[opensuse] How to monitor Linux systems from a focal/central point (was: ranting and raving about removing the MTA).
Anton Aylward wrote:
Per Jessen said the following on 10/24/2008 03:58 AM: [snip]
I completely fail to see any security issue in having a postfix MTA listening on localhost:25 on a desktop machine.
If you want to make this a security issue then the whole thing of applications sending out alerts by mail is the security issue.
I have no desire to turn this into a security issue - that topic was introduced by somebody else.
In a enterprise setting this is normally handled by a central syslog mechanism for the enterprise and there is some very sophisticated software supporting this.
In the enterprise, SNMP is by far the preferred method for real-time alerts, failing that email. The syslog is primarily for auditing and post-mortem purposes. If the syslog was really so central in enterprise real-time monitoring of Linux systems, it's difficult to understand why popular monitoring tools typically provide an email option, very often also an SNMP MIB, but usually no plain syslog option. (ex: mdadm, smartd, HPs Proliant Support pack tools).
I'm perfectly well aware of how to set up Postfix, and, for my sins, sendmail before that. I've been using Postfix for over a decade both on my home system and in large (> 50 server, > 1,000 users) enterprise settings as well as for ISPs. I run it on my own home network on a dedicated mail hub. However before I installed openSUSE none of my non-mail hub machines and in the specific not my laptop or desk workstation ran Postfix, exim, sendmail or other such MTA.
Which distro were you running? Maybe it was a better option for you. I'm curious though, how did you manage to receive the various systems alerts and messages without a local MTA? Did you write your own /usr/sbin/sendmail to drop the text directly into the filesystem?
But more to the point while I *can* configure Postfix, the installation process should configure the mail forwarder.
As it does too, it just assumes that no forwarding is necessary and that the enterprise admin person with a central mailserver will probably be capable of using vi to correct the single line in /etc/postfix/main.cf. It's hardly worth writing up a YaST2 module for.
Anton, I think I'm going to say "troll". No enterprise monitors events via syslog - they are far more likely to use SNMP, HP Openview, BMC Patrol, Tivoli and such tools.
Having worked in IT & Security at large banks and telcos I can assert that syslog *is* a primary central monitoring tool in large corporations.
Having done roughly the same for the last 25 years, I submit that the syslog is primarily for auditing and post-mortem purposes, and that SNMP (and/or similar) is certainly the real-time alert mechanism of choice where many Linux systems are involved. /Per -- /Per Jessen, Zürich -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Sunday 26 October 2008 00:16:25 Per Jessen wrote: [...snip...]
I'm perfectly well aware of how to set up Postfix, and, for my sins, sendmail before that. I've been using Postfix for over a decade both on my home system and in large (> 50 server, > 1,000 users) enterprise settings as well as for ISPs. I run it on my own home network on a dedicated mail hub. However before I installed openSUSE none of my non-mail hub machines and in the specific not my laptop or desk workstation ran Postfix, exim, sendmail or other such MTA.
Which distro were you running? Maybe it was a better option for you. I'm curious though, how did you manage to receive the various systems alerts and messages without a local MTA? Did you write your own /usr/sbin/sendmail to drop the text directly into the filesystem?
Pardon me for butting in, but my understanding is that local delivery of mail is the job of the MDA (mail *delivery* agent) not the MTA (mail *transfer* agent). Sendmail is not an MDA - it does not deliver local mail to a user's mailbox. It is designed to transfer mail between hosts. Local delivery is the job of something like procmail. Postfix and Exim, as I understand, include both MTA and MDA functionality. I agree - you do need to have an MDA running to locally delivery user's mail to their mailboxes, unless the users are solely accessing an external mailserver via POP3, IMAP or the like using a client such as Kmail, Evolution etc. in which case no local MDA is needed, *unless* the user also wants to receive adminstrative emails from the local machine that are normally directed to root. My understanding of the original poster of this thread was concerned that sendmail/Postfix/Exim were dependencies that *could not be uninstalled without breaking the system to the point of unusability* - the concern was that since his machine was either stand-alone or client-only and was very limited on disk space, that these services should be able to be uninstalled (or not installed in the first place) without breaking the whole system. In that regard, I tend to agree. Forget the enterprise or other scenarios - this is solely regarding the case of a minimal install on a resource-limited client machine that has absolutely no need for an MTA to be installed. Even client software such as Kmail/Evolution/Thunderbird can send via an external mail server. IMHO, modern Linux distributions (and I'm not referring just to openSUSE) have made it increasingly difficult to install a trimmed down "lite" system by introducing many dependencies that, on the surface, to the non-expert user (and even to some more knowledgeable users) appear nonsensical. Others (including, apparently, the developers and project managers) see it differently and that is OK. I guess that is where the truly "lite" distros such as Puppy and DSL fit in. Following on from that, since openSUSE is effectively the community "development" distro for SLED and SLES, it is unlikely that we'll ever see a really "lite-capable" version of openSUSE for resource-constrained hardware unless someone external to the project builds it specifically for that purpose. I'll butt out again now :-). Cheers, -- =================================================== Rodney Baker VK5ZTV rodney.baker@iinet.net.au ===================================================
Rodney Baker wrote:
On Sunday 26 October 2008 00:16:25 Per Jessen wrote: [...snip...]
I'm perfectly well aware of how to set up Postfix, and, for my sins, sendmail before that. I've been using Postfix for over a decade both on my home system and in large (> 50 server, > 1,000 users) enterprise settings as well as for ISPs. I run it on my own home network on a dedicated mail hub. However before I installed openSUSE none of my non-mail hub machines and in the specific not my laptop or desk workstation ran Postfix, exim, sendmail or other such MTA.
Which distro were you running? Maybe it was a better option for you. I'm curious though, how did you manage to receive the various systems alerts and messages without a local MTA? Did you write your own /usr/sbin/sendmail to drop the text directly into the filesystem?
Pardon me for butting in, but my understanding is that local delivery of mail is the job of the MDA (mail *delivery* agent) not the MTA (mail *transfer* agent).
That's correct, I would say. In postfix, local delivery is handled by "local", one of postfix' components. I guess I tend to use "MTA" to mean the whole postfix/sendmail/exim package.
Postfix and Exim, as I understand, include both MTA and MDA functionality. I agree - you do need to have an MDA running to locally delivery user's mail to their mailboxes, unless the users are solely accessing an external mailserver via POP3, IMAP or the like using a client such as Kmail, Evolution etc. in which case no local MDA is needed, *unless* the user also wants to receive adminstrative emails from the local machine that are normally directed to root.
How the users accesses his mail is somewhat independent of how it is delivered locally. When you use POP3 or IMAP, the mail has still got to be delivered <somewhere> until it is retrieved.
My understanding of the original poster of this thread was concerned that sendmail/Postfix/Exim were dependencies that *could not be uninstalled without breaking the system to the point of unusability* -
I'm not sure what OPs concern really was, but the above is certainly true. It is not something particular to openSUSE, it is also the case for the other popular distros.
the concern was that since his machine was either stand-alone or client-only and was very limited on disk space, that these services should be able to be uninstalled (or not installed in the first place) without breaking the whole system.
In that regard, I tend to agree. Forget the enterprise or other scenarios - this is solely regarding the case of a minimal install on a resource-limited client machine that has absolutely no need for an MTA to be installed.
If space is really so limited, the OP should probably opt for a different distro. There are distros out there that are optimized for e.g. embedded systems or from running from a single floppydisk or USB stick. Trying to argue that openSUSE, a general purpose distro forming the basis of SLED and SLES, should include an option not to have an MTA installed, is an exercise in futility IMHO.
IMHO, modern Linux distributions (and I'm not referring just to openSUSE) have made it increasingly difficult to install a trimmed down "lite" system by introducing many dependencies that, on the surface, to the non-expert user (and even to some more knowledgeable users) appear nonsensical.
Does the non-expert user really have a need to install a general purpose distro as a trimmed down light system? If so, all you have to do is deselect the GUI, and you'll have a pretty minimal system that'll easily fit in less than 1G. /Per -- /Per Jessen, Zürich -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 10:50 AM, Per Jessen <per@opensuse.org> wrote:
Does the non-expert user really have a need to install a general purpose distro as a trimmed down light system? If so, all you have to do is deselect the GUI, and you'll have a pretty minimal system that'll easily fit in less than 1G.
But it will still have the (unneeded) MTA. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Andrew Joakimsen wrote:
On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 10:50 AM, Per Jessen <per@opensuse.org> wrote:
Does the non-expert user really have a need to install a general purpose distro as a trimmed down light system? If so, all you have to do is deselect the GUI, and you'll have a pretty minimal system that'll easily fit in less than 1G.
But it will still have the (unneeded) MTA.
Not if you don't install it. Feel free to shoot yourself in the foot. And don't tell me you can't avoid installing it. /Per -- /Per Jessen, Zürich -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Rodney Baker said the following on 10/25/2008 10:18 AM:
Pardon me for butting in, but my understanding is that local delivery of mail is the job of the MDA (mail *delivery* agent) not the MTA (mail *transfer* agent).
Sendmail is not an MDA - it does not deliver local mail to a user's mailbox. It is designed to transfer mail between hosts. Local delivery is the job of something like procmail.
*sigh* I wish it were as simple and well partitioned as that! Postfix, as well as the old sendmail, qmail, Smail3, ZMailer and others, is capable of local delivery as well. Having Postfix pipe ail for local delivery though procmail is very sensible and offers a great deal of per user controllability. I have my Postfix->procmail(user) on my mail hub bypass via a whitelist, and put mail in the correct folders, and run the rest through spamassassin. Along the way I have a blacklist, some of it from spamassassin, that procmail pipes back to Postfix. Some of the back-feed is to spam analysis sites and some of it simply bounces.
Postfix and Exim, as I understand, include both MTA and MDA functionality. I agree - you do need to have an MDA running to locally delivery user's mail to their mailboxes, unless the users are solely accessing an external mailserver via POP3, IMAP or the like using a client such as Kmail, Evolution etc. in which case no local MDA is needed, *unless* the user also wants to receive adminstrative emails from the local machine that are normally directed to root.
And there we get to the point of the original discussion. (From which we've diverged too much!) Given that many installed packages use mail rather than syslog ... Oh, why should they? Well mail forces delivery, syslog doesn't. ... either this is an enterprise setting with IT support to take care of configuration, in which case we wouldn't be having this discussion, or its a small home system. If the latter its either a sophisticated user such as Per, Carlos, yourself or myself, or its Joe AverageUser or his parents or grandparents. If its a sophisticated user, then we can hack things whatever way we choose, and that's not what I'm interested in or the point I'm trying to make. So Joe (or...) has this Linux, possibly form a LiveCD so he cold kick the tires without committing himself, and its really to avoid the Windows Tax. He's running a GUI, reads mail via Gmail, browses the web, downloads his camera writes a few letters, does a bit of accounting with a spreadsheet. He doesn't want to know what's "under the hood" any more than with his cell phone (which, coincidently runs an embedded version of Linux! but he doesn't know that), his fridge or his mp3 player.
My understanding of the original poster of this thread was concerned that sendmail/Postfix/Exim were dependencies that *could not be uninstalled without breaking the system to the point of unusability* - the concern was that since his machine was either stand-alone or client-only and was very limited on disk space, that these services should be able to be uninstalled (or not installed in the first place) without breaking the whole system.
Actually I can see a number of ways that the system can become brittle or perhaps eventually 'break' even if they are installed. The way my system was installed from a LiveCD (not an upgrade of a previous, just blow away everything except the /home partition) was like that. If the installation is into one partition - the way things are usually with MS-Windows - it become VERY brittle and insecure.
In that regard, I tend to agree. Forget the enterprise or other scenarios - this is solely regarding the case of a minimal install on a resource-limited client machine that has absolutely no need for an MTA to be installed. Even client software such as Kmail/Evolution/Thunderbird can send via an external mail server.
:-) And more to the point, while all those *can* access local files, the user has to know and set it up to do so. No wonder people are returning the Linux netbooks; Linux as is takes too much set-up. The old accusation that UNIX was written by geeks for geeks seems to be true in trumps for Linux. -- The real distinction is between those who adapt their purposes to reality and those who seek to mould reality in the light of their purposes. Henry Kissinger -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Per Jessen said the following on 10/25/2008 09:46 AM:
Anton Aylward wrote:
I have no desire to turn this into a security issue - that topic was introduced by somebody else.
stet.
In a enterprise setting this is normally handled by a central syslog mechanism for the enterprise and there is some very sophisticated software supporting this.
In the enterprise, SNMP is by far the preferred method for real-time alerts, failing that email. The syslog is primarily for auditing and post-mortem purposes.
Our experiences differ. I've worked with real-time monitoring built around syslog at international banks and brokerages, and the datacenters for high-street stores. I was shocked when I first saw some of the heavy processing going on, not least of all putting the syslog records in a relational database so that all manner of analysis can be done, time trends and such like, that simply isn't possible with reports by email.
If the syslog was really so central in enterprise real-time monitoring of Linux systems, it's difficult to understand why popular monitoring tools typically provide an email option,
No, not at all. You are taking an exclusionary stance, I'm taking an exclusionary stance. E-mail and syslog can perform different ends. For example, a manager can request changes of access permission for his staff from the IT department via e-mail, and this is logged and archived for regulatory (e.g.Sarbanes Oxley) compliance and can be audited. Similarly external communications with vendors and contractors. How alerts resulting from any one of a number of mechanisms are delivered to users depends on context. It is also independent of the way that the alerts are generated and delivered to the mechanism that delivers alerts to the humans. I think you are confusing the two. E-mail is inherently asynchronous. SMTP is a store-and-forward protocol. It works even if there is a loss of connectivity; the messages will be delivered when connectivity is restored. It is a TCP rather than a UDP mechanism so it needs two-way connectivity. It is asynchronous at the human level. Mail delivered overnight, no matter how urgent, is waiting there for me when I log in the next morning, or perhaps the next day or the next week. Even if I am logged in I may be working on other matters and not have my mail reader window open. I may not have a system that pops up a "you have mail" on my screen. At the human level email is asynchronous and unreliable. More reliable, in that it will interrupt me (or even wake me) is delivery by pager or cell-phone. Yes, I can still turn them up or ignore them, but they don't require me to be logged in and I can be involved in other activities than computer related ones. And before you ask, yes my phone has interrupted at embarrassing moments. If email is routed to a program rather than a mailbox then the whole matter becomes moot. Automatic mail responders are inherently no different from any other watcher. The input might as well come from a filtered syslog or MQ channel. The only difference is between TCP and UDP. System control rather than simply passive monitoring is another matter. network components such as routers and switches report by syslog and SNMP, but syslog is a reporting mechanism not a controlling mechanism. If you want to expand this to control then pleas change the subject line. At present it says "monitor".
Which distro were you running? Maybe it was a better option for you.
SunOS back when, Solaris; UNIX V6 and V7 when I was a kernel hacker, SYSIII, SYSV Berkeley BSD 2.4 though 2.8 and 4.0 though 4.1; AIX from the beginning through to current; man versions of HP/UX; DG/UX; many now defunct versions of microprocessor "unix" not least of all SCO's XENIX, including the ports of it by HCR to various platforms. I even had one spell using Zeus on a machine running the Zilog Z-8001 processor though I thought the Onyx version on their box much more fun. I *like* AIX but can't afford it it home. I've run a number of versions of Linux over the last decade and half, but have little interest in switching back and forth.
I'm curious though, how did you manage to receive the various systems alerts and messages without a local MTA? Did you write your own /usr/sbin/sendmail to drop the text directly into the filesystem?
You are failing to differentiate between how I have configured systems and how I thing a system for a variety of different contexts should be allowed to be configured to suit the needs of that context. My how set-up and experimentation and each of my clients over the years have all been different. Again: you are being exclusionary, I'm being inclusive. I can say that SNMP is for command and control of devices that need controlling whereas many devices can simply report - via syslog. I can say that an auditor doing a BASEL, FFIEC, SOX or HIPAA audit is going to be more interested in mail records than syslog records. And there are contexts where that's absolutely correct. And some where none of it applies, since BASEL, FFIEC, SOX and all the rest don't apply everywhere. And some enterprises that don't use SNMP. One size doesn't fit all. Context is everything. -- "Too many preachers use the bible as a stepladder for their soapbox." -- John Tandervold -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Anton Aylward wrote:
I was shocked when I first saw some of the heavy processing going on, not least of all putting the syslog records in a relational database so that all manner of analysis can be done, time trends and such like, that simply isn't possible with reports by email.
Like I said - syslog is for audit trails and post-mortem analysis - email and SNMP are more for the real-time alert. [big snip about email - I didn't quite get your point]
System control rather than simply passive monitoring is another matter. network components such as routers and switches report by syslog and SNMP, but syslog is a reporting mechanism not a controlling mechanism. If you want to expand this to control then pleas change the subject line. At present it says "monitor".
No, this is not about controlling.
Which distro were you running? Maybe it was a better option for you.
SunOS back when, Solaris; UNIX V6 and V7 when I was a kernel hacker, SYSIII, SYSV Berkeley BSD 2.4 though 2.8 and 4.0 though 4.1; AIX from the beginning through to current; man versions of HP/UX; DG/UX; many now defunct versions of microprocessor "unix" not least of all SCO's XENIX, including the ports of it by HCR to various platforms. I even had one spell using Zeus on a machine running the Zilog Z-8001 processor though I thought the Onyx version on their box much more fun. I *like* AIX but can't afford it it home. I've run a number of versions of Linux over the last decade and half, but have little interest in switching back and forth.
Well, I have difficulty in believing that Solaris, AIX and HPUX all manage perfectly well without postfix/sendmail/exim/<anyMTA>, but I don't have enough experience with those to contradict you. Still, why don't you run openSolaris if that does what you want?
I'm curious though, how did you manage to receive the various systems alerts and messages without a local MTA? Did you write your own /usr/sbin/sendmail to drop the text directly into the filesystem?
You are failing to differentiate between how I have configured systems and how I thing a system for a variety of different contexts should be allowed to be configured to suit the needs of that context.
You stated very clearly that "before I installed openSUSE none of my non-mail hub machines and in the specific not my laptop or desk workstation ran Postfix, exim, sendmail or other such MTA.". I'm only asking how you did it, that's all. /Per -- /Per Jessen, Zürich -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Per Jessen said the following on 10/25/2008 12:49 PM:
[big snip about email - I didn't quite get your point]
That's clear. Its also clear I've seen many operations where syslog is of more importance and email is the audit side.
[..]
No, this is not about controlling.
SNMP is not just about monitoring. Its has control & configuration capability as well.
Which distro were you running? [...]
Well, I have difficulty in believing that Solaris, AIX and HPUX all manage perfectly well without postfix/sendmail/exim/<anyMTA>, but I don't have enough experience with those to contradict you. Still, why don't you run openSolaris if that does what you want?
You asked me what I've run, you didn't ask about the settings, the context. If I really want to be picky I could add my cell phone. I also have a wireless router than runs an embedded Linux. They don't have MTA and their context is a little more self apparent. And yes, some of those enterprise networks had workstations & headless devices that had a simple dumb forwarder.
You stated very clearly that "before I installed openSUSE none of my non-mail hub machines and in the specific not my laptop or desk workstation ran Postfix, exim, sendmail or other such MTA.". I'm only asking how you did it, that's all.
We've drifted from the original point which was that openSUSE Postfix demanded you have the LDAP libraries installed. The Mandriva I was running immediately before I installed openSUSE-11.0 from the LiveCD didn't have that dependency. I should check the sources to see if openSUSE has a compile option for no ldap and how that would affect packaging. The old config ... had a laptop mode where it was running on batteries a lot of things that were installed were turned off and the disk and screen shut down sooner and more stuff like that. One of the things it did was check to see if it was on the home LAN. If not there was no MTA. So in that case it didn't matter what MTA I had installed... or none. But the key issue wasn't WHICH MTA, but that the MTA didn't have a ridiculous dependency list. As a final note, you seem to think that the MTA is the deciding factor for me. The MTA is an incidental. This thread was originally about dependencies. As I pointed out, without a specifically configured MTA many users won't see the system generated mails. They may as well not be there, not happen. It doesn't matter that the default install delivers to localhost; /var/spool/mail/root may as well be linked to /dev/null. The problem is that various utilities need the MTA since mail needs a 'receiver'. There should be an alternative "null" MTA that just does "cat - > /dev/null" and doesn't depend on ldap. If the user isn't part of a, for example, corporate network, then what's the point of this mail? The user isn't going to see it. If you don't like the example of how Microsoft Windows deals with 'alarms', that is events which have to be reported to the user because of a non-trivial error (as opposed to audit events which are probably turned off for a 'home' user), then look how it was dealt with on the various version of the Macintosh, before and after OSX. But once again, the real issue isn't what MTA, its that the present install means that useful facilities such as CRON drag in a MTA that drags in other stuff like LDAP. Setting MAILTO="" won't do anything about that dependency chain. In this thread we've dragged in a lot of other things, but the essentials are about the dependency chain. Regardless of whether or not a MTA is needed, making ldap a dependency is the kind of idiotic 'bloatware' that we might expect from Microsoft. ------ I just checked the sources. The "-DHAS_LDAP" compile-time option enables LDAP in Postfix. Yes, it can be built without the need for LDAP. There's also a note which makes me think that the LDAP support _could_ be pluggable. It says that installing the "postfix-ldap" package will do the job, so presumably if you don't it isn't. It seems that openSUSE have chosen not to go that way. As I said right at the beginning of this thread, it is a decision point. It could have been made the other way. -- Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. --John Stuart Mill -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Anton Aylward wrote:
Its also clear I've seen many operations where syslog is of more importance and email is the audit side.
From your point of view, perhaps. Email in my point of view only started in 1989 when I first brought the DISOSS tape to a colleague of mine who was going to install it. Prior to that syslog was still primarily for audting, and alerts were generated differently. (I grew up in the IBM mainframe arena).
No, this is not about controlling.
SNMP is not just about monitoring. Its has control & configuration capability as well.
Anton, please stop being condescending. It does you no good. I'll repeat that this thread is not about controlling, but about monitoring.
Which distro were you running? [...]
Well, I have difficulty in believing that Solaris, AIX and HPUX all manage perfectly well without postfix/sendmail/exim/<anyMTA>, but I don't have enough experience with those to contradict you. Still, why don't you run openSolaris if that does what you want?
You asked me what I've run, you didn't ask about the settings, the context.
Yes, I did in fact ask you just that. Please don't twist my words. Regardless, I'll then ask you directly about "the settings and the context" - i.e. HOW did you do it?
If I really want to be picky I could add my cell phone. I also have a wireless router than runs an embedded Linux. They don't have MTA and their context is a little more self apparent.
Add your garden gnome and your coffee percolator for all I care - we're talking about openSUSE and similar distros, possibly even other similar UNIX systems.
And yes, some of those enterprise networks had workstations & headless devices that had a simple dumb forwarder.
Which was?
You stated very clearly that "before I installed openSUSE none of my non-mail hub machines and in the specific not my laptop or desk workstation ran Postfix, exim, sendmail or other such MTA.". I'm only asking how you did it, that's all.
We've drifted from the original point
You may have, I haven't.
which was that openSUSE Postfix demanded you have the LDAP libraries installed.
No, that was not my topic when I started this NEW thread. If you feel that is worth discussing, please start a new thread.
As a final note, you seem to think that the MTA is the deciding factor for me.
Not really, no. I don't give a toss which MTA you use. My point was that if you do not install an MTA (sendmail/postfix/exim) on your openSUSE system, you have really screwed your system up.
The MTA is an incidental. This thread was originally about dependencies. As I pointed out, without a specifically configured MTA many users won't see the system generated mails. They may as well not be there, not happen. It doesn't matter that the default install delivers to localhost; /var/spool/mail/root may as well be linked to /dev/null. The problem is that various utilities need the MTA since mail needs a 'receiver'. There should be an alternative "null" MTA that just does "cat - > /dev/null" and doesn't depend on ldap.
cat <<XXX #!/bin/sh
/dev/null XXX >/usr/sbin/sendmail
If the user isn't part of a, for example, corporate network, then what's the point of this mail? The user isn't going to see it.
Who says that the email has to go to the desktop user?
But once again, the real issue isn't what MTA, its that the present install means that useful facilities such as CRON drag in a MTA that drags in other stuff like LDAP. Setting MAILTO="" won't do anything about that dependency chain.
I really think you need to start a different thread on that topic. I looked at one of my server systems, and I think a saw two LDAP-related libraries plus 4-5 YaST2-ditto. Given that the days of harddisk-sizes measured in megabytes are long gone, what is the _real_ problem?
------ I just checked the sources. The "-DHAS_LDAP" compile-time option enables LDAP in Postfix. Yes, it can be built without the need for LDAP.
Of course it can - seriously, you're quite obviously hung up about this LDAP dependency - open a bugreport, document your findings, and get it fixed. I don't understand why you haven't done so long ago? (or maybe you have?) /Per -- /Per Jessen, Zürich -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Per Jessen said the following on 10/25/2008 04:21 PM:
HOW did you do it?
sSMTP actually, but it was overkill as it only talked to my mailhub. As I said, 'netcat' would have done the job, or a small shell script. sSMTP 'cos I was keeping mu options open. I had this idea that perhaps I would have a profile for the laptop at home on the home LAN and it forwards to my mailhub, and another profile for when I'm away and it forwards to an ISP and my mailhub fetches that via 'fetchmail'. Anyway, lightweight stuff. The real heavy Postfix set-up is on the mailhub. Keep it DRY. The point, as Ruben Safir originally made, is that some of the stuff that dependencies drag in is overfill for a single machine, a laptop, a home computer, especially one that is primary concerned with browsing. -- In 2006, the attackers want to pay the rent. They don't want to write a worm that destroys your hardware. They want to assimilate your computers and use them to make money. — Mike Danseglio, program manager in the Security Solutions group at Microsoft, April 4, 2006 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
This may be of value http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Syslog_server http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Enterprise_Syslog_Server I have used both Eventgnosis products to monitor and collect syslog data from many PC's and its really good. The Event Centre application is really great and I have it running on my LAN. The CEP product is for really massive networks 500 PC+ Anton Aylward wrote:
Per Jessen said the following on 10/25/2008 04:21 PM:
HOW did you do it?
sSMTP actually, but it was overkill as it only talked to my mailhub. As I said, 'netcat' would have done the job, or a small shell script.
sSMTP 'cos I was keeping mu options open. I had this idea that perhaps I would have a profile for the laptop at home on the home LAN and it forwards to my mailhub, and another profile for when I'm away and it forwards to an ISP and my mailhub fetches that via 'fetchmail'. Anyway, lightweight stuff. The real heavy Postfix set-up is on the mailhub. Keep it DRY.
The point, as Ruben Safir originally made, is that some of the stuff that dependencies drag in is overfill for a single machine, a laptop, a home computer, especially one that is primary concerned with browsing.
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
----- Original Message ----- From: "Anton Aylward" <anton.aylward@rogers.com> To: "Open SuSE mail list" <opensuse@opensuse.org> Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2008 5:38 PM
Subject: Re: [opensuse] How to monitor Linux systems from a focal/central point (was: ranting and raving about removing the MTA).
Per Jessen said the following on 10/25/2008 04:21 PM:
HOW did you do it?
sSMTP actually, but it was overkill as it only talked to my mailhub. As I said, 'netcat' would have done the job, or a small shell script.
sSMTP 'cos I was keeping mu options open. I had this idea that perhaps I would have a profile for the laptop at home on the home LAN and it forwards to my mailhub, and another profile for when I'm away and it forwards to an ISP and my mailhub fetches that via 'fetchmail'. Anyway, lightweight stuff. The real heavy Postfix set-up is on the mailhub. Keep it DRY.
The point, as Ruben Safir originally made, is that some of the stuff that dependencies drag in is overfill for a single machine, a laptop, a home computer, especially one that is primary concerned with browsing.
----------------------------- Rather, to me this all just sounds like you (collectively, or the OP) simply want some other distribution whos stated goal is to be tiny, or no distribution at all just put exactly what you want on your hardware. opensuse is perfectly functional for it's target, which is contemporary machines from laptops to servers. Contemporary as in todays opensuse on todays laptops. I still say it's absolutely retarded to complain that you can't install or run the latest _anything_ that aims to be full featured and generic (such as opensuse or windows for that matter) on 10 or more year old hardware. If you have hardware that falls outside the mainstream, then of course you need special software for it. The fault is not opensuse for being obscenely fat. It's not really. (sure it is in comparison to 10 or 15 year old systems) The fault is even thinking about running something large like a typical modern general purpose linux distribution on tiny hardware. If you can't stand a couple of libraries and a binary that you don't intend to use, then build your own distro or use one of the distros that specializes in extreme customization and optimization. This is like me complaining that my truck is poorly designed because it doesn't fit everywhere my tiny little Miata does, nor get it's gas mileage, nor accellerate or corner nearly as well. Well duh?? Opensuse is a _general purpose_ distro. It pretty much has to include such things as ldap libraries because numerous applications might be called upon at any time to talk to and ldap server. If you don't want a large general purpose distribution, then don't install a large general purpose distribution. I don't know that tomorrow I won't suddenly have a need for ldap, and so I'm perfectly happy that my system is ready to do it even though I never used it so far. It's a common enough thing that support should be in there. I use imagemagic for some document scanning/faxing/printing/pdf stuff in my application, but I only ever use png, tiff3g, and pcl graphics formats. Damn opensuse for including all that unnecessary jpeg and bmp support in all those graphics tools! -- Brian K. White brian@aljex.com http://www.myspace.com/KEYofR +++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++. filePro BBx Linux SCO FreeBSD #callahans Satriani Filk! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Brian K. White said the following on 10/26/2008 07:59 PM:
opensuse is perfectly functional for it's target, which is contemporary machines from laptops to servers. Contemporary as in todays opensuse on todays laptops. I still say it's absolutely retarded to complain that you can't install or run the latest _anything_ that aims to be full featured and generic (such as opensuse or windows for that matter) on 10 or more year old hardware.
If you have hardware that falls outside the mainstream, then of course you need special software for it.
I suppose you could say the Kindle isn't mainstream, though it runs Linux, but many of the netbooks - not 10 years old - are running on SSDs and don't have the 160G to 320G of "mainstream" laptops. Netbooks seem to be coming with 8G, 16G or 40G SSD. I have a friend with a Eee 900 and he installed Mandriva on a 16G model without having to hack the dependency, runs KDE, T'bird, FF. Can that be done with openSUSE-11.0 while respecting the dependency? How much workspace is left over? However, I do note that while MySQL and PostGres are plugins for Postfix, LDAP is compiled in, which is why its a dependency. This despite the documentation that openSUSE supplies mentioning that LDAP can be a plugin. Who made the decision that LDAP would be compiled in and hence a necessary dependency but not MySQL? MySQL is easier to set up than LDAP. BTDT - both ways. -- Me...a skeptic? I trust you can prove that. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Anton Aylward wrote:
Brian K. White said the following on 10/26/2008 07:59 PM:
If you have hardware that falls outside the mainstream, then of course you need special software for it.
I suppose you could say the Kindle isn't mainstream, though it runs Linux, but many of the netbooks - not 10 years old - are running on SSDs and don't have the 160G to 320G of "mainstream" laptops.
Netbooks seem to be coming with 8G, 16G or 40G SSD.
It's been a while since I've done a full complete-with-gui openSUSE installation, but I seem to remember the installation summary usually ending up around 2.5-3Gb. My AMD64 workstation which I use for development has an openSUSE 10.3 install, with currently 10Gb of diskspace taken up. About 1Gb of that is miscellaneous source code in /usr/src, java and Adobe stuff take up some 1.3Gb in /opt, and I've no doubt got a pile of unneeded multimedia stuff.
I have a friend with a Eee 900 and he installed Mandriva on a 16G model without having to hack the dependency, runs KDE, T'bird, FF. Can that be done with openSUSE-11.0 while respecting the dependency?
I have not tried, but I would very surprised if not.
However, I do note that while MySQL and PostGres are plugins for Postfix, LDAP is compiled in, which is why its a dependency. This despite the documentation that openSUSE supplies mentioning that LDAP can be a plugin.
I've just installed a number of servers with 11.0 and postfix, and I didn't notice any LDAP dependencies - all I see installed is: ldapcpplib openldap2-client openldap2-devel yast2-ldap yast2-ldap-client /Per -- /Per Jessen, Zürich -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Tuesday 28 October 2008 12:05:06 am Per Jessen wrote:
It's been a while since I've done a full complete-with-gui openSUSE installation, but I seem to remember the installation summary usually ending up around 2.5-3Gb. My AMD64 workstation which I use for development has an openSUSE 10.3 install, with currently 10Gb of diskspace taken up. About 1Gb of that is miscellaneous source code in /usr/src, java and Adobe stuff take up some 1.3Gb in /opt, and I've no doubt got a pile of unneeded multimedia stuff.
I read somewhere that a 20MB hard drive is all you'll ever need... Oh, and has anyone been able to get on the Codeweavers site today? -- kai www.filesite.org || www.perfectreign.com Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it. - Dee Hock -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Kai Ponte wrote:
On Tuesday 28 October 2008 12:05:06 am Per Jessen wrote:
It's been a while since I've done a full complete-with-gui openSUSE installation, but I seem to remember the installation summary usually ending up around 2.5-3Gb. My AMD64 workstation which I use for development has an openSUSE 10.3 install, with currently 10Gb of diskspace taken up. About 1Gb of that is miscellaneous source code in /usr/src, java and Adobe stuff take up some 1.3Gb in /opt, and I've no doubt got a pile of unneeded multimedia stuff.
I read somewhere that a 20MB hard drive is all you'll ever need...
Kai, I've got a box of 20 x 290Mb - would you be interested? These are genuine IBM drives, in the original packaging too. Better let me know before I put them up on ebay. /Per -- /Per Jessen, Zürich -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Brian K. White said the following on 10/26/2008 07:59 PM:
I don't know that tomorrow I won't suddenly have a need for ldap, and so I'm perfectly happy that my system is ready to do it even though I never used it so far. It's a common enough thing that support should be in there.
That's a specious argument. I use MySQL for my applications, but I *might* one day want to use Oracle or DB2. That doesn't mean I *have* to have them loaded right now. I'm happy to have them as installable when I need them. Support for them is there when I need it. Just like I might one day want to use Gnome or XFCE, but I don't have to have them loaded right now ... but they are there to be installed if and when I need them. Just like .... and so on. The logical corollary to your argument, Brian, is to load up *everything* since you don't know that one day you might have a need for it, even though you've never used it so far. -- The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. --Thomas Jefferson -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Brian K. White wrote:
If you don't want a large general purpose distribution, then don't install a large general purpose distribution.
That is an almost compelling arguement. However, Suse is still the only distro that uses YAST, apart from some very odd derivatives. If someone has been using YAST for some years and is happy with it, and the package manager is advertised as capable of removing as well as adding packages, then it's not entirely unreasonable for someone to try to install suse for another machine and then try to prune off some of the things that are overburden. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday, 2008-10-27 at 04:57 -0000, Robert E A Harvey wrote:
If you don't want a large general purpose distribution, then don't install a large general purpose distribution.
That is an almost compelling arguement. However, Suse is still the only distro that uses YAST, apart from some very odd derivatives.
If someone has been using YAST for some years and is happy with it, and the package manager is advertised as capable of removing as well as adding packages, then it's not entirely unreasonable for someone to try to install suse for another machine and then try to prune off some of the things that are overburden.
You still need to recompile many apps to not include ldap support, and one of the things that opensuse boasts about, is ldap integration. Yes, pam may use plugins, but other apps don't. So I don't think it will be done. However, anybody could create a project in the buildservice doing just that: recompile all those apps that use ldap, without. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkkFfZ4ACgkQtTMYHG2NR9UBTwCff6NVKJ8Ude0eYlf0VRKRNJ1/ CWwAoIraCqrK7xRE/d/9fv3+OKWIRiGa =6Qgp -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 7:59 PM, Brian K. White <brian@aljex.com> wrote:
Rather, to me this all just sounds like you (collectively, or the OP) simply want some other distribution whos stated goal is to be tiny, or no distribution at all just put exactly what you want on your hardware.
The main purpose in removing all the dependency issues was so we can remove unneeded programs. Like in 11.0 Beta, I found out that someone thought that the yast-fingerprint module should be a required dependency so if you removed it - which I DID - then ALL the networking was dropped. What a load of BS. How many machines even have that kind of hardware? .001%? Probably less. Fortunately, it was fixed after I pointed the problem out. I've seen similar problems with stuff like irda, pilot, nokia phone utils, etc. For some reason, someone thinks that just because I want to use something like a PIM, I must have a nokia phone to use with it.
opensuse is perfectly functional for it's target, which is contemporary machines from laptops to servers. Contemporary as in todays opensuse on todays laptops. I still say it's absolutely retarded to complain that you can't install or run the latest _anything_ that aims to be full featured and generic (such as opensuse or windows for that matter) on 10 or more year old hardware.
So, I should be running it on my HP Dual P3/500 server with 256MB RAM? or my other lower end hardware. I shouldn't bother using it unless I have over 1GB RAM and a dual core proc? Come on, opensuse is a BALANCED distro. I have it on machines as slow as a G3/266(and it does run slow on it) to a 3.2Ghz Dual Core. Yes, KDE ran horribly on my PowerMac 6500 with it's 603ev/225 and 128MB RAM. But that wasn't the point. The point was to see if it WOULD run. I was able to use it very easily as a text mode system and play music with mplayer. Would I even try it on my Thinkpad 380XD with it's Pentium MMX233 and 96MB RAM limit? No. But, any machine faster than a P3/450 and 256MB can run it very comfortably. I know, I have it installed on a Thinkpad with a P3/450 and 256MB RAM. It runs KDE and Firefox reliably if not speedy, and plays movies just fine.
If you have hardware that falls outside the mainstream, then of course you need special software for it.
Liked what? There's distros targeted at really old hardware like DSL and puppy. But, I have no idea why I would need special software on a P3 machine.
The fault is not opensuse for being obscenely fat. It's not really. (sure it is in comparison to 10 or 15 year old systems) The fault is even thinking about running something large like a typical modern general purpose linux distribution on tiny hardware.
Again, what do YOU consider low end? I've been active with my low end systems, and I have very little problems. Of course, after you remove resource hogs like beagle and turn off unneeded desktop effects, you find out just how well older hardware runs.
If you can't stand a couple of libraries and a binary that you don't intend to use, then build your own distro or use one of the distros that specializes in extreme customization and optimization.
I've been looking into that. I'd love to be able to slim openSUSE down to run better on lower end hardware. Remember when we could get a 1CD install? Sure, there are LivedCDs now, but a 1 cd install with everything you really needed was great. Yeah, we had 3 cd personal versions and 5cd/dvd professional versions, but you could usually get a 1CD install disk from a magazine.
This is like me complaining that my truck is poorly designed because it doesn't fit everywhere my tiny little Miata does, nor get it's gas mileage, nor accellerate or corner nearly as well. Well duh??
This is pointless. You're comparing a car to a truck. opensuse is like the engine. It can power a 3 cylinder Geo or a big old cadilac. Might not get it going fast, but it will get it going.
If you don't want a large general purpose distribution, then don't install a large general purpose distribution.
Sound advice. So, where is the cutoff? And who decides? Haven't we had this debate before? Personally, I LIKE to refurbish older machines. Case in point - everyone raves about the new netbooks. For less than $100, I put together a Thinkpad X21, P3/700/384MB. Runs about as fast as some of the netbooks I have seen, but has a better keyboard, and better screen(taller anyway. most web pages are vertical). So, I saved a good bit of cash. Yes, it isn't AS small, but it's more usable, and the battery lasts over 3hours(and used at that), and it's very portable. That's what I call value.
I use imagemagic for some document scanning/faxing/printing/pdf stuff in my application, but I only ever use png, tiff3g, and pcl graphics formats. Damn opensuse for including all that unnecessary jpeg and bmp support in all those graphics tools!
At least you can remove the Gimp, openoffice, and a lot of those bigger apps. I will comment that SuSE has always had a larger install footprint. Back when I first started, I had a lot of 2GB SCSI drives. And a standard install of SuSE would fill 2GB. I've recently upped my root partitions on new installs to 10GB from 5GB. But, then again, I have 40 - 250GB drives in my laptops and larger in my desktops. So, drive usage isn't the concern it used to be. RAM usage it. So long as I can run comfortably with 256-512MB, I'm happy. It's not speedy, but then I'm not usually in that much of a hurry. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Sound advice. So, where is the cutoff? And who decides? Haven't we had this debate before? Personally, I LIKE to refurbish older machines.
Actually so do I. I just don't expect most of the current versions of the larger distros to run on them. If they do or can be made to with install options, that's nice, but I don't think the distro is broken if it is too much for an older machine. Where is the cut off? There is no single cut off. If a machine was new in 2002, then the best software to run on it is stuff from near 2002. Some small number of years before and after. What number of years? Who cares? Sometimes you're lucky and can run 5 year newer software, sometimes you lose compatibility the next year. Either way, there is software available that runs on that hardware. I'm sure opensuse 6,7,8,9 will run just fine on that P3-700. It is unreasonable to expect to get the ever increasing levels of functionality that new software provides, out of the same unchanging old hardware. I have machines where hardware support was simply removed from the mainline kernel, affecting all distros, simply because no one was updating the scsi card driver or the multiport serial card driver and the kernel changed it's driver api and no one updated these drivers to the new api, so they didn't work, and so they were removed. So, I either stopped using that old scsi card, or kept using the old software that supported it. It's just that simple.
Case in point - everyone raves about the new netbooks. For less than $100, I put together a Thinkpad X21, P3/700/384MB. Runs about as fast as some of the netbooks I have seen, but has a better keyboard, and better screen(taller anyway. most web pages are vertical). So, I saved a good bit of cash. Yes, it isn't AS small, but it's more usable, and the battery lasts over 3hours(and used at that), and it's very portable. That's what I call value.
I would use such a machine too. Well actually what I would do is exactly what I did. I paid a little over $2k and got a vaio-tz which is about as small as the netbooks, yet has every hardware convenience (dvd-rw-dl, gigabit, wifi-n, evdo, cam, bluetooth, fingerprint reader) and actually has a longer battery life. The notebook, a more portable version of it's charger, the power cord, and a 15 foot super flat cat5e cord and a few misc items like usb sticks a couple cd's etc all packs into a tiny carry case designed for the 13" macbook. (the vaio is only 11 inches) and the whole thing weighs less than most normal laptops just bare by themselves. That thing, in order to remain tiny in size, and in order to have a 5 hour battery life, one compromise is cpu, it's only a 1.06 ghz core2duo, and the ram, it's 2 gigs, but in the form of a single stick (so no dual-channel) and only running at 533mhz. It's brand new, and so it shipped with Vista, but I don't run vista on it. I run XP and xubuntu. I also have freebsd and sco open server partitions but I dont use those for general work, they are just for testing, reference, and bragging rights. (it was NOT a simple matter to get even freebsd on there, let alone SCO, because of the odd dvd drive which is internally connected via usb. I have old machines I soup up for the fun of it too, but they sit in the corner and I don't actually use them except in a few odd cases where one may serve as a router or light duty server or appliance. They don't run desktops. Such machines would not be good enough today even if I tried to customize one manually. Web sites just require too much these days. The mobile boom will help that, but still there will be too many sites that expect you to be using a modern pc. A souped up old machine is a toy not a tool. I don't think it's wrong for opensuse and other main distros not to waste time on that. It might amuse me to keep a 386 alive, or to play with a little device that fits in my pocket. But, they can only ever be toys. I can't go without a dvd drive, at least a cd burner, wired and wireless nics, and enough cpu, ram and hd space to actually run apps and store data. I don't think opensuse should waste time on toys. The netbooks and the various appliances and embedded devices all have super custom versions of debian or fully custom systems of their own, not stock versions of anything. I see nothing wrong with that. My palm centro has more cpu and ram and "hd" (in the form of flash) than my first full pc's. However it runs a comparatively limited PalmOS system instead of the desktop and server os's I ran on those pc's. Even though the cpu could handle it and there is more than enough ram and filesystem room for it, I can't install and run my text based database and application development system on it. There is nothing really wrong with that. I have no need to be able to install opensuse 11.0 on a machine that small and slow today. It's fine for that device to require it's own special optimized system. Same goes for netbooks. In any event, the original poster doesn't even have a problem as far as I can see. It sounds like he's just inventing a problem because he doesn't like the idea that there is an MTA or that there are ldap libraries. Other people have pointed out that there isn't even necessarily any big ldap dependancy anyways. So he chose to install something that specifically pulled in ldap with it. Trying to have a unix based system without an mta today is just silly. It's possible because anything is possible, but it's well outside the norm, and so he should just accept that he is obligated to hand craft his own customized system that has no mta or simple local forwarder. There is some dependacy sprawl where various things pull in all kinds of junk you don't really want. I'm not saying that there isn't some excess and inefficiency there, I'm just saying most of it isn't worth worrying or complaining about. Certainly not the mta in particular. My production servers don't even have desktops and are never accessed in gui mode, yet I end up having half or more of gnome (and thus x11) pulled in anyways just because I do use imagemagic and ghostscript and some other things which have both gui and non-interactive modes, and so they end up pulling in most of the desktop environment as "dependancies", when none of that junk is actually used at all. It's absolutely not even worth thinking about let alone rasing a stink about, and it's a lot more files and total size than the OP is talking about. I want some tool, and the tool only exists because it was easy to write, because lots of libraries existed for the author(s) to use, and so, to get the tool I have to get the libaries, which in turn may depend on yet larger systems of libraries and maybe even running daemons. Well. I want the tool so be it. Sure it could physically be written without most of that stuff that I don't happen to use, but the fact is, then it simply wouldn't have been written at all, or not nearly as fully featured. So the choice is really live without or live with a little excess. Everything we have could actually be written in assembly instead of the higher level languages and could then run on much smaller hardware, except, no it can't. The man-hours don't exist for that. That's the opposite of value. What's value is, you get a lot more bang for your buck having developers able to use big fat rich libraries and big fat rich languages, who can produce a large powerful app and then continue to improve it with large changes on a constant basis. And that all requires more hardware, but the hardware costs waaaay less than the cost of either coding everything in low level languages or living without the rapid, and ever increasing rate, of development, or living without many things entirely, at any stage of development. I'll take the development, and pay the hardware price, thanks. So, by a completely different route we arrive at the same conclusion that you should be happy to run opensuse 6 or some other old version of linux on old hardware, because in a world where developers were more concerned about hardware instead of development, opensuse 11 as we know it today wouldn't exist anyways. -- Brian K. White brian@aljex.com http://www.myspace.com/KEYofR +++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++. filePro BBx Linux SCO FreeBSD #callahans Satriani Filk! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Brian K. White wrote:
Where is the cut off? There is no single cut off. If a machine was new in 2002, then the best software to run on it is stuff from near 2002.
Pardon me, but even openSUSE 11.1 runs fine on my computer, which is year 2000 vintage. - -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 11.1-factory) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkkHvUMACgkQU92UU+smfQXyUQCaA770Yy02vSGKWd6WcuYEDfKH snoAnjhK0Akg6vwIuGgryPZuf4v+wqPN =Sofj -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 9:32 PM, Carlos E. R. <robin.listas@telefonica.net> wrote:
Pardon me, but even openSUSE 11.1 runs fine on my computer, which is year 2000 vintage.
Yeah, he missed my whole point about having better than a netbook for LESS $$ than a netbook. I use this Thinkpad A22p P3/1Ghz/256MB/250GB machine on a daily basis. It's 1600x1200 15" screen is amazing crisp(but not as bright tho), and it does all my normal web browsing tasks, plays movies, etc just fine. And, since it's a 4x3 screen, I can actually read more text. Other than needing to get it a new battery, I've got about $175 in it with the 250GB drive. I've personally NEVER purcahsed a brand new fully built computer. I did spend a bit a while back to build a celeron e1200 that's overclocked @ 3.2Ghz right now, has 2GB RAM, and an nVidia 6200(had an X300, but that died....). I used an old case, and it does everything I need it to do. I'm not made of money. I see little reason to buy new when my refurbished machines do what I need to do. What Brian is talking about is the bigger better thing deal, and that's what M$ wants us to do with WinDoZe. With Linux, I have the freedom to run my old 486 machine if I want, as long as I understand the limitations. The only thing my Thinkpads (the P3s) don't do is play HD, and I could care less about that. I have a 50" HD TV for that. Oh well....... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
----- Original Message ----- From: "Larry Stotler" <larrystotler@gmail.com> To: "OS-en" <opensuse@opensuse.org> Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 10:23 PM Subject: Re: [opensuse] ranting and raving about dependancies.
On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 9:32 PM, Carlos E. R. <robin.listas@telefonica.net> wrote:
Pardon me, but even openSUSE 11.1 runs fine on my computer, which is year 2000 vintage.
Yeah, he missed my whole point about having better than a netbook for LESS $$ than a netbook. I use this Thinkpad A22p P3/1Ghz/256MB/250GB machine on a daily basis. It's 1600x1200 15" screen is amazing crisp(but not as bright tho), and it does all my normal web browsing tasks, plays movies, etc just fine. And, since it's a 4x3 screen, I can actually read more text. Other than needing to get it a new battery, I've got about $175 in it with the 250GB drive.
I've personally NEVER purcahsed a brand new fully built computer. I did spend a bit a while back to build a celeron e1200 that's overclocked @ 3.2Ghz right now, has 2GB RAM, and an nVidia 6200(had an X300, but that died....). I used an old case, and it does everything I need it to do.
I'm not made of money. I see little reason to buy new when my refurbished machines do what I need to do.
What Brian is talking about is the bigger better thing deal, and that's what M$ wants us to do with WinDoZe. With Linux, I have the freedom to run my old 486 machine if I want, as long as I understand the limitations. The only thing my Thinkpads (the P3s) don't do is play HD, and I could care less about that. I have a 50" HD TV for that.
I didn't miss anything about netbook functionality. Run a netbook class os on a netbook class device. And if you don't want bigger and better, then why doesn't that apply to software? Run opensuse 10, 9, or 8 if 11 doesn't work on some old hardware. If it does run ok on something from 2000 as the other person who missed the point that 2002 was just an example, well fine that's just gravy. I don't see the problem. -- Brian K. White brian@aljex.com http://www.myspace.com/KEYofR +++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++. filePro BBx Linux SCO FreeBSD #callahans Satriani Filk! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 11:11 PM, Brian K. White <brian@aljex.com> wrote:
I didn't miss anything about netbook functionality. Run a netbook class os on a netbook class device.
Or use an older product that basically offers everything that the netbooks offer, but in a better package.
And if you don't want bigger and better, then why doesn't that apply to software? Run opensuse 10, 9, or 8 if 11 doesn't work on some old hardware.
I do actually. I have SuSE 8.1 on an old Thinkpad that only takes 96MB RAM. Can't run the newer web broswers tho. However, I can install DSL or Puppy and it would be ok. DIstros like that are geared to lower end hardware and I don't expect openSUSE to cater to that end. I'm the one who went through all the PowerMacs and submitted a list of actually usable machines versus those that weren't worth supporting and asking whether we should drop support for older machines, but never really got any answer back.
If it does run ok on something from 2000 as the other person who missed the point that 2002 was just an example, well fine that's just gravy. I don't see the problem.
The problem was saying that you shouldn't try to run a modern system on older hardware. What you need to realize is that older hardware that was upgradable or expandable is perfectly capable of running modern OS's so long as you plan ahead before implementation. A powermac 9600 that's been upgraded to a G4/1Ghz, 1.5GB RAM, and SATA drives can run openSUSE 11.0 very fast. It is limited by it's 50Mhz memory bus, but that's not a really a deal breaker for most prodcutivity stuff or web browsing, Movie reencoding is tho. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Larry Stotler wrote:
And if you don't want bigger and better, then why doesn't that apply to software? Run opensuse 10, 9, or 8 if 11 doesn't work on some old hardware.
I do actually. I have SuSE 8.1 on an old Thinkpad that only takes 96MB RAM.
I can beat that with my firewall, a 486DX2 running SUSE 7.1 in just 24Mb RAM. The machine is about 16 years old, and has gone through three harddisks by now. I'm about to replace the whole thing because I want to do traffic-shaping, but otherwise I would probably start using a compact flash disk instead. -- /Per Jessen, Zürich -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
----- Original Message ----- From: "Per Jessen" <per@opensuse.org> To: <opensuse@opensuse.org> Sent: Friday, October 31, 2008 5:10 AM Subject: [opensuse] Re: running open/suse on ancient hardware (was: ranting and raving about dependancies.) Larry Stotler wrote:
And if you don't want bigger and better, then why doesn't that apply to software? Run opensuse 10, 9, or 8 if 11 doesn't work on some old hardware.
I do actually. I have SuSE 8.1 on an old Thinkpad that only takes 96MB RAM.
I can beat that with my firewall, a 486DX2 running SUSE 7.1 in just 24Mb RAM. The machine is about 16 years old, and has gone through three harddisks by now. I'm about to replace the whole thing because I want to do traffic-shaping, but otherwise I would probably start using a compact flash disk instead. ----- Wellll... if we wanna talk old or minimal linux... Without sort of cheating and talking about current embedded stuff. This is still basically a pretty modern linux, I mean, it was late 2.0 kernel. But still... One time the regular UPS guy that came to place I worked every day spotted two old GRiD laptops on someones trash pile and brought them to me while on his route. 386sx-16 , 2M ram, some tiny hd space like 20M. mono vga lcd. (approximately like a calculator screen with a little better contrast and brightness, except 640x480 pixels, perhaps not even 256 shades of grey) I robbed the ram from one to make the other 4M The mb had no provision for clearing the bios password but the chip was removable and I was able to clear the bios by popping it into a different board just to use it's cmos-clear jumper with power applied. And using only a tomsrtbt floppy I got the original win3.1 partition resized without destroying and got a lilo based dual boot and tomsrtbt installed on an hd partition. Made a plip cable and had plip networking to a redhat pc. Then I found a 486slc upgrade chip that fit in the 386sx qfp socket and it never ran for more than a few minutes again :/ This was around '98 and I think the laptop was from the late 80's. I'd love a new machine packed into that grid case. The way the screen unfolded with a sort of brace in the middle so it was held in place by a sort of pyramidal geometry like an easel was bulletproof. I completely beleive the stories about them being dropped down cement fire escape stairs while open and running and suffering only paint damage at the corners. -- Brian K. White brian@aljex.com http://www.myspace.com/KEYofR +++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++. filePro BBx Linux SCO FreeBSD #callahans Satriani Filk! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Saturday, 2008-10-25 at 15:46 +0200, Per Jessen wrote:
Anton Aylward wrote:
In a enterprise setting this is normally handled by a central syslog mechanism for the enterprise and there is some very sophisticated software supporting this.
In the enterprise, SNMP is by far the preferred method for real-time alerts, failing that email. The syslog is primarily for auditing and post-mortem purposes. If the syslog was really so central in enterprise real-time monitoring of Linux systems, it's difficult to understand why popular monitoring tools typically provide an email option, very often also an SNMP MIB, but usually no plain syslog option. (ex: mdadm, smartd, HPs Proliant Support pack tools).
I think I can perhaps explain why telcos use syslog as core in their monitoring and alerting systems. Basically, tradition. I have worked for telcos and for one of the big exchange makers. This machine is big, very expensive, and the design must be from the seventies or eighties, with updates. It's Unix. It doesn't have network: I mean, no tcp/ip. It has a main dumb terminal on a serial port, and also a serial port printer. These two connect to a dual card, like a computer having two serial port cards connected to the same device via a switch. Very, very reliable. And privileged, some operations can only be done from this terminal. There are also other type of "secondary" serial port cards, each handling 4 terminals or printers. There is usually a secondary terminal and printer on the site. The card may control instead an X.25 connection, which can be used for file transfers (not FTP) and some more terminals (remote). And a tape r/w unit. Ah! The internal Unix has mail. I wasn't allowed to test it, understandably. Pity! These machines were controlled locally; they used to have 24h/7d personnel on shifts. The main printer was used for a kind of syslog: the exchange is continuously printing status messages, alarms, audits, exceptions, output of some commands... all the outputs have a very strict formatting that allows differentiating each report or alarm. The secondary printer dumped periodically traffic reports. Now comes tcp/ip. They want to use networking to do remote management of the exchanges, with a central core of trained personnel for the entire network, and maybe no permanent personnel on sites. What they did was connect the main terminal and printer to a special router or PC that converts the serial port into telnet, and transmit the data to the central control center. Maybe they connect the rest of the terminals (8) and leave none on site. So, on the central operation center (NOC) they get the output that was pushed to the two printers years before. It is collected and saved to log files. They have Unix machines with expensive proprietary software that collect each report, save them into a database record, do some analysis, raise alerts based on importance... these things display into nice displays into the technicians computers (you need training to use them); the alarms go to a wall display. The room may have dozens of technicians and engineers... kind like the NASA control center on movies. A director may assign an alert to be handled by a technician of his choice, etc. See an alert, take or assign it, open a telnet to the site, solve the problem or escalate, report it... Cute! :-) :-p Now, complicate all that if they have exchanges from different manufacturers, and of different models. It is a very complex setup, I assure you. Mine was one model only and relatively small. So, for this people, syslog is core to their way of thinking. Although it is not a real syslog as in Linux. And, even if it makes sense for that setup, that doesn't mean that we have to use the same on Linux setups. Let us have our syslog, our email, and our SNMP, and whatever they invent >:-) HTH. :-) - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkkFAFcACgkQtTMYHG2NR9W5cACeKzmNhns9xr45DPZkP3nRrnM6 jZUAnj43mwvILzFq1mZ5099rxnbh5oiw =29Q0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
participants (10)
-
alpha096＠virginbroadband.com.au -
Andrew Joakimsen -
Anton Aylward -
Brian K. White -
Carlos E. R. -
Kai Ponte -
Larry Stotler -
Per Jessen -
Robert E A Harvey -
Rodney Baker