October 2001 - openSUSE Users - openSUSE Mailing Lists

Re: [SLE] AGP speed?
by Tom Wesley 03 Oct '01

03 Oct '01

It's an Intel. The BIOS shows it as 440LX, but there seem to be several of these on the web site. It's probably about 18months old too. Not sure. On Wednesday 03 October 2001 9:28 pm, W.D.McKinney wrote: > What MB do you have ? Any brand name or model ? > > -----Original Message----- > From: Tom Wesley [mailto:tawesley@yahoo.com] > Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2001 12:27 PM > To: suse-linux-e(a)suse.com > Subject: [SLE] AGP speed? > > > Hi, > > Thiking og upgrading a graphics card. However, after doing a little > checking I found that many cards require a 4x AGP slot. Any idea how I can > check if I have this? > > I've not got the manual for my motherboard btw. > > If my motherboard is not up to this, will the graphics card still work, > just slower? Or will it just not work? > > Cheers, > Tom > > _________________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

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Fwd:Positive Linux article in Washington Post
by Steven T. Hatton 03 Oct '01

03 Oct '01

This article is very R** H**-centric, but it is still well worth a read. Having spent a great deal of time working in the US Government's IT sector, I can honestly confirm the US Government has contributed significantly to the advancement of computing, both open source and proprietary products. I was once mentioned that the German Government should move to support the advancement of SuSE. I can confidently assert that such intentional Government involvement as was suggested has done a great deal to make the US Computing industry what it is today. I like SuSE Linux, and I like the fact that I have a genuine choice as to which distribution I run. I suspect Germany has lost a great many computing professionals to the US in what is often called a 'brain drain'. If the German Government were to more actively support their own domestic computing industry, perhaps that trend would be reversed. And no, I do not consider this to be an anti-American statement. It's merely a pro-SuSE statement. Steven ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2001 15:45:29 -0500 (CDT) From: webster(a)washtech.com To: hattons(a)bellatlantic.net gister(a)washtech.com Subject: A Washtech.com article from hattons(a)bellatlantic.net You have been sent this message from hattons(a)bellatlantic.net as a courtesy of washtech.com (http://www.washtech.com) To view the entire article got to http://www.washtech.com/news/govtit/12873-1.html Is Linux Going Mainstream? Maybe Once relegated to a limited set of applications, the Linux operating system is moving into the mainstream. Thats the word, anyway, from market research firm International Data Corp. and Linux vendors, such as Red Hat Inc. They said public and private organizations, rather than confining their Linux use to applications such as inexpensive Web serving and experimental, high-performance computer clustering, are now turning to the open-source software for broader uses, such as database hosting. Evidence of this shift is contained in an August IDC survey revealing that corporate and governmental information technology decision-makers are anticipating a 9 percent growth in Linux-related spending in 2002, up from 3 percent in 1999. Scott McLarnon, study director and group vice president at IDC of Framingham, Mass., stopped short of saying the results demonstrate a burgeoning Linux domination in the operating environment marketplace, which is currently led by Microsoft Corp. But he confirmed that the numbers bode well for the future of the open-source operating system, and that vendors had addressed many of the hurdles to adoption, including acceptance by hardware and software vendors. McLarnon added that the federal government sector was lagging behind many commercial industry sectors in adopting Linux. Commercial adopters of Linux include smaller job shops in manufacturing, professional services and technical services firms, software developers, universities, health care and research and engineering. The federal government is marginally less likely to be moving today to Linux than most other sectors, with a few exceptions, such as banking and brokerage, which were very unlikely to consider Linux, he said. The survey of 865 corporate and governmental IT decision-makers, including 70 respondents representing federal government departments and agencies, also indicated that state and local governments were slightly more likely than the federal government to move to Linux, he said. Sandy Quant, associate analyst covering Linux and Open Source for the research firm Giga Information Group Inc., Cambridge, Mass., attributed the growth of Linux adoption to the price and performance advantages of Linux on Intel hardware. According to Quant, the government continued to use Linux-based platforms in science and technology research at Los Alamos National Laboratory and elsewhere. But widespread adoption of Linux in government is potentially hindered by scalability issues that hamper the ability of the operating system to support high-end applications, she said. Another hindrance may be the lack of a clear endorsement of the Linux OS from the Bush administration, Quant said. Michael Tiemann, chief technology officer for Red Hat, a Linux developer in Durham, N.C., bristles at remarks about scalability limits in Linux. He conceded that the 2.2 version of the Linux kernel had limitations, referred to collectively as the BKL, or big kernel lock, that effectively limited the performance of Linux platforms when kernel services became overtaxed. The kernel is the core of an operating system. However, Red Hat did a lot of work on locking mechanisms in version 2.4 of the kernel, enabling operations to be performed independently and largely resolving any scalability concerns, Tiemann said. He said he is dismayed that analysts continue to raise the issue, and suggested that anyone concerned about scaling and performance consult industry test results that demonstrated our Linux Web server to be two to three times faster than Microsofts. Take, for example, the Terascale Computing Initiative at the National Computational Science Alliance and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and other government agencies. It is based entirely on Linux, including small systems to collect data, and large Linux systems to process it, Tiemann said. Judy Chavis, manager of Compaq Computer Corp.s Linux programs office in Houston, echoed Tiemann, noting that her company has incorporated high-scalability capabilities, such as Single System Image, in Linux, enabling the creation of humongous clusters. While I would agree there are not a lot of implementations of Linux out there running on eight-way servers, the ability to scale an application across a Linux cluster has never been in doubt, Chavis said. Government is where the clustering efforts started, and we are starting to see an increase in Linux use in that space. Randy Sandone, founder and chief executive officer of Argus Systems Group in Savoy, Ill., is worried that the government is slow to adopt Linux because of security concerns fueled by the publicized involvement of the National Security Agency in overseeing security enhancements to the Linux operating system kernel. Sandone said it isnt fair to single out Linux for special attention. Linux is no more or less secure than other operating systems, he said. Sandone, whose company offers its own kernel-level security augmentations for Linux in a product called Pitbull LX, said he didnt understand why U.S. taxpayer money was being used to enable Linux security, when the commercial industry is already investing money, and off-the-self solutions are already available today. He said some government agencies may have gotten the wrong message from the $1.2 million contract the NSA awarded in February to Network Associates Inc., Santa Clara, Calif., for development of further operating system security enhancements. They may think they need to wait on NSAs secure Linux before they use the operating system, said Sandone, who added that the government has a track record of building unwieldy, government-centric systems. In contrast, Red Hats Tiemann looks at the NSAs funding of open-source security enhancements as testimony to the open-source model and its capability to support many options. Security has not hampered adoption to any perceptible degree, said Robert Hiddard, Red Hats manager of federal systems programs. For all of the noise around potential impediments to Linux adoption, Rob Scheschareg, vice president of marketing and product development for World Expo of Framingham, Mass., remains bullish. World Expos annual Linux World conference and exposition is growing in attendance and sponsorship, according to Scheschareg. We are 30 percent up in attendance compared to last year, but the interesting thing is there are more IT directors and system administrators, not just hard-core developers doing personal applications. There are more mainstream commercial applications, and more sponsors, he said. That trend is why World Expo is holding its first Open Source Conference Oct. 2-5 in Washington. According to Scheschareg, feedback collected from federal government attendees of the Linux World shows has been very supportive of a program catering to government interests. He said two-thirds of agencies continue to use Microsoft operating systems, but they are giving us the impression that there is a lot of frustration with Windows NT. Linux offers an attractive alternative because it can be introduced in small projects at a very low cost and with no procurement processes, Scheschareg said. That description fit the Federal Aviation Administration in December 2000. What began as an experiment with Linux as an alternative to other expensive or error-prone operating systems is now the foundation of projects aimed at migrating several FAA mission-critical, Oracle database-driven applications off of Microsoft NT and Hewlett Packard Unix platforms and on to Intel-based servers running Linux. According to John Kelly, database administrator and project manager with Kenrob & Associates Inc., a contractor at the FAA Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Herndon, Va., the move to Linux is no longer perceived as a radical departure with convention. Linux is stable, offering the flexibility of Unix but at a much lower cost, Kelly said. Moreover, the strategy enables the FAA to reutilize several medium-sized servers, giving us more equipment options, he said. The FAA began exploring the Linux option about eight months ago, as the need to upgrade existing Oracle databases to later software versions became a priority. At the time, frequent problems with Microsoft NT-based servers soured Kelly and others on the operating system. We were not been pleased with NT. It seemed like the doors of the equipment cabinets [housing the NT servers] were always opened, like there were always problems that needed to be fixed, Kelly said. The other operating system used in the FAA data center, HP UX, had the downside of high cost. Linux was seen as a possible replacement for both, and we started an informal evaluation at the beginning of the year. By February, according to Kelly, the FAA had ported its application development environment to Linux, a move encouraged by Oracles support for Red Hats version of the operating system for use with its new database products. Kelly said he had heard the debates about the security and scalability of Linux, but rigorous testing alleviated his concerns. We saw we could push it hard in the testing that we performed and decided to purchase Dell servers to host Oracle on Red Hat Linux, phasing out our HP servers in the process, Kelly said. Today, the FAA has migrated several important applications to Linux and is developing new database applications for hosting on the platform that have a lot to do with the way that FAA does business, he said. In the process, the move to Linux has saved the FAA considerably in costs, Kelly said. While he could not quantify the savings, we know what were looking at, and it is quite a cost difference compared with the HP UX systems, he said. Kenrobs security manager had evaluated the overall security of the platform and developed a policy for locking it down that met the FAAs data protection requirements, Kelly said. He said any doubts he has about the scalability of the operating system were offset by two factors: better performance than HP-UX system and cost savings. Linux is a Unix-like operating system comprising a kernel developed in 1991 by Linus Torvalds at the University of Helsinki in Finland, and a number of system components developed by team members of the Free Software Foundation as part of an open-source operating system project. Conceived as a free or very low-cost alternative for Unix, Linux is a complete operating system that includes a graphical user interface and other components usually found in a comprehensive Unix system. While creators of some Linux components own copyrights of their contributed elements, Linux is distributed using the Free Software Foundations copyleft provisions, which require that any modified version of Linux that is redistributed must be freely available. Linux is a lightning rod for criticism by vendors of proprietary operating systems, such as Microsoft Corp., which has termed the operating system un-American and a threat to intellectual property rights. Linux is available for most major microprocessor platforms from Intel servers to IBM mainframes. It is widely used for Web serving and for high-performance, highly scalable server clustering, though advocates argue that it is just as capable as any other operating system of supporting mainstream applications and databases. Free distribution makes Linux market-share numbers difficult to pin down. Analysts note on their operating system market share data, which usually shows Linux as the second most popular server operating system (behind Microsoft), that license-free Linux may actually enjoy much greater share than that recorded by commercial distributors, such as Red Hat. Reported by Washington Technology, <A HREF="http://www.washingtontechnology.com">http://www.washingtontechnology.c om</A> Copyright (c) 2001 by Post-Newsweek Tech Media Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ------------------------------------------------------- -- Open Source Software depends on your support. If you use it, be sure to give something back. http://www.suse.com | http://www.kde.org http://www.mozilla.org | http://www.xemacs.org

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</rant>
by Timothy R.Butler 03 Oct '01

03 Oct '01

I just wanted to say I'm happy to drop my rant (until the next release <g>), so everyone can happily give a group sigh of relief that my rant is over for now. Now that I'm done with that I just need my copy of SuSE 7.3... -Tim -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy R. Butler Universal Networks tbutler(a)uninetsolutions.com ICQ #12495932 AIM: Uninettm Free/Open Source Web Tools: http://www.uninetsolutions.com Christian Portal and Search Tool: http://www.faithtree.com ============== "Christian Web Services Since 1996" ==============

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modem connections
by Jacek Boboli 03 Oct '01

03 Oct '01

Hi ! Today I configured Hylafax/Susefax as root. Since then it is impossible to launch modem connections (kppp + susefax) from individual users. As root still Ok. Checked the files like hosts.hfaxd, etc/hosts is rw inittab checked but no result. Reconfiguring the users (access to modem allowed) in yast1 doesn't modify the situation. What the hell will I have done wrong (surely something but what ?). Any idea ? Rgds Jacek

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7.3
by Fred A. Miller 03 Oct '01

03 Oct '01

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Below is what I rec'd from SuSE after I placed my order for 7.3. From this I ASSUME that it will ship tomorrow....not on the 12th. Fred ________________ Thank you for your purchase from SuSE's online Shop! You will be recieving your tracking number by email within the next business day. Order Number: xxxxxxxxxxx Login: xxxxxx Password: xxxxxx Your order will be shipped to the following address: etc. - -- - -- - ----/ / _ Fred A. Miller - ---/ / (_)__ __ ____ __ Systems Administrator - --/ /__/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ / Cornell Univ. Press Services - -/____/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\ fm(a)cupserv.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE7u1KHIhTtc6nTZIIRArloAJ42X62QTtHbdttStkDx6W2Hk9MGVgCgi3qV LkG54Ix2XgXm8LJTKDNqGqc= =c1L2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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SuSE 7.3 (Not a rant - just a question...)
by Cleary_Mike＠emc.com 03 Oct '01

03 Oct '01

I noticed that the game "Parsec" (space sim) was to be included in 7.3. I went to their home page (http://www.parsec.org <http://www.parsec.org> ) and it looks pretty cool (space sims are my personal favorite). BUT, from what I could gather, it isn't ready yet, and didn't sound like it would be anytime soon. Maybe the web site is just out of date.....? Just wondering if anyone else had heard anything about the status of Parsec since 7.3 is due to be released during the next 2 weeks. TIA, P.S. As long as "she who must be obeyed" doesn't find out, I'll most likely shell out the $80 for 7.3.....:-) MIke ------------------------------------------------------ Cleary_Mike(a)emc.com x6033 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Overflow on /dev/null, please empty the bit bucket.

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Re: [SLE] Tim's Upgrade Rant -- and more ;)
by Nick Webb 03 Oct '01

03 Oct '01

On Wednesday 03 October 2001 01:11 pm, you wrote: > On Wednesday 03 October 2001 18.47, Nick Webb wrote: > > Yast2 written in something other than Java. I've written graphical > > programs in Java, and I know it's easier, but I never tried to sell > > them. It's pretty sad when yast2 runs slow on my PIII-850MHz machine > > with 1GB of ram . . . > > AFAICS Yast2 is written in C++ > > Anders You know, I was gonna tell you all the reasons why I think it is, but I just launched it and it seem to be quite fast and responsive, perhaps something was wrong on my system before, but it HAS always been slow until today . . . or at least I think it was. I was always running it under Window Maker, and now under Enlightenment, but I don't think that should have any effect on it . . . weird. I looked at /sbin/yast2 and it's a shell script that runs /usr/lib/YaST2/bin/y2bignfat, see the below output of 'file' on that. . . . nickw@gizmo:~ > file /usr/lib/YaST2/bin/y2bignfat /usr/lib/YaST2/bin/y2bignfat: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped . . . Also looking at /sbin/yast2 it says "It starts the qt user interface", so that seems like a C/C++ program to me, using the qt toolkit. After that, me thinks your be right ;) Perhaps my last YOU update contained some performance improvements? -- Nick Webb http://www.uidaho.edu/~nickw/ =================================================================== "Thirty days hath Septober, April, June, and no wonder. all the rest have peanut butter except my father who wears red suspenders." ===================================================================

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7.3 Upgrade
by Nick Webb 03 Oct '01

03 Oct '01

With the news of the new release another question comes to mind, how painful is it to upgrade a SuSE machine to a new version? Anyone have particularly good (or bad) experienes with this? Thanks, _Nick

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Re: [SLE] Apache, CGI
by Martin Webster 03 Oct '01

03 Oct '01

On Tuesday 02 October 2001 9:34 pm, Brandon Caudle wrote: > [2001-10-02 17:34:52]: info: (target/actual) uid: (kheang/kheang) gid: > (users/users) cmd: test.cgi > this is the error i get Sorry, I don't recognise this message (is it from suexec.log?). Anyway, I think it's something to do with permissions, ownership and suexec. What else is there in /var/.og/httpd/error.log? And what version of Apache are you using? M -- Martin Webster <mwebster(a)ntlworld.com> Registered Linux User #230322 http://homepage.ntlworld.com/spider-monkey/

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Tim's Rant, Part II (The Response)
by Timothy R.Butler 03 Oct '01

03 Oct '01

Hello everyone, I was tired last night, so I didn't really express the fullness of my rant, so I will go into a bit more detail... BUT FIRST: I should also note that the "why SuSE is having finacial problems" part of the rant never made it into the message, but I forgot to remove that from the subject until after I sent the message. I am sorry about that. ANYWAY: The point is, SuSE has good justification to charge $60 bucks retail for SuSE Pro (that's what it goes for on average). You are basically paying for a bunch of great books and software. However, it's absolutely insane for them to charge $50 bucks plus S&H for the upgrade then. Now, to those who still disagree with my rant here, let me give an example. Apple is releasing a minor upgrade to OS X, but I hear it actually makes many improvements to the system. This is probably about the same amount of change the average user notices between SuSE releases. They want $20 for it if you are an existing customer. Where am I going with this? While some think Apple should just give away the upgrade, at least Apple sees that existing OS X users should receive a substantial discount on OS X.1. It's also worth noting that Apple probably spent way more in development of the improvements in OS X.1 than SuSE did in improvements between SuSE 7.2 and 7.3 (after all, probably 90%-95% of the stuff in SuSE Pro was developed without SuSE providing financial support to the developer). The key thing is, upgrades are suppose to be substantially cheaper for existing customers. With the way SuSE does upgrades, after S&H, why would I pay the same price as I would for SuSE Pro, only I don't get $40 worth of manuals. Does that make sense to anybody here? Yes, I understand that SuSE needs to make money. However, on the other hand, from release to release there is often little change in the system. I'm not arguing that SuSE should drop the price of the Professional version to $11 bucks. I'm arguing that if I upgrade from SuSE 7.2 to SuSE 7.3, I shouldn't pay the same amount (or virtually the same amount) as if I had just bought SuSE Pro for the first time. See what I mean? Now, on to my point about ISO's. SuSE says they can't offer ISO's because that would cut down too much on sales. How come Mandrake can? How come RedHat can? How come even the black sheep of Linux - Caldera - can, but SuSE can't? How are their losses by offering ISO's so much more than anybody elses? How would *I* resolve this? 1.) SuSE provides their retail boxes to stores at substantially lower (wholesale) price. They should drop the price of the Professional Upgrade to around (or slightly lower than) than the wholesale price of normal Professional version. That way SuSE would still make way more profit on the Upgrade version than on the normal version, and still give their users quite a deal. Lets say the wholesale price of SuSE Professional is $30. If they sell a SuSE Pro Upgrade for $30 directly to the consumer, they make just as much as they would from the retail box that sold for $60! Actually, more correctly, they would make more from the upgrade box in the above scenario, since it cost less to produce than the full version which would be sold at wholesale for the same price. 2.) If that is not acceptable, they should at least make the Upgrade available to the reseller channel, incase any stores *want* to carry it. That way at least it wouldn't cost the same as the full version. 3.) SuSE should provide at least a one or two CD version as a downloadable ISO version. Just like every other major distribution company. -Tim -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy R. Butler Universal Networks tbutler(a)uninetsolutions.com ICQ #12495932 AIM: Uninettm Free/Open Source Web Tools: http://www.uninetsolutions.com Christian Portal and Search Tool: http://www.faithtree.com ============== "Christian Web Services Since 1996" ==============

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