Re: [cobalt-users] Have SUN stopped supporting XTR?

[Ryan Verner <xfesty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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On Mon, 21 Oct 2002 15:33:41 -0700 Travis Ogdon <togdon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

| I've run proprietary .rpm files through alien before and come out with less than
| working results. I don't think it's worth the bandwidth management tool and the
| lcd panel to bother trying this. Besides, we're then still relying on Cobalt for
| at least one patch.

Yah, agreed, alien sucks with most conversion... but there'd be no need to use it anyway.   We can use rpm to extract any files out of "proprietry" sun RPM's.

| Not that it's really applicable, but Gentoo does it in a weird way. The main
| source is pointed at the vanilla source from kernel.org, and then the various
| kernels are just patched with these big patches. For instance I'm using XFS, so
| it downloads the vanilla kernel from one place (kernel.org or a mirror) and the
| XFS patches from another (SGI or a mirror). It then patches them and then it's

Heh, cool.. haven't looked at Gentoo for a while.

| up to me to configure the kernel. Since the hardware targets are pretty similar
| I think we could get away with releasing binary only pre-compiled kernels. 
 
Nod, agreed.  The simpler we can make it for people, the better.

| No offense, but look at what the updates are sometime. Debian is very slow and
| deliberate and they usually release a package 5-6 times before moving on. After
| almost a year they're nowhere near releasing XFree86 4.2.1. X is just one

AFAIK Debian was the first distro to actually package 4.2 (4.2.1 is definitely in unstable).  I remember there was some font incompatibility somewhere with 4.2, and as a result Debian was the only distrib that showed the problem.  Everybody was blaming Debian.

Stable is stable.  Its not /meant/ to be cutting edge - its packages might be slightly out of date, but they're proven to be rock solid and they don't have security issues.

Said that though, we dont have to use their packages.  Its quite trivial to create our own - so we can do pretty much what we want.  My plan is to use the debian framework (base, debian tools, packaging) with our own stuff.

| example. They're really good about releasing solid packages, but they're pretty
| bad about rushing into things (as in there could be a lot more rushing). There
| were nearly two years between the Potato and Woody releases (08/14/2000 -
| 07/19/2002), and the Woody release still ships with a 2.2 kernel.

Woody comes with a 2.4 kernel on the cd, and you can even boot into a 2.4 installer.  Its 2.2 as per default though, because there /are/ incompatibilities with 2.4 on some systems (Redhat/Mandrake wont install on a lot of machines because of this).

| > Semi-yearly isn't really a good security practice either ;)  Every few days
| > for me, at least weekly.
| 
| The following in /etc/apt/sources and a weekly or so 
| 'apt-get update; apt-get upgrade' is of course ideal:
| 
| deb http://security.debian.org/ woody/updates main contrib non-free

Nod, absolutely.  Thats the only line sitting on my router at the moment ;)

| You're still going two years between 'apt-get dist-upgrades' though.

So?  I don't see the problem with this...

Besides, we're going to be running our own named "dist" anyway.

| 
| > Webmin's okay, but I don't want to use this.  I'm prepared to write a new web
| > interface from scratch, and I'd sure love my help.
| 
| Just looked at Webmin. It's not ok. Not for what I'd need it for, so we'd
| definitely need to write a new interface, or just all be prepared to shell out
| for Ensim/Plesk/Sphera.

Heh fair enough.  I'm not a huge fan of it either - it works for some people (hence the "okay") but I don't like it.

Its biggest flaw IMHO is that its too complex - the cobalt interface might be simple, but it sure is logical.  Webmin is a mess.

R

| -- Travis
| 


- --
Ryan Verner <xfesty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

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