64 Bit Linux NFS client issues, plus ...

Fedora Core 6, NFS updates, and 64 bit file servers

We have been looking at a weird problem with Fedora Core 6, and our Tru64, 64 bit file server. This morning I got this note from Dan , one of my lead technical people:

“It looks like the same problem we had with the Apple OS.X file server all over again! (See the post from the wayback machine for details: Ed.)

You may recall that OS.X used 64 bit cookies in the NFSV3 READDIRPLUS* operation and certain Linux NFS clients could not deal with that. On the OSX system Apple patched the system to allow a "-32bitclients" NFS export to simply send 32 bit cookies.

That, of course, did _*NOT*_ fix the Linux client code. And here we are seeing this again because ADVFS on Tru64 is also a 64 bit filesystem. Although we only see this on more recent kernels like 2.6.18+ on FC6 and RHAS 5. I was able to hack the kernel this morning to force the Linux NFS client to not use READDIRPLUS and _*the problem no longer occurs*_....”

If you are using GA, vendor-supported-for-production-uses versions of Linux like RedHar AS or SUSE Enterprise. you won't have seen this one yet. It just showed up in Fedora 6 (might as well start using the new name) after a recent kernel update. It was educational that when Dan then backed out the update with his hack that it started to work again. You will want to know about this problem though, if you are more bleeding edge on you Linux versions (and from email I have received I know some of you are...) !

MS Exchange server beatdown

Search is good. Just ask Google. Except of course when search is bad.

Picture this:

• Ubuntu 6.10, running Evolution 2.8.1, on my desktop system. This is where my inbox filter runs: the one that files all my email mailing list memberships into various folders.

• OpenSUSE 10.2, running on the IBM T41 Laptop, running Evolution 2.8.2. This was where I was reading most of my email and replying. Accepting meetings. Scheduling meetings.

• Outlook 2003, running under Windows XP, as a VMware guest of the desktop system. It was up to check in, I just had never brought it down.

• Google desktop is installed on the guest, and set to index email.

• Beagle is installed on Ubuntu and OpenSUSE. Including the Evolution-beagle bit.

I wasn't really thinking about what that meant to the server. The same files stored on the server being indexed for search by three different email clients. Apparently the logs on the server get quite large....

Helpful safety tip.

Default settings

One of Openoffice.org's default settings has done a very good job hacking off both my wife and daughter. Actually NeoOffice, but the same thing that gets up their nose about NeoOffice is true in OpenOffice. Same code base. Same default settings as far as I have seen.

Word completion in enabled by default. This feature is where OpenOffice tries to guess what you are going to type next based on what you have typed so far. If the word is right, you can press enter, and it will jump ahead to the end of the word and you can start typing the next word. This makes both of them very angry. If they wanted to use that word, they would have typed that word. It messes with their flow of thought. And when you type at 120 WPM, messing with your flow is serious.

I told them how to turn it off, but there was credulity that they even had to. General feeling was “why is is even on... or even there as a feature at all?”. Like I needed any help looking stupid to a 14 year old. It does not matter that I didn't write the program or make that the default. As the designated official representative for OpenOffice at my house this is something I have to explain. But I can't.

I am not a touch typist, but it is the first thing I turn off every time I install a new version of OO. I don't even edit a document first, and then notice I left it on. Not often anyway. I install OO, and then I turn that feature off before I exit the install. If I forget, and start to edit a document with it on, it does not last ten seconds from the first time it fills in a word unbidden.

It is not just my wife and daughter though, the so-called 'Word Completion' messes with my flow of thought too. I did try to use it once. That went like: I'm trying to type what I am thinking I want to type, and there is a second track in my mind always asking with every single keystroke “is that the word I want...is that the word I want...... how about now? Hey... I forgot about that word. I have not used that word in a long time! It isn't the one I wanted, but that is such a cool word...”.

Like I need help digressing.

Someone somewhere must like this 'word digression' setting, because it has been enabled ever since the feature was added. I am guessing it was enabled by the person or people that wrote the feature, but that could just be the irritation talking.

Really: Getting OO Base to be more stable and having it able import and export more things would win far more points at the house than having a 'word digression' feature.

There are others defaults I just know to over-ride from long experience in other products too.

• A new Firefox install requires turning off smooth scroll. Pronto. Before I view a page. So does a new I.E. Install under Crossover (of under MS Win for that matter). I just don't get smooth scroll. I want it to go to the next page, and I want it to go there when I am done reading this page. I pressed 'page down', not 'take your own sweet time getting to the next page'. I don't even have a button with that latter label on it. Oh well.

• A new MS Win install of XP requires turning off desktop effects (why do I want to wait around for a menu to fade in? Something to do while waiting for smooth scrolling page down in Firefox to finish?),

• Turning on “Cleartype” in MS Win XP (<sarcasm>Sure: I want my fonts to look bad normally</sarcasm>).

• KDE and Gnome always need tweaks to the default font settings so that fonts are fully anti-aliased and optimized for LCD's. See comment above. These days most monitors are plug and play. The OS, or at least the bit that drives the graphics card knows if I have an LCD attached.

• KDE's 'Busy Application' cursor, especially the default one that bounces in most Distros. Egad!

• Thunderbird always have to have replies set to 'reply above'. I have read the forums. I know about the hot religious debate that is happening about which way is better. I would never use an email app where the only option is reply-after, so I guess I know which email-religion I am.

• Evolution and KDE's Kontact always has to have the first day of the week set to Sunday, even though I have set the time zone to CST, so it “knows” I am in a country where Sunday is normally considered the first day of the week. All the calendars at the bookstore are printed that way anyway. So is the calendar I just got from India. I get the logic of having Monday be the first day though. It is just hard to reset years of training.

• MS Windows 'Indexing Service'. I have no idea if this is better in Vista, but all if ever seemed to do in the OS's I have seen is slow down my hard drive access. Spotlight in OS.X has never been an issue, and other than the MS Exchange beat-down I mentioned, neither has Google Desktop.

With an Ubuntu / Mint install being 20 minutes these days (my current exemplar for speedy/ easy installs), I easily spend far more time tweaking it to not do things that irritate.

Remedy User under Codeweavers Crossover

I bring up MS Windows VMware guests more and more rarely. Quite often I bring up the guest so they can phone home to the “Marimba Mothership” for current patches, then shut them back down when I think about it later. Ditto the dual boot OpenSUSE 10.2 / Windows XP laptop. I keep Linux patched as well of course. And OS.X at home...

Until recently, there were only two “production” applications that I wanted to run from time to time on a native (I.E., on the VMWare guest) MS Windows OS. These were MS Outlook 2003 and and Remedy User.

Most folks probably know what MS Outlook is: the reason I needed it of course was that we use MS Exchange for corporate calendaring, and I went through a bad spell a while back with Evolution. Too many posts about that to link. Evolution works pretty well under Ubuntu 6.10, Mint 2.1, and OpenSUSE 10.2 right now. I have a small update about that in the 'beatdown' section below.

Hopefully most folks know what Remedy is! We use it internally as part of all things BSM, but there is no native Linux client for Remedy User. As a primary Linux desktop person, no native client means I have two ways of accessing the application: Via the MS Windows native client (in my case, running XP as a guest, and Remedy user installed under that), or via a web browser. The Remedy mid-tier (the bit that makes the web access work) made some amazing leaps forward in functionality in the last release: I can use it from Firefox from Linux and it works very well. The MS Windows native client is slightly faster at this time though, and there are a couple of things I can do in the MS Windows client I can not in the web client. Things that mostly have to do with reporting.

I am not really sure why but I have never tried to run Remedy User, the native MS Windows client, under Wine. I was reading through the many posts about Codeweavers Crossover 6.0, and especially an interview with Jeremy White, and it popped into my head after all this time that I have never tried this. Jeremy was talking in the interview about how many new, unsupported applications should actually be working now because of recent changes to the product. So I grabbed the MS Windows installer off the internal web site: the one pre-configured for our internal configuration, and ran the Codeweavers 'Install Unsupported Application' process on it. It dropped in like it was meant to be there.

There are a few usability issues. I have to be careful when I am in fields not to blank them. Blanking them means exiting without saving changes so I can recover the field. A screen management issue it appears. The Web / Mid-Tier is still the better way to use Remedy. But Codeweavers has sure come a long way. This is an unsupported, untested by anyone as far as I know usage of the product, and that it works at all is kind of amazing.

It's not supported to do this of course. Not by BMC, and not by Codeweavers. But it is working for what I wanted it for.