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Linux Software Technology

LinuxWorld Highlights 77

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the on-the-front-lines dept.
Jan Stafford writes "Bernard Golden over at SearchEnterpriseLinux was wowed by the many hardware and software products on display at LinuxWorld. Among the highlights include Blackdog, a complete Linux server the size of a deck of playing cards and Astaro a bundled security suite designed for corporations. He also outlines the good, bad and funny trends of the convention."
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LinuxWorld Highlights More

LinuxWorld Highlights

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  • Toaster! (Score:5, Funny)

    by PakProtector ( 115173 ) <[cevkiv] [at] [gmail.com]> on Tuesday August 16, 2005 @06:16AM (#13329039) Journal

    What about the toaster [wickedways.org] powered by netBSD [netbsd.org] that was shown at LinuxWorld?

  • Really, it seems that the event itself was just as boring as the writeup. I would have at least expected a description of the (rumored) fistfight between Linus Torvalds and Bruce Perens over (and in) the patent pool.

  • Male Booth Dolly (Score:5, Funny)

    by colmore ( 56499 ) on Tuesday August 16, 2005 @06:29AM (#13329069) Journal
    from the article:

    "I knew that vendors hired attractive women to staff their booths, hoping to attract the mostly-male attendees of technical conferences, but I had no idea that the subterfuge extended to the other half of the species. Live and learn!"

    Or maybe they're just extending to the other *tenth* of the species, if you catch my drift.

    Not that there's anything wrong with that, as Seinfeld would say.
    • Let's just call them boothbobs.
    • Hey where did that statistic come from anyway? I have heard of the Ten Percenters or whatever they are called, but I wonder who made the claim that 10% of the population have homosexual urges. Does it extend to bisexuals as well? Does it include only those who have given or received penis in various improper locations?

      Just curious (no pun intended)

  • blackdog... I want one! (Score:5, Informative)

    by tulimulta ( 769091 ) on Tuesday August 16, 2005 @06:35AM (#13329086)
    That Blackdog [projectblackdog.com] is amazing for just $200. I want one!
    • And it's gonna cost me a lot less in euros...:-)
    • Did anyone find the claim of two factors of authorization to be a bit odd? I mean, if holding the server in your hand constitutes a genuine "what you have" factor, how is that any different from having physical access to the hardware in ANY situation? My hard drive in my desktop machine is protected by "what you have" authentication, woo hoo.
      • Multi-Factor Authentication. BlackDog uses two strong authentication factors - "what you have" - the BlackDog device, and "who you are" - your biometric signature
      • Actually, It's three factor authentication if you want to require a password. Then you've got "have", "know" and "are".

        And yes, if you don't mind taking your hard drive with you everywhere you go, and it has PKI auth tokens not found elsewhere used to access back end services, then it is a possesion token for those services. Auto sign-on to such services is a perfect use for such a "toy".
    • Yeah, saw that and would love to play with one too. I can see using it at friend's/relative's houses when visiting and needing to log into work, without needing my laptop with me. Could keep ssh keys on it that you then change after returning home too.

      Biggest gripe I had with them... stupid use of a mechanical bull as their eye grabbing marketing idea.
  • seems like the last one he was at was '00 in san jose. now THAT was a party. ever since has been drab, and this one was just about as average as the rest of the west coast/bay area ones since.

    although, yeah, .org pavilion being relocated to the mezzanine was lame - but it was still good to be able to walk up to the folks at gentoo, kde, moz and eff and give them the props they deserved.

    ~A
    • Linux 2005 very much a geeks event, and yet it only made it to the linux section [slashdot.org] and only had 3 posts. Go figure.
    • Actually, that's something that disappointed me a lot - I guess I didn't bother to consult a map or guide, and never found it 'by chance.' Therefore, I was rather bummed to learn of the NetBSD toaster *after* I got back. I would have loved to have see the Debian & Mozilla folks as well...oh well... I still thought it was a pretty good show - an improvement from a small decline in the past. Heck, I thought the improvement of some personnel was a pretty good indication that there's some more money flo
    • It was a strange segregation of the two sides of Linux-- big commercial vendors downstairs, OSS projects upstairs, tucked away in the corner.

      This might be a common theme at the new Moscone annex-- I attended a big coin show at the same building few weeks back and they did the same thing: Downstairs was reserved for commercial booths, upstairs was reserved for nonprofits and government organizations (US Mint, Canadian Mint, etc). All the interesting stuff was upstairs-- downstairs was full of coin sharks wan
      • As someone who just blundered past one morning on the way to work with an exibit only pass, I didn't have a clue there were community groups on the second floor.

        I was wondering where the locals and nonprofits went. Not that there were all that many of them in previous years, but I always found at least a few interesting conversations on the floor. Guess not bothering to pick up a conference guide book was a mistake.

        I've got nothing against big-money IT-centric vendors. Hell, it's more than that. I'm ver

  • Blackdog seems neat (Score:2, Interesting)

    by TarryTops ( 888130 )
    maybe i'll order one myself. They ought to put up some demo's there. ;-)

  • Double Your Pleasure (Score:3, Informative)

    by cmplus ( 681254 ) on Tuesday August 16, 2005 @07:43AM (#13329342)
    Seems like I've seen a similiar specification [gumstix.com] for the Blackdog somewhere before.

    What I don't understand is why the MMC card on these devices is limited to 512mb. Sandisk and others already offer 1, 2, and 4GB high-speed CF cards. Is it an issue of pre-formatting, the software driver, or something else I'm missing? It would be kind of cool to have an external RAID device consisting of multiple CF cards plugged into a "CF bus."

  • Hmm... (Score:2, Informative)

    by mporcheron ( 897755 )
    Mentioning the fact that mambo (open source) [mamboserver.com] actually beat Firefox 1.0.5, Linux Terminal Server Project and IBM's Derby 10.1 to the Best Open Source Solution award would have made this review slightly less incomplete.
    • Mambo is a really cool project and deserves an award. I just started using it a couple months ago and am really happy with it.

      The article could have at least mentioned that LTSP [ltsp.org] took Best In Show [sys-con.com] overall.

  • Misinformed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Donny Smith ( 567043 ) on Tuesday August 16, 2005 @08:28AM (#13329600)
    From TFA:

    "I was also impressed by Coraid, maker of ATA-over-Ethernet (AoE), hardware. The AoE protocol allows Ethernet-connected hard drives. What's so great about that? It offers the ability to build SANs without the cost and complexity of fibre channel or iSCSI. "

    Wow, wow, wow! Hold it right there!
    Let remind ourselves here that he uses the word "SAN" in a very loose sense.
    There's a heaven-and-sky difference between this and good old fibre channel SAN.
    I don't know who this pal is, but I figure were he familiar with the traditional SANs, he wouldn't have toss out the SAN word just like that.

    Then he sez:

    "Essentially, this allows machines to write data via a low-level Ethernet protocol using a machine's standard NIC card. To me, this offers the potential to allow SMBs to get access to SAN functionality previously unaffordable to them."

    About "previously unaffordable". It can't be more affordable than iSCSI (as the network and the adapters used are the same), so except for the novel (read: niche, unsupported, unreliable and most likely untested - especially when compared to the industry-standard and well-tested iSCSI protocol) protocol, I don't see how this can be attractive to any company, including the suicidal SMBs (SMEs).
    I mean, what would you use this kind of "SAN" for? ERP? Oracle? Mail? Never.

    It's too bad that he missed to call any of that stuff "mission-critical".

    Oh, well - typical Linux enthusiast attitude that makes IT people laugh. Then again, it's in line with what we usually get to read here.
    • What we need is cheap reliable SOHO AoE hardware. The average home users isnt going to buy a 3 U box with 12 drives. However a small 2 drive box with 1G/100Mb/10Mb capability for say $50-60 would be most welcome...
    • did you follow the "ATA-over-Ethernet (AoE)" link? it goes to a page about "analog telephone adapter".

      I was left really baffled wondering what the fuck the product really was.
      • I saw that too. I think he tried to add a 'credible reference', but didn't bother to see if the link referenced the right 'ATA'. Hope he's hungry enough for the egg on his face.
    • This article [linuxjournal.com] makes a good case for ATA over Ethernet. The main difference the article points out between AoE and iSCSI is that iSCSI is dependent upon TCP/IP, which has quite a bit of overhead associated with it.

      Whether it's better or not, I don't know. Just remember that every technology was once new.

    • If you're just thinking of network cards, then this makes sense: "It can't be more affordable than iSCSI (as the network and the adapters used are the same)." But the article author, Bernard Golden, may have meant that iSCSI is more expensive than AoE because of the cost of a TCP Offload Engine (TOE). These iSCSI host adapters cost hundreds of dollars per host. AoE doesn't require a TOE, having no TCP to do.

      Anyway, the way I read it he was calling iSCSI complicated, not expensive. Golden says, "It offe

  • a complete Linux server the size of a deck of playing cards

    In unrelated news Bicycle Company, Inc., announced a new rack-mountable version of its popular Deck of Playing Cards.

    -Loyal

  • The prestigious "Best Database Solution" award went to EnterpriseDB [enterprisedb.com] this year. The press release is here [businesswire.com].

    EnterpriseDB is built upon the PostgreSQL database, and contributes what they create back to PostgreSQL (often immediately). One of the improvements they made to PostgreSQL is an Oracle compatibility layer.

    They competed against MySQL, Oracle, and IBM DB2.
  • Tell ya what...in San Fran, this might have been a good thing. I saw at least TWO guys wearing skirts. Not kilts mind you, but SKIRTS! Was the BoothBob there by mistake...or was it planned to attract the diversity that makes San Fran so cool. Not that there is anything wrong with that...
  • I feel like this article missed a ton of other items that were at the show. Yeah, okay, ATAoE is cool, but there was way more there.

    The NetBSD toaster has already been mentioned, but what he neglected to discuss were some of the other offerings:

    - Splunk (www.splunk.com) an amazingly cool log searching system, which is basically google for system logs

    - The large number of companies offering huge disk arrays (19TB+) that ran directly on Linux. (Aberdeen and Pogo to name two)

    - The companies (communigate, othe
  • Cue Elvis - "As the snow flies,On a cold and gray chicago mornin',A poor little baby child is born,
    In the ghetto"

    Ahem... I happened to make it up there only because I am a Mepis user, and was told that I could donate up there(and possibly meet Warren, Hi Warren)... Interesting. I did not not seeing FreeBSD up there, but i made the rounds to all the booths; Frightened some young EFFer by walking at him with a $20 dollar bill and just handing it to him. :) Firefox, KDE, Gnome, Xorg all up there and did not se
  • The .org pavilion was banished to an upstairs mezzanine. This caused many attendees to miss it. I felt that it sent a message that the .orgs are unimportant.

    I worked at the KDE booth. We were remarking on the steady but someone slow traffic. Then I went downstairs (for my turn at snagging swag and Redhat chocolate bars) and discovered where all the people were. Just a tenth of those people upstairs would have been cool. Oh well.

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