Cramsession Linux Newsletter

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Nov 2 2000

                    LINUX NEWS
        RESOURCES & LINKS FROM BRAINBUZZ.COM
            Thursday, November 2, 2000

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1) Sean’s Notes

2) Linux News

StarOffice Source Released
RedHat and Sound?
Micro$oft buying into Linux?
PHP 4.0.3 released

3) Linux Resources

  Signal 11
  Journal File Systems
  3COM 3C509 help
  93 Watt Processor?

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1) Sean’s Notes

Welcome to the issue zero of the Brainbuzz Linux newsletter! (if there is one thing you learn from this, let it be that most things in Unix are zero indexed). This weekly publication is for those who want to keep on top of Linux news, and pick up some great resources along the way.

There’s been a lot of hoopla in the news lately about RedHat 7. Comments from “2500 bugs”, to “binary incompatibility”, and even foul language like “Microsoft tactics” are being thrown around.

If you’re thinking that RedHat 7 is representative of Linux as a whole, it’s simply not true. First, Linux isn’t RedHat. RedHat is one out of several distributions of Linux. It’s a good one, IMHO, even though it has a history of shipping buggy point-oh releases. It’s just the price to be paid to ship the latest code. Furthermore, a distribution ships the Linux kernel along with the software to run on it. Can Linux itself be blamed for someone shipping bad client software? That’s a little like saying Windows is bad because my spreadsheet crashes all the time.

Second, upgrades aren’t as big a deal in the Unix world as they are elsewhere. The basic theory is “if it works, don’t touch it”. I’ve still got a 2.0.36 kernel on one machine simply because it does the job it’s needed for. Upgrading to the latest version of the distribution (Slackware in this case) would mean upgrading every piece of software. That’s like moving your Windows 95 machine to Windows ME, along with upgrading your office suite, all the games, and everything else you’re running. So if you’re running RedHat 6.2, you may not want to make the immediate leap to 7.0. Setting up a new system? 7.0 may be for you. The machine I’m typing this on is RedHat 6.1, using the X-Windows from 6.2, and GNOME from Helix.

A difference between Windows and Unix upgrades is that software in Unix is very compartmentalized. Want to upgrade Microsoft Exchange to the 2000 version? You’d better upgrade your OS to Windows 2000, right? Want the latest sendmail on your Linux 1.2 machine? Go ahead, just install it. There are some instances where this isn’t the case, like when you get into the system libraries. However, there is a clear distinction between the OS and the user in Linux. Even the GUI runs as a user! This is the biggest reason that Linux is able to obtain such high uptimes.

Back to RedHat. They’ve got a long history of shipping the latest code in their distributions. If you’ve ever looked at the source for the kernel that they ship, you’ll see that it’s got a lot of extra patches that haven’t made it to the current kernel yet. It helps to promote open source by getting the software into people’s hands.

Being on the bleeding edge comes at a price. Sometimes software just isn’t ready. One of the more serious issues with RH7 was the inclusion of GCC 2.96, which is a snapshot release. A snapshot release is one that has been pulled right out of the development tree. Compare this to a formal release, where the developers have decided that the code is at a point where it is ready for widespread use. Alas, 2.96 creates object files that are not compatible with current versions, nor will be compatible with future versions. The GCC steering committee thought that this was a stupid move, so they issued a release about it:

http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-announce/2000/msg00003.html

Bob Young, Chairman of the Board of RedHat responds: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid/10/12/163218&mode=thread

LinuxToday provides some balanced comments: http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn 00-10-09-005-21-NW-CY-RH

On the subject of binary incompatibilities, support for the old libc5 has been dropped. RedHat has been using glibc2 for some time now, so I can forgive them for shedding some deadweight. People with legacy binary packages may find their applications broken, but installing libc5 shouldn’t be a big problem. RedHat was one of the first distributions to move over to glibc2, and at the time there was some discontent about it. Now, there is little dispute that it was a good move for the Linux community. glibc2 allowed improvements and design fixes to enter the system libraries. On that thought, maybe shipping a snapshot compiler wasn’t a bad idea?

Some other notable bugs in RedHat 7:

RedHat 7 crashes after 3 weeks due to a file descriptor bug: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid/10/11/1341237&mode=thread

RedHat 7 security errata (7 packages): http://www.redhat.com/support/errata/rh7-errata-security.html

RedHat 7 package fixes (9 packages): http://www.redhat.com/support/errata/rh7-errata-bugfixes.html

Bugs aside, RedHat 7 includes some great new features, such as:

  • OpenSSH for secure telnet and file copying
  • SSL for secure web transactions and sockets
  • XFree86 4.0, the latest X servers for better performance
  • GNOME updates.

I am quite happy to see the inclusion of strong cryptography into a popular distribution. In case you didn’t know, until recently companies couldn’t export cryptographic software from the States without a license (or back door). These restrictions have since been relaxed.

RedHat is also using 7.0 to publicize their new update service, called the RedHat Support Network:

http://www.redhat.com/products/support/network/

So what’s your opinion on RedHat 7? Let me and others know on the Brainbuzz RedHat board: http://boards.brainbuzz.com:80/boards/vbt.asp?b4

On a closing note, even though I’m in Canada, I know the Americans in the audience are coming up to election time. Out of interest, I checked out what OS the candidates chose to host their website:

www.algore2000.com: Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) PHP/4.0.1pl2 secured_by_Raven/1.5.1 www.bush2000.com: Microsoft-IIS/5.0

Long live the penguin,

Sean swalberg@brainbuzz.com

2) Linux News

StarOffice Source Released

SUN StarOffice is a pretty nice office suite that runs on Solaris, Linux, and Windows. It’s goal is to be a functional clone of Microsoft Office, and let me tell you that it’s not doing too badly. SUN recently put the source under the GNU license and posted API and file format documentation so that the community can direct and improve the project. Brilliant move or cheap marketing ploy? Only time will tell. In the meantime, enjoy the free office suite.

http://www.sun.com/staroffice/openoffice/

RedHat and Sound?

windfall has a Creative Vibra 128 and can’t get it to work on his RedHat 6.2 box. Sound isn’t my forte (I’ve got an SB 16 – works on everything!), but maybe it’s yours… Can someone give this fellow a hand?

http://boards.brainbuzz.com/boards/vbm.asp?rpg=1&wpg=1&sb=0&m6129

Micro$oft buying into Linux?

Tell me it’s not true! Microsoft recently pumped $135M into Corel. Now, Corel is a good [Canadian!] company and can use the money, but the only thing they have to offer is Linux! So why would Microsoft want to talk to them? From a M$ SEC filing: “Corel hereby grants Microsoft an option for Corel to Port some portion or all of the .Net Framework from the Windows Platform to the Linux Platform.” Ahhh.

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-3173984.html?tag=st.ne.1002.bg if.ni

PHP 4.0.3 released

PHP is a server side web scripting language, much like ASP. It’ll run on UNIX and Win32, using IIS, Apache, or most other web servers. If you’ve never used it, take a look. If you run it, you’d better upgrade because some security related bugs were found in the older versions.

http://www.php.net/

3) Linux Resources

Signal 11

Signal 11, otherwise known as a Segmentation Fault (or violation), is the Unix equivalent of GPF. When a process accesses memory that it hasn’t been allocated, the kernel sends it signal 11 and stops it. Usually this is the result of sloppy programming, but can sometimes indicate bad or misconfigured hardware. The Sig 11 FAQ explains what causes this condition, and how to diagnose what’s causing it.

http://www.bitwizard.nl/sig11/

Journal File Systems

Ever turned off a busy Unix box without properly shutting it down? They don’t power on very well, do they? That’s because some of the filesystem was in memory waiting to be flushed to disk, so now there are inconsistencies that must be fixed. A journal file system logs the changes to a journal file, much like a database. After a crash, the system just replays the log file and the file system is good as new. There are also some performance enhancements that you get out of this.

http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue55/florido.html

3COM 3C509 help

BrainBuzz member GuitarLynn has posted a how-to on the 3C509 network card. It’s a good, cheap ISA card that is quite popular with older PCs. The problem is that ISA cards don’t always get detected on bootup, so you’ve got to give Linux a hint. This document will fix you right up. (Watch out for the URL, it’s going to wrap!)

http://itresources.brainbuzz.com/tutorials/tutorial.asp?t=S1TU866&t n<509B+ install&pi=S1C1&pn=How+To%27s

93 Watt Processor?

This is a good article on power consumption in CPUs. The author also shows how a P4 CPU can consume up to 93 Watts of power! My soldering iron is 30 Watts! How much longer before the cooling and power needs of PCs will make them unattractive to the home buyer?

http://www.linux.com/hardware/newsitem.phtml?sid=1&aid997

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