Linux & Software

Introduction
I was interested in a genealogy of music genres using Wikipedia as a reference. I had some success, no doubt more to learn.

It occurred to me that if I have a tool to manage tracking and another for invasive ads, then why can't I have even more tools to augment what I already have to provide a safer, more productive experience. I tried to establish what tools are necessary and whether or not they currently exist. I did my best to arrange them in a hierarchy.

Data Availability
Data is usually made available by two means: reliability and ports of entry (i.e. redundancy).

Effort has been made to buy reliable hardware. Top of the line SSD, motherboard, memory, CPU and power supplies are used in the server.

Data is made redundant by providing multiple on-line copies of data. This is achieved primarily through a RAID1 mirror and protects against bad sectors and disk failures.

At some point I should add a small UPS to protect against power outages and brown outs.

Introduction
Time to upgrade my ailing, 99% filled 350GB spinning disk mirror.

There were several end user requirements:

Overview
This entry covers the technical details of the implementation.

I approached this by breaking down the stack into individual steps and then I conduct performance, security and data management reviews.

The Physical Stack

• Storage Devices
• Storage Controller
• Server
• Network
• Site
• User

Synopsis
I recently upgraded my router from Debian Sarge (3.1) to Debian Etch (4.0). Debian is a fairly ideal platform for building routers. It includes all the software you need. The packaging is fantastic and most of it integrates fairly well. The Debian infrastructure is unsurpassed and so are its ideals. Here, I will share with you the steps required to build a professional router. I will also point out bugs and problems I had during the installation. Places where Debian could provide better integration and be more seamless.

On Mar 28, 2007 OSNews carried a story¹ about the linux community and the impact of the formation² of the Linux Foundation.³ As the article indicates, the Linux Foundation membership is comprised of commercial entities and no leading members of either the Linux community or the Open Source community. Many readers were alarmed (including myself) and this led to a very interesting discussion in the OSNews forum, but failed to come to any solid conclusion why this consortium was dangerous to the Linux community.

I work on fast computers. Really fast computers. Not supercomputers, those weirdly configured boxes destined for niche applications like nuclear tests and protein folding, but enterprise computers. The ones that help run banks, governments, and corporations. But while working on the next generation platform, I kind of wonder what the point of it all is. We design the next 2, 5, or 10 times faster system, build it, rejoice, feel proud for having worked on such a technological work of art, then we start over again and throw the old computer in the dumpster. It is now garbage.