Anonymous Reader writes “”Are you moving from a UNIX to Linux? Do you miss the slick remote administration tools that come with the not-so-free UNIX systems? Read on, you might learn from my expereince.”

http://www.linuxfreak.org/post.php/2002/04/09-07_10_28/336.html“

Anonymous Reader writes “TuxReports has posted a copy of Mr. Robertson’s email regarding the release of Lindows service pack 2. There is also information about the philosophy of the company. You may read it here.”

Anonymous Reader writes “A Federal bankruptcy trustee was scheduled Monday to finalize the demise of Loki Software, a company that over three years became famous simultaneously for excellent Linux ports of popular game titles and for financial weirdness on an heroic scale — weirdness that left its programmers and others holding the (empty) bag. Linux and Main’s Dennis E. Powell has the story of defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.”

Jon Fields writes “Tired of typing your contact information at the bottom of email messages time after time? Spice it up using ASCII art, read the article over at http://www.linuxfreak.org/post.php/2002/04/08-23_37_05/333.html“

MozillaQuest reports: “Look for the next Red Hat Linux distribution soon. Red Hat official spokes-people are keeping mum about it. However, it likely will be called either Red Hat Linux 7.3 or Red Hat Linux 8.0.”

Tom Oehser writes, “I’ve released a major new version of tomsrtbt, 2.0.9. The kernel has been upgraded from 2.0.39 to 2.2.20.”

Interesting new feature: bzip2 kernel and ramdisk loading

What will most be missed: emacs, for the moment, only vi will fit

What you have is… M386 MATH_EMULATION MODULES ELF FD IDE-DISK/CD/TAPE LOOP RAM

INITRD DAC960 UNIX SCSI-DISK/CD/TAPE AHA152X AHA1542 AIC7XXX BUSLOGIC EATA TULIP

NCR53C8XX EL2 EL3 VORTEX WD80x3 ULTRA EEXPRESS/PRO/PRO100 NE2000 PCNET32 IS09660

MSDOS SERIAL SERIAL_CONSOLE FAT VFAT JOLIET MINIX NTFS PROC EXT2 EXT3 NFS VIDSEL

3c589_cs agetty ash badblocks basename boot.b buildit.s busybox bz2bzImage bzip2

cardmgr cat chain.b chattr chgrp chmod chown chroot clear clone.s cmp common

config cp cpio cs cut date dd ddate df dhcpcd– dirname dmesg domainname ds du

e2fsck echo egrep elvis ex false fdflush fdformat fdisk filesize find findsuper

fmt fsck.ext2 fstab grep group gunzip gzip halt head hexdump hexedit host.conf

hostname hosts i82365 ifconfig ile init inittab insmod install.s issue kernel

key.lst kill killall killall5 klogd ld ld-linux length less libc libcom_err

libe2p libext2fs libtermcap libuuid lilo lilo.conf ln loadkmap logger login ls

lsattr lsmod lua man map md5sum miterm mkdir mkdosfs mke2fs mkfifo mkfs.minix

mknod mkswap more more.help mount mt mtab mv nc necho network networks nmclan_cs

nslookup passwd pax pcmcia pcmcia_core pcnet_cs ping poweroff printf profile

protocols ps pwd rc.0 rc.6 rc.M rc.S rc.custom rc.custom.gz rc.pcmcia reboot

rescuept reset resolv.conf rm rmdir rmmod route rsh rshd script sed serial

serial_cs services setserial settings.s sh shared shutdown sleep sln sort split

strings swapoff swapon sync syslogd tail tar tcic tee telnet telnetd termcap

test tomshexd tomsrtbt.FAQ touch true umount undeb– unpack.s unrpm– update

utmp vi vi.help view wc wget which xargs xirc2ps_cs yecho yes zcat

…ON ONE FLOPPY!

Updated new current fixed better versions of:

e2fsck mke2fs rescuept fdisk pcmcia busybox

New support added to the default image:

eexpress_pro100 ext3_fs pcnet32 serial_console

Removed from the default image:

idetape mouse slip tr emacs debugfs dumpe2fs fsck.msdos ifport pcmcia-scsi

It comes in three flavours, which make the same booted image:

tomsrtbt-2.0.9.dos.zip # for installation from DOS

tomsrtbt-2.0.9.tar.gz # for installation from Linux

tomsrtbt-2.0.9.ElTorito.288.img.bz2 # for bootable CD installation

The home page is:

http://www.toms.net/rb/

It’s a boot/root rescue/emergency floppy image with more stuff than can fit.

Bzip2, 1722Mb formatting, and tight compilation options helped jam a lot on.

It is useful for “learn unix on a floppy” as it runs from ramdisk, includes

the man-pages for everything, and behaves in a generally predictable way.

Note: This is a .0.0 version and has many known rough edges…

—————————- tomsrtbt-2.0.0.lsm ————————–:

Begin3

Title: tomsrtbt

Version: 2.0.0

Entered-date: 06APR02

Description: “The most Linux on one floppy.” (distribution or panic disk).

1.72MB boot/root rescue/tools diskette for your shirt pockets.

Supports ide, scsi, tape, network adaptors, PCMCIA, much more.

About 100 utility programs and tools for fixing and restoring.

See tomsrtbt.FAQ for a list of stuff that is included. Not a

script, just the diskette image packed up chock full of stuff.

Easy to customize startup and scripts for complete rebuilding.

Also good as learn-unix-on-a-floppy as it has mostly what you

expect- vi, , lua, sed, sh, manpages- loaded on ramdisks.

There is one installer that runs under Linux, another for DOS.

Keywords: rescue recovery emergency floppy panic bootdisk tomsrtbt help

Author: tom@toms.net (Tom Oehser)

Maintained-by: tom@toms.net (Tom Oehser)

Primary-site: www.toms.net /rb

1 kB home.html

Alternate-site: sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/system/recovery

1722 kB tomsrtbt-2.0.0.tar.gz

1722 kB tomsrtbt-2.0.0.dos.zip

1722 kB tomsrtbt-2.0.0.ElTorito.img.bz2

Copying-policy: GPL

End

-Tom Oehser, tom@toms.net

Robin Rowe writes, Open Source Programmers Group Meeting, April 10, 2002, from 7-9pm at America Pizza, 2072 University (just west of Shattuck) near the Berkeley BART station in Berkeley, California.

Free meeting for those interested in open source programming in Linux or other operating systems. This is a friendly open forum to discuss issues related to open source software development or documentation. If you have a burning question about programming or perhaps an interesting story about overcoming a bug please come and share. We look forward to hearing about your ideas, frustrations, and triumphs.

RSVP not required, but appreciated. Please direct your RSVP to me off-list.

For more information see www.OpenSourceProgrammers.org.

Cheers,

Robin Rowe
rower@movieeditor.com

The San Francisco Chronicle has a story on the proposed Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act of 2002. The bill “would give the entertainment and technology industries up to 18 months to agree to a technological standard that would halt the spread of unauthorized copying of digital video and audio.

The bill would require this on any ‘digital media device’ — any hardware or software that reproduces, converts, retrieves or accesses copyrighted works in digital form. Penalties for altering the standard would be $200 to $2,500 per violation.”

From LinuxPlanet.com: “For once, I wish I could rate the installation process separately from the product itself. The K Desktop Environment (KDE) is a nice, mature Graphical User Interface (GUI). It’s been around for years, a lot of people like it, and it’s free. Can’t ask for much more than that. The huge problem is this, though: getting a new version of KDE installed is a big pain. Once you actually get into the GUI itself it’s great and a lot of fun. Personally, I look forward to when KDE 3.0 comes pre-rolled into the newest distributions.”

MontaVista Software Inc., the company powering the embedded revolution, today announced MontaVista? Linux® Carrier Grade Edition 2.1, the first carrier-grade quality Linux distribution targeted for edge and core telecommunications including applications for the converging IP and voice networks, optical networks, signaling gateways and Voice over IP (VoIP) gateways, and many other applications.

“The market is demanding a Linux solution for telecommunications and MontaVista Software is being responsive to the market needs,” said Jim Ready, president and CEO of MontaVista Software. “We are leveraging our significant expertise in providing telecommunications solutions to deliver a standards-based, open architecture software platform for the industry’s next-generation telecommunications systems, which require virtually zero down time.”

MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition enhances standard Linux with additional high reliability and availability features for deployment in carrier-grade environments, and is designed specifically to address the needs of telecommunications equipment manufacturers. Based on a significant open source development project initiated by MontaVista Software with contributions from other open source projects, it provides kernel and driver hardening, monitoring and fault management services, and other carrier-grade features.

MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition builds on the company’s expertise in embedded Linux and high availability. The new product incorporates all the benefits of the MontaVista flagship product, MontaVista Linux Professional Edition, which includes a fully preemptive kernel and real-time scheduling, small footprint targets and journaling file systems. It also builds on key technologies from the MontaVista High Availability Framework, such as PICMG 2.12 hot swap capabilities (hot replace and hot insert), redundant Ethernet, and resource monitoring and event management subsystem.

“This MontaVista Linux release adds momentum to the emergence of Intel-based carrier-grade solutions,” said Scott Richardson, general manager of Intel’s Network Processing Group. “Telecommunications customers need fast and cost-effective access to high-performance, highly available platforms. The combination of modular Intel building blocks, MontaVista’s Linux expertise and its ongoing alignment with emerging OSDL specifications will give these customers the levels of flexibility and time-to-market they require.”

“Telecommunications equipment manufacturers want to deliver affordable next-generation solutions at a faster time-to-market,? said Jane Munn, vice president, IBM Global Telecommunications. ?Carrier-grade Linux, with its open interfaces and leading-edge technology, will help bring these solutions to telecommunications customers. By working with the IBM Linux Technology Center, MontaVista Software is moving aggressively to enable carrier-grade Linux-based solutions that meet the stringent requirements of the core network infrastructure.?

MontaVista Software has a strong commitment to providing carrier-grade solutions and is actively participating in several industry initiatives to define carrier-grade and high availability standards. These include the OSDL Carrier Grade Linux Working Group (which includes Intel, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Nokia and Alcatel as members) and the Service Availability Forum (which includes Compaq, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Nokia, Radisys and Force as members). As specifications from these organizations emerge, MontaVista is committed to incorporating these into its Carrier Grade Edition product.

“The availability of an open Linux platform that addresses the requirements of the telecommunications industry is a major step in moving Linux and open source software technology into these important applications,” said Tim Witham, OSDL lab director. “MontaVista’s participation in the OSDL’s Carrier Grade Linux Working Group shows its commitment to the development of common building blocks to allow software and hardware vendors maximum control over their products and time-to-market.”

Availability

MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition will be available for Intel architecture platforms in the second quarter of 2002. Subscribers to the MontaVista High Availability Framework product will be able to migrate seamlessly and without additional cost to the MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition product. Subscribers of MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition will be able to upgrade to a next-generation version of the product when industry carrier-grade Linux specifications are further defined. Support for other architecture platforms is also planned. For more product information, please visit http://www.mvista.com/products/mvl_cge/mvlcge_over view.html.

Background

High Availability is a term for technology that enhances the “up-time” of computer systems by distributing functionality across multiple CPUs. Highly available systems reduce single points of failure in a single chassis. In response to hardware and software failures, high availability systems facilitate the rapid transfer of control (fail-over) from a faulty CPU, peripheral, or software component to a functional one, while preserving operations or transactions in progress at the time of failure.

Carrier-grade is a term for next-generation telecommunications products that require 5 nines or 99.999 percent reliability. MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition provides key technologies that enable 5 nines solutions. The product?s hot swap capabilities, combined with redundancy support for networking and storage subsystems, provide a higher level of availability than is realized with standard Linux operating systems. These features, along with a fault management framework and hardware redundancy, will enable a system to reach 5 nines or even 6 nines of availability.

See What Other MontaVista Partners are Saying at the Bottom of the Release.

About MontaVista Software Inc.

MontaVista Software Inc. powers the embedded revolution by providing open-source systems software solutions for embedded developers. Founded in 1999 by real-time operating system (RTOS) pioneer James Ready, MontaVista’s principal products include MontaVista Linux® Professional Edition and MontaVista Linux® Carrier Grade Edition. The Professional Edition is a Linux-based embedded source and binary distribution, cross development platform and a set of tool kits for x86/IA-32, PowerPC, StrongARM, MIPS, SH, ARM, XScale, Xtensa and other microprocessor architectures. The Carrier Grade Edition is a second-generation high availability product that is an ideal Linux platform for telecommunications and carrier-grade applications. MontaVista Software also provides several complementary technology products addressing specific customer needs such as the Java development environment, high availability technology, powerful graphics toolkits and more. MontaVista offers developers a family of products and services for embedded design and development targeted for applications ranging from communications infrastructure to consumer devices.

Headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley, in Sunnyvale, Calif., MontaVista Software is a privately held company funded by leading investors such as Alloy Ventures, US Venture Partners, RRE Ventures, WR Hambrecht + Co., IBM, Intel Capital, Panasonic and Sony Corporation. For more information about MontaVista Software, please visit http://www.mvista.com, email to info@mvista.com or call (408) 328-9200.

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. MontaVista is a trademark of MontaVista Software Inc. All other names mentioned are trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective companies.

Contacts:

Joe Samagond,
Director of Marketing and Corporate Communications,
MontaVista Software Inc.,
Phone: (408) 328-9234,
E-mail: jsamagond@mvista.com

Patricia Colby,
PR Strategy and Business Development,
Pacifico Inc.,
Phone: (408) 293 8600 x340,
E-mail: pcolby@pacifico.com

Support from Key Providers:

Radisys Corporation

“Industry-wide standardization of interfaces is required to drive interoperability and economy of scale for data services to be widely available,” said Arif Kareem, senior vice president for RadiSys. “It makes sense for telecommunications equipment providers to select open source, cost-effective operating platforms from innovative companies such as MontaVista Software.”
www.radisys.com

GoAhead Software

“The open architectural model allows system components including hardware, operating systems, middleware and applications to interact more efficiently,” said Michael O’Brien, CEO of GoAhead Software. “Additionally, with the integration of off-the-shelf solutions, such as MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition and GoAhead SelfReliant Service Availability middleware, network equipment providers can realize reduced development costs, time-to-market improvements, and ultimately, more reliable and available products for their customers.”
www.goahead.com

LVL7 Systems

“Networking equipment providers will now have a choice of industry standards-based products as a welcome alternative to proprietary operating systems,” said Ernie Baker, president of LVL7 Systems. “With the availability of LVL7’s FASTPATH software integrated with MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition, networking OEM vendors can reduce development costs, improve operational efficiencies and decrease time to market.”
www.lvl7.com