SHARE, NFS testing, and new Linux stuff

This has been an amazing couple weeks: the proverbial hitting the ground running. The CD's arrived today so that I can start getting ready for SHARE. I am going to do something I have never personally done before, and in two ways: I am going to present at SHARE (A career long dream) and not only once but twice. Session 9252 is a hands on lab about using a Linux client in Windows infrastructure: lessons derived what I do every day here. And session 9206 is a session about cloning Linux systems under z/VM. This second one is a new one for me, and it has me a bit nervous to be honest. I have been a VM System programmer for over 20 years, and my team clones Linux systems all day long every day, not just on the mainframe but everywhere. You would think this would be a no-brainer, but this was originally another persons session, and Rick Troth was (and is) a well known and respected person in this field and specifically at SHARE. I have huge shoes to fill. I am studying hard to make sure both of these sessions are as good as I can make them. ...no pressure...

SHARE for me was one of those landmark events: a conference so good I would rather go to it than to a regular technical class. Growing up as a junior Sysprog, it was a very formative thing, to go to all those technical session and listen to people who were so very far in advance of where I was. IDG's Linuxworld has become that for me as now as well.

64 bit NFS testing

We are working on testing the 64 bit kernel on FC4 in a file server role, trying to see if it has the same 32 bit client issues we uncovered and solved previously with OS.X . I had someone write me and request an article on "When NFS Breaks", a sort of sequel to the "When Linux Breaks" article, so I will put together an article or two on not only the results of those tests, but how we went about testing NFS.

Quick look at FC4 recent updates

I loaded up the new 2.6.15-1.1830_FC4 kernel as well as the new KDE 3.5.1 updates, rebooted, ran vmware-config.pl to rebuild VMware player, and installed the latest NTFS rpm so that I can read NTFS formatted USB disks. It all booted up clean as a whistle (how clean *are* whistles?). Subjectively, it feels like 2.6 is booting faster and faster as time passes and new releases hit the streets. I heard that FC4 delayed 2.6.15 to be sure it was problem free, and the first 2 hours of it on the IBM T41 have been no problem. VMware player came up, XP came up under that... everything is crisp and fast. Except one thing: NTFS is being a pain. I am not sure if it is this disk or a global issue: I have not had time to square root it.  KDE pop's up the cool new window asking what I want to do with the new disk, but when I click the 'Open It' option, it says it can't. It's mounted off /media, owned by root, set to read only and permission 700, so I would think not! I may just need to tweak something, but I have no more time this week to look at it.

Kubuntu

I loaded up Ubuntu before the holidays on a test system. It was a quick easy install, and seemed to be pretty good at running on the 500 Mhz / 192 MB RAM test unit I had assembled out of spare parts. But I lost interest pretty quickly after that: it seemed like a Debian based distro with a Gnome GUI. Small, fast, but not what I am interested in: I am a KDE person, in part because it is easier to jump back and forth between KDE, OS.X and Windows for me than it is Gnome, OS.X and Windows. I keep an FC4 system around with Gnome as the primary interface, just to keep up to date on what they are doing with Gnome, but I didn't really need another one.

I keep hearing about Ubuntu though, and how many folks love it, and they way it is taking off as a Distro. I like the idea behind Ubuntu a great deal (from the Ubuntu main page):

"Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others". Ubuntu also means "I am what I am because of who we all are". The Ubuntu Linux distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.

So I got to thinking I must be missing something, and decided to try Kubuntu this last week during the midnight hours. It loaded up relatively quickly on the junker Compaq M300. And then I met it's GUI package manager, Adept. Very nice. It's KDE is 3.4.2: fairly current, but I sure wish it was 3.5: I have already gotten spoiled by 3.5's nicer way of dealing with removable media. The web site says 3.5.1 is in beta now. I was pretty happy, and thinking I had a real winner, till I jacked in the 802.11b card.

Everyone says they love Ubuntu because wireless cards just work, but I tried my 2: A Netgear MA401, and a Linksys. Both have the PRISM chipset, which I go out of my way to buy whenever I can because they just work under Linux. No NDISWRAPPER, no muss, no fuss. I have tried them on Mandrake, SUSE, and Fedora, and they just work. But not under Kubuntu. 

I was going to "pry open the covers" a bit and see if it was an easy fix, when the M300 CPU fan quit and it committed suicide. I'll rebuild it tonight and try again. I'll keep trying.Adept is very cool.

Update:A quick hardware rebuild, and a new acx100 based network card, kwifimanager, dhclient, and kubuntu is on the air. I don't know what is up with the Prism chipped cards yet, but I'll start poking around the 'net and see if others know of this. In the meantime, the OpenSUSE laptop likes the Prism based card just fine, so they will switch cards for now. Weird that acx100 based cards have reached the place that they seem to work more universally than the Prism or Orinoco chipped gear. Linux sure changes fast...

Another update: I tried an Atheros chipped card today, and it worked fine as well. It is just the older cards that used to be the Linux sweet spot that have the issue with Kubuntu. It is also worth noting that a beginner would not like how wireless works on Kubuntu: After I put a working card it, I have to configure it in Kwifimanager, and then I have to run dhclient against the correct device name: ath0 for the Atheros based card, and wlan0 for the acx100 card. Both are dlinks, The acx100 is a DWL-650+. The Atheros chipped card is a DWL-G630.