Forum OpenACS Q&A: RedHat and OpenACS - Wake Up Call

While I'm not a huge RedHat fan, I would like to point out that there is an upgrade path available from RedHat to Fedora, which just released it's first version today. The Fedora project, while not providing service contracts to purchase, is planning to do maintenance and security releases, along with full releases 2-3 times a year. They are attempting to be more of a community supported project much like debian (although debian does have quite a head start). Even so, Fedora will be the basis for RedHat Enterprise in the future, so RedHat will be a contributor to the Fedora project.

I don't necessarily like what RedHat has done for it's non-enterprise users, but they have provided another path for users to follow.

is FreeBSD smp support decent these days, then?

i'm running freebsd 4.9rc -- smp is supported and runs, but i haven't tested whether or not it performs to full advantage.  it is supposed to be improved in 5x.

to anyone researching os alternatives, i'd suggest at least trying freebsd.  i've been very pleased so far.  package management is nice (similar to debian from what i understand).  you don't have to worry about all the sco lawsuit stuff going on right now, nor the novell/suse or redhat/enterprise wierdness.  from various benchmarks i read, freebsd ranks near linux's 2.6 kernel -- but freebsd has already been out for a long, long time.  it's established, and isn't likely to change it's "business model " down the line...

which leads to os x.  i'd also love to see more support for os x as it is my other favorite os.  it would be my prime candidate for server, but it's so new and so expensive that it's not an option for me...  but it is freebsd based.

incidentally, my boss was told by oracle's tech support that the latest version of oracle will only run under redhat advanced server (which is licensed for somewhere in the ballpark of $4k) -- not any other distributions.  this is news to me.  maybe redhat's support guy is nuts...  has anyone heard this, and if it's true, does it also have any affect on oacs or the community?

OS X makes the world a better place to live in. Especially when it comes down to panther. I could install .LRN one minute faster than on Linux. But maybe this is just to the convenience of me knowing how to make most use of the user friendliness of OS X.

But that does not help the RedHat people. For them I'd suggest to assume that RH is going to provide an upgrade path (everything else would not make a lot of business sense for them). If they fail to do so in due time, I'd switch to SuSE Enterprise (if you need this extra feeling of good support, now with Novell enhancement) or start with Debian.

Re: FreeBSD on SMP

Seems to work. Until I sold the machine to a customer that needed Oracle (and Linux), I had a Dell 2550 with dual cpu running on FreeBSD 4.9 and it ran fine, including support for the RAID controller and gigabit Ethernet.

Re: OS X

I'm waiting to see what the G5 Xserve brings to the table. I already have one OS X Server for testing purposes and I'm impressed with it. If the G5 Xserve has ECC RAM (or some other method to account for single-bit memory errors) I'll be very happy. And the Apple fiber-channel Xserve Raid disk array is the bargin of the IT industry at only $11k for 2.5 TB of storage. If they update that to serial ATA drives and keep the price down it'll be even better.

Heh ... I've been having the same thoughts regarding Mac OS X, too ... you don't need Mac OS X server to run OpenACS, whether you're using Oracle or PostgreSQL, both run fine on Mac OS X "consumer".

The reason to get server is to get the server admin tools but for a K-12 ".LRN in a box" Mac distro there's no reason to require it.

Now a Knoppix CD with OpenACS pre-installed and running on port 80 would be tres cool, too ... as well as one with .LRN, I guess ... would get us past the hump of "this is so hard to try out most people never get there" ...

RedHat's moves have astonished me.  Just a personal comment.

Perhaps the base OS X installation should only assume installing on darwin[1] for a wider trial base?

comment: Maybe Redhat likes the MacOS business model? Free, open-source based OS (and community support) with proprietary/licensed GUI built on it?

1. http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/darwin/faq.html

http://www.redhat.com/solutions/migration/rhl/

Woohoo! He's back! And with trademark aplomb!

talli

Re: OS X vs Darwin

Does the Oracle install for OS X rely on the native GUI, an additional install of X11 (Apple's version is included with Panther, I believe), or anything else that might tie it to the full OS X?

Applescript's ability to drive applications and command line scripts all tied together with a GUI is pretty impressive.  Its clear to me that the "out of the box" project will benefit from it.  I would prioritize an OS X based doc over a Darwin doc.

As a side note, several months ago I was contacted by email by a person who said they had Applescript developers working on a mostly automated install.  I'm a bit tired at the moment to dig through old email, but I'll look into soon.

Walter

Rocael Hernandez said:
Do a lot of k-12 schools uses OS X servers?

I can only speak for one private K-12 school in Utah-- but we don't have any Macs because of their cost. We are in a unique (?) situation of having virtually no IT budget, but I am able to get PC donations from local businesses that have kept us well supplied with teacher and lab computers.

One of our three servers runs NT 4, another RH 7.3--- and a third (as of last weekend) is running Debian.

I chose to go with Debian on this new server because I need something easy to maintain and stable-- and looking at my options Debian seems to be the most promising. How long I will maintain the 7.3 box before either loading a replacement or moving its functions (email, calendar, personal webspace) to the debian box; I am not sure.

I'd love to take a gander at .LRN, but I don't have the resources to do so until it becomes close to a drop in and go install. OpenACS has been there before (3 years ago for example)… but I believe some of that focus has been lost over time.

Sam

I just did an upgrade of my home system from RH9.0 to Fedora Core 1.0.  Upgrade went on smoothly.  Only hitch I've encountered was the installation of NVIDIA drivers barfing because the kernel was built using an older version of gcc than the ones included in the distro.  Simple fix editing the Makefile.  Tux Racer hangs though. :) I'm assuming due to the gcc version issue.  Should be solved when I recompile a custom kernel and stop using the stock.  I've tested software and everything seems to be working fine including Oracle.  This was an upgrade though so I'm not sure if LD_ASSUME_KERNEL stuff if doing a fresh Oracle install still holds true without changes.

Lamar,

I've noticed on the announcement page that they are not including Postgres RPMS.  Will you continue packaging them for the Fedora Project?

Apple Australia has expresed great interest in geting openACS on OSX. They even donated WEG some hardware! so we will be working more on this distribution.

Sounds great Rafael.  I've been thinking about this sort of thing since writing the first OS X install doc.  I would like to take part in the work.

Here's a follow up to my earlier post about the person who said that they had some Applescript developers working on this.  I was unable to find the specific email.  So if the person is reading this, it would be great if you could step forward.

On another note, Mark Darymple has a doc or a draft of a doc on Apple's Package Manager that might be helpful and he said he could make it available.