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Linux in education report #43

Author: JT Smith

The latest Linux in education report is now available from Simple End User Linux.

Category:

  • Linux

Linux everywhere – the flexible penguin

Author: JT Smith

Kelly McNeill writes “As Linux grows in popularity, we can expect an ever-growing list of places where our preferred operating system will be found, but don’t just expect the inevitable data-center or consumer desktop locations. If osOpinion’s future predictions prove correct, we can expect even bigger plans

Category:

  • Linux

Dr. Dobb’s Tcl-URL

Author: JT Smith

Linux Weekly News posts the latest edition of news and links of interest to the Python developer community. In this issue, Tcl for Palm OS; Snack 2.1b1 released; and notes on multithreading.

It’s time to can spam

Author: JT Smith

eWEEK’s Matt Hicks asks: “Why does the burden to prevent spam lie
with consumers like me and not with the marketers profiting from it? I never inquired
about hot stock tips, the latest herbs that send you flying high or sexual enhancers.
And when these messages first started flowing into my work e-mail account, I was
offended. What if I were unlucky enough to work at a company that monitored all my
e-mails and decided these were an inappropriate use of company resources? I
would face the burden of explaining their presence.”

Taking Net services rural

Author: JT Smith

ZDNet reports on efforts in Washington to bring high-speed Internet access services to rural parts of the United States. A bipartisan bill introduced last week would allow the Baby Bells to provide long-distance data services without having to meet competition-promoting requirements. Opponents have labelled the bill an “incumbency protection program,” arguing that passage would reduce or eliminate competition.

SAP R/3 Web Application root compromise

Author: JT Smith

“The Web Application Server demo for Linux contains the program
saposcol that is setuid root. Due to improper usage of popen(3) it may
be possible for local users to gain unauthorized root access.” Full details at Help Net Security.

Category:

  • Linux

Users say Napster is dead

Author: JT Smith

From the San Francisco Chronicle (via Computer News Daily): “Napster is blocking so much music these days, its
members are starting to play a dirge for the popular online
song-swapping service. The effect, some users say, has stripped Napster of the content that
made it a worldwide phenomenon. Indeed, a random check by The
Chronicle on Friday found only 12 of the Billboard’s Top 20 hits still
available on Napster, compared with 19 a month ago. Many of the top
hits that remained were misspelled and had fewer copies.”

The market channel that makes Linux go

Author: JT Smith

An anonymous reader pointed us to this article at Consulting Times: “10 years ago, an association of top Unix Resellers located throughout the US and Canada formed an association. They stated their purpose as one in which
they could work with one another to provide Unix (and now, Linux) customers with what they claim as the best possible products, support and service.

Their members have worked successfully together on many projects and bring their expertise to the Linux/UNIX channel. They quietly do the work that allows
Linux to thrive. You don’tt hear much about them but they make up a large part of what allowed Compaq to do close to a billion dollars in server sales in the
Intel UNIX and Linux space last year.”

Category:

  • Linux

eLiza asks: What makes you say you want a self-healing server?

Author: JT Smith

By Andrew Orlowski

The Register
IBM says it will devote a quarter of its server budget to Project eLiza:
making its Unix, NT and Linux servers “self-healing.” It claims five of its
R&D centres will be working on eLiza technology, although figures were
scarce in the first, reverential reports in the US trade inkies. So it’s too early to say if the eLiza initiative represents new technology, or simply a new marketecture which encompasses existing research. There are two parts to the initiative: fault tolerance and “self-management”, neither of which are exactly new industry initiatives.

Certainly IBM, along with other High-Availability server vendors, has already done much to make its systems fault tolerant. IBM probably more than anyone, given its mainframe background; a little while ago we heard of an eight-year old System 390 (ZzzzServer) in Japan that had had all of its original parts upgraded or replaced, without losing any uptime. But the knack has been moving this expertise into lower cost systems.

Genuine fault tolerant servers don’t come cheap, as they simply duplicate the parts most likely to fail. Both IBM and Hewlett Packard have licensed Stratus’ fault-tolerant servers in recent years to fill gaps in their product lines, and it remains a small but lucrative niche for Stratus. So the high end HA crowd have been looking to drawing selected features of fault-tolerant systems such as error correcting memory and hot swap CPUs into their systems, saving the cost of one-for-one duplication.

But we suspect IBM decided going head to head with Compaq’s ZLE (Zero Latency Enterprise) marketing wasn’t enough, which is where the self-managing come in.

IBM hinted – in a memo conveniently ‘leaked’ to InfoWorld – that work such as Project Oceano would be considered part of eLiza work. The weekly describes this “essentially a server farm that manages itself… Oceano servers can be taken online and offline to intelligently meet constantly changing demands from operating systems and data.” You don’t say. So it’s got load balancing and failover? Smelling salts to Vulture central, please, and hurry!

The most interesting part of the announcement was the hint that selected fault-tolerant code or management initiatives would be open sourced. Again, hardly surprising as IBM’s Irving Wladawsky-Berger, who was beating the eLiza drum last week, oversees Big Blue’s Linux projects. But if low level code can percolate into the mainstream Linux boxes, everyone would benefit.


All Content copyright 2001 The Register

NewsForge editors read and respond to comments posted on our discussion page.

Category:

  • Linux

Industry leaders announce support for ColdFusion Server 5

Author: JT Smith

From a press release at PR Newswire: “Industry leaders announcing support for the launch of Macromedia
ColdFusion 5 include: platform vendors such as Red Hat, SuSE Linux AG, and
Sun Microsystems; solutions providers such as F5 Networks and Seagate
Software; and enterprise systems management companies such as BMC Software.
Working with Macromedia Alliance Technology Partners, Macromedia was able to
include a variety of new features and functions in ColdFusion 5, such as
enterprise management systems integration, load balancing, and reporting.”