- WLUG - wlug.mailman3.com

Sysstat -> Graph?
by Adam Keck 20 Aug '07

20 Aug '07

Hello All, What are your favorite sysstat graphing tools? I run sysstat on almost everything, but also have orca for Linux collecting data from several servers for graphing. I am wondering if I can make do with only sysstat. -Adam

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comparison of virtualization technologies
by Chuck Anderson 17 Aug '07

17 Aug '07

Here are the links to the virtualization technology comparison we talked about at the meeting: http://virt.kernelnewbies.org/TechComparison http://virt.kernelnewbies.org/HypervisorVsLinuxBased

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Awesome article about Windows v. Linux in the marketplace
by Eric Martin 17 Aug '07

17 Aug '07

I found this on either digg or slashdot. It's a really good article and I agree with most of it. People won't even consider GNU/Linux while they can still get a copy of XP for free from a buddy. That's why I tell people that I won't support their pirating of software; and pitch FOSS at every turn to them. http://tlug.jp/articles/Windows_Is_Free Give it a read, it might spur some good conversations tonight.

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REMINDER: WLUG meeting coming up
by Andy Stewart 16 Aug '07

16 Aug '07

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 HI Everybody, Its that time again for a WLUG meeting: Thursday, August 16th 7:00 PM Access Grid Room WPI Campus Worcester, MA USA See ya there! Andy - -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group (http://www.wlug.org) Chelmsford Linux Meetup Group (http://linux.meetup.com/393) Amateur Radio: KB1OIQ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGwn8kHl0iXDssISsRAikMAJ9zfo16xjYwhPIRJFOIr2D0raS23ACcDEmA D3w9ynOUYfEUFrgymuELv90= =Jnxo -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Linux meta-questions - platform choice
by Adam Keck 10 Aug '07

10 Aug '07

Hello All, I have some "meta-Linux" questions regarding platform choice. I am wondering if anyone knows of any research, papers, or other work that has been done on the topic. Given two major types of IT infrastructure: - Heterogeneous, where each application/service uses the platform to which it is best suited. - Homogeneous, where one bends a particular platform to fit every edge case. where the platform can be anything from and OS to a language to an application stack. o Under what general conditions is one infrastructure type more efficient than the other? o What other types of infrastructure are there? o More generally, how does one compare infrastructures in a rigorous manner? - How does one rigorously define "efficient" when comparing concepts like infrastructures? - What other metrics, besides "efficiency" (however defined) may be useful in comparing infrastructures? Does anyone know of any work where this topic has been abstracted and analyzed mathematically? Or of any trade papers where this question has been looked at in practice? So far, I found the following paper via Google: http://uic.edu/cba/cba-depts/ids/IDSNewsFiles/JGITM_Evaristopaper.pdf that seems to be on the topic and some hits on arxiv that appear related but not specifically on the topic. This relates to Linux in that convincing an organization to switch entirely over to Linux seems to be prohibitively hard in practice, but if one can show that the heterogeneous case above can be more efficient, then one can make the case for using Linux where it fits best. Thanks for any info/opinions/personal experiences! -Adam

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Anybody want a really cheap computer?
by Andy Stewart 06 Aug '07

06 Aug '07

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 HI everybody, Check this link: http://www.dataevolution.com/dectop%20info%202.htm This company bought the assets to the AMD PIC (personal internet computer). They're selling it for $99, or three for $299. Yes, it runs Linux. Here is one person's experience: http://jsco.org/dectop/ I wonder if this machine would make a good LTSP thin client...hummmmm. Perhaps a topic for a future WLUG meeting? See ya later, Andy - -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group (http://www.wlug.org) Chelmsford Linux Meetup Group (http://linux.meetup.com/393) Amateur Radio: KB1OIQ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGqo+VHl0iXDssISsRAnvgAKCBXbtNXCZ4paL2KzmGCvOYOPr0cQCfVaKH swC2c4lA1DSL6SoiKix8vB0= =gaqH -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: [Wlug] Anybody want a really cheap computer?
by Jamie Guinan 06 Aug '07

06 Aug '07

On Fri, 27 Jul 2007, Andy Stewart wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > > HI everybody, > > Check this link: > http://www.dataevolution.com/dectop%20info%202.htm > > This company bought the assets to the AMD PIC (personal internet > computer). They're selling it for $99, or three for $299. > > Yes, it runs Linux. Here is one person's experience: > http://jsco.org/dectop/ > > I wonder if this machine would make a good LTSP thin client...hummmmm. > Perhaps a topic for a future WLUG meeting? > > See ya later, > > Andy I remember reading about this when it came out a few years ago. It was intended for the same market that OLPC is now aiming for. Hence the rugged "big mac" case. :) Of course it lacks a monitor. A few others to consider, Nicer form factor, but slower CPU (166MHz), no HD: http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS6828123924.html http://www.norhtec.com/products/mcjr/index.html USB 2.0, but pricier (price listed in Euros): http://www.linutop.com/ Consumer variant of OLPC XO1, whenever it comes out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC Not to discourage you - the PIC looks like a fun little box! -Jamie

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core 2 duo extremely slow
by brad 03 Aug '07

03 Aug '07

Hi All, I recently got in a nice new 2.4GHz core 2 duo with a bunch of memory, 8GB. I installed kubuntu i386 on it. To get use of the 8GB of memory i recompiled the kernel to enable high memory support, a.k.a PAE. When i booted the new kernel it saw all my memory, but it took 10-15 minutes to boot. i checked dmesg and it didn't seem to report anything out of the ordinary. Then, I thought that perhaps the 64bit version of kubuntu might be a better option. I installed kubuntu 64bit. The install took two days because every step was extremely slow. Once the install finished, i rebooted and it took 10-15 to boot. I was seeing the same symptoms of the 64bit install as i was with the 32bit install with PAE. I tried downloading the current kubuntu 64bit release as well as the beta of the next release. I'm also trying Fedora Core 7 64bit as i type, but that install is going just as slow. I hunted through the BIOS for any suspicious settings. I removed all the hardware except for the CD-ROM (to boot a live CD). I did searching through the interweb. All with no luck to solving this problem. If anyone has any suggestions, they will be much appreciated. keep cool, - brad

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Detecting power failure
by Tal Cohen 03 Aug '07

03 Aug '07

Hi Guys, I have a question about detecting power failures in Linux. I have an Intel server sitting in a datacenter. It is running Crux 2.1 (a 2.6 kernel). It is a 2U server with 2 power supplies. Does anyone know if I can detect when 1 of the power supplies fails? Thanks, Tal

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Programming position at UMass CS
by Hanna M. Wallach 30 Jul '07

30 Jul '07

========================================== Software Engineer in Information Extraction and Synthesis Laboratory at UMass. Work with computer science researchers and other software engineers to revolutionize search over research literature and patents. See our preliminary web portal for computer science researchers at http://rexa.info/faq, and read relevant publications at http://www.cs.umass.edu/~mccallum/papers. Open source tools: Linux, Java, MySQL, Apache, ... Modern methods: Test-driven development using the Java/Spring framework. Feature-rich, Ajax-based web interfaces. Intellectually stimulating: Learn about cutting edge methods in machine learning, information extraction, web search, data mining, social network analysis. Serious hardware platforms: 100-CPU cluster, 10Tb disk, fast servers and desktops. Challenging work: Not cookie-cutter programming. Integrate with machine learning methods; program for high parallelism; devise algorithms for massive scalability. High creativity, intelligence, experience, and independent drive required. Experienced colleagues: Former VP R&D 170-person startup, extensive professional software engineering experience on the team. Tuition Benefits: Take UMass Amherst courses while working. Opportunities to publish research papers, if desired. True search: No internal candidate. Excellent follow-on prospects: Several others from the lab later got job offers from Google, Yahoo, IBM, Microsoft. (We want someone interested in staying multiple years, though.) Time off: Five weeks vacation and personal time, plus 13 holidays each year. Gorgeous location: Amherst, MA: bucolic surroundings plus active culture. Smith, Holyoke, Hampshire and Amherst Colleges all in the neighborhood. Office with window. ================================================ Rexa: http://rexa.info (create free login) Rexa is a digital library covering the computer science research literature and the people who create it. Rexa is a sibling to Google Scholar, CiteSeer and the ACM Portal. It's chief enhancement is that Rexa knows about more first-class, de-duplicated, cross-referenced object types: not only papers and their citation links, but also people, grants, topics---and in the near future universities, conferences, journals, research communities, and more. Rexa currently provides: * Keyword search on over 7 million papers (mostly in computer science) * Cross-linked pages for papers, authors, topics and NSF grants * Browsing by citations, authors, co-authors, cited authors, citing authors; (find who cites you most by clicking "Citing authors" on your home page) * Web-2.0-style "tagging" to bookmark papers * Automatically-gathered contact info and photos of author's faces * Analysis of research topics, their impact, and how they relate. Coming soon: * Much improved coverage of recent CS papers (it's somewhat weak now) * Ability to make corrections to extracted data Coming later: * Improved ranking, extraction and co-reference accuracy * Much more data mining * Broader coverage of more research fields Rather than seeing our siblings as competitors, we believe that such services are like "newspapers for the research community", and, just as it is tremendously important that there is not solely one national newspaper, we think there should be many such services. This is especially true since increasingly they will do more than simply supply raw information, but also provide subjective analysis, pattern discovery, and predictions. Rexa acts as driving application and showcase for our research in machine learning, natural language processing, information extraction, entity resolution, trend analysis and social network analysis. We aim to revolutionize the progress of science by providing new tools to help scientists do their job more effectively. ============================================ Official Job Posting: The Information Extraction and Synthesis Laboratory within the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval (CIIR) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is seeking computer professionals to support its expanding research. The Software Engineers will design, implement, and maintain software systems. Both positions require experience with programming in Java or C++ and with building software systems, web-based systems experience is a plus. Experience preferred in Unix, Network, shell script programming and one or more of the following: information retrieval, natural language processing, text and information extraction processing, and database systems. Software Engineer 1: B.S. in computer science or related field, or equivalent combination of education, training and experience, plus 2-4 years experience or equivalent. M.S. preferred. Hiring Range: $39,200 - $55,400. Respond to Search #R25014. Senior Software Engineer: M.S. in Computer Science or equivalent and 2-4 years of related work experience. Demonstrated leadership ability required; project management experience preferred. Hiring Range: $47,600 - $65,000. Respond to Search #R26907. To apply, send a letter with your resume and three letters of recommendation to: Search {# from above}, Computer Science Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003-9264. These positions are grant-funded; renewal beyond one year contingent upon continued funding. Review of applications will continue until the available positions are filled. The University of Massachusetts is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. Women and members of minority groups are encouraged to apply.

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