On Fri, May 30, 2003 at 11:40:49AM -0500, Hollis Blanchard wrote:
On Friday, May 30, 2003, at 11:34 US/Central, linas@austin.ibm.com
wrote:
quoted
Latest & greatest is only the best if you are a developer. For users,
old-trustworthy is usually a much better bet.
I disagree,
OK, I can't just let this one slide.
It's hard to say this without sounding personal and insulting, but it
is exactly this sort of attitude on the part of developers that lies
at the root of a lot of the software attrocities commited (of which
I am a guilty, collaborating member). This sort of an attitude has
got to change; if not, people will curse Linux as much as they curse
Windows.
At various points in my life (including the present) I have had to
sysadmin more than half-a-dozen systems at the same time, and software
upgrades are one of the worst things a sysadmin has to go through.
Things like disk crashes and data loss are pretty bad, but software
upgrades often result in data loss too, or system outages, or subsystem
outages. No sysadmin willingly upgrades a working system.
I could barrage you with a litany of personal experiences. I could
tell you to talk to any sysadmin, who would do the same. I could
try to remind you of what you went through last time you accidentally
got hammered by an MS Windows upgrade. Or a debian apt-get upgrade.
I have spent way too much of my life trying to deal with brokeness,
and frankly, I'm kinda getting sick of it. I'm feeling gun-shy or
shell-shocked or whatever, I get this sinking feeling, 'batten down
the hatches', 'get ready for another all-nighter', 'there goes another
nice sunny weekend' every time I have to contemplate a software upgrade.
Yes, I am venting, but there was a time when I enjoyed maintaining
my own Linux server. Now I hate it, and my hatred is reaching crisis
proportions. I know that I am not alone. OK, so what to do? Can
I steer the conversation back to something positive & constructuive?
I've started writing up some of these problems here:
http://www.linas.org/linux/peeves.html
This url deals more with a hardware outage I had running www.gnucash.org,
(you can read a short version of the saga on the news, there), and
deals primarily with storage issues. I'll expand this tirade to
include software upgrades: I think I can blame at least some of my
pain on an upgrade of the 'mailman' mailing list software, which
clobbered all of the subscriber lists. I had to downgrade back to the
older version of the software, and restore what I could from backup.
Ugh.
--linas
Hmm. Its tempting to blame the upgrade process, rather than the new
software. The upgrade process stinks, and needs a complete overhaul.
But sometimes the mere act of upgrading is at fault. I remember installing
kernel 2.2.13 (or some version like that) and the mouse just stoped
working for no apparent reason. Even a picture-perfect upgrade
process would still let things like that sneak through: the moral
of the story being that software upgrades are inherently risky.
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On Friday, May 30, 2003, at 16:48 US/Central, linas@austin.ibm.com
wrote:
On Fri, May 30, 2003 at 11:40:49AM -0500, Hollis Blanchard wrote:
quoted
On Friday, May 30, 2003, at 11:34 US/Central, linas@austin.ibm.com
wrote:
quoted
Latest & greatest is only the best if you are a developer. For
users,
old-trustworthy is usually a much better bet.
I disagree,
At various points in my life (including the present) I have had to
sysadmin more than half-a-dozen systems at the same time, and software
upgrades are one of the worst things a sysadmin has to go through.
Things like disk crashes and data loss are pretty bad, but software
upgrades often result in data loss too, or system outages, or subsystem
outages. No sysadmin willingly upgrades a working system.
But you're venting entirely from a sysadmin standpoint. The position
you advocate here nothing new; in fact it's common practice. Even in
the Linux world: have a look at RHAS or Debian "stable" - these things
are constantly on the verge of obsolescence (and that's being kind,
depending on when the last Debian release was ;).
Now think about it from a general user standpoint. "Sleep crashes my
powerbook." "My Xserve doesn't boot." Video drivers, SMP stability and
performance... Even getting away from hardware support, personally I
*require* the input layer, which allows me to plug and unplug USB mice
while also using a PS/2 nipplemouse without freaking out my X server.
It didn't always work like that. Wheelie-mouse support - it wasn't
always there! And now let's step away from the kernel: I'm sure you're
a diehard twm user, but I think we can all agree the KDE and Gnome
projects of today are much better than those from two years ago. And
anyone here who remembers trying to compile x86-developed code with
PowerPC glibc 1.99 will assure you that newer is better. :)
For many (most?) users, newer is better. If that weren't the case, then
what are all these developers *doing* anyways? :) As for sysadmins,
you're free (wise, even :)to keep doing what you've always done: if it
ain't broke don't fix it.
--
Hollis Blanchard
IBM Linux Technology Center
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Hi Hollis,
I got your reply, but don't have it here in front of me, so I can't
quote it. But ...
On Fri, May 30, 2003 at 04:48:22PM -0500, linas@austin.ibm.com was heard to remark:
On Fri, May 30, 2003 at 11:40:49AM -0500, Hollis Blanchard wrote:
quoted
On Friday, May 30, 2003, at 11:34 US/Central, linas@austin.ibm.com
wrote:
quoted
Latest & greatest is only the best if you are a developer. For users,
old-trustworthy is usually a much better bet.
I disagree,
OK, I can't just let this one slide.
In your reply, you talk mostly of Linux desktop apps, and new hardware.
Lets not dismiss the problem by false analogy.
-- New hardware (e.g. laptop which won't go into sleep mode) does
require new software, drivers, etc. But that's OK, cause its new
hardware, not an upgrade. I have nothing against new software:
I create a lot of it, and I use a lot of it.
-- You also mention desktop apps. Yes, the linux desktop has been
moving rapidly, and it is reasonable to assume that some users want
to upgrade old hardware to use the new desktops. (instead of
buying new hardware that actually has things like USB on it).
But beware of turning the home user into an inadvertant sysadmin.
When your home user becomes the sysadmin, they will rapidly come
to hate you.
A little annecdote: I 'inherited' a late-model Win98 box. I 'loaned'
it to my 6 year old. Who used it happily. One day, we got a new
game that required a new 'macromedia flash'. OK, I'm a big man,
'I can do this', I say to myself. It pre-req'ed an newer version
of apple's 'quicktime veiwer'. This pre-req'ed a pile of Win98
upgrades from Microsoft, about 25MB worth. I think it must have
been an automated Win98SE upgrade. Took a while to download. When
done, the sound card didn't work. My 6 year old was unhappy. The
next day, 10 drivers later, sound still doesn't work. Every nite,
I come home, my 6 year old hovers waiting to get the computer back.
This goes on for 5 evenings in a row. In furstration, I tell him,
sorry, computer's ba-ba. We have discussion about piggy-banks and
cost of new computer, and how spare change isn't gonna solve it.
Next week a freind offers to pirate a copy of WinXP for me, he
says its pretty good, he likes it. I almost go for it: one thought
holds me back: new software sometimes has a real problem with
old hardware. I might be jumping from frying pan into fire on such
an upgrade. Sometime, a few weeks later, after we've given up on it,
I'm toying around, install the sound driver one more time, one more
reboot, magic! it starts working! Oh, and the game that required
the software update? It still didn't work.
Moral of the story? Even desktop users can be turned into sysadmins.
(BTW, I am the proud co-author of gnucash, which, if you read the
trade-press, is in the top-10, if not ranked #1 in the category of
'most difficult-to-install Linux desktop software'. Of which I'm
*not* proud of. But what can one do? How else can one add new
features? So I understand the other side of the coin pretty well.)
Linux is real strong in the server space, weak in the desktop. Server
'users' are almost exclusively sysadmins. They run systems for 5 years
or more. (my www.linas.org is an 9 year old Dell 486. www.gnucash.org
is 3.5 years old) When a server goes down, hundreds of users are
affected. (each of the www.gnucash.org mailing lists have 500+
subscribers, I move 7-10 GBytes a month.). I think we need to make sure
that Linux in the server space benefits the sysadmin, and this means
very conservative design principles, and conservative installers
(something that really can backout the new version and replace old
version). God help us all if one day Microsoft succeeds in building
a system that is easier to install/upgrade/manage than a Linux server.
Don't bite the hand that is currently feeding Linux.
--linas
--
pub 1024D/01045933 2001-02-01 Linas Vepstas (Labas!) [off-list ref]
PGP Key fingerprint = 8305 2521 6000 0B5E 8984 3F54 64A9 9A82 0104 5933
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On Friday, May 30, 2003, at 19:58 US/Central, Linas Vepstas wrote:
Linux is real strong in the server space, weak in the desktop. Server
'users' are almost exclusively sysadmins. They run systems for 5 years
or more. (my www.linas.org is an 9 year old Dell 486. www.gnucash.org
is 3.5 years old) When a server goes down, hundreds of users are
affected. (each of the www.gnucash.org mailing lists have 500+
subscribers, I move 7-10 GBytes a month.). I think we need to make
sure
that Linux in the server space benefits the sysadmin, and this means
very conservative design principles, and conservative installers
(something that really can backout the new version and replace old
version). God help us all if one day Microsoft succeeds in building
a system that is easier to install/upgrade/manage than a Linux server.
Don't bite the hand that is currently feeding Linux.
There's no problem here. Keep right on installing <distribution from
1996> until your hardware dies, and it won't bother me one bit.
Backport security fixes (or find others who have already), and ignore
reports about the latest wonderful features in the current version.
Your 500+ subscribers will thank you.
However, don't complain that upgrading your system can make things
break and ask me for sympathy. :) I for one would rather spend my time
making things work than making things backwards-compatible back to
version 0.3. I guess you're trying to convince me of the exact
opposite, but IMHO there's simply too much stuff left to get working.
Once it all works then we can talk about backwards-compatibility... ;)
--
Hollis Blanchard
IBM Linux Technology Center
** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/
I am trying to get remote serial console going through my Keyspan
USB to Serial adapter.
The machine is single G4 tower, 1Ghz CPU, running 2.4.20-ben10.
I appended these options to the kernel load time parameters:
console=ttyUSB0,57600
The Keyspan adapter works fine in minicom, and dmesg seems to show all
the modules loading. However I get the message:
" Warning: unable to open an initial console. "
After doing some research I discovered that there is a patch for 2.5
kernel that would allow me to accomplish this task.
Is there any way I can get this going in 2.4?
Regards,
daRonin
========================================================
Certe, Toto, sentio nos in Kansate non iam adesse
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