dawgiestyle

11/28/04: NFS Performance on Suse 9.1

NFS performance is talked about on quite a large number of sites, but as I have just found out, Google cannot always solve one's problems. I got a lot of results where people were talking about terrible NFS write performance, which is what I was experiencing, but most of them either went unanswered or were solved by adjusting rsize and wsize mount options. I tried playing with these settings even though I knew they were fine. I was using the same mount options that I used with Gentoo and Slackware on my desktop with great performance. It was only after installing Suse 9.1 that I noticed a nasty slowdown in NFS write performance. 3MB/s on a 100Mbit lan.

I actually really like Suse, so I began desperately trying to find a solution, because if I could not find one I knew I would have to change desktop OSs yet again.

My fileserver is a Slackware 10 box with 2 NICs bonded into 1 interface, which I had done around the same time I installed Suse, so I reversed those changes, and still no luck.

There were other things I changed (kernels on server and desktop) but I won't go into them. Finally, as a last resort, I noticed "nfsvers=2" on the end of my mount options and changed it to "nfsvers=3" and bam, 8-9MB/s writes. This was about 5 minutes ago so I'm still ecstatic.

So I had to post this in case others are banging their heads against walls about it as I have been doing for a couple weeks now. I love solving problems, but its very annoying knowing that it was right in front of me the whole time. Though situations like these do wonders for troubleshooting skills :)

11/24/04: Stop Using Winamp

Winamp Flaw Allows Attacks by Ryan Naraine -- Users of America Online Inc.'s Winamp media player are at risk of remote code execution attacks because of a flaw in the software, according to a warning from a security research firm.

The flaw, which Secunia rates as "highly critical," has been reported in Winamp versions 5.05 and 5.06. Prior versions also may be affected. --

Ironically, I stopped using Winamp under a week ago. As much as I dislike AOL, Winamp was what I knew and was accustomed to. Of course, these days I use linux much more than windows, so I'm all XMMS. For a media player in windows though, I really like Quintessential Player . Give it a try.

11/23/04: More Secure Remote Access Options

Citrix to Acquire SSL VPN Provider by Dennis Fisher -- Citrix Systems Inc. on Tuesday announced that it is acquiring a small SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) VPN provider, a move that company officials hope will position Citrix as a major player in the remote-access market.

The purchase of Net6 Inc. for $50 million puts Citrix smack in the middle of a rapidly expanding and fiercely competitive portion of the security market. --

Thanks to things like SSL, remote access is much less of a double-edged sword today than it was not so long ago. It saves an enormous amount of time for anybody who administers servers in more than one location, as I do. Precautions must be taken, however, to ensure that what is convenient for the admin is not a cakewalk for the cracker that wants access to your network. Competition in secure remote access is good news for everyone.

11/23/04: Software Patents Be Damned

Torvalds Slams EU Patent Proposal by Matthew Broersma -- Linus Torvalds and two other European software luminaries have thrown their weight behind a campaign to block software patents from being legitimized in Europe, ahead of a critical European Competitiveness Council decision later this week.

On Thursday or Friday, the Competitiveness Council is expected to decide whether to formally back-draft legislation on "the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions," which received the tentative approval of the EU Council in May. In the long EU legislative process, this would amount to a significant step forward for the controversial proposal, which many argue would open the floodgates to software patents if approved in its current form.

In a statement published on Tuesday, Torvalds, the inventor of the Linux operating system kernel, along with Michael Widenius, one of the creators of the MySQL database, and Rasmus Lerdorf, creator of the PHP scripting language, urged the EU Council to prevent the proposal's adoption. "In the interest of Europe, such a deceptive, dangerous and democratically illegitimate proposal must not become the Common Position of the member states," they wrote. --

I don't really have anything to add to this except that it is important to be aware of such things, especially for fans of open source. It is absolutely ridiculous that this nonsense has gone on as long as it has. Go read the full article.

11/21/04: The Future of the Internet

ICANN pitches the internet's future by Kieren McCarthy -- ICANN - the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - which oversees the Internet in all its manificent lunacy, has just published a Strategic Plan, in which it has outlined what its direction and goals are for the next three years.

In reality though, the strategic plan is a sales pitch to the world. And it should be read by anyone who wants to know the kind of people who will be running the internet for some time to come.

As a sales pitch, it is charming, convincing and considered. And as a sales pitch it is also simplified, one-sided and vague. Its job is to persuade you that ICANN is the best choice in what could become the greatest auction in history. The prize is control of the internet. --

Its kind of scarey to consider that this thing we have become so accumstomed to is completely in someone else's control. I don't believe the internet will ever go away, but I think we have to keep an ear to the ground on where it is being steered or we may just get a nasty surprise. Remember, the Internet is by no means stable. It is developing everyday.

11/19/04: Open Source Licenses - More Than Just the GPL

Open Source Licenses Are Not All the Same by Stephen Fishman -- As open source and the Internet continue to grow in popularity, more and more users and developers come into contact with open source code. Though the various licenses increase user rights somehow, they all do it in different ways and with different goals. Steve Fishman categorizes several popular licenses and explains their implications.

This is a must read for anyone who distributes their own code, whatever the type. Personally, I knew there were different licenses, but until now I did not know how and was just not pressed to look it up.

11/19/04: Differences Between Linux and FreeBSD

FreeBSD for Linux Users by Dru Lavigne -- BSD and Linux are both Unix workalikes. How different can they be? In certain cases, very! Though the systems share a family tree, their differences sometimes stand out. Dru Lavigne explains FreeBSD's runlevels, startup scripts, kernel configuration, and documentation systems to Linux users.

As noted in a comment to the original article, there are exceptions the the usual sysV runlevels initialization style in linux. Slackware, for example, uses a BSD-style layout for init scripts. Overall this is a great article for anybody interested in trying the other OS. I recommend trying both and I use both myself for different tasks.

11/15/04: Which Linux Do I Use?

Since I began trying alternatives to windows I have used 5 different distributions of Linux, as well as OpenBSD and just a little FreeBSD. The Linux distributions I have used are RedHat, Slackware, Debian, Gentoo, and finally Suse. I have to say that all in all, I am very pleased with Suse. Find out why. I started out by installing RedHat 7.3 to dual-boot with windows. At the time though I was using dialup internet with a winmodem, so I didn't spend any real time in Linux till a couple months later when I moved up to ADSL. To my surprise, as soon as I booted into RedHat, I was online, so I got myself familiar with the basic commands and was on my way. It wasn't till a few months later when I accumulated enough spare parts to build a second computer that I really started using linux in a big way. Again, I installed RedHat 7.3 exclusively on the second box and got a kvm switch. No more hassle of rebooting :) RedHat was only installed for a short time when I felt confident enough to try out Slackware 9.0, after reading so much about it. I immediately fell in love with its simplicity and the necessity of actually learning things about linux. In fact, I still run Slackware (version 10.0 now) on that very box, which is now my fileserver.

After upgrading my desktop, I decided to once again go the way of dual-boot. This time, my aim was to completely curb my dependence on windows and mainly use linux. The windows partition was therefore just a safety net. So I installed Slackware on this box also and all was well. I didn't like NIS though, and Slackware does not use PAM, so LDAP authentication is awkward. I resolved this by writing some small shell scripts using the rsync command to keep passwd and group files in sync, but I learn by doing, and I really wanted to get LDAP working, so alas, I made the decision to look past Slackware on the desktop.

At this point, I installed Debian woody after hearing great things about it. Of course, now I realize that woody is more appropriate for servers and the latest unstable release is better for a desktop. This was largely the reason I replaced it after only 2 days. As a side note, I have worked with Debian since then on webserver boxes, and found that its ease of upgrading is a big advantage for it in this area.

I was taking a networking course around this time, which was only half-days, so I figured I had the time needed to try out Gentoo. I was extremely impressed with this distribution. The install docs were very thorough, and installing and upgrading software was very easy to do, if a little time-consuming. I did achieve LDAP authentication within a few days of getting Gentoo up and running :)

Once I got a job, I found that I no longer had the time to maintain my Gentoo box. It is definitely more of a hobby distribution. After trying out a Suse Enterprise Server 9.1 evaluation at work, I downloaded the install boot cd and did an ftp install of Suse 9.1 at home. This distribution has everything I want and need. The installer is fantastic, software and system management is done through a single interface (though I still like to get right into the config files myself), and updating my system is a breeze and takes no time at all.

I have to say that it wasn't until I decided to ignore the real zealots and elitists that I was comfortable trying Suse. There is absolutely nothing wrong with using a refined distribution where you don't have to deal with text config files all the time. There are also plenty of programmers and kernel hackers that use more refined distributions, so why not? And Suse is definitely the most refined Linux distribution I have seen to date.

As for OpenBSD, well, it will always be my firewall. It is a great OS for many other things, but in my current setup, it is a superb firewall.

11/15/04: A Secure, Standards-Compliant Alternative to IE

I have been using Mozilla Firefox for about a year now and have always thought it was a fantastic browser. I wasn't comfortable recommending it to inexperienced users though as it was in its testing period and had a few small quirks.

Well it no longer matters. Firefox Version 1.0 has been released, and I am pleased to say that any of the little problems I have observed in the earlier versions have been resolved. It is now about as easy to use as any browser can possibly be. On top of that, the more people that start using Firefox, the closer we all get to complete standards compliance :)

The link is http://www.getfirefox.com

Go get it right now!