Free Software Linux

The Situation Ok, so you know that currently SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 10 defaults to GNOME as the desktop, a move that garnered a few cranky folks from the KDE [KC]amp, but one that was easily understood when you realized that most corporations really needed to have a default, that way they didn’t have to stall their testing to make a decision about what Linux Desktop standard they would support. openSUSE 11.0 doesn’t force such a choice, you have several options, none is selected by default, it’s like being in line at Starbucks and having to decide if you want a twist of lemon in your half-caf, double-decaf.

Customers are always looking for ways to get their cost of Linux deployments down lower, and make management easier on their staff. One of, at least in my opinion, the best options they have is to get rid of 3rd party multi path IO solutions for your SAN and disk management. I was at one of my customers the other day helping them set up MPIO that is built into SLES 10. While I was there I took a few notes for what we did to get things working for their environment. These same instructions should work with other SAN’s that can handle multi path IO. SLES 10 supports a lot of SAN’s right out of the box and automatically detects them so you don’t really need an /etc/multipath.conf. My customer likes to be able to change the black list for various types of hardware they use and wanted user-friendly names. To do this I created a multipath.conf for them that looked like the following… ## /etc/multipath.conf file for SLES 10 ## You may find a full copy of this file, with comments, here.. ## /usr/share/doc/packages/multipath-tools/multipath.conf

From the article: The topic of a bootable external USB Linux hard drive (without dual-boot) is an area that is not well documented. A simple Google search shows many articles, blogs and forum posts written on this topic, all of them discuss setting up dual-boot strategies. While I did not specifically test a USB Thumb Drive and did not intend to address this device in this article, I see no reason why this would not work for Thumb Drives as well. This article was written with the goal of defining an alternative to the traditional dual boot concept and keeping each operating system isolated from each other. Read More.

From the article: The Linux kernel is a restless beast, and must continally evolve and change. Especially in ways that mystify us poor end lusers. A recent wrinkle, as of kernel version 2.6.20, is changing the /dev names for ATA devices, so that all ATA and SCSI devices are named /dev/sd*. This is a result of using the shiny new libata subsystem. In the olden days PATA (also called IDE) hard drives and ATAPI devices (CD/DVD, tape drives) were /dev/hd*, and SCSI and SATA devices were /dev/sd*. Read More.

From the article: The Linux kernel is a restless beast, and must continally evolve and change. Especially in ways that mystify us poor end lusers. A recent wrinkle, as of kernel version 2.6.20, is changing the /dev names for ATA devices, so that all ATA and SCSI devices are named /dev/sd*. This is a result of using the shiny new libata subsystem. In the olden days PATA (also called IDE) hard drives and ATAPI devices (CD/DVD, tape drives) were /dev/hd*, and SCSI and SATA devices were /dev/sd*. Read More.

From the article: Why, in the midst of a major Windows Home Server push, would HP introduce a little Linux-based NAS at half the price? And why would HP make the $300 Media Vault mv2120 so full featured and easy that its $600-and-up MediaSmart Servers look A) too bulky B) too expensive C) too overloaded D) all of the above? Is HP telling Microsoft there’s no need for Windows Home Server, especially in light of its recent troubles? Or is HP saying that WHS is nice, but it’d be nicer if it was actually priced as an accessory? Whether the new Media Vault is a lurch away from Microsoft’s gravitational pull, or whether it’s a placeholder until Redmond can come up with a formula for $300 WHS boxes, it’s a pretty cool little machine.

CNet reports that some students from Edith Cowan University in Australia have created a Linux live CD that creates a data forensics tool that will help police catch the bad guys. That’s cool!I think it’s safe to say that the open nature of the Linux platform definitely appealed to the authors here, especially considering the customizations that they undertook… The application is called “Simple” (Simple Image Preview Live Environment) but trying to do this in the proprietary software world would be anything but! The operating system has had some features removed so that investigators can view data without affecting the host machine. “We stripped out a large amount of functionality because we want to maintain the integrity of data collected, so we removed all network support and the ability to write to disk. Also, if for some reason a disk is writeable, the system will halt automatically,” he added.

From the article: If a server goes down, essential services don’t have to shut down along with it. To prevent downtime, Linux administrators can set up a Heartbeat cluster on Linux. Heartbeat adds the advantage of a cluster to Xen virtual machines (VMs), thus maintaining VMs’ uptime when a server crashes. This series explains how to configure and use a Heartbeat cluster on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server using a storage area network (SAN) and a Xen VM as a cluster resource. I’ll also discuss the Linux Heartbeat project, whose mission is improving critical services availability in the network environment at critical times. In this, the first installment, I cover installation of a SAN. In the next tip, I’ll cover the configuration of the Oracle cluster file system (OCFS2). Read More.