Quick poll

[Lonni J Friedman]

On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 7:37 AM, David A. Bandel <david.bandel at gmail.com> wrote:
> Folks,
>
> A couple of quick questions:
>
> 1.  How many of you run servers (vice desktops)?

I run both, although you didn't define what constitutes a server other
than !desktop.

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

2-10

>
> 3.  How many are headless?

If by headless you mean a system without any connected display device,
then 0.  I've got a KVM attached to all of my systems in the unlikely
event that I need a quick local console (and don't want to drag a
crash cart over from who knows where).

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

Of the server, or of the total?  None of my servers run X, or even
have it installed.  And BTW, they're all running Fedora.

>
> 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).

All of my installations are text mode installs, over the (local)
network.  I run a kickstart server for everything.

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

I have to download the DVD once to get the software needed to setup
the kickstart instance.  I have no clue what percentage of packages
were installed, as I've never really paid that close attention.  Disk
is cheap, and I'm more concerned with spending my time ensuring that
the automation environment works correctly.  Kickstart setups for
Redhat & Fedora are usually brain-dead easy.  I wish the same could be
said for its competition (try doing a kickstart install of Ubuntu and
you'll quickly find that your Fedora problems are trivial by
comparision).

> 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)?

The biggest fact that you seem to be overlooking here is that Fedora
is not targetted at the server, non-desktop use space at all.  You are
not even remotely their target audience, and therefore your usage
requirements are not even on their radar for the most part.  That
isn't to say that your problems aren't valid (although requiring LILO
seems absolutely bizarre to me, as no major distro supports LILO any
more).

>
> 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).

Can you provide a URL that documents this?  From everything that I'm
reading, the Fedora developers are still fixing text mode installation
bugs as recently as a week ago.  Seems odd that they'd be spending
their time fixing bugs in something that was going to be unsupported.



-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
L. Friedman                                    netllama at gmail.com
LlamaLand                       https://netllama.linux-sxs.org