Quick poll

[Bill Campbell]

On Sun, Oct 05, 2008, David A. Bandel wrote:
>Folks,
>
>A couple of quick questions:
>
>1.  How many of you run servers (vice desktops)?

Mostly servers, OS X desktops and laptops.  Ran Linux desktops
for a decade before switching to OS X.

>2.  How many servers? (1, 2-10, more than 10)?

More than 50.

>3.  How many are headless?

None, all on KVM switches.

>4.  How many run X (headless or not)?

None -- although we run X clients on them occassionally.

>5.  How did you install them? (Graphical install/text install, local
>install/network install/internet install)
>I broke network install into network and internet to allow for local
>network vice internet where the repositories are all remote -- local
>install is from CD/DVD or the same machine for a virtual server).

Network kickstart installs on local LAN.

>6.  Did you d/l all the CDs/DVD.  If so, what percentage of programs
>did you install?

Local mirror CentOS installation and update directories.

Install most development libraries, compilers, etc.  We do not
user the distribution's version of major server software, apache,
mysql, postgresql, postfix, etc., but use the packages from the
OpenPKG portable packaging system as we have more control over
versions, patch levels, etc.  Included in the OpenPKG packages
are perl, python, berkely DB, and the associated add-on packages
from CPAN etc.

I tend to err on the side of installing too much software as it's
easier to deal with than having to be hunting for missing pieces
when they're needed.

>What I'm looking at here is how odd am I?  Having run Debian for so
>long (even before I started w/ Caldera), I might be spoiled.  My
>recent foray into FC has me wondering if any of the developers there
>have any gray matter or incredible tunnel vision -- or again, is it
>that everyone but me has 100Mb Internet, unlimited DVDs to burn and
>throw away (very carbon), and of course all systems (even headless
>servers) with Terabytes of RAM and running X (because who cares with
>that much RAM)?
>
>All my installs are text mode (FC is doing away with text mode
>installs, FC 10 Beta's text mode is so borken you have to know the
>secrets to get past the disk partitioning, and I expect no text mode
>in FC 11).  All my installs are PXE/TFTPBOOT installs of a network
>(internet) load -- mostly to limit bandwidth usage and start with a
>100% up-to-date install.

We use text mode kickstart automated installs with disk
partitioning set for fixed size for ``/'', swap determined
automatically by RAM, and /home to fill the remainder of space
available on the primary drive.  Additional drives are handled
manually after the base install.  We do VMware installs by
creating a base image which we keep current with updates.  This
image generally is 10GB with a single disk, and we add ``disk''
as necessary when installing new VMs from that base.

>I'm afraid I fail to see the sense behind installing servers with X.
>I also see little sense in burning a DVD just to throw it away after 1
>install and d/l a newer one 2 weeks later for another install.

We tend to install X11, but boot the systems in init state 3.
This allows one to ``startx'' on occassions when it is
convenient to use a GUI tool.

>Perhaps there are just too many who've started their training on M$
>and can't deal with non-graphical, non-local installs.

I find GUIs useful, primarily to do things that I do rarely or to
figure out what's going on under the hood.  I will often ``touch''
a file to create a timestamp, do something in a GUI, then run
``find /etc -newer timestampfile -type f'' to figure out what the
vendor's GUI tools are doing.

IBM's SMIT tool has (had) a nice feature in that it showed the
command it executed, and created a log with the commands.

Bill
-- 
INTERNET:   bill at celestial.com  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
Voice:          (206) 236-1676  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820
Fax:            (206) 232-9186

It would be a great improvement if the government respected individuals
rights as much as they respect the rights of the caribous.