Ian Murdock Answers 86
1) Distributions
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Chalst
What's your second-favourite Linux distribution?
Ian:
I got started with Linux in 1993 using a distribution called SLS. I started Debian later that year, and have been using Debian ever since. So, I guess that makes SLS my second-favorite distribution.
2) Debian stuff
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Uruk
What do you think about the current political problems with KDE in debian, the possible removal of non-free, and any other 'political' issues you care to comment on?
How has debian converged or diverged from what you originally wanted it to be?
If you were Wichert, which direction would you take debian in now?
Ian:
I tend to be more interested in technical rather than political issues, so to be perfectly honest, I don't have too many opinions to share with you. One thing I can say about the non-free removal debate is that many are arguing that changing the social contract would be akin to changing the founding principles of Debian, which isn't entirely true. The social contract came along well into Debian's lifetime. It captures a set of principles that evolved over time, and is really a snapshot of that set of principles taken at the time it was written. Perhaps it's time to evolve further. Perhaps it isn't. I'll leave that question to the Debian folks.
In terms of convergence or divergence, Debian has become so much more than I ever dreamed it would become, so I'm nothing but thrilled with how well it's all come together. Debian is one of the best examples of just how well the open development model can work. I'm immensely proud of all that Debian has accomplished and all that it continues to accomplish, and I'm proud to have been a part of it.
Where would I like to see Debian go from here? I'd really like to see Debian's appeal broadened. For a long time, Debian was the best Linux distribution you'd never heard of, and that's started to change this past year. Debian is a really great system, the best out there in a lot of ways, but a few small things sometimes get in the way. Installation needs to be easier, many things need to be better integrated, releases need to happen more frequently, interfaces need to be designed with a broader range of users in mind. It looks like a lot of this is starting to happen, and I'm very happy about that. And, by the way, I think Wichert is doing an outstanding job.
3) Preview?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by pb
Could you tell us about this "Linux NOW" project you guys are working on now?
Will the filesystem be based on Coda, or are you writing something completely new?
How does the distributed architecture compare with what is currently available?
Will it offer distributed computing, or just centralized administration?
It's great to hear that this will be released back to the community; I'm sure this will be released long before Microsoft makes any real headway on their "Millenium" project. :)
Ian:
Linux NOW makes a network of workstations look like a single integrated system. The basic problem that we're addressing is how to integrate the network, how to make networks easier to manage and use. The basic observation is that many problems become very difficult very quickly as computing environments grow from a single machine to dozens of machines to hundreds to thousands. For example, people have a fairly firm grasp on how to manage a single machine, how to share resources on a single machine, how to provide a good environment for users on a centralized machine. When it comes to dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of machines, however, these issues become much more difficult, and even after twenty years of using networks, people still don't have good ways of approaching them.
Linux NOW makes a network look like a single system to simplify the task of managing the network, sharing resources on the network, making the network secure, providing a consistent environment to users. System administration and security management are much simpler because there is only one system to manage rather than many independent systems. Sharing resources like files and hardware devices is much easier because there is just one set of resources rather than many independent sets distributed around the network in various places. The user's environment is consistent across machines because the system is the network, the network is the system, rather than the network being just a physical medium for connecting systems together. In Linux NOW, the network is more than a mere communications vehicle, a way for systems to talk, it's an integral part of the system, it *is* the system. Linux NOW is about building a good abstraction, about simplifying, about reducing big problems to smaller, more approachable problems.
We are writing a new file system. Many of the features that we need have been implemented in one file system or another, but there is no one file system that does all we need in one package. The file system that we're writing is largely influenced by the Sprite file system (http://HTTP.CS.Berkeley.EDU/Research/Projects/sprite/sprite.html), but we're integrating in various bits and pieces from other file systems where that makes sense. For example, Sprite was written ten years ago, and these days, networks are no longer static things, they contain laptops and mobile devices that come and go, and those mobile devices should be equal members of the network of workstations. So, we're looking very closely at projects like Coda and InterMezzo that provide support for mobile computing and disconnected operation, and borrowing ideas and code from those where that makes sense. We are also looking at cluster file systems, like GFS, and other network operating systems, particularly Plan 9.
In terms of how Linux NOW compares to what is already available, the closest cousin to a NOW is a cluster, like a Beowulf. Both run above a collection of computers, and turn that collection of computers into a larger thing. The main difference is the approach, and the end goal. Most clusters are dedicated collections, tightly-coupled collections, and are specifically designed to do a very specialized task. For example, the task a Beowulf is designed to do is high-performance computing, number crunching and computationally-intensive things. In contrast, Linux NOW is a general-purpose system and infrastructure for large networks. Linux NOW's goal is to simplify system administration, resource sharing, security management, user environments, and so on, general-purpose tasks rather than specialized tasks. And Linux NOW is designed to drive the workstations that sit on people's desks, whereas clusters are usually dedicated things that sit in the machine room. Furthermore, a cluster is usually a tightly-coupled group of machines, whereas a NOW can include laptops, home offices, and those sorts of things. In short, the underlying foundation is very similar, but what we do with that foundation is very different.
In terms of whether we will support distributed computing, we do plan to provide limited support for things like process migration to make resource sharing easier. That being said, Linux NOW is fundamentally a general-purpose system, so we're only interested in such features to the extent that they solve general-purpose, end-user kinds of problems. Process migration can be used to do distributed compiles, for example, or to move running processes off of a workstation that is being rebooted. So, if you're interested in using a collection of machines to do a specialized thing like distributed computation, or load balancing, or failover, then a cluster is probably a better fit. Of course, Linux NOW has its place in clusters as well. After all, clusters have to be managed, and providing shared storage across the cluster is very important, and Linux NOW can provide that.
4) Distro wars
(Score:5, Interesting)
by BgJonson79
What do you think is the best way to put out the distro flame wars and welcome more people into the world of Linux?
Ian:
We're never going to put out the flame wars. The best we can do is hope that people will learn to devote their energies to more productive things, like making the software better, and not let the flame wars get in the way of making progress. Flame wars are an unfortunate byproduct of the passion that people put into free software. When people are willing to spend hours and hours arguing about things, sometimes arcane things, that means they care very much about them. Can you imagine people arguing endlessly about the merits of a particular toaster or microwave oven? People in this community care very much about their software, and that's a big part of the reason why Linux, and free software in general, have come so far in such a short amount of time. People are willing to pour everything they've got into this. Given that kind of passion, it's inevitable that we're going to have flame wars.
5) Hurd/Linux
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Tiro
Why has Debian tied its long-term future to the Hurd's so long before the Hurd is ready for prime time? We all know about the hopes and dreams the GNU project has for its kernel, but why is Debian going along for the ride when the future is so hazy?
Ian:
I don't think Debian has tied its long-term future to the Hurd at all. Debian is a volunteer project, so it's not like Debian is taking away resources from other projects to work on the Hurd, like a company might have to do. Volunteers tend to work on what interests them, and the Hurd interests many Debian volunteers, so that's where they're going to work. Personally, I'm glad to see that Debian is providing the kind of support that is moving the Hurd's development forward. The Hurd has a very interesting design and incorporates some very interesting ideas, and I hope that something eventually comes of it.
6) Debian development
(Score:5, Interesting)
by fremen
Debian has often been accused of having a very slow development cycle. The "stable" distribution is still using two to three year old technology, while frozen is getting more and more out of date each day. Meanwhile, companies like Mandrake are releasing much more bleeding edge distributions. These distributions have more bugs in them, but are also ahead of the game in terms of performance enhancements, newer software, and fixes for older bugs that still plague the older software in Debian. How do you respond to companies like this, and what do you see as Debian's place among these companies?
Ian:
I agree that the slow release cycle is a problem. The Debian folks recognize it as a problem too and are taking steps to address it. Release management is very hard, especially when you're dealing with hundreds and hundreds of people, many of whom have never met and most of whom work on the thing purely as a hobby. It's far easier when you have a company and people are all in the same place and getting paid. So, this is a common problem among free software projects, and Debian is having to deal with it on a scale larger that most projects have had to deal with it. And they're getting there.
7) What would you add to *nix?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by miahrogers
If you could take 2 features from two other operating systems and add them to *nix what would they be?
Ian:
The first feature I would add to Unix is a good distributed file system. Unix has been lacking in this department for a long time. This is really unfortunate, because the file system is such a central abstraction in Unix, arguably *the* central abstraction in Unix. In Unix, if you can get the file system right, solutions to a remarkable number of very difficult problems just fall out, so the lack of a good distributed file system has really been the central thing that has made networks of workstations so hard to manage and use.
The most important thing that a file system does is provide a name space, a high-level view of data storage. In spite of this, this is exactly where most network file systems for Unix fall short. Network file systems for Unix tend to be designed to share private name spaces, rather than to build common, network-oriented, network-wide name spaces. Look at the current state of affairs in Unix. Each machine on the network has its own disk and its own private name space built above it. Unix gives us NFS and AFS and other file systems to share name spaces, but the end result is that all these machines still have their own disks and their own name spaces built above them. Resources are scattered all over the network, and you end up with this crazy quilt of name spaces stitched together in haphazard ways. Some of the name spaces are shared, some aren't, and some parts of the private name spaces need to be shared but can't be shared easily. So, you end up with all sorts of problems, like how do you keep configuration consistent, how do you provide a consistent environment to users, how do you keep software up to date, and things get very complicated in a hurry.
In terms of what other operating systems have done with file systems, Sprite got the name space issue right. Sprite provided a single system image across a cluster of machines, including a single file system image; so, although there may be many computers and thus many disks in the network, there is one file system shared by all of them. Unix needs a file system that builds a network-wide name space, and provides high performance, high availability, good security, support for mobile computing, and other things too.
The second feature I would add to Unix are the per-process name spaces of Plan 9. That is just an incredibly good idea. Although they are different in many ways, Plan 9 is like Sprite in that it builds a single system image across a network of machines, and there is one file system providing access to a global set of resources, just as there is in Sprite. The difference is that, in Plan 9, machines, users, and even processes can build their own local view of this global name space, rather than sharing one common view. This is a very powerful mechanism because you don't always want to see the same name space. For example, how do you deal with heterogeneity in a network of workstations? How do you deal with different classes of machines or users with varying access rights to the network's resources? Plan 9's per-process name spaces address these kinds of issues in a very elegant way.
8) Mobile Linux and Other Debian-based distros
(Score:5, Interesting)
by zeevon
Despite promises from Lineo and Blue Cat to be the embedded Linux specialists, Transmeta is using Debian as a base for its Mobile Linux. In addition, Corel uses Debian for its own distro.
Do you see Debian becoming a base upon which other distributions are built instead of "just another Linux distribution[1]." Given the amount of ports Debian has expanded to (x86, 68k, Sparc, Alpha, ARM, i-opener, etc), do you see it becoming the uber-distro for embedded (and unorthodox) systems?
Ian:
Sure. Debian is a great foundation for building systems, embedded or otherwise. It's the foundation for Linux NOW. It allows people to concentrate on doing what they do best, to concentrate on building value, rather than on reinventing the wheel.
The nice thing about Debian in this respect is that it's modular. The package concept lends itself very well to modularity. That was the whole reason behind basing Debian on packages. I wanted others to be able to contribute to Debian, to participate in the development process, and breaking the system into modular packages seemed the best way to enable that.
Other distributions have almost universally adopted the package concept by now too, but most of them still tend to be arranged as complete, take-it-or-leave-it systems. Debian is more of a collection of packages that can form a complete system, custom-tailored just the way you want it. So, because of the package concept, the resulting modularity, and the "collection of packages" approach to constructing the system, it's very easy for someone to take just those parts of Debian that he needs and build value above them. And that's why Debian is a better system for this purpose than any other.
Re:SLS (Score:1)
Goo goo goo joob! (Score:5)
... and we are all together. See how they fly like pigs in the sky see their stock soar.
I'm buying.
Sitting on a hard drive, waiting for the 'net to load.
Pornographic pictures, stupid NT systems, man you've been a naughty boy you got your sendmail old.
I am the admin. WHOOO!
They are the admins. WHOOO!
I AM THE PENGUIN! GOO GOO GOO JOOB!
--
apt-get! apt-get! (Score:2)
I wanted to go from deb. 2.0 to 2.2, frozen branch. So, I typed apt-get dist-upgrade, went and made a sandwich, played some Zelda 64, and came back, answered some config questions (need a way to automatically accept default...), and had a working 2.2 without having to reboot. Sure, I had DSL to make this nicer, but still... this was very cool.
I used to use Debian because I liked the philosophy. Now I use it because of apt-get (and the philosophy too).
From a technical standpoint, apt-get is what sets debian apart.
Re:Another Question (Score:1)
Re:Cop-out on the first question (Score:1)
Re:How is LinuxNOW better? (Score:1)
He didn't explain it fully in his answer.
With your example you still have multiple individual computers connected to a central server that store /home and /usr
But with linuxNOW it doesn't sound like you have a central computer just a bunch of computer that are connected. Some of the data may be stored on your buddies computer down the hall. If you access the same data a lot it would move itself over to your hardrive.
This is what I understand at least.
check out these other articles aobut it:
http://www.linux-mag.com/online/pro geny_01.html [linux-mag.com]
http://www.linux.com/interviews/2000071 2/63/ [linux.com]
Re:Anybody else see this in apt? (Score:1)
Re:I thought he said 'SLS' (Score:1)
Re:Flame wars (Score:1)
GE toasters are pretty cool.... I mean, hot...
Distributed File System... (Score:2)
>AFS and other file systems to share name spaces, but the end result is that all these machines still have their own disks and their own name spaces built above them. Resources are scattered all over the network
and...
>Sprite provided a single system image across a cluster of machines, including a single file system image; so, although there may be many computers and thus many disks in the network, there is one file system shared by all of them.
This is where AFS seems to have a nice advantage over Sprite for some instances, but Sprite would work well in others... Sprite seems to assume a lot of things, and moves itself into more of a niche, rather than a nice broad-purpose file system. Anybody feel any different on this one or want to point out what I don't see?
Re:Goo goo goo joob! (Score:1)
Re:apt-get! apt-get! (Score:1)
Seems to me apt-get is a pretty bad solution if you are installing a new system, and you are on a slow connection.
Re:Debian, mixed packages (Score:2)
However, Debian does provide packages for much of those things, specifically, there is a QMail package. (Though it's slightly different from most others because of QMail distribution requirements).
qmail is technically non-free (it fails to meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines) because its license prevents redistribution of modified versions. Instead, one must distribute a patch which can be applied to the pristine upstream source.
Debian can't package a pristine qmail binary, because qmail's design conflicts with the Debian policy. (qmail uses ~/Mailbox for message storage instead of /var/spool/mail/$USER; and Debian requires that all mail programs use the Debian locking library, which qmail naturally does not use.)
Thus, Debian cannot provide qmail binaries. Instead, they provide "Debianized qmail sources" -- which is basically a collection of the pristine qmail source tarball along with Debian patches and build scripts.
I've used the Debianized qmail before, but honestly, I just don't like it. (It's also caused grief for a lot of people, since at some point during potato it stopped working. I don't have details beyond that, because I stopped attempting to use it, and stopped caring about it.)
Personally, I recommend building qmail yourself from the source code (download it from qmail.org [qmail.org]). Debian already gave you the user-IDs and group-IDs in /etc/passwd and /etc/group, so that much of the installation is already done before you even download the source.
Of course, building something as fundamental as a mail transfer agent tends to raise issues with the Debian packaging system. But there's an easy solution: equivs. The Debian "equivs" package allows you to tell the packaging system that you already have a mail-transfer-agent package installed, thankyouverymuch, and please don't delete all the packages that depend on mail-transfer-agent. :)
Oh, and in answer to a previous question in this thread: the default Debian MTA is exim, not sendmail.
(Some of you may know me as greycat on #debian.)
Ian Presentation at Purdue on 7/24/00 (Score:3)
I attended a presentation he made at Purdue on Monday, 7/24/00 to the PLUG (Purdue Linux Users Group). He gave an hour presentation and dealt with an hour of formal questions and more than an hour of one-on-one questions. Several things struck me about his presentation:
1) In the hour presentation, he spent 40 minutes talking about Unix history. Sadly, he was wrong about lots of little things, such as Unix was designed to be a time-sharing system -- NOT. I would have hoped for 10 minutes of history and 50 minutes of NOW.
2) In the remaining 20 minutes, he described NOW. It sounded much like Athena and especially Plan-9. It is problematic that Plan-9 solved many of his problems and took 10 years to do that while they have far less time than that. He was "not familier" with MIT Oxygen [mit.edu]
3) NOW's time-line seemed unrealistic. NOW's lack of core PhD class CS problem solvers was notably missing. NOW's goals (given the time line) should have been aggresively well defined and yet "we're looking at that" was often an answer.
4) He was factually incorrect about the features of Plan-9. If he'd even read and absorbed Plan 9 from Bell Labs [bell-labs.com] he'd have been in better shape.
5) The company is missing a definitive business plan. It shows already and they're barely off the ground.
6) The office location they've selected in Indianapolis, is one of, if not the most expensive locations in the entire city. This means their venture capital burn rate will be extremely high. Within 5 minutes of that location there are places that cost 25% of that location.
7) The presentation was an un-abashed hunt for warm bodies that know something about Unix (Indianapolis is a nice place, but far from a hot-bed of computing -- Unix or otherwise).
So I came away with the feeling that they'd not done their homework before they started. Further that their venture capitalists said, "Linux is hot, who is available? Ian? oh good. Let's give him buckets of money and see if he can do 'stuff'."
In the end, they're destined to fail. They have a poor grasp of Linux pre-history (Multics [multicians.org] & Unix real history) and lack good technical management to judge wisely how to spend their finite amount of money.
Too bad. NOW as a concept doesn't seem like a clunker as little as we were told about it.
Re:Reboot? (Score:1)
And I'd long since stopped using the old-as-dirt 2.0.36 kernel that came with deb. 2.0, so there was no need to upgrade the kernel, hence no need to reboot.
Re:Debian, mixed packages (Score:1)
qmail is technically non-free (it fails to meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines) because its license prevents redistribution of modified versions. Instead, one must distribute a patch which can be applied to the pristine upstream source.
Erm, yes, hence the note, which you quoted, where I mention that it is different from standard Debian packages. ;-)
Debian can't package a pristine qmail binary, because qmail's design conflicts with the Debian policy. (qmail uses ~/Mailbox for message storage instead of /var/spool/mail/$USER; and Debian requires that all mail programs use the Debian locking library, which qmail naturally does not use.)
This is correct.
Thus, Debian cannot provide qmail binaries. Instead, they provide "Debianized qmail sources" -- which is basically a collection of the pristine qmail source tarball along with Debian patches and build scripts.
Actually, there is more to it than just the 'Debianized QMail sources'. When you get the qmail-src debian package, it also pulls down a build script that will automatically build and install QMail for you. This script can be run with 'build-qmail'. (Modified versions of this script are included with most of the QMail related programs, such as ezmlm, ucspi-tcp, dot-forward, and rblsmtpd, making it as easy as a single command to have working QMail binary packages.)
I've used the Debianized qmail before, but honestly, I just don't like it. (It's also caused grief for a lot of people, since at some point during potato it stopped working. I don't have details beyond that, because I stopped attempting to use it, and stopped caring about it.)
Interesting, I've been using QMail since before it became a Debian package, and I've been using the Debian package as long as it's been available, and I've never run into this problem. I've also tracked the (semi-official) Debian QMail mailing list since it's creation, and I don't recall hearing about any problems like that there. I've actually been very impressed with the high quality of the package, and the excellent job it's maintainer has done delivering an easy to install QMail binary with minimal hassle, thanks to the build scripts.
Personally, I recommend building qmail yourself from the source code (download it from qmail.org). Debian already gave you the user-IDs and group-IDs in /etc/passwd and /etc/group, so that much of the installation is already done before you even download the source.
For the record, I'd strongly suggest just grabbing the Debian QMail 'src' packages. Doing that will have QMail up and running for you in just minutes, and with essentially no hassle at all. Considering the license restrictions the QMail pacakge maintainer has to work around, the ease with which it installs is little short of amazing.
Of course, building something as fundamental as a mail transfer agent tends to raise issues with the Debian packaging system. But there's an easy solution: equivs. The Debian "equivs" package allows you to tell the packaging system that you already have a mail-transfer-agent package installed, thankyouverymuch, and please don't delete all the packages that depend on mail-transfer-agent. :)
Ugh. I would *strongly* recommend against the above mentioned procedure, especially in order to get QMail working. The Debian equivs package is something of an ugly hack, and should only be used when it's absolutely necessary. When packages are already there, you're just gonna get yourself in trouble unless you really know what you're doing. (In which case getting the qmail pacakges built and installed should be cake.
Oh, and in answer to a previous question in this thread: the default Debian MTA is exim, not sendmail.
This is correct, with a significant minority of the Debian developers pushing for Postfix as a possible replacement for exim as the default.
(Some of you may know me as greycat on #debian.)
(None of you will know me as anything on #debian, as I tend to live on SorceryNet [sorcery.net]. ;-)
Re:Goo goo goo joob! (Score:1)
I'm 22, and the albums are mine... what does that say?
Re:Distributed File System... (Score:1)
>So, at a particular local machine you can see some files that other machines in the cell see, but not others
I've run into that in my AFS admin days, too... nothing is really perfect, but as a rule, it seemed to work better than most. Plus, it's a pretty nice solution across AIX/SysV/Sol/Linux. DFS is nice, too (and has better NT support), but some strange things tend to happen with the local cache and tickets (more often than AFS, it seems).
The ACL/mode bit deal does get confusing now and then... such are the problems with certain filesystems. Personally, I much prefer the ACL control - it's far more flexible and, in most cases, more useful. Usually, if most of your stuff is on AFS, the users never have to play with the local drive and the different security model.
I'll have to look more into the details of Sprite, since I'm still not exactly sure where all of these files are kept... if the files are distributed across the different workstations, and one goes down... that would be a bad thing. Backups would suck up tons of network bandwith (nobody there in the middle of the night anyway, but hey)... I probably need to do some more reading on it, but it doesn't seem like that great a solution right off the top...
distributed system (Score:1)
If done right, this could prove a real nightmare to administer, especially if my home-configured notebook is to be integrated without thinking about whose console i will be trying to use when those guys in the other part of the building have finished lunch (or when that switch is reconnected...).
Am I the only one to have thought this sounds just a bit like vapourware coming out of micros~1 just two years before they start putting on their thinking-caps?
Theres everything in there - people will not need to know, the network will be fully transparent, the system will just do anything you want it to - action at your nerve-tips!
Just being sceptical. Never mind. Maybe its just the all-powerful Debian that will do it. You never know.
Kiwaiti
Re:SLS (Score:3)
"Slackware is based on the older SoftLanding System Linux"
"SuSE started in the Linux business by distributing the SoftLanding Systems version of Linux"
I also found this reference [linuxjournal.com] to an old Linux Journal article... written by Ian A. Murdock... saying basically SLS was so bad, that he had to do better... and started Debian.
Re:question skipped? (Score:1)
I'm not very good at sound effects... that's the sound of a piece of metal being drawn to a magnet.
Re:Debian, hopelessly out-of-date? (Score:3)
There are, thank goodness, images of both frozen and even unstable available. See: cdimage.debian.org [debian.org] for more information.
In fact, if you are new to Debian I would strongly recommend checking out the frozen iso images. Installation has improved tremendously, and you'll end up with substantially newer packages.
Just remember that Debian is designed in such a way that you only install it once. So when you get tired of upgrading your RPM based distros piecemeal, wade through a Debian install and learn the power of apt-get.
Re:Flame wars (Score:1)
I mean, who wants to be toasting with 2-3 year old technology?
Re:I thought he said 'SLS' (Score:1)
Re:How is LinuxNOW better? (Score:2)
Re:SLS (Score:1)
Re:Debian, mixed packages (Score:1)
I usually like to get my kernels directly, mostly because the RedHat patches make it impossible a patch the kernel from ftp.kernel.org
I also don't like to use packages like BIND or Sendmail (using dnsdjb and qmail instead).
RPM doesn't have a problem with this, but then again. RPM seems pretty braindead compared to apt-get
NFS horrors (Score:2)
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
Re:apt-get! apt-get! (Score:2)
Actually, i don't think you can use apt-get to install a brand-new system. It at least has to boot debian before apt-get will help you.
Anyway, once the system is up and running, just running apt-get frequently will keep the number of packages to update small, thus alleviating the bandwidth concern.
Corrected Link (Score:1)
The link is not www.mosix.org but www.mosix.com [mosix.com].
Re:Debian, mixed packages (Score:2)
And about kernels: Debian provides both images and source on their servers. I never touch the images so I can't comment on them. They are generally pretty good about providing up-to-date source (of course, I'm using unstable), although naturally if you want to get the latest version right away you're better off downloading it from kernel.org. However, there's not much of a difference when you're talking about kernel sources. Even with the
Now, Debian does provide a great package (make-kpkg) that allows you to compile and install your kernel as a Debian package. You can use this regardless of where you got your source and I highly recommend you do. It streamlines the whole process of installing and maintaining your kernel.
Re:Goo goo goo joob! (Score:2)
No, I don't believe that one either.
And in case anyone happens to click my user info and find out that I'm 14, it is my parents' record
--
Re:Debian, mixed packages (Score:1)
How is Debian with mixed packages (i.e. deb packages and .tar.gz).
If you put your custom software in /usr/local, then Debian packages will *NEVER* touch them. Debian policy is that /usr/local is sacrosanct, and must always be left for the sysadmin.
I usually like to get my kernels directly, mostly because the RedHat patches make it impossible a patch the kernel from ftp.kernel.org
Then you'll prolly love Debian's make-kpkg utility. Debian provides standard kernel packages, for those who choose to use them. They also provide make-kpkg, which allows you to download the kernel source yourself, and then compile it according to *your* configuration, and then turn that kernel into a Debian package.
This way, you can add in whatever custom patches you want, and still install your kernel as a standard Debian package for organizational purposes.
I also don't like to use packages like BIND or Sendmail (using dnsdjb and qmail instead).
Again, if you just place all of your own stuff in /usr/local, you'll be just fine, as Debian will never touch it. However, Debian does provide packages for much of those things, specifically, there is a QMail package. (Though it's slightly different from most others because of QMail distribution requirements).
If you like adding custom patches to software that has Debian packages, it is *very* easy to get the source [package] (Debian doesn't actually have source packages, but you can grab the full source of a program, along with the debian build scripts, as easy as 'apt-get source packagename', which you can then patch as you like and then turn it into a Debian package which you can install as easy as the original.
RPM doesn't have a problem with this, but then again. RPM seems pretty braindead compared to apt-get
apt-get should have no problems with any of this, either. And it is much more intelligent and powerful than RPM. ;-)
Have fun, and good luck!
Re:Debian, hopelessly out-of-date? (Score:2)
3) Incompatibilies between versions. Version 2 is incompatible with version 3 (currently used in 6.x series), and the next version 4 is incompatible with 3. And I can't upgrade rpm, because the rpm package itself is in rpm version 4. Which means I can't upgrade the packages at rawhide, because they're all in 4.0 rpm packages.
Tech tip: Install rpm-3.0.5*.rpm - it understands both version 3 and version 4 packages, and should allow you to get going on those Rawhide packages. That said, I've had some funnies with 3.0.5 seg-faulting on me, so it's not exactly bullet proof. Exact diagnosis of the problem has escaped me... I run a heavily rawhide patched RedHat 6.1 with HelixCode installed over the top, and the problems arrived when I stripped out XFree86 3.3.5 in preparation for 4.0.1.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Re:Anybody else see this in apt? (Score:2)
Re:question skipped? (Score:1)
Actually, it's called he answered that one at the top of the article.
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
Re:Debian, hopelessly out-of-date? (Score:3)
My problem, though, is this: I have been using Red Hat forever, it seems like. I know how it works, I know what it does, and I am, believe it or not, happy. I keep wanting to play with Debian, to see if apt-get is really what everyone says.
But my Red Hat machines run well, have never been cracked, and I know the system. My stuff is nicely customized, and I'm happy.
Now, I know, the answer here is "Fine, you're happy, shut up then" but that isn't exactly what I am looking for. What I am asking is, what then is the "migration path" (sorry) if I wanted to use Debian? My first impulse was buy a new hard drive, move hda to hdc, make the new one hda, and install. Then just after I'm done, copy things as needed. Then the happy-fun time of downloading 8 zillion things, over and over, to get it all, since I am using Qt and other things that make some Debian types I know really, really cross. If something goes really, really bad, I can just put the old hda back, and reboot.
Thats going to take a weekend, I guess. There *has* to be a shorter path, I can't be the first person to want to do this, and I can't believe that droves of people are going to Debian and manually reinstalling their machines after using Red Hat, Slackware, or SuSE. "Wade through" doens't inspire me. I've been using Linux for years now, and I don't wade through anything. If I wanted to wade, I'd use NT (although thats more like drowning, isn't it?).
Thanks in advance.
Yes, it is (Score:1)
Which is fortunate because about a month later I found debian, which quickly became both my first successful non-windows install and my OS of choice. And which ironically mentioned SLS on its web site.
I found SLS by searching AOL for "linux" (yes, I was on AOL--I went for the free month to use their browser because one of my DLLs was corrupt and it prevented both IE and netscape from working on my then win95 box, plus stopping me from reading email, prompting me to get my yahoo addy; this was also what prompted me to consider a change in OS) and it may still be there. It evidently hadn't come very far from 1993 (prob'ly ended completely somewhere along the line and was simply circulating in frozen form); it didn't seem very advanced, looking at the descriptions and features, once I found out what other distros could do.
If you want a full system it involves d/ling (or somehow obtaining, I don't think anyone sells SLS) something on the order of thirty or forty, or fifty floppies, give or take. Yecch. I haven't seen this system in CD form.
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
pull the PLUG (Score:1)
I would mod that one up +1 insightful or interesting (on of the two) if I hadn't already posted this round. Somebody do it for me? pleaze?
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
Re:Creepy Terminology (Score:1)
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
With debian it doesn't matter (Score:1)
You can also have it update automatically the day a new version of your favorite package comes out, but you don't care about the convenient features, you prefer the ones that tie you down so never mind.
But yes, they do provide images of the "official" distribution cd. I'm not sure where on which part of which site but I am 100% certain I read in their official documentiation on debian.org under "how do I get debian" that they provide cd images. Vendors also custom mix their own debian cds to sell too from packages but they do have imags they provide.
Also bear in mind there is much more to the world than just you. I have installed more debian systems from floppy than from the CD set that I bought. I can't see how the point of the distro would be not to have to d/l the packages--if it weren't for the distro, there would be no packages to download! Most of the installs I've done there was no CD drive available and so after the ten-floppy base set was installed I let it loose on the modem and the whiz-bang package installer went and got everything else I'd picked off its list while I was away.
Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
Quickie migration to Debian (Score:1)
You put
Regarding stuff that isn't in Debian...
First off, a number of packages that peeve Debian (such as KDE) are available from third-party sources. The best thing about apt is that you can insert the location of these files into your sources list, and voila, they will be transparently handled as Debian packages.
Secondly, Debian includes the alien utility which allows you to just use RPM packages. So if you still have those RPMs of the packages you want on your hard drive, or for that matter have them on your Red Hat CD, you can just let alien install them. (Although I recommend against this approach if possible, RPMs routinely ignore the filesystem standard and files end up in weird places.)
Also, I've seen cd distributors that make unnofficial Debian CDs with KDE or what not on them.
(Note: I'm planning to do much the same thing within a month to clean up some cruft from running unstable versions of Debian. If anyone sees any flaws in the above backup system, please correct me.)
Wait, wait... (Score:4)
Re:question skipped? (Score:1)
1) Distributions
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Chalst
What's your second-favourite Linux distribution?
Ian:
I got started with Linux in 1993 using a distribution called SLS. I started Debian later that year, and have been using Debian ever since. So, I guess that makes SLS my second-favorite distribution.
Re:question skipped? (Score:1)
1) Distributions
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Chalst
What's your second-favourite Linux distribution?
Ian:
I got started with Linux in 1993 using a distribution called SLS. I started Debian later that year, and have been using Debian ever since. So, I guess that makes SLS my second-favorite distribution.
SLS (Score:1)
-colin
Good bye karma! (Score:1)
Re:question skipped? (Score:1)
Great quote! (Score:3)
Parameterize this baby and you've got yourself a response to "why don't these developers quit writing IRC clients and all contribute to some one project".
Linux NOW sounds pretty interesting. Something I didn't see him address, though, is the absolutely most important feature of a distributed (file) system: Simple, easily understood (and discovered) behavior. Every time I save a file, I don't want to have to think to myself "Let's see, I saved this from a desktop, so if I go to a laptop I have to hit refresh but make sure not to save changes....etc".
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Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
Creepy Terminology (Score:1)
Re:question skipped? (Score:1)
Re:Creepy Terminology (Score:1)
Now, Slashdot! sounds like a Hitchcock title.
-- the demiurge
Namespaces (Score:1)
Scott
Re:Goo goo goo joob! (Score:2)
where are you?
this one is ART!!!
long live The Beatles!
Im buyiiiiing....
Kiwaiti
Re:SLS (Score:2)
Re:Debian, hopelessly out-of-date? (Score:1)
Firstly, Debian releases many minor releases ("outdated" slink is at 2.1r5) which have updates to the most recent security alerts.
In addition, there's apt, which updates your system incredibly easily. In fact, there was a recent post on debian-devel [debian.org] where a user updated from 1.3 (released 3 years ago) to frozen quite easily.
Basically, if you want to run an "up-to-date" system with Debian, it's release cycle is not getting in your way.
Re:SLS (Score:1)
Someone posted a link to a 1994 Pat Volkerding interview [linuxjournal.com] done by Linux Journal [linuxjournal.com] in which, among other things, he talks about how Slackware came into existence.
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Re:Distributed File System... (Score:1)
The problem with AFS is that it is bolted onto UFS. So, at a particular local machine you can see some files that other machines in the cell see, but not others. That causes one sort of administrative problem, where semi-savvy users don't understand the difference. But it can also be a problem when you are trying to distribute everything out from the central servers to the clients. They have their own OS, executables, etc on the local system and you want to update them. It is not as easy as just changing one file. You have to have a system whereby the client machines examine the central server, and update themselves. Not that that is any great shucks, but it is a lot more complex than just "put the file there, and it's there". Which is what this Linux NOW and Sprite sound like. Furthermore, it was relatively easy to have something go wrong in the update scripts, leaving the machine in a bad state where it would not boot or where something was not updated correctly, etc. So we ended up doing a lot of "telnet to the user's machine and poke around" sort of administration.
Another problem with AFS is that it tends to underuse the disk that is really available, since the local disk(s) on most machines cannot be accessed readily. For a system like I administered, that was not a problem. They had beaucoup cash. But for my home system, I don't want to see even a tiny little modern disk, like say, 13 GB, languishing semi-or-unused. 10 years ago disk was expensive and centralizing it made more sense that it does now, IMO.
Finally, I think it is annoying (and somewhat hard on users) to have two different protection models for files depending on where they are. I liked ACLs, and really wouldn't mind even more flexibility of control. But try to explain to a secretary why this file has mode bits, this one ACLs, and what the difference is -- and why.
Re:Debian, hopelessly out-of-date? (Score:1)
Reboot? (Score:1)
Re:Debian, from RedHat (Score:2)
The basic rule of thumb is that you can keep your
I personally find the best thing other than apt in debian is that it makes good use of a large hdd.
IF you have a fast internet connection, have a look at the recent auto-apt (if you try to use a file that is in something that you haven't got installed... it automatically downloads and installs it for you.
Have a look at all of the non-RedHat packages you currently have, and see that almost all of them are already somewhere in debian (other than kde-like ones which you just have another sources.list (i.e. apt-get) entry). This makes upgrading to debian much easier... after an intall, just type in apt-get (list of all the programs you like) and come back in the morning.
I guess that doing transferring each of my machines to debian was about a 6 hour process, BUT (due to technical local network difficulties) had to install slink first before upgrading to potato, and had to recompile kernel each time. Unless you have anything tricky (like need to recompile kernel) it may take you as little as 3 hours (including installing lots of programs that with redhat you used to have to search for).ymmv
Re:How is LinuxNOW better? (Score:1)
Re:Goo goo goo joob! (Score:1)
Re:Linux NOW vs Mosix (Score:2)
We discovered, however, that not many end users cared very much about total SSI semantics. They typically wanted only the distributed file system, or the DFS plus process migration, or remote device support, but seldom did they care for the whole ball of wax. Locus never lost money on the technology, but it never gained the market acceptance and market share we had hoped for.
So SSI is nothing new. The question I'd like to ask Mr. Murdock is, what has changed in the marketplace that makes SSI now a viable product on which to base a business? I don't believe that "because it's open source" is a credible answer.
Ciao....
Re:Debian, hopelessly out-of-date? (Score:1)
1) I never been able to upgrade a RedHat distribution. If it doesn't fsck up my system, the installation crashes. Which is why I now have
2) RPMs messes up with my custom configuration.
3) Incompatibilies between versions. Version 2 is incompatible with version 3 (currently used in 6.x series), and the next version 4 is incompatible with 3. And I can't upgrade rpm, because the rpm package itself is in rpm version 4. Which means I can't upgrade the packages at rawhide, because they're all in 4.0 rpm packages.
The one saving grace it has is that I know it. I know how to work around most of the quirks. I know how to create, fix and patch
Re:How is LinuxNOW better? (Score:1)
On cheap hardware, even :)
s/h/k (Score:2)
Debian, hopelessly out-of-date? (Score:1)
The whole idea of a distribution, to me, is so I don't have to download all the packages individually. Kind of defeats that purpose if I install Debian, and have to download all the packages to get them up-to-date on my system.
Linux NOW vs Mosix (Score:2)
I don't know if many people know about the "Mosix" project at www.mosix.org. It transparently dispatches a process in the kernel level to a cluster of other computers in the network. I tried it on a group of computers at school and it is pretty amazing.
This project was actually covered on Slashdot a year or more back. There was a large noise made because it consisted of a kernel patch and a module which were not GPL. Naturally people had the right to complain and they resolved it by licensing it as GPL. Now the irony is that inspite of this, the Mosix folks can't seem to get any of the Mosix code to be folded into the mainstream kernel! As it stands now, there is a patch and module which must be applied to the kernel each and everytime you get a new revision. When I first tried it, it took a few tries to get it all working. The Mosix folks seemed to be genuinly interested in getting any portion, however small, to merge into the mainstream kernel because it makes their patch maintainence effort that much easier and more accessable to a larger user base. I think it would be great if someone with more involvement in the core Linux kernel development assisted them in this regard.
Thanks! (Score:2)
Even though that was an excellent answer to my question, it raises yet more questions. However, now I'm pretty excited about Linux NOW, so I guess that's a fair trade.
At my University, like so many others, we use AFS and Kerberos to integrate all the machines. It sorta works, but it's messy and annoying, and sometimes it really lags, too. I'd love to see something better, instead of a bunch of symlinks and mount points stuck together with a bunch of duct tape.
Also, I've configured NFS before; we recently needed to share resources between two machines, and that makes things impossible. If one of them goes down, the other one becomes catatonic. I realize NFS on Linux isn't perfect yet; in fact, it's downright bad.
However, my box at home isn't connected, so until something better comes along, I'll run 'make -j' in a corner on my unclustered, uniprocessor box...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
linux now and...kevin smith!? (Score:1)
sorry, i know
Re:Debian, hopelessly out-of-date? (Score:1)
Yes. Even images of "unstable". At cdimage.debian.org [debian.org]
Flame wars (Score:2)
GE Toasters forever!
Haiku (Score:2)
Replied to your great questions.
So pay attention.
Please read the answers,
Don't be like Signal 11,
Trying for first post.
Apparently if it isn't *X it doesn't exist... (Score:2)
"When it comes to dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of machines, however, these issues become much more difficult, and even after twenty years of using networks, people still don't have good ways of approaching them."
An interesting statement, given that Digital Equipment Corporation first provided that capability on VAXclusters under VMS in 1983, and the current development of that inital product is available [digital.com] from Compaq under both OpenVMS VAX and Alpha systems as well as forming the basis for TruCluster for Tru64 UNIX [compaq.com], including a distributed Cluster File System.
Not that it's isn't a good thing for Linux to have these capabilities, or for them to be Open Source; but maintaining that nothing like NOW exists currently just isn't the case.
Re:Debian, hopelessly out-of-date? (Score:1)
When I went from 1.3 to 2.0, it was pure pain. The main obstacle was the move to glibc. I followed the upgrade instructions as closely as I knew how, but still ended up with stuff broken. Don't get me wrong, I like Debian, and still use it, but I find it difficult to believe someone went from 1.3 to 2.2 "quite easily".
Re:Wait, wait... (Score:1)
Can't possibly be Debian... he must be completely bored with it...
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modularity an debian embedded-ness (Score:2)
debian is horrible for embedded systems. i've tried it. the debian package management depends heavily on perl and a bunch of associated utilities & libraries which don't fit too well on, say, 8mb of flash disk. in fact, it takes a lot of effort to strip a debian distro down under 20-30 megs.
if you really want to do use linux on embedded hardware, do yourself a favor and just build your own distro. for small systems, it's really not all that hard.
if you are lazy, check out lem [linux-embedded.com], linux embedded. it's about 8 megs total, and includes X and glibc 2.1.x.
if you want linux on a desktop, or for a linux server, you can't go wrong with debian.
=--- - - .
Re:Cop-out on the first question (Score:1)
Anybody else see this in apt? (Score:1)
Re:Cop-out on the first question (Score:1)
Re:SLS (Score:1)
I thought he said 'SLS' (Score:2)
Yep, he did. Not that I've ever heard of SLS...
Re:Murdoch? Wow! (Score:2)
The good news is: what would you ask Rupert Murdoch? All I can think of is "Does it upset you that the Simpsons spends a lot of it's time insulting you and your company?" But Ian Murdoch, well... I couldn't think of much to ask him either, but other people asked much better questions.
Devil Ducky
Re:Debian, hopelessly out-of-date? (Score:2)
PS They use the pseudo-image kit because of limited bandwidth on those sites which mirror the .iso images. The idea being that you conserve bandwidth on the main mirrors and get a fast mirror for the packages, then you rsync it (which, according to them, takes up around 1% of the bandwidth of an .iso download) against one of the rsync mirrors. They have kits for both Linux and Windows.
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How is LinuxNOW better? (Score:1)
Mount
Mount
Voila! The system administrator now only has to keep the main system upgraded. The rare updates to the root directory can be automated over the network, and each user can still install his/her/its stuff in the usr/local directory without fear of it getting overwritten. Of course, this is a simplification -- a bunch of other directories can also be mounted remotely, but I don't know enough about the hierarchy to specify which one.
So it sounds to me like LinuxNOW just bundles that with a bunch of remote administration utilities. Where is the advantage?
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