Re: [Fwd: Re: [SLE] Machine Building - Nightmare Alley - Compatibility and Upgrade]

On Thu, 2004-09-02 at 22:21, Ted Hilts wrote:

Jerry: Norton Anti Virus does this to me all the time. It intercepted and checked my out going email to you and because the connection became busy it just dropped it and does not retry later. This forces me to forward from my send catalog.

Linux has serveral Free Virus checkers, that will scan your email as it forwards it. I would suggest you setup a virus scan on the linux email server/router that handles your entire network. I don't bother, instead I have an ISP prorovder that does all the scanning/spamming work for me on all incoming/outgoing emails.

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [SLE] Machine Building - Nightmare Alley - Compatibility and Upgrade Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2004 14:13:30 -0600 From: Ted Hilts Reply-To: thilts@help-for-you.com Organization: help-for-you To: "Jerome R. Westrick" References: <41360C72.9020905@help-for-you.com> <1094073633.7173.183.camel@jerry.jerry.westrick.com>

Jerry:

Thankyou for a complete section by section response.

No Prblm. It's my payback for all the help I get...

I do appreciate your reply, it also demonstrates that you know how to "read" and read from a technical standpoint. Many people simply discard a written communications because they are not up to intellectually dealing with anything that initially seems complex. So thank you for making this effort. I like very much your suggestion of Alice which I think is on the 9.1 SuSe distribution.

One thing I maybe did not make clear. TELNET has associated with it a client/server packages. It is possible for a computer to be a TELNET client but not a TELNET server. Same is true of a lot of packages. When I used the word server I was not referring to a web server but to servers in general such as TELNET, FTP, NFS, etc. Clients ask for services. Servers provide these services. So that is what I meant.

However, you are correct in saying that I want a fully functional machine in every Linux machine with some exceptions. And here again, you mentioned ALICE would hanle differences between SERVERS (in the sense of a web server or data base server, etc.) But it would seem that ALICE could treat my machines as such SERVERS (like on a SERVER farm) and that would accomplish my objective.

I'm getting confussed here. So I'll try to state it in a clear way. ALICE if for "SERVER FARMS" (to use a term we've agreed on already). It generates the complete configuration out "Templates". Theese templates are really not much more than text files with variables to be substituted. The Text files generate constitute all the entire configuration of a Linux machine. Alice keeps the templates and the "parameters" (machine configuration) in CVS to give versioning support. Now Last I looked was a late SuSE 8.x version. But like I said the entire setup (ALICE Server, ALICE WORKSTATION, Generated Server, CVS Template, etc etc ) was just too much effort for the 5 or so servers I had at the time.

Most of my LAN problems are not with Linux but rather with MS operating systems. I have to run Anti Virus stuff on real time, email, and system scans and they consume a lot of bus bandwidth.. And every improvement coming from Microsoft turns the machine into a slower than before slug. I have a list of complaints far too numberous to set out here.

My remark about DISKs was meant to convey that I would save the old Linux 6.4, 6.2, Slackware, etc. Linux systems on their old disks (hard drives) which would simply go into storage. (I could reuse them if necessary by reinstalling them but that would only be necessary if there was a problem with the 9.1 installation on the NEW hard drives.) Hopefully they would not deteriorate in storage. Maybe it's not a good idea. But for sure I would put the 9.1 distribution for each machine on NEW hard drives as you suggested.

Regarding RAID. I got burnt using RAID. I have a Linux machine which is both WEB SERVER and DATABASE SERVER and it had RAID. Can't remember the details. The CPU was AMD and frequently crashed. I did not understand how to technically manage or interact from the command line with RAID. I was afraid of it to be honest. I turned the problem over to a consultant and he also was unable to deal with it. So we ended up just using the hard drives in a conventional manner. I realize that is not a good excuse and one day I will have to get better educated and skilled regarding RAID. The kernel on that machine was recompiled to accommodate the software RAID function. That's all I remember about it.

I had some problems with Software Raid On SUSE 6.4 also. Biggest problem was the 1.5 hours rebuild time after an "unclean" shutdown. On the other had, at a doctors office here in Switzerland, where they were doing heavy construction on the street infront of his door, I had a really bad case. THe Electricity Blinked. machine rebooted, software raid rebuild began. Then the electricity proceded to fail again 6 consectives times during the 6 consectutive rebuilds. A little hand work was required, (and a 150$ paid support call to SuSE, to confirm the right raid commands) but in the end I had no data loss. The software raid has matured quite a bit since thoose days. Today I trust myself to "hotadd", "hotdrop" disks from arrays, etc. etc. And most important, the rebuild happens in backgraound while the system is running... I have SATA RAID, and IDE RAID cards. I turn the RAID off where the card allows it, and define single disk raid-0 where the hardware cannot be turned off. And then use software raid. The software raid is faster, and I feel more confortable with it. And of course the clencher, I can take a SW-Raid disk, stick it in an external USB Box and get access to the data...

THANKS again for your reply and for taking the many hours to do so.

No Prblm.

TED

BTW: If you do look into ALICE, keep me posted, as I start getting more and more servers to support, ALICE is looking better, and better 8-)