- Roundtable - muug.ca

Linux Research - Request For Assistance (fwd)
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 17 Nov '05

17 Nov '05

Anyone interested in participating in a survey of Linux use?... -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)cs.umanitoba.ca> Dept. of Computer Science Web: http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/ University of Manitoba Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg, MB, CANADA R3T 2N2 Fax: (204)474-7609 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 13:55:02 -0700 From: "Andi Mann" <amann(a)enterprisemanagement.com> Subject: Linux Research - Request For Assistance Hi , I am a Senior Analyst for Enterprise Management Associates (www.enterprisemanagement.com) a leading IT analyst firm, covering Systems Management technology. We are doing an in-depth research paper on Linux server management, and would like your help to survey the members of the Manitoba UNIX User Group Linux SIG. We have posted a web survey, and I would like you to forward this email to your members, asking them to complete the survey. Each survey should take about 10 minutes. The URL for the survey is: http://www.emausa.com/surveys/ema_lsurvey.htm The proposition I am researching is that the total cost of ownership (TCO) for large-scale commercial Linux systems is declining due to availability of more powerful management tools; and that Linux TCO is equal to or less than that of Windows. It is in reaction, in part, to 2004 studies from Meta Group, Yankee, and Microsoft claiming Linux has higher management costs, and higher TCO, than Windows. My research aims to find out if the availability of better management tools has further reduced the cost of Linux ownership. In return, we would be happy to provide any respondents with the completed report. We think this will be a very significant paper, which will help you and your members present independent validation of Linux cost advantages. I would appreciate your help. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments. Thanks, Andi.

1 0

IT Lounge info (fwd)
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 17 Nov '05

17 Nov '05

Just finally getting caught up on some older messages that came in, which I was meaning to forward to the roundtable list... -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)cs.umanitoba.ca> Dept. of Computer Science Web: http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/ University of Manitoba Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg, MB, CANADA R3T 2N2 Fax: (204)474-7609 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Mitch Tulloch" <mktulloch(a)mtit.com> Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2005 14:10:44 -0600 Message-ID: <000501c5de57$2d046170$640b10ac(a)mtit.local> Subject: IT Lounge info Hi, please let your MUUG membership know about our bi-weekly gathering for IT professionals here in Winnipeg, see http://itlounge.blogspot.com/ for more info. Thanks!! Cheers, Mitch Tulloch MVP - Windows Server ======================================= website: http://www.mtit.com my blog: http://itreader.net ***This message is provided "as is" with no warranties, and confers no rights***

1 0

Winnipeg Area VMware User Group meeting invitation (fwd)
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 17 Nov '05

17 Nov '05

Any VMware users out there interesting in this?... Just passing it along! -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)cs.umanitoba.ca> Dept. of Computer Science Web: http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/ University of Manitoba Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg, MB, CANADA R3T 2N2 Fax: (204)474-7609 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:05:40 -0800 From: "The VMware Team" <VMware(a)vmware.rsc02.com> Reply-To: "The VMware Team" <usergroup(a)vmware.com> Subject: Winnipeg Area VMware User Group meeting invitation Message-Id: <437D0CC4.00000089(a)om-vmware.rsc02.com> Balmoral Hall School is proud to host the first Winnipeg Area VMware User Group meeting. Our initial meeting is on: Date: December 14th, 2005 Time: 5:30 pm Location: 630 Westminster Avenue Winnipeg, Manitoba The meeting will be held in the Sifton Memorial Theatre. Parking is available at the front of the school. All visitors are required to sign in. To register go to http://www.vmware.com/vmug Agenda - Welcome and introductions - Roundtable of how you use VMware in your organization - User group planning discussion - Open Forum After this initial meeting we would like to meet the second Wednesday of the quarter. The first of these dates are: December 14th March 8th June 14th And repeating every 3 months thereafter. VMware will be providing us Pizza In the future, various topics will be covered including P2V, Workstation, tips and tricks, upcoming releases, etc. Whether you are new to VMware or a master in working with the technology, this is a great opportunity to learn, share and meet. VMware, Inc. 3145 Porter Drive Palo Alto CA 94304 USA Tel 650-475-5000 Copyright © 2005 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. VMware is a registered trademark of VMware, Inc. All other trademarks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. ______________________________________________________________________ This message was sent by VMware using Responsys Interact. http://www.responsys.com/rsvp.asp Safely unsubscribe from VMware e-mail at any time: http://vmware.rsc02.net/servlet/optout?OtPpDXAADWEnLKLmpsFJlDNtHgpmhIHDJHE0 View our permission marketing policy: http://vmware.rsc02.net/servlet/pp/1?u=http://vmware.rsc02.net/servlet/opto…

1 0

optical RAM ?
by schwartz 17 Nov '05

17 Nov '05

I'd like the member's opinion on the credibility of Atom Chip Corp.'s claim to have developed optical RAM that employs holographic storage techniques. http://www.atomchip.com I had read years ago that IBM was looking into holographic methods for data storage, but a friend of mine pointed out that you'd need really deep-pockets to develop this kind of technology and he doubted a small outfit like Atom Chip could do it. Linux's problem with SATA drivers made me think of this, because Atom Chip claims their notebook operates without a hard drive but with lots of optical RAM, and can run Linux or XP. Does anyone know anything about Atom Chips's corporate status and the validity of their claims?

2 1

More on 'Niagara'
by Shawn Wallbridge 14 Nov '05

14 Nov '05

Now known as UltraSPARC T1. http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5946639.html They will only consume 72W (vs 95W for an Opteron and 135W for a Dual Core Xeon). shawn

1 0

Update on SATA woes
by Kevin McGregor 14 Nov '05

14 Nov '05

Here's a short update on the latest with my SATA woes. First, a correction: The distribution I originally had working was Red Hat Linux 9. After trying many distributions, some with interesting failure modes (e.g. Debian Sarge), I finally got around to Fedora Core 1 (I had to download it this afternoon!). This installs kernel 2.4.22, and it not only recognized my two SATA disks, but the existing LVM setup, too! Under the old installation (I don't recall the kernel version at the moment), I was getting disk-cache reads of ~87 MB/s and disk reads of 1.39 MB/s (as reported by hdparm -tT /dev/hde). Yes, appallingly slow, but it worked. With FC1, I get disk-cache reads of 1500 MB/s (!) and disk reads of ~57 MB/s. After that, I had the job of getting the software RAID 1 working again, as one of the drives got out of sync. I eventually figured out I needed to use raidhotremove/raidhotadd (with no man page installed!). raidhotremove /dev/md0 /dev/hdg said the drive had already been removed, and raidhotadd /dev/md0 /dev/hdg got everything going again. W00t! Now it's happily resyncing at around 10 MB/s (est. 250 mins to completion) according to cat /proc/mdstat. Maybe I should mention that the on-board SATA controller had been disabled by a jumper. :-P Yet another hurdle. I'll check it tomorrow and run some tests.

3 2

Re: [RndTbl] Update on SATA woes
by Kevin McGregor 14 Nov '05

14 Nov '05

Why, yes! Yes, there is a reason! For example, when I boot the Fedora Core 4 disc, the install proceeds to the point where it says "Loading sata_sil driver...Diabling IRQ #11" (the last part in white text on black background, showing up after a few seconds), where it hangs. This happens to other recent distributions. On the behind-the-scenes screen (via Alt-F4) is a screen full of nasty messages including, but not limited to, "irq 11: nobody cared!". So, I figured maybe a distribution somewhere between Red Hat 9 and FC4 might work. I've been trying. The latest fun is the Debian netinst CD image. Someone gave me a copy he burned some time ago, and I just downloaded my own copy and burned it, and both hang at exactly the same place with a md5sum error! I've tried 3 different CD-ROM drives and the two discs and it's weird that they both fail at the exact same spot. Anyway, as I said in my previous message, I did get FC1 running (kernel 2.4.22), but while it *seemed* to work, when I ran md5sum on a directory of the mirrored SATA drives with a number of large files, I get non-reproducible results. I.e. different md5sums for the longer files on different runs. Eeek. That can't be good! I'm running out of options and patience. If I can get Debian sarge running, I'll try that (kernel 2.4.27). Yes, I've read the status reports, and I am depressed. ----- Original Message ----- From: Gilles Detillieux <grdetil(a)scrc.umanitoba.ca> Date: Monday, November 14, 2005 10:33 am Subject: Re: [RndTbl] Update on SATA woes > Hey, Kevin. Is there any reason you're sticking with older Linux > distros like RH9 & FC1, rather than using the newer 2.6 kernel- > based > distros like FC4? My own experience with SATA-based systems has > been a > bit spotty, even with the 2.6 kernel. ... > _______________________________________________ > Roundtable mailing list > Roundtable(a)muug.mb.ca > http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable >

1 0

eth0 doesn't work.... no matter what
by Sean A. Walberg 14 Nov '05

14 Nov '05

My firewall (FC1) had a 3COM 3c900B and a 3c905b, the former being the outside interface and only running at 10/half. I was seeing collisions that were making my VoIP run poorly, so I decided to swap it out with another 3c905b. And, for some reason, mii-tool reported eth0 as always having no link status, the interface never showed as RUNNING, and I had to ifconfig eth0 UP manually all the time, but it worked. I replaced the 900b with the 905 and it didn't work. The interface showed up and was detected, but I couldn't get a DHCP address. Kudzu found it though. Long story short, I even went so far as replacing both cards with intel e100s, but the same behaviour was seen for the card in eth0. No link, no DHCP, -UP -RUNNING. No matter which card was eth0, no matter which interrupt I had it on. Finally, I put 3 NICs in and am running off of eth1/eth2 and it works fine. I have no clue why this is happening. I wiped any trace of network stuff in /etc/mod*, rebuilt the initrd, and grepped under /etc for any mention of eth0. It even does this in single user mode. No kernel paramaters either, and I'm running the latest FC1 kernel from Legacy. Any idea where else to look for this configuration? Thanks, Sean -- Sean A. Walberg <sean(a)ertw.com> http://www.ertw.com

3 4

Re: [RndTbl] Sveasoft firmware
by Kevin McGregor 13 Nov '05

13 Nov '05

To respond to (part of) my own query: Future Shop still carries the older version of the Linksys WRT54G. Check the serial numbers on the box; the ones with serial numbers starting with CGN0 through CGN5 have 8 MB ROM/32 MB RAM. Avoid the CGN6 series. At two Future Shop stores I checked today, they had a total of one CGN6 and a dozen or so CGN3. I think I'll pick one up this week. They're $85 after mail-in rebate. ----- Original Message ----- From: Kevin McGregor <kmcgregor(a)shaw.ca> Date: Friday, November 11, 2005 4:44 pm Subject: [RndTbl] Sveasoft firmware > To anyone out there who is using the (paid-for) Sveasoft firmware > for the Linksys WRT54G/WRT54GS routers: > > Are any other routers officially supported? OpenWRT.org supports a > variety, including the ASUS models with USB 2.0 ports. I'd like to > get one soon, but I'm not sure what I should buy. The latest > hardware revisions of the Linksys routers apparently now has > VxWorks firmware and less RAM/Flash ROM, making it unsuitable for > replacement firmware. > > There's a rumour that a "Linux hobbyist" version will be coming > out soon, but not much is known about it. Does anyone have any > details? > _______________________________________________ > Roundtable mailing list > Roundtable(a)muug.mb.ca > http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable >

1 0

Sveasoft firmware
by Kevin McGregor 11 Nov '05

11 Nov '05

To anyone out there who is using the (paid-for) Sveasoft firmware for the Linksys WRT54G/WRT54GS routers: Are any other routers officially supported? OpenWRT.org supports a variety, including the ASUS models with USB 2.0 ports. I'd like to get one soon, but I'm not sure what I should buy. The latest hardware revisions of the Linksys routers apparently now has VxWorks firmware and less RAM/Flash ROM, making it unsuitable for replacement firmware. There's a rumour that a "Linux hobbyist" version will be coming out soon, but not much is known about it. Does anyone have any details?

1 0