Robert Pogson

My GNU/Linux terminal server, while performing brilliantly, had a rather slow hardware RAID array. It was slower than individual discs by a large margin. Clearly something was wrong with the interface or the mpt driver. I fiddled and finally got the system onto software RAID with one component pinned by “root=/dev/sdxx” and the system was unbootable. I used SystemRescueCD and copied everything over to another server with newly increased storage. Since SystemRescueCD had no problem with the device, I thought it might be time to upgrade to Debian Squeeze, the next release due near the end of 2010 if my extrapolation of http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/ is correct. With fewer than 1000 bugs out of 25000 packages, I felt lucky.

I downloaded the Netinst CD and let her rip. I was half-way through the installation before there was any sign of a problem. One package would not install and the installation failed. Later, I tried to install GRUB-legacy from the menu but it, too failed, as did GRUB2 and LILO. I used the rescue mode to boot the system. Strangely, this new release still was unbootable for the same reason, one of the components was pinned, mounted as /dev/root. It turned out that the drive was considered busy and unavailable for RAID. Further digging found that RAID did not like the fact that the drive had been part of a hardware RAID. Zeroing it out fixed that inside the initramfs. I had to do a pkg-reconfigure mdadm to make the thing bootable with “root=/dev/md0 md=0,/dev/sda2,/dev/sdb2″. Finally, Squeeze runs and boots on its own. Apart from the RAID complications and GRUB not installing, this was a remarkable performance for a release a year away. Great work, Debian!

Now I have a new terminal server with twice the transfer rate of its former configuration and some improved software. I split off all file services to another server, too, to lighten the load on this RAM-starved machine. I expect students will love it on Monday. They loved it as it was last week.

Some things that are different about Squeeze:

• no xpdf, my favourite PDF viewer
• XFCE4 is looking a bit like GNOME with the virtual desktops at the bottom-right. This is configurable, of course.
• XFCE4 mixer works… Had to install Amarok to get sound to work. Diversity is good…
• XawTV does not work for me. Not surprising as I installed all the last 700 packages manually. My USB camera seems to be recognized but does not work with XawTV.

Squeeze works well enough as it is for production use here. Where are they hiding those bugs?

Oh no! Here we go again! There is an article claiming as fact that GNU/Linux on the desktop is soon to be irrelevant as it will not matter what OS you run on your PC. How silly. It matters what OS you run on your PC or in the cloud because:

• GNU/Linux costs less to run anywhere
• GNU/Linux is Free Software and freedom is better for everyone except tyrants
• Software designed to be simple, modular and effective performs better with the given hardware and budget than stuff designed to lock-in users

Really, will the FUD never stop? GNU/Linux is becoming more relevant every day as people realize they do not require M$ in their lives whether on client or server. Where I work, people are saying, “It’s faster? Install it.”, so rather than fighting to keep XP alive, my job has changed into migrating as many clients as possible as fast as I can to GNU/Linux. I am now delayed, not by expertise or availability of clients, but adequacy of the servers. I will have to shift the file-serving load that is on the GNU/Linux terminal server to a dedicated file-service on another machine. I will also have to beef up the terminal server (RAM) or add terminal servers to use clients thinly. I am looking at using GNU/Linux thick clients which are a lot more work but they still perform twice as well as that other OS.

Desktop GNU/Linux is happening whether on clients thick or thin or on servers. Repeating the same old drivel that GNU/Linux has no share and never will is tiresome and wrong. It could be that certain niches will stick with M$. It is those who are becoming irrelevant. GNU/Linux is mainstream and growing more rapidly daily on both server and desktop. Last time I looked, that other OS was still losing share in the top server hosting companies. There is no way M$ will dominate the cloud. Lock-in does not work on the web. There are too many choices too easily accessed for M$ to have a monopoly there. Look at search and e-mail and social networking, mature cloud niches. Where is M$? They have Hotmail and that’s about it.
“comScore estimates unique monthly visitors. According to the latest stats, the number of people visiting Gmail grew 43 percent last year to 29.6 million. In contrast, the much more massive Yahoo Mail grew 11 percent to 91.9 million uniques. AOL Mail finished in second place for the year with 46.6 million uniques (plus another 7.2 million visitors to AIM Mail), while Hotmail actually declined 5 percent to 43.5 million.” No monopoly there either. When it comes to price and performance, M$ is second rate because they are closed, closed-minded, and anal-retentive. see “Gmail Grew 43 Percent Last Year. AOL Mail And Hotmail Need To Start Worrying.” on TechCrunch, 20009-1-14. More recent figures show the trend continues. Gmail shows even stronger year over year % growth in Brazil.. I seem to recall that Google uses GNU/Linux. Is Google becoming irrelevant? No.

I feel like a winner these days. In spite of all kinds of bumps in the road of life, a lot of good has happened this year. Today, for instance, I needed my spool of cable to connect a computer in a convenient place to an outlet in an inconvenient place. To my horror, I could not find it anywhere. The last place I remembered using it was the classroom across the hall from mine. I had forgotten that I strung that cable in anticipation of the copier guys visiting when I made a cable for them in the supply room. Lo, a teacher found it in her way in the supply room. Fortunately, it had my name on it as I brought it up in luggage. Other good things have been:

• Winning the school-built toboggan race with my improved classroom desk…
• Winning third place a few times when there were only three entries…
• Finding an employer and staff really willing to accept GNU/Linux for the performance

Seriously, apart from some awards as a student, the last time I competed and won something was 1958 in a Field Day at a one-room school in the bush. I had forgotten how good it is to win.

I was surprised to find in my in-box, an invitation to enter a contest by AMD for some neat processors and a motherboard to go with it. We are talking serious multicore CPUs and a quad-socket motherboard with 32 memory slots. Unfortunately, it is only open to residents of the USA. Too bad, I could envisage this thing being the heart of the ultimate GNU/Linux terminal server:

• everything in one box: terminal servers, web servers, file servers, authentication, …
• about one core for every two client machines
• enough RAM to cache everything in ECC
• a bunch of gigabit/s NICs

Compare that with one core for thirty or so clients and you can see a machine that rarely lets anyone wait and you would have adequate power for the occasional big job like compiling the Linux kernel or some 3D graphics in Blender or editing AV stuff. I doubt my non-budget would be enough to populate the RAM slots but it is good to have challenges. I might be willing to host a few BINGO nights to pay for it.

It was a great day. Novell scored a big hit by getting SCO’s witness to agree the copyrights did not transfer from Novell to Santa Cruz Operation. I think the jury will not be able to forget this little detail in all of the rest of the noise.

According to GROKLAW’s reporter,MSS2 , Frankenberg cross-examination by Novell yields many nuggets:

That pretty well blows SCOG’s case, doesn’t it? Their own witness revealing the fundamental flaw in SCO v Novell, that SCO doesn’t own the copyrights so Novell could not have slandered SCOG’s title.

There is more to the case than that but SCOG is paddling a leaky canvas canoe and will be soggy when they dance in front of the jury. The jurors will remember this little detail…

I must say I am feeling better about the proceedings now. The judge seems quite fair in spite of the strange ruling of the Court of Appeal and the pre-trial motions.

There have been some clue-bat moments reported on GROKLAW:

• Reporter cpeterson:”One highlight of today: when Ty Mattingly referred to Ed Chatlos’ testimony. (Cue sound of jaws dropping.) “How did you know what Mr. Chatlos said? How did you know that Mr. Chatlos had testified?” asked Brennan. After some stammering, and hunting for an answer, Mattingly said, “Lee Johnson told me.” Bad case of footgun, I think.“. The jury might de-rate that testimony, eh?
• A filing reveals that Maureen O’Gara asked SCO for “war pay” because of the angry responses she gets from her readers and that Blake Stowell, PR guy for SCOG requested MOG to “send a jab PJ’s way. She is now listed as a creditor. The judge is considering what parts of her video-taped testimony to allow. see GROKLAW.
• . Mattingly also testified that he found Novell documents in his garage. SCOG turned them over to Novell only during the trial, a Perry Mason moment which the judge abhors…
• Judge Stewart has a motion from Novell that because SCOG was accusing Novell of slandering their title “to this day”, Novell could introduce evidence of findings under the previous judge who made summary judgements. SCOG has to prove Novell new it was wrong but they could rely on the opinion of a federal court judge. That was a foot-gun moment. Adding a phrase for emphasis repeatedly in questions to witnesses and in the opening argument cost them. Stewart had previously agreed to exclude this information from the jury.
• Reporters describe the awkward moments for SCOG’s witnesses trying to state the copyrights were transferred even though the agreement says they were excluded. How cool is that? There was also news that one of the jurors may be a relative of a possible witness.

All in all, I think it was a good start to a bad trial. The appeal by Novell has reached SCOTUS but there is no word yet that they will hear the case. The lawyers agreed the trial should proceed because it may be a long time before there is any progress at SCOTUS. They also agreed that there is only a small chance of the case being heard statistically.