Trial & Error with RedHat 6.0

[James R. Van Zandt]

Christoph <linuxguy at ici.net> writes:
>"James R. Van Zandt" wrote:
>>
>> Please consider Debian.  It's larger than any of those, and (I
>> believe) covers more architectures (currently i386, alpha, m68k
>> and sparc, with powerpc coming next).

>I would love to try Debian (for personal use), but unfortunately if
>you look around at vender supported products like Legato (backups)
>and TNG (monitoring), they have declared support for RedHat (5.2).
>Look at Dell, Compaq, IBM, etc... it's all stamped with 'RedHat
>Inside'
>
>If I want to make a case for Linux (keep in mind that it'll replace
>NT in server type areas), vender support makes a HUGE difference.
>
>But to encourage a good debate... enlighten me/us why debian would
>make a better installation.

Well, what kind of "support" do you have in mind?  If there is
something you don't understand how to do, you are likely to get a lot
better support from the net for any Linux system than for any of the
commercial OSs.  If you find a bug, how much leverage do you really
think you will have with a commercial source?

Debian had an open bug reporting system.  If you have a problem with a
Debian package, you can easily find out whether anyone else has
reported the problem, and whether a new package has been uploaded that
fixes it.  If not, we have an automated tool to help you construct a
helpful bug report.  There are currently about 400 Debian maintainers.
Each maintains something like 15 packages.  Ordinarily they are
programs he uses himself, so he has a vested interest in keeping them
in good shape.  I don't know how many people RedHat has, but I would
be surprised if many .rpm packages get the kind of close attention
that .deb packages do.

Debian promises technical excellence.  That means package
dependencies, so you know you will have the libraries to run your new
program.  It means you will always be able to upgrade incrementally.

With Debian, decisions are never driven by marketing considerations.

In other words, Debian is developed the same way as the Linux kernel,
and shares many of the same strengths.

I ran Slackware for two years or so.  It always gave me the impression
of barely hanging together.  I could install a few things, but to
really upgrade (e.g. new libraries) I would wind up reinstalling
everything.  I learned a lot, because I had to.  Running Debian, I get
the impression of having an army of very experienced sysadmins helping
me out.  I have not used Red Hat enough to develop a clear impression.
I will admit that a Red Hat installation is simpler than a Debian one.
However, you only have to install once.

Please try not to be influenced too much by the lack of an advertising
budget.  E.g. for backups, please check out amanda before worrying too
much about a commercial backup system.  Likewise, look at mon for
monitoring services.

You may find it easier to argue for a Red Hat system, in the same way
that "nobody ever got fired for recommending IBM".  (Of course some
times it was a mistake, but at least you had lots of company.)  I hope
you are willing to start with an open mind, though.

		   - Jim Van Zandt


Package: amanda-client
Priority: optional
Section: utils
Installed-Size: 177
Maintainer: Bdale Garbee <bdale at gag.com>
Architecture: i386
Source: amanda
Version: 1:2.4.0-3
Depends: amanda-client, amanda-common, libc6, libreadlineg2 (>=
2.1-4), ncurses3.4, amanda-common
Suggests: awk, gnuplot
Conflicts: amanda
Filename: dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/utils/amanda-client_2.4.0-3.deb
Size: 68174
MD5sum: 6b136dafd49c4dda5cf766479b351386
Description: Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver
(Client)
 Amanda is a backup system designed to archive many computers on a
 network to a single large-capacity tape drive. This package is
 suitable for large amounts of data to backup. For smaller solutions
 take a look at afbackup, tob, taper, ...
 .
  Features:
   * will back up multiple machines in parallel to a holding disk,
     blasting finished dumps one by one to tape as fast as we can
     write files to tape.  For example, a ~2 Gb 8mm tape on a ~240K/s
     interface to a host with a large holding disk can be filled by
     Amanda in under 4 hours.
   * built on top of standard backup software: Unix dump/restore, and
     later GNU Tar and others.
   * does simple tape management: will not overwrite the wrong tape.
   * supports tape changers via a generic interface.  Easilyp
     customizable to any type of tape carousel, robot, or stacker that
     can bep controlled via the unix command line.
   * for a restore, tells you what tapes you need, and finds the
     proper backup image on the tape for you.
   * recovers gracefully from errors, including down or hung machines.
   * reports results, including all errors in detail, in email to
     operators.
   * will dynamically adjust backup schedule to keep within
     constraints: no more juggling by hand when adding disks and
     computers to network.
   * includes a pre-run checker program, that conducts sanity checks
     on both the tape server host and all the client hosts (in
     parallel), and will send an e-mail report of any problems that
     could cause the backups to fail.
   * can compress dumps before sending or after sending over the net,
     with either compress or gzip.
   * can optionally synchronize with external backups, for those large
     timesharing computers where you want to do full dumps when the
     system is down in single-user mode (since BSD dump is not
     reliable on active filesystems): Amanda will still do your daily
     dumps.
   * lots of other options; Amanda is very configurable.
 .
 THIS PACKAGE RELIES ON A RUNNING AMANDA SERVER IN YOUR NETWORK.
 .
 For a quick start read the README.client.debian in /usr/doc/amanda-client.
 .
 Explanation of suggested programs:
  - awk and gnuplot are needed for plotting statistics of backups


Package: mon
Priority: optional
Section: admin
Installed-Size: 217
Maintainer: Roderick Schertler <roderick at argon.org>
Architecture: all
Version: 0.37k-2
Depends: perl (>= 5.004), libtime-period-perl
Suggests: netstd
Filename: dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/admin/mon_0.37k-2.deb
Size: 57852
MD5sum: 35a57ced501a0a3efb5a35420fa73e2c

Description: monitor hosts/services/whatever and alert about problems
 "mon" is a tool for monitoring the availability of services. Services
 may be network-related, environmental conditions, or anything that
 can be tested with software.  If a service is unavailable mon can
 tell you with syslog, email, your pager or a script of your choice.
 You can control who gets each alert based on the time of day or day
 of week, and you can control how often an existing problem is
 re-alerted.

Package: iptraf
Priority: optional
Section: net
Installed-Size: 227
Maintainer: Frederic Peters <fpeters at debian.org>
Architecture: i386
Version: 1.2.0-1
Depends: libc6, ncurses3.4
Filename: dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/net/iptraf_1.2.0-1.deb
Size: 105282
MD5sum: b51ff56a25d6bd9175df5d7e6ba1c2e5
Description: Interactive Colorful IP LAN Monitor
 IPTraf is an ncurses-based IP LAN monitor that generates
 various network statistics including TCP info, UDP counts,
 ICMP and OSPF information, Ethernet load info, node stats,
 IP checksum errors, and others.
-
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