re:Gartner (Score:4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 28, @12:09AM (#9274396)

Yes (0.8 likelihood)

[ May 22, 2004] SCO Case News

Interesting clause... (Score:5, Funny) by angst_ridden_hipster (23104) on Friday May 21, @07:35PM (#9221447) (http://fogbound.net/flummox | Last Journal: Wednesday February 05, @03:49PM)

I thought that this was a particularly interesting clause in the filing and one that you don't often see: "IBM further requests extensive injunctive relief from litigants, viz, their fields shall be burned, and sown with salt; their buildings torn assunder; their leaders beaten and hanged; their animals slain, and left unto the beasts; their wives enslaved and set to lamentation; their names and images expunged from the histories and chiseled from the monuments; and their children's teeth set on edge, yea unto the seventh generation. So shall vengeance be wreaked upon those who look with enmity upon Big Blue."

Re:if they win? (Score:4, Funny) by Keith McClary (14340) on Saturday May 22, @02:00AM (#9223426)

What if legions of small, zombie bunnies attempt to take over the world? Are you referring to female corporate spokespersons?

If this were a drinking game... (Score:5, Funny) by dacarr (562277) <ke6isf.spamcop@net> on Friday May 21, @07:48PM (#9221550) (http://www.northarc.com/~ke6isf | Last Journal: Thursday April 08, @02:03AM)

If I had a beer for every time that either SCO said that Linux is for all intents theirs, IBM or others said no it's not, or Slashdot posted about this, I'd be a puddle of organic goo on the office floor.

In other news (Score:5, Funny) by orcrist (16312) on Friday May 21, @09:12PM (#9222034)

Slashdot announced an expected 10% loss in page views once the SCO case is wrapped up. VA Investors are looking for a new company to rally the slashdot readers against... -chris

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=20300852&pgno=3

User error is indeed a common problem in all kinds of computing. In fact, support techs sometimes joke about "PEBKAC" errors ("Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair") or "ID 10 T" errors ("idiot.")

March

Bicoherent The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, by Carlo M. Cipolla

The First Law:

Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

The Second Law:

The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

The Third Law:

A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

The Forth Law:

Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

The Fifth Law:

A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

The corollary of the Law is that:

A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.

Slashdot Academics Take On Government Net Censorship

What Sla$hdot DOESNT want you know (Score:-1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 18, @11:18AM (#8897126)

An analysis of hacker attacks on online servers in January by security consultancy mi2g found that Linux servers were the most frequently violated, accounting for 13,654 successful attacks, or 80 per cent of the survey total. Windows ran a distant second with 2,005 attacks. A more specific analysis of government servers also found Linux more susceptible, accounting for 57 per cent of all breaches [zdnet.com.au]

Re:What Sla$hdot DOESNT want you know (Score:2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 18, @11:23AM (#8897141)

You are risking bringing the wrath of the Linux jihadists down on you. You are indeed brave. If this were groklaw, your post would already be deleted.

Slashdot Five Fundamental Problems with Open Source

Open sauce company

BBspot - Student Suspended Over Suspected Use of PHP By Brian Briggs

Topeka, KS - High school sophomore Brett Tyson was suspended today after teachers learned he may be using PHP.

"A teacher overheard him say that he was using PHP, and as part of our Zero-Tolerance policy against drug use, he was immediately suspended. No questions asked," said Principal Clyde Thurlow.   "We're not quite sure what PHP is, but we suspect it may be a derivative of PCP, or maybe a new designer drug like GHB." 

Parents are frightened by the discovery of this new menace in their children's school, and are demanding the school do something.  "We heard that he found out about PHP at school on the internet.  There may even be a PHP web ring operating on school grounds," said irate parent Carol Blessing.  "School is supposed to be teaching our kids how to read and write.  Not about dangerous drugs like PHP."

In response to parental demands the school has reconfigured its internet WatchDog software to block access to all internet sites mentioning PHP.  Officials say this should prevent any other students from falling prey like Brett Tyson did.  They have also stepped up locker searches and brought in drug sniffing dogs.

Interviews with students suggested that PHP use is wide spread around the school, but is particularly concentrated in the geeky nerd population.  When contacted by BBspot.com, Brett Tyson said, "I don't know what the hell is going on dude, but this suspension gives me more time for fraggin'.  Yee haw!"

PHP is a hypertext preprocessor, which sounds very dangerous.  It is believed that many users started by using Perl and moved on to the more powerful PHP.  For more information on how to recognize if your child may be using PHP please visit http://www.php.net.

MS Hotmail Offline For Hours

Re:Yeah, I'll say... (Score:1, Insightful) by Awptimus Prime (695459) on Sunday March 14, @06:15AM (#8560489)

Hotmail was purchased by MS that my entire mail quota could be filled with spam in mere days, and it was then that the system got so sluggish and unreliable that it was never a surprise when I couldn't use it. (Microsoft is really good at some things, not least among them making people feel like pawns in billion dollar chess games.) Yes.. That terrible, evil company.. They were so wrong to give you a free email service. How dare they..

This is news??? Who the fuck cares! (Score:5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14, @03:45AM (#8560125) God, how fucking petty is slashdot getting??? Sure, hotmail was down, boo-hoo. It's a free email service. Deal with it. Why is slashdot determined to report every single trivial detail when it comes to Microsoft? Try to stick with the big stories, please, not "Bill Gates forgets to lift toilet seat!" or "Steve Ballmer takes up two parking spaces in Microsoft parking lot!"   Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares! (Score:5, Funny) by kasperd (592156) <vxktjfuimviyNO@SPAMskrammel.yaboo.dk> on Sunday March 14, @03:52AM (#8560147) (http://kasperd.lir.dk/) It's a free email service. I'm sure RMS [stallman.org] would disagree with you. Re:This is news??? Who the fuck cares! (Score:5, Funny) by PacoTaco (577292) on Sunday March 14, @05:18AM (#8560364) RMS is planning to start his own free email service. Supported clients will include Emacs and Netcat.

Slashdot Young Programmer, Stop Advocating Free Software!

Re:Site slashdot'ed befor it went live (Score:5, Funny) by MotherInferior (698543) * on Monday March 01, @10:22AM (#8428946) (http://www.goodmancounty.com/)

So once you get your degree from school, what's the plan? To get outsourced.

Irony (Score:5, Funny) by Morosoph (693565) on Monday March 01, @11:01AM (#8429416) (http://slashdot.org/~Morosoph/journal/ | Last Journal: Tuesday February 24, @10:25AM)

well, that was particularly insulting. nothing quite like the threat of "no pussy!" to drive intelligent young programmers away from open source / free software. Hence your .sig: geeks CAN get dates! [realdoll.com] Sorry, that just made me laugh. I agree with you, though.

Re:Site slashdot'ed befor it went live (Score:5, Funny) by jdcook (96434) on Monday March 01, @11:02AM (#8429435)

"well, that was particularly insulting. nothing quite like the threat of "no pussy!" to drive intelligent young programmers away from open source / free software." Says the poster with the Real Doll sig.

February

Slashdot Tech Training Schools Going Bust

Re:Good! (Score:5, Funny) by Texas Rose on Lava L (712928) on Friday February 20, @07:32PM (#8345806) (http://www.michaelmoore.com/ | Last Journal: Monday January 12, @10:46PM)

40,000 new IT jobs are opening up every year! Must be willing to relocate to Bangalore.

Re:Good! (Score:5, Funny) by way2trivial (601132) on Friday February 20, @07:36PM (#8345849)

they don't say that, they say "40,000 new IT jobs are opening up every year!* Train now for a rewarding career!" . *worldwide

Re:Good! (Score:5, Funny) by CatLord42 (657659) on Friday February 20, @08:01PM (#8346072) (Last Journal: Sunday March 23, @08:20AM)

"Sign up for Cisco and Microsoft training! Get the pay and respect you deserve!" From what I've seen, most people with Microsoft Certifications (who are un^H^Hemployed) *are* getting the pay and respect they deserve! ;-)

Re:Good! (Score:5, Funny) by Maserati (8679) on Friday February 20, @09:12PM (#8346511) (http://creekside.editthispage.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday September 14, @09:25AM)

Many, many moons ago I took an Intro to Engineering class in high school. We had a bunch of speakers from the professional world as well as from schools. Including Heald. The brochure the Heald guy passed out included a *complete* list of recent graduates and the jobs they had. Somebody spotted the "Sanitation Engineer" so we pored over the list and found, among others, two car park attendants. I don't think Heald is giving the full list to HS students anymore :-)

Serves them right. (Score:5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 20, @07:30PM (#8345793)

They shood do what I did and go to an acredited scholl like the University of Pheonix. Online. Re:Serves them right. (Score:5, Funny) by WankersRevenge (452399) on Friday February 20, @07:42PM (#8345901) (http://www.jezner.com/) Screw that. Just come to me. I'll mail you a diploma in a numerous programs (nuclear physics, heart transplant surgery, political The job outlook for high-tech professionals is bad (Score:5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 20, @07:31PM (#8345800) I am a professional HTML software developer with good working knowledge of Microsoft FrontPage 2000, Microsoft FrontPage 2002, Microsoft FrontPage 2003 and HomeSite. Extensive experience with back-end server management via Microsoft Web Publishing Wizard. I am looking roughly for $80-90K (plus sign-on bonus and relocation), but I can tell you the job field is not that great. I think I should learn PHP and wait for things to pick up. Can anyone recommend good PHP classes under-$5,000 range?

[Feb 20, 2004] GPL religion revisited ;-)

GPL non-GPL compliant? (Score:5, Funny) by G3ckoG33k (647276) on Wednesday February 18, @04:14PM (#8319784)

What's next? The current GPL, version 2, will not be GPL version 3 compliant?

Re:gpl like religion ? (Score:2, Funny) by Notre97 (245681) on Wednesday February 18, @05:13PM (#8320456) (http://slashdot.org/)

Repeat after me: "There is no license but GPL, and RMS is it's prohet"

gpl like religion ? (Score:4, Funny) by ehack (115197) on Wednesday February 18, @04:13PM (#8319765) (Last Journal: Saturday October 26, @07:42PM)

Is the gpl a text that says "if you change a word of this text you shall be excommunciated from the religion of Free Software, Stallman prophet ?"

Re:gpl like religion ? (Score:4, Funny) by GigsVT (208848) on Wednesday February 18, @04:21PM (#8319908) (Last Journal: Monday February 02, @11:48AM)

Actually, here are some proposed additions for GPL Version 3: For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the license of this code, If any man shall add unto these things, RMS shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this license. And if any man shall take away from the words of the license of this code, RMS shall take away his part out of the license to this code, and out of the open bazaar, and from the things which are written in this license.

What if Stallman bitched about licensing (Score:5, Funny) by Gothmolly (148874) on Wednesday February 18, @04:27PM (#8319977)

And nobody cared? Is this the beginning of market forces affecting the open source movement? Practical realities asserting themselves over floating abstractions?

[Feb 16, 2004]Slashdot Microsoft Source Follow-Up 

"With the open source community, there are a large percentage of tinkers and 'ankle biters' who are trying their hand at hacking. Some are even communicating with each other. So it only takes one or two of these groups sharing information to be able to pull something off. When you have this type of passion, it's hard to fight because these people are like virtual suicide car bombers."

January 2004

[Jan 23, 2004] Instructor to students in Web-based class:
                        "And now who can first figure out what "ls -r / | xarg rm -f" does?"

[Jan 23, 2004] http://www.inicia.es/de/Turbo_J/metelev1_01.swf  "Brute force" repair of  the computer (nice Flash animation) ;-)

[Jan 22, 2004] "No one will call you if you don't have any friends"  from the Nokia 6800 marketing leaflet.

[Jan 21, 2004] Smack the Pingu! -- With some trust Penguin can fly fairly well ;-).  Gifted people can reach 500 m. It would appear that it was an unfinished demo released from 1moregame.com - home of lots more silly games. None quite as good as Smack the Pingu though.

[Jan  20, 2004] There is at least one Slashdot reader who has doubts that Slashdot is exclusively Linux self-congratulation site

Is this childish language necessary? (Score:-1, Flamebait) by geekee (591277) on Tuesday January 20, @04:48PM (#8036384)

"It looks like SCO has finally ditched their failing product line in favor of 24/7 litigation and PR work." Show some objectivity, or I have no reason to bother reading the story you found, since I must assume you are pushing an agenda, rather than reporting news.

What is the Best Way to Handle a GPL Violation

Re:If you gave the code away for Free (Score:1) by pantycrickets (694774) on Thursday January 15, @09:15PM (#7993836)

...if you intended to give away the code for free in the first place, why are you so concerned that someone is taking it and profiting off of it? I think the Rap Dictionary would call that a case of "Playa' Hatin'"

Kiss that sucker goodbye (Score:2, Funny) by Rogerborg (306625) on Friday January 16, @08:33AM (#7997141) (http://slashdot.org/)

And accept it as the cost of choosing to be an impoverished hippy rather than a corporate drone.

Did anyone actually LOOK at the libraries???? (Score:4, Interesting) by humblecoder (472099) on Friday January 16, @12:15PM (#7999362)

I went to the original posters website to look at the libraries in question, and they appear to be trivial little code snippets. Here are some examples: 1. Lanuching a browser window 2. Creating a password dialog box 3. Base64 encoding of text I find it hard to believe that any commercial company would expose themselves to liability by stealing pieces of code that any code monkey worth their salt can write in less than a day. It is more likely that they happened to develop the similiar libraries in parallel. Since these tasks are so trivial (and examples of them appear in many places, both in print and on the web), I can see how two programmers would code up these tasks in the same way. In fact, given how widespread the implementation of, say, Base64 encoding is, I wouldn't be surprised if the original poster's libraries are nearly identical to a previous implementation of the libraries. It would be akin to someone trying to copyright a musical chord and then suing everyone for trying to use it in their music!

Two example letters: (Score:2) by rice_burners_suck (243660) on Friday January 16, @12:52PM (#7999789) (http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Thursday December 04, @09:24PM)

... ... ... For immediate release GPL Coder, a private individual, sues GPL Violator, a multi-billion dollar multinational corporation, for the theft of one hundred lines of code. No evidence of any kind will be presented, but we're telling the truth about the wrongdoing. Honest!

Rewrites Considered Harmful  Another entry into famous "considered harmful" series

Rewrite of the article (Score:5, Funny) by seanmeister (156224) on Thursday January 15, @02:53PM (#7989251)

The Problem: Rewrite Mania         Waaaaaaa!! Case 1: IPv4 vs IPv6         Waaaaaaa! Case 2: Apache 1.x vs Apache 2.x         Waaaaaaaaaa! Case 3: Perl 5.x vs Perl 6         Waaaaaaaaa! Waaaaaaaaaaa! Case 4: Embperl 1.x vs Embperl 2         Waaaaa! Case 5: Netscape 4.x vs Mozilla         Waaaaaaaaa! Case 6: HTML 4 vs XHTML + CSS + XML + XSL + XQuery + XPath + XLink + ...         XML is hard! My HTML for Dummies book weighs too much! Waaaaaaa! Case 7: Windows 2000 vs Windows XP vs Server 2003         Waaaaaaaa! Conclusion: In Defense of "good enough" and simplicity         Waaaaa waaaaaaaaa!

Re:Rewrite of the article (Score:1) by e-Motion (126926) on Thursday January 15, @03:31PM (#7989869)

The Problem: Rewrite Mania   Waaaaaaa!! ... etc Excellent rewrite. I found this post to be much clearer and more concise than the original article, while still maintaining the same message. I'm now convinced that rewrites can be A Good Thing.

Harmful (Score:2, Funny) by SEWilco (27983) on Thursday January 15, @02:53PM (#7989254) (http://www.wilcoxon.org/~sewilco | Last Journal: Monday April 28, @12:31PM)

"Considered Harmful" is Considered Harmful.

The CADT Model New Software Development Paradigm by Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>

In February 2003, a bunch of the outstanding bugs I'd reported against various GNOME programs over the previous couple of years were all closed as follows:

Because of the release of GNOME 2.0 and 2.2, and the lack of interest in maintainership of GNOME 1.4, the gnome-core product is being closed. If you feel your bug is still of relevance to GNOME 2, please reopen it and refile it against a more appropriate component. Thanks...

This is, I think, the most common way for my bug reports to open source software projects to ever become closed. I report bugs; they go unread for a year, sometimes two; and then (surprise!) that module is rewritten from scratch -- and the new maintainer can't be bothered to check whether his new version has actually solved any of the known problems that existed in the previous version.

I'm so totally impressed at this Way New Development Paradigm. Let's call it the "Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers" model, or "CADT" for short.

Stallman On Free Software and GNU's 20th birthday

curious quote and comparison by randyest (589159) <ranorano@NOSPaM.hotmail.com> on Monday January 05, @11:21AM (#7881480) (http://randyrandy.net/)

Stallman says: The most effective way to strengthen our community for the future is to spread understanding of the value of freedom--to teach more people to recognize the moral unacceptability of non-free software. People who value freedom are, in the long term, its best and essential defense. The current U.S. administration says (my paraphrasing): The most effective way to strengthen the world for the future is to spread understanding of the value of freedom--to teach more people to recognize the moral unacceptability of non-free peoples. People who value freedom are, in the long term, its best and essential defense.

First line... by jdreed1024 (443938) on Monday January 05, @11:21AM (#7881476) The first line reads: "It was twenty years ago today that I quit my job at MIT to begin developing a free software operating system, GNU." Did anyone else start thinking up new lyrics to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band when they read that first sentence? Perhaps a new Free Software Song is in the making.... Re:First line... (Score:2) by Thurn und Taxis (411165) on Monday January 05, @02:02PM (#7883020) (http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Friday June 14, @11:21PM) Okay, I can't resist (my apologies in advance for slant rhymes): It was twenty years ago today Richard Stallman quit M-I-Tay He's been working on the code for Hurd And growing one hellacious beard So let me introduce to you The father of all things GNU Richard Stallman's libre-software band!   Re:First line... (Score:5, Funny) by TeknoHog (164938) on Monday January 05, @02:26PM (#7883284) (http://www.iki.fi/teknohog/) Hmm, I guess this would go better with the 2.4.24 release. It was thirteen years ago today Col. Torvalds let the source away. We've been going in and out of drives but we guarantee to raise uptimes. So may I introduce to you the hack we've known for all these years Col. Torvalds' Linux slash GNU band! We're Col. Torvalds' Linux slash GNU band, we hope you will enjoy the code. Col. Torvalds' Linux slash GNU band, just hack and let the evening go! Col. Torvalds' Linux Col. Torvalds' Linux Col. Torvalds' Linux slash GNU band! It's wonderful to post here, it's certainly no troll. You're such a lovely userbase, we'd like to merge your code with us, we'd love to take you /home. I don't really want to freeze the code, but I thought you might like to know this release is going to fix the root and we want you all to patch for good. So let me introduce to you the one and only Billy's fear Col. Torvalds' Linux slash GNU band!

[Continued]

Recommended Links

---

In case of broken links please try to use Google search. If you find the page please notify us about new location

• developerWorks Linux Open source projects
• ***** Open Directory - Recreation Humor Computer Programming
   
• ***** Google Directory - Recreation Humor Computer Programming
   
• ***** [Classic] The UNIX cult

  The UNIX cult is widespread across the Galaxy now and the surprise discovery of some ancient files in the archives of Intergalactic Brain Machines on Sol 3 triggered the dispatch of an inter-disciplinary investigation team. The files are extremely extensive, occupying all of a small island off the coast of Continent 3. It transpires that the island was taken over by Intergal in the aftermath of the Corporate Wars which plagued Sol 3 some centuries after the birth of the cult.

  The team were asked to find out the original meaning of some of the incantations used in UNIX religious practice and also to shed some light on what it all meant at the start.

  We should take this opportunity to use the ancient prayer:

  UNIX is a trademark of AT&T in the USA and other countries.

  Earlier versions of this prayer do seem to exist, it is unclear why the form of words altered. `AT&T' was the Corporation where the Creators of the cult worshiped. The Corporation totally disappeared in the wars and many of its original records were either destroyed or altered by the victor in an attempt to `re-write' history. The placement of the country USA on the four continents has been lost.

   

• ***** On the Design of the UNIX operating System the evidence is very strong that bad typing played a large role in the design of the UNIX system.

  Why is UNIX successful?
  The computer world seems to have gone `UNIX mad', and it is hard to understand why. One good reason is the portability of the system but there must be more to it than that. Most people who use the UNIX system seem to like it even though it is full of idiosyncrasies, is terse to the point of unhelpfulness and consists of a very large number of totally forgettable commands. I think that the success of the system is summed up by the following paragraph.

  The UNIX system is successful because the minimum number of keystrokes achieve the maximum effort. In addition, the system says very little to explain errors and relies on the intelligence of the user to deduce reasons for failure.

  The statement describes UNIX V6, which we all know is the parent of the UNIX systems running today. History tells us that the guys who designed it did their own typing into the machine. It seems to me that because of this, the main reason that UNIX enjoys/suffers from terse input and output is not through any intellectual design decisions made at some early stage but because the UNIX designers were just bad typists working on slow peripherals.

  Let us examine the evidence.

• ***** Perlisisms - Epigrams in Programming by Alan J. Perlis
   
• **** Rec.humor.funny jokes and comedy
• **** Computer songs and poems full index
• **** Todd's Humor Archive By Thread
• **** Humorix Published Articles  "Oh My God! They Killed init! You Bastards!"    -- from a Slashdot post
• **** LaughNet - Computer Humor by Stephen Henry
• **** Addicted to the Net & Webmaster Foibles -- nice collection
• **** Murphy Laws Site - All the laws of Murphy in one place
• Quotes for Programmers
   
• BBspot - Your Only Source for Tech News -- many nice parodies. Among them
  • Sun Discovers the Network is NOT the Computer
  • BBspot - BBspot Interviews Apple CEO Steve Jobs
  • Linux Distributions-  Real or Fake-
  • Toys-  Slashdot Story Generator
  • Linux Developer Gets Laid
• Computer Science Humour
• USAIL Computer Humor
• The International Obfuscated C Code Contest
• Preface to THE UNIX-HATERS HANDBOOK
• Unix hater links
• Humorix All Linux Humor. All Copied Mottos. All the Time.
• Funny Jokes at http://fun.ee/jokes/
  • Jokes from many categories (including "computer", "internet", "unix" categories and many other) "If we cannot make you laugh, nobody can!"
• ChemTeam Humor Menu
• Jokes Magazine

Top 10 Classic Unix Humor Stories

1. The Jargon File the most famous Unix-related humor file.
 

Please note that so called "hacker dictionary" is the jargon file spoiled by Eric Raymond :-)  -- earlier versions of jargon file are better than the latest hacker dictionary...

2. Tao_Of_Programming (originated in 1992). This is probably No. 2 classic. There are several variants, but the link provided seems to be the original text (or at least an early version close to the original).

Here is a classic quote:

"When you have learned to snatch the error code from the trap frame, it will be time for you to leave."

... ...

If the Tao is great, then the operating system is great. If the operating system is great, then the compiler is great. If the compiler is greater, then the applications is great. The user is pleased and there is harmony in the world.

3. Know your Unix System Administrator by Stephan Zielinski -- Probably the third most  famous Unix humor item.  See also KNOW YOUR UNIX SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR  also at Field Guide to System Administrators [rec.humor.funny]. I personally like the descriptions of idiots and fascists and tend to believe that a lot of administrative fascists are ex-secretaries :-). At the same time former programmers can became sadists also quite often -- there is something in sysadmin job that seems cultivates the feeling of superiority and sadism ( "Users are Losers" mentality. IMHO other members of classification are not that realistic :-) :

There are four major species of Unix sysad:

1. The

   Technical Thug.
   Usually a systems programmer who has been forced into system administration; writes scripts in a polyglot of the Bourne shell, sed, C, awk, perl, and APL.

2. The Administrative Fascist.
   Usually a retentive drone (or rarely, a harridan ex-secretary) who has been forced into system administration.
3. The Maniac.
   Usually an aging cracker who discovered that neither the Mossad nor Cuba are willing to pay a living wage for computer espionage. Fell into system administration; occasionally approaches major competitors with indesp schemes.
4. The Idiot.
   Usually a cretin, morphodite, or old COBOL programmer selected to be the system administrator by a committee of cretins, morphodites, and old COBOL programmers.

---------------- SITUATION: Root disk fails. ----------------

TECHNICAL THUG:

Repairs drive. Usually is able to repair filesystem from boot monitor. Failing that, front-panel toggles microkernel in and starts script on neighboring machine to load binary boot code into broken machine, reformat and reinstall OS. Lets it run over the weekend while he goes mountain climbing.

ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST:

Begins investigation to determine who broke the drive. Refuses to fix system until culprit is identified and charged for the equipment.

MANIAC, LARGE SYSTEM:

Rips drive from system, uses sledgehammer to smash same to flinders. Calls manufacturer, threatens pets. Abuses field engineer while they put in a new drive and reinstall the OS.

MANIAC, SMALL SYSTEM:

Rips drive from system, uses ball-peen hammer to smash same to flinders. Calls Requisitions, threatens pets. Abuses bystanders while putting in new drive and reinstalling OS.

IDIOT:

Doesn't notice anything wrong.

4. RFC 1925 The Twelve Networking Truths  by R. Callon

1. It Has To Work.

2. No matter how hard you push and no matter what the priority, you can't increase the speed of light. (2a) (corollary). No matter how hard you try, you can't make a baby in much less than 9 months. Trying to speed this up *might* make it slower, but it won't make it happen any quicker.
3. With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead.
4. Some things in life can never be fully appreciated nor understood unless experienced firsthand. Some things in networking can never be fully understood by someone who neither builds commercial networking equipment nor runs an operational network.
5. It is always possible to aglutenate multiple separate problems into a single complex interdependent solution. In most cases this is a bad idea.
6. It is easier to move a problem around (for example, by moving the problem to a different part of the overall network architecture) than it is to solve it. (6a) (corollary). It is always possible to add another level of indirection.
7.  It is always something (7a) (corollary). Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two (you can't have all three).
8. It is more complicated than you think.
9. For all resources, whatever it is, you need more. (9a) (corollary) Every networking problem always takes longer to solve than it seems like it should.
10. One size never fits all.
11. Every old idea will be proposed again with a different name and a different presentation, regardless of whether it works. (11a) (corollary). See rule 6a.
12. In protocol design, perfection has been reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

5. Murphy's laws -- I especially like "Experts arose from their own urgent need to exist." :-). See also 

• Murphy's laws

• Murphy's Laws [ 1993 version ]

• Murphy Laws Site - Murphy's Laws

1. Nothing is as easy as it looks.

2. Everything takes longer than you think.
3. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
4. If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong. Corollary: If there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen then.
5. If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
6. If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.
7. Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
8. If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
9. Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
10. Mother nature is a bitch.
11. It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
12. Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.
13. Every solution breeds new problems.

    ... ... ....

6. Network Week/The Bastard Operator from Hell. The classic story about an Administrative Fascist sysadmin.

7. Academic Programmers- A Spotter's Guide by Pete Fenelon; Department of Computer Science, University of York

Preamble     I Am The Greatest     Internet Vegetable     Rabid Prototyper     Get New Utilities!     Square Peg...     Objectionably ...

My Favourite ...     Give Us The Tools!     Macro Magician     Nightmare Networker     Configuration ...     Artificial Stupidity     Number Crusher

Meta Problem Solver     What's A Core File?     I Come From Ruritania     Old Fart At Play     I Can Do That!     What Colour ...     It's Safety Critical!

Objectionably Oriented

OO experienced a Road To Damascus situation the moment objects first crossed her mind. From that moment on everything in her life became object oriented and the project never looked back. Or forwards.

Instead, it kept sending messages to itself asking it what direction it was facing in and would it mind having a look around and send me a message telling me what was there...

OO thinks in Smalltalk and talks to you in Eiffel or Modula-3; unfortunately she's filled the disk with the compilers for them and instead of getting any real work done she's busy writing papers on holes in the type systems and, like all OOs, is designing her own perfect language.

The most dangerous OOs are OODB hackers; they inevitably demand a powerful workstation with local disk onto which they'll put a couple of hundred megabytes of unstructured, incoherent pointers all of which point to the number 42; any attempt to read or write it usually results in the network being down for a week at least.

8 Real Programmers Don't Write Specs

Real Programmers don't write specs -- users should consider themselves lucky to get any programs at all, and take what they get.

Real Programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.

Real Programmers don't write application programs, they program right down on the bare metal. Application programming is for feebs who can't do system programming.

... ... ...

Real Programmers aren't scared of GOTOs... but they really prefer branches to absolute locations.

9. Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal -- [ A letter to the editor of Datamation, volume 29 number 7, July 1983. Ed Post Tektronix, Inc. P.O. Box 1000 m/s 63-205 Wilsonville, OR 97070 Copyright (c) 1982]

Back in the good old days-- the "Golden Era" of computers-- it was easy to separate the men from the boys (sometimes called "Real Men" and "Quiche Eaters" in the literature). During this period, the Real Men were the ones who understood computer programming, and the Quiche Eaters were the ones who didn't. A real computer programmer said things like "DO 10 I=1,10" and "ABEND" (they actually talked in capital letters, you understand), and the rest of the world said things like "computers are too complicated for me" and "I can't relate to computers-- they're so impersonal". (A previous work [1] points out that Real Men don't "relate" to anything, and aren't afraid of being impersonal.)

But, as usual, times change. We are faced today with a world in which little old ladies can get computers in their microwave ovens, 12 year old kids can blow Real Men out of the water playing Asteroids and Pac-Man, and anyone can buy and even understand their very own personal Computer. The Real Programmer is in danger of becoming extinct, of being replaced by high school students with TRASH-80s.

There is a clear need to point out the differences between the typical high school junior Pac-Man player and a Real Programmer. If this difference is made clear, it will give these kids something to aspire to -- a role model, a Father Figure. It will also help explain to the employers of Real Programmers why it would be a mistake to replace the Real Programmers on their staff with 12 year old Pac-Man players (at a considerable salary savings).

10. bsd_logo_story

Last week I walked into a local "home style cookin' restaurant/watering hole" to pick up a take out order. I spoke briefly to the waitress behind the counter, who told me my order would be done in a few minutes.

So, while I was busy gazing at the farm implements hanging on the walls, I was approached by two, uh, um... well, let's call them "natives".

These guys might just be the original Texas rednecks -- complete with ten-gallon hats, snakeskin boots and the pervasive odor of cheap beer and whiskey.

"Pardon us, ma'am. Mind of we ask you a question?"

Well, people keep telling me that Texans are real friendly, so I nodded.

"Are you a Satanist?"

Etc: other historically important items

Programming Eagles

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

And they showed me the way There were salesmen down the corridor I thought I heard them say Welcome to Mountain View California Such a lovely place Such a lovely place (backgrounded) Such a lovely trace(1) Plenty of jobs at Mountain View California Any time of year Any time of year (backgrounded) You can find one here You can find one here

... ... ...  ... ... ... ...

John Lennon's Yesterday -- variation for programmers.

Yesterday,
All those backups seemed a waste of pay.
Now my database has gone away.
Oh I believe in yesterday.

Suddenly,
There's not half the files there used to be,
And there's a milestone hanging over me
The system crashed so suddenly.

I pushed something wrong
What it was I could not say.
Now all my data's gone
and I long for yesterday-ay-ay-ay.

Yesterday,
The need for back-ups seemed so far away.
I knew my data was all here to stay,
Now I believe in yesterday.

The UNIX cult -- a satiric history of Unix

Notes from some recent archeological findings on the birth of the UNIX cult on Sol 3 are presented. Recently discovered electronic records have shed considerable light on the beginnings of the cult. A sketchy history of the cult is attempted.

On the Design of the UNIX operating System

This article was written in 1984 and was published in various UNIX newsletters across the world. I thought that it should be revived to mark the first 25 years of UNIX. If you like this, then you might also like The UNIX Cult.
Peter Collinson

,,, ,,, ,,,

'I Provide Office Solutions,' Says Pitiful Little Man a nice parody on programmers in general and open source programmers in particular

"VisTech is your one-stop source for Internet and Intranet open source development, as well as open source software support and collaborative development" said Smuda, adjusting the toupee he has worn since age 23. "We are a full-service company that can evaluate and integrate multi-platform open source solutions, including Linux, Solaris, Aix and HP-UX"

 "Remember, no job is too small for the professionals at VisTech," added the spouseless, childless man, who is destined to die alone and unloved. "And no job is too big, either."

Unofficial Unix Administration Horror Story Summary

Best of DATAMATION GOTO-less

By R. Lawrence Clark*

From DATAMATION, December, 1973

Nearly six years after publication of Dijkstra's now-famous letter, [1] the subject of GOTO-less programming still stirs considerable controversy. Dijkstra and his supporters claim that the GOTO statement leads to difficulty in debugging, modifying, understanding and proving programs. GOTO advocates argues that this statement, used correctly, need not lead to problems, and that it provides a natural straightforward solution to common programming procedures.

Numerous solutions have been advanced in an attempt to resolve this debate. Nevertheless, despite the efforts of some of the foremost computer scientists, the battle continues to rage.

The author has developed a new language construct on which, he believes, both the pro- and the anti-GOTO factions can agree. This construct is called the COME FROM statement. Although usage of the COME FROM statement is independent of the linguistic environment, its use will be illustrated within the FORTRAN language.

Netslave quiz

AT YOUR LAST JOB INTERVIEW, YOU EXHIBITED:

A. Optimism
B. Mild Wariness
C. Tried to overcome headache. I was really tied
D. Controlled Hostility

2. DESCRIBE YOUR WORKPLACE:

A. An enterprising, dynamic group of individuals laying the groundwork for tomorrow's economy.
B. A bunch of geeks with questionable social skills.
C. An anxiety-ridden, with long hours and a lot of stress because of backbiting bunch of finger-pointers.
D. Jerks and PHB

3. DESCRIBE YOUR HOME:

A. Small, but efficient.
B. Shared and dormlike.
C. Rubble-strewn and fetid.
D. I have a personal network at my home with three or more connected computers and permanent connection to the Internet

NEW ELEMENT DISCOVERED!

The heaviest element known to science was recently discovered by university physicists. The new element was tentatively named Administratium. It has no protons and no electrons, and thus has an atomic number of 0. However, it does have one neutron, 15 assistant neutrons, 70 vice-neutrons, and 161 assistant vice-neutrons. This gives it an atomic mass of 247. These 247 particles are held together by a force that involves constant exchange of a special class of particle called morons.

Since it does not have electrons, Administratium is inert. However, it can be detected chemically as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. According to the discoverers, a minute amount of Administratium added to one reaction caused it to take over four days to complete. Without Administratium, the reaction took less than one second.

Administratium has a half-life of approximately three years, after which it does not normally decay but instead undergoes a complex nuclear process called "Reorganization". In this little-understood process, assistant neutrons, vice-neutrons, and assistant vice-neutrons appear to exchange places. Early results indicate that atomic mass actually increases after each "Reorganization".

Misc Unproductive Time Classification -- nice parody on timesheets

• www.uwsg.indiana.edu

• Horror Stories
• www.lbl.gov
• Dr. Bombay: Where to Find the `Any' Key and other stories

You Might Be A Programmer If...  By Clay Shannon - bclayshannon@earthlink.net

• Anytime you see a penguin, it makes you think of Linux

• Your computer has more RAM than your car has horsepower.
• When you hear the term “Evil Empire”, you think, not of Ronald Reagan and the old USSR, but of Microsoft.
• Before you move into a new house or apartment, the most important thing to you is the type and amount of wiring with which it is equipped.
• You have a LAN in your room.
• You like the sound of modems when they’re handshaking.
• Pornography is not the first thing you think of when you see the letter X.
• You don’t think wearing tennis shoes with a suit is strange.
• You own more than 50 T-shirts, but can’t remember the last time you had to actually pay for one.
• You understood the InterBase T-shirt.
• You’re the highest-paid but worst-dressed person in the office.
• You get involved in heated conversations on newsgroups concerning things about which “normal” people have never even heard.
• You’ve spent more time in front of a computer screen than a television screen.
• Your PC’s monitor is bigger than your television screen.
• When watching movies that show computers, you can not only tell which operating system is being used, but you also know what development tool was likely used to create the custom applications that are shown.
• You know where Scott’s Valley is.
• You know that it wasn’t named after Scott McNealy.
• You know who Scott McNealy is.
• You keep in touch with dozens of people on a regular basis, but have not sent a personal letter via the post office in years.

Jokes Magazine Drug Dealers Vs Software Developers

• Refer to their clients as "users".
•  "The first one's free!"  vs  "Download a free trial version..."
• Have important South-East Asian connections.
• Realize that there's tons of cash in the 14- to 25-year-old market.
• Drug Dealers: unhealthy addictions. Software Developers: DOOM. Quake. SimCity. Duke Nukem. 'Nuff said.

Jokes Magazine Ten Commandments For Stress Free Programming December 23, 1999

1. Thou shalt not worry about bugs. Bugs in your software are actually special features.
2. Thou shalt not fix abort conditions. Your user has a better chance of winning state lottery than getting the same abort again.
3. Thou shalt not handle errors. Error handing was meant for error prone people, neither you or your users are error prone.
4. Thou shalt not restrict users. Don't do any editing, let the user input anything, anywhere, anytime. That is being very user friendly.
5. Thou shalt not optimize. Your user are very thankful to get the information, they don't worry about speed and efficiency.
6. Thou shalt not provide help. If your users can not figure out themselves how to use your software than they are too dumb to deserve the benefits of your software any way.
7. Thou shalt not document. Documentation only comes in handy for making future modifications. You made the software perfect the first time, it will never need mods.
8. Thou shalt not hurry. Only the cute and the mighty should get the program by deadline.
9. Thou shalt not revise. Your interpretation of specs was right, you know the users' requirements better than them.
10. Thou shalt not share. If other programmers needed some of your code, they should have written it themselves.

Archive of The Softpanorama Humor Chronicle

Vol 9 (1997)

• humor090.html.

  -- Java related April 1st humor (variation on the theme of Richard Stallman by N. Bezroukov)

• humor091.html  -- Computer Humor The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll. Review picked up on the Internet and adapted for alt.security by Nikolai Bezroukov.
• humor092.html  -- The Perl Purity Test. Version 1.01, October 30, 1992 Written by Jeff Okamoto with help from Tom Christiansen

Etc

Don't let a few insignificant facts distract you from waging a holy war

A Slashdot post

It's spelled Linux, but it's pronounced "Not Windows"

- Usenet sig

It is time to unmask the programming community
as a Secret Society for the Creation and Preservation of Artificial Complexity.

Edsger W. Dijkstra: The next forty years (EWD 1051)

Last but not Least

www.shibumi.org/EotI  -- great link:  "There are no more links. You must now turn off your computer and go do something productive." :-)

The Last Page

You have reached The End of the Internet

Thank you for visiting the Last Page.

There are no more links. You must now turn off your computer and go do something productive.