Fedora Frog 1.0-11.0.0 released

One of the ways that people give back to the Open Source Community is by writing or contributing to Open Source projects. My programming project is Fedora Frog which I took over in 2007 from Raivis Dejus, a Lithuanian programmer and college student.

Open Source Community at Work

Raivis wrote a handy little utility to assist System Administrators installing software that was not part of the original Fedora releases, or that was not installed by default. Raivis was getting too busy to continue working on the project and asked for volunteers to take it over. I offered and have been maintaining it ever since.

This is how Open Source Software works. People have a need for a particular piece of software and find that existing software does not do what they need so they write their own. Some Open Source Software, such as OpenOffice.org may gain a very large number of developers, testers and supporters, sometimes numbering into the thousands, far more than any company would be able to afford to assign to such a project. I found that Fedora Frog was very valuable to me and so, rather than have it die, I volunteered to take over its maintenance.

Some of the Open Source developers work for companies such as Sun Microsystems in the case of OpenOffice.org, but the vast majority do their work for free because they enjoy it and they are able to make a positive contribution to the project. I happen to enjoy writing programs and, as a System Administrator, I have a frequent need to install software on many remote computers. Fedora Frog is the software I use to do that. So it solves my problem and that of the more than 17,000 other people who have downloaded it since I put it up on SourceForge in 2007.

About Fedora Frog

This version of Fedora Frog is a nearly complete rewrite of the code. I have made it more efficient and combined multiple pieces of code into a single program.

This Bash program provides the Linux administrator an easy way to install applications not installed by default during a Fedora Core installation procedure, and applications that are not part of the standard distribution. It also tweaks some configuration items. Additional repositories are required beyond the normal Fedora ones, and they are added by Fedora Frog as well.

Frog installs media players such as RealPlayer, Mplayer, VLC, Kaffiene and Xine. It also installs Thunderbird, Firefox, GNUCash, Adobe Reader and Yumex, and some things specifically for System Admins such as chkrootkit. Fedora Frog is currently supported on Fedora 10 and 11. Support for all previous versions of Fedora has been removed.

The latest version of Fedora Frog can be downloaded at https://sourceforge.net/projects/fedorafrog/.

Fastest Computers on the Planet Run Linux

Here is an interesting article at ComputerWorld, “Linux: It doesn’t Get Any Faster” which discusses the current semi-annual ranking of the world’s top 500 supercomputers.

In High Performance Computing (HPC) speed is the only thing that matters and 88.6% of these supercomputers run on Linux. Another 5.8% of supercomputers run a hybrid version of Linux and Unix.  Only 1% of the world’s supercomputers run Windows.

The world’s fastest computer is the IBM Roadrunner system at Los Alamos National Laboratory with a capacity of 1.105 petaflops using 129,600 CPU cores. That is 1.105 quadrillion (1,105,000,000,000,000) floating point operations per second (flops). And it runs Linux.

Top 500 List links:

• The complete list.
• Link to the Operating Systems Family Share statistics.
• Link to the List Introduction.

The Need for Speed

Most of us don’t need to power a supercomputer and your computer may have only one, two or four cores instead of 129,600, but you should be able to count on having all of the performance of every processor core you paid for when you need it. And you should not be robbed of any of that performance by the CPU cycle stealing spyware, virii, worms and other malware that permeates the world of Windows.

If you are ready to extract all of the speed that your computer can give, it is time to consider Linux. Contact us at Millennium Technology Consulting LLC to get all the performance you paid for out of your PC hardware.

Summer Thunderstorms and Power Failures

Spring and summer are the seasons for thunderstorms although they can actually occur any time during the year. In the state of North Carolina alone during the time period between January 1, 2000 and March 3, 2009, 8040 thunderstorms occurred(1) —  and these are only the ones with hail over 1″ and wind speeds of at least 50 Knots. That is an average of 869 major storms per year during the slightly more than 9 year time period. Many more smaller or unmeasured thunderstorms occurred during that same period. Thunderstorms caused an estimated $200M to $400M in damages per year.

All of these thunderstorms often lead to power failures, lightning strikes, flooding and resulting damage and potential data and productivity loss for computers. This data loss can be due to losing work on a document or spreadsheet because it had not been saved before the power outage occurred, or it could be due to data loss during a write to the hard drive. Modern hard drives and operating systems like Linux are significantly less prone to data loss due to power failure than in the past but it can still happen.

Protecting you and your business from data and productivity loss is an important part of any disaster recovery plan. You do have one don’t you?

There are some important steps that anyone can take to protect against or to at least recover from these types of events. Regular backups with off-site storage can save your data and allow you to recover your business in the event of disaster. This is probably the most important step you can take to ensure recoverability and survivability.

But what about continuing to operate or preventing loss of data during those power outages caused by thunderstorms? This is where having a good Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) is extremely important. Keeping the power flowing while the mains are down can mean the difference between instant down-time and loss of data or saving the data in your spreadsheet and doing an orderly shutdown. It can also mean the difference between simply working through the many short power failures lasting less than a few seconds and having to recreate at least part of that spreadsheet or document.

I recommend that all computers, even desktops and not just the servers, be connected to a UPS capable of maintaining power for at least 20 minutes for one or more computers connected to it. This provides a reasonable amount of time to save your work and power down the computers in a controlled manner rather than losing power and data in an instant.

Remember, protecting against data loss due to power failures, whatever their cause, is only one aspect of a complete disaster recovery and survivability plan for your business. Millennium Technology Consulting LLC can assist you with creating and implementing a disaster recovery and survivability plan tailored to your unique requirements.

(1)Data source: NOAA National Climate Data Center, database search.

Linux Rocks – Again!

Of course I have known for years that Linux rocks which is why I use it exclusively. But today I experienced a really amazing example of that. Yet another one. I think this one deserves sharing as it is a perfect illustration of how much more advanced Linux is over other personal computer operating systems.

Running out of Disk Space in VirtualBox

Yesterday was the first day of release for the new Fedora 11 distribution. I always like to run new distributions in a VirtualBox virtual machine for a few days or weeks to ensure that I will not run into any devastating problems when I start installing it on my production machines.

This morning I started installing Fedora 11 in a new virtual machine on my primary workstation, thinking I had enough disk space allocated to the filesystem in which it was being installed. I did not. About a third of the way through the installation I ran out of space on that filesystem. Fortunately VirtualBox is great software itself. It detected the out of space condition and paused the virtual machine and even displayed an error message indicating the exact cause of the problem.

Adding Disk Space on the Fly

Since most modern distributions use LVM, Logical Volume Management, and I had some free space available on the hard drive, I was able to assign additional disk space to the appropriate filesystem on the fly. This means that I did not have to reformat the entire hard drive and reinstall the operating system or even reboot. I simply assigned some of the available space to the appropriate logical volume and resized the filesystem — all while the filesystem was on-line and the running program, VirtualBox was using the filesystem and waiting. I resumed running the virtual machine and the installation continued as if nothing had occurred.

Ease the Pain

Although this type of problem may never have happened to you, running out of disk space while a critical program is running has happened to many people. And while many programs, especially Windows programs, are not as well written and resilient as VirtualBox, Linux made it possible to recover without losing any data and without having to restart the time-consuming installation. How much pain would that cause?

Well-written Open Source operating systems and software are resilient and flexible. They offer significant advantages over many proprietary equivalents. And it is not necessary to reboot just to keep them working, let alone add new disk space.

Contact us at Millennium Technology Consulting LLC to see how Open Source Software can ease your pain. We can also provide training to assist in making the transition. We do Open Source and Linux consulting for small to medium businesses.

Happy Linux Customers

There is a neat little company in Austin Texas that does Linux and Open Source consulting. HeliOS Solutions is doing in and around Austin Texas what we at Millennium Technology Consulting LLC are trying to do here in the Raleigh Durham, RTP area of North Carolina.

They have been doing this for a while now and we are just getting started. So I am not too proud to point you to the What our customers are saying page of the HeliOS Solutions web site to see how satisfied their customers are with Linux and Open Source Software.

Just a couple fragments from that page:

“It is such a relief to not worry about viruses and spyware anymore. What struck us immediately about Linux is the beauty of it.”

“Well, this begins month two without having to reboot our computer and my kids have went download-crazy. The fact that they can play their beloved games and not ruin our setup like it used to happen is not only a relief, it has saved us countless hours of reformating[sic] and reinstalling Windows.”

“I’ve been using Linux now for about a year and a half, and I stopped dual-booting Windows about a year ago. I cannot believe how much time, energy, and money I literally wasted, needlessly, on software while using Windows.”

The company also refurbishes old computers and make them usable by removing Windows and installing Linux. They donate these older but now usable computers to children who would not otherwise have access to a computer at home.

Contact us at Millennium Technology Consulting LLC to see how Open Source Software can improve your life. We can also provide training to assist in making the transition. We do Open Source and Linux consulting for small to medium businesses.

Dell to Bundle Open Source Software to SMBs

From an article on Yahoo by By John Ribeiro, IDG News Service – Tue Jun 9, 2009 12:30AM EDT

Dell is planning to offer small and medium businesses (SMBs) globally pre-configured bundles of hardware and open source software to run their businesses, according to an executive at the company.

There is a definite shift from proprietary to open source software among SMBs, particularly as companies in this sector look to cut costs, said Amit Midha, president of Dell’s Asia Pacific and Japan region for the SMB business, on Tuesday.

“The more advanced the customers, the more likely they will adopt open source, because they are likely to ask why they should spend money on something they can get free,” he added.

Read the complete article.

Contact us at Millennium Technology Consulting LLC to see how Open Source Software can make your business more competitive. We can also provide training to assist in making the transition. We do Open Source and Linux consulting for small to medium businesses.

DataBook® Troubleshooting Documents

I have recently finished adding some new documents to the Troubleshooting section of the DataBook for Linux Administrators. This includes some general troublesooting tips as well as some information on troublesooting ElectroMagnetic Interference (EMI) problems. Be sure to refer to this latter section on EMI problems if you are experiencing otherwise unexplainable and unresolvable symptoms.

Linux – Easier Than You Think

“But Linux is hard!”

I hear this quite frequently in many different forms. Sometimes it takes the form, “Do I have to learn to use the command line,” “It is just too complicated,” or, “I won’t know how to use it.” These questions and statements are based upon an assumption that Linux is significantly different from other operating systems like Windows in the face it presents to end users.

In fact nothing could be further from the truth. It is very much like the situation in which your system administrator installs a new computer with Windows on it on your desk. If that same administrator installed a new Linux computer on your desk the experience of moving to a new operating system would be nearly the same. With Linux:

• You never have to use the command line unless you really want to.
• The GUI, the Graphical User Interface looks and works very much like the Windows desktop. It can be made to look and work exactly like Windows if you wish.
• Some applications, like OpenOffice, Thunderbird and Firefox, are the same in both Windows and Linux.
• Some applications, such as OpenOffice are similar enough to their Windows counterparts that you will generally take only a few minutes to make the transition.

I liken the transition to Linux a little like purchasing a new car. Even when you move from one model or year to another of the same manufacturer the controls may be placed a bit differently, the accelerator and brakes have a bit of a different feel, and it may take a couple times to get used to how the wiper controls work on the new car. Moving from Windows XP to Windows Vista took a bit of getting used to.

When moving to a car from another manufacturer the differences may be a little greater and it may take a little longer to get used to the way the controls work and the car responds to steering, acceleration and braking, but the basics are all the same. The basics of Linux are all the same as any other operating system. Some things work a bit differently but launching and using programs, manipulating application windows, accessing files and many other things are very similar to what you are already used to.

Contact us at Millennium Technology Consulting LLC for a demonstration that can show you how easy it is to make the transition to Linux. We can also provide training to assist in making the transition. We do Open Source and Linux consulting for small to medium businesses.

Availability of Open Source Applications

The availability of high quality Free Open Source Software (FOSS) is an important factor if you are considering making the switch to Linux and Open Source. I started to write a post that would list some of the major classes of software and provide examples of Open Source Software that can be used to replace the Windows-based software you likely use currently. It became much longer than would be appropriate for a post so I have added it to the FAQ section of this web site.

You can go directly to the Free Open Source Software Availability page to read all about it. I am always amazed at the number of Open Source applications that are available. I think you will be too.

Millennium Technology Consulting LLC can help you locate and choose the Free Open Source Software you need for your business. Contact us today.

Linux: Lean, clean, and green

How GNU/Linux is becoming more eco-friendly

Summary: Green IT is one of the hottest of today’s technology trends, and the GNU/Linux® community has risen to the challenge. Along with several corporate partners, the GNU/Linux operating system provides solutions for dealing with power consumption, carbon emissions, and e-waste.

There are some amazing numbers and information in this article. Be sure to read it and you will understand a bit about the magnitude of the e-waste problem.

Full Story: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-green-linux/index.html