fidzu : SUSE

• I'm writing a little utility that generates Git repositories from some unpleasantly-formatted data. The test suite for this was really simple to write: you can simply ask git, "give me the SHA-1 hash that you have for the content" at the end of the test run (i.e. "git-cat-file -p HEAD" and parse out the "tree" hash from there). If the obtained hash matches your expected hash, then you know the test succeeded. This is much easier than comparing all of the expected/obtained content by hand.

24 Jul 2008 12:03am GMT

New Features

I've recently added several new features into the YaST DNS Server module. Just to list them briefly:

• Added new directly supported resource records: TXT, SRV, AAAA
• Added support for IPv6 reverse zones
• Added support for automatically generated reverse zones (from forward ones).
  

Automatically Generated Reverse Zones

Because the last mentioned feature is a revolution in managing DNS zones in YaST DNS Server, I'd like present it to you using some screenshots.

Once upon a time, there was a DNS server administrator that had to manage several DNS zones and also keep the reverse zones in order. Every time he changed something in any forward zone, he had to change a reverse record in an appropriate reverse zone. But alas, then IPv6 came and took his TIME! :) ;)

In these days, we don't have to manage three different zones - we can create these three zones (forward, reverse IPv4, and reverse IPv6) and connect them together. After changing some records in the forward zones, the reverse ones are automatically regenerated.

Example: Creating Automatically Generated Reverse Zones

Start the YaST DNS Server, click on the DNS Zones menu item. We start with an empty list of managed DNS zones ...


Add forward zone example.com ...
Add reverse IPv6 zone. Here you have three options how to add it:

• Standard form: 4.5.0.0.0.0.0.0.8.b.d.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa.
• Forward form: 2001:db8:0:54::/64
• Forward without netmask bits expressed: 2001:db8:0:54:: (defaults to 64 bits)
  

... another pain solved :)


Add reverse IPv4 zone.


Select the IPv6 reverse zone and enter the zone editor by clicking on the [Edit] button. Select the Automatically Generate Records From checkbox and select example.com zone. This will mark the reverse zone dependent on the example.com zone. Anyway, you will have to add a NS Records (Name Servers for the zone) manually.


Do the same for the IPv4 reverse zone.

Select and edit the example.com zone. All connected reverse zones will be listed in the Basics tab.


Add NS Records for the zone (you have entered the very same records for IPv4 and IPv6 reverse zones already).


Add A records (A translates name to IPv4).


Add AAAA records (AAAA translates name to IPv6).


Close the dialog with [OK] button and finish the YaST DNS Server module. You have just configured your DNS Server providing example.com zone also with automatically generated reverse zones. Every time you change a any record in example.com, the other zones are automatically generated again.

... and they all lived happily ever after ;)

Appendix A - Zone example.com:

example.com. IN NS ns1.example.com.
example.com. IN NS ns2.example.com.
ns1 IN A 192.168.0.1
ns2 IN A 192.168.0.2
dhcp001 IN A 192.168.0.101
dhcp002 IN A 192.168.0.102
ns1 IN AAAA 2001:db8:0:54::1
ns2 IN AAAA 2001:db8:0:54::2
dhcp001 IN AAAA 2001:db8:0:54::101
dhcp002 IN AAAA 2001:db8:0:54::102

Appendix B - IPv4 zone:

0.168.192.in-addr.arpa. IN NS ns1.example.com.
0.168.192.in-addr.arpa. IN NS ns2.example.com.
1.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR ns1.example.com.
2.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR ns2.example.com.
101.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR dhcp001.example.com.
102.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR dhcp002.example.com.

Appendix C - IPv6 zone:

4.5.0.0.0.0.0.0.8.b.d.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa. IN NS ns1.example.com.
4.5.0.0.0.0.0.0.8.b.d.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa. IN NS ns2.example.com.
1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.4.5.0.0.0.0.0.0.8.b.d.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa. IN PTR ns1.example.com.
2.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.4.5.0.0.0.0.0.0.8.b.d.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa. IN PTR ns2.example.com.
1.0.1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.4.5.0.0.0.0.0.0.8.b.d.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa. IN PTR dhcp001.example.com.
2.0.1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.4.5.0.0.0.0.0.0.8.b.d.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa. IN PTR dhcp002.example.com.

23 Jul 2008 8:00pm GMT

I tend to idle #suse on freenode to try to assist users with whatever problems they may have. It came to my attention today that there are several channels for languages other than English available, as #suse is an English only channel.

I speak Brazilian Portuguese with some fluency and I decided to join #suse-br and found that there were a total of 3 people in there! I joined the channel to assist a Brazilian who asked a question in #suse.

If you speak any other language outside English and you idle #suse, please consider joining the channel specific to whatever language you speak. The SUSEHelp bot can direct you to the proper location, simply issue ! followed by a country code in #suse. For example, !br yields #suse-br.

EDIT: Apparently the official Portuguese channel is #opensuse-pt. Thanks cgoncalves, for that information!

23 Jul 2008 4:02pm GMT

If virtualization is in your vocabulary these days, and who in IT doesn't finish the day without saying it at least a dozen times… (at least that's what it feels like) - you should understand including SUSE Linux Enterprise is not about "either/or" but rather "and".

What the heck am I talking about??

While Xen is included in our distribution, our solutions go way beyond the inclusion of a hypervisor. SUSE Linux Enterprise will actually work with whatever major virtualization technology you want to use, and we can probably even help you manage them all. We've posted several articles on the topic and discussed it many times, but I wanted to share a couple of additional examples with you…

For starters, here's a recent win over Red Hat (mentioned over at SearchEnterpriseLinux.com) where the customer fully recognized the value that Novell's solution brings to the table in virtualization solutions other than Novell''s - Microsoft Hyper-V, Virtual Iron, Citrix XenSource, etc. - or as in this case VMware.

Virtualization restrictions increased Novell's fiscal advantage since a Red Hat license limits the number of VMware virtualized machines to four for every physical machine, while SUSE allows unlimited virtualization, either on Citrix Systems Inc.'s Xen or VMware Inc., he said. This became an important differentiator for Novell, because Invitrogen is committed to VMware, which it rolled out last fall, he said. (full article and the related Novell press release)

The point here is that regardless of the virtualization technology you adopt, we'll enhance that solution… we're all about giving customers a choice.

For those that would rather use a more open solution or perhaps a much lower-cost alternative to VMware (see my cost comparison post), check this article out…

Before choosing SUSE Linux Enterprise with built-in Xen virtualization, VIST also considered VMware Inc.'s and Citrix Systems Inc.'s offerings but decided on Novell as the best virtualization fit for VIST's environment, McLaine said. VMware was "substantially more expensive" and would have required more hardware and additional labor to operate, he said. While Citrix was comparable to Novell in functionality, it didn't have Novell support and integration, he said.

"SUSE offers virtualization at substantial cost savings, so the switch is a no-brainer," he said. "It makes my job that much easier."

(full article)

And while you might say to yourself that you need some management tools too (not just a hypervisor), were you aware of ZENworks Orchestrator and similarly the PlateSpin family of products we offer? …but that'll have to wait for another post.

23 Jul 2008 1:57pm GMT

Everybody probably knows YaST. You should use it, at least for installation. And what about AutoYaST? AutoYaST is a great tool for automatic installation and configuration. I did some work regarding automatic installation & network setup during installation. Documented here
I did 4 tests:

1 - When installation starts, udev will create configuration file for persistent naming (based on MAC address). At the end of 1st stage (before first reboot) YaST will copy this file into installed system, so after reboot all network devices will have same device names.

2 - Same as 1, but during AutoYaST installation. That means when no rule in AutoYaST profile about this file, keep it, not replace by empty file.

3 - Use AutoYaST profile. When there is defined some rule about this file, use it and replace the original one. This example from networking section creates corresponded udev rule to keep eth0 name for interface with 08:00:27:07:a2:2d MAC address (and replaces udev rule file from 1):

part of AY.xml

<networking>

...

 <net-udev type=list>

  <rule>

   <rule>ATTR{address}</rule>

   <value>08:00:27:07:a2:2d</value>

   <name>eth0</name>

  </rule>

 </net-udev>

...

</networking>

/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules file as a result:

# Generated by autoyast

# program run by the persistent-net-generator.rules rules file.

#

# You can modify it, as long as you keep each rule on a single line.

SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="08:00:27:07:a2:2d", NAME="eth0"

4 - Migration from SLES10-style syntax. When you use your old profile (from =SLES10x), it's something like:

<networking>

...

 <interfaces config:type=list>

   <interface>

     <bootproto>dhcp</bootproto>

     <device>eth-id-08:00:27:07:a2:2d</device>

     <name>79c970 [PCnet32 LANCE]</name>

     <startmode>auto</startmode>

     <usercontrol>no</usercontrol>

   </interface>

 </interfaces>

...

</networking>

YaST will convert device name eth-id-08:00:27:07:a2:2d into rule for udev:

# Generated by autoyast

# program run by the persistent-net-generator.rules rules file.

#

# You can modify it, as long as you keep each rule on a single line.

SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="08:00:27:07:a2:2d", NAME="eth0"

and rename configuration name into eth0

And that's all for now ...
... have a lot of fun
Bye,
Michal

23 Jul 2008 1:32pm GMT

I've been thinking about an itch that I'm sure not only I have, and it's an itch I'm really surprised exists. It is with this itch that I need help with hacking from all you programming and hacking supremos out there. Why don't I start hacking? Well simple, I can barely hack "Hello world"! So please help me.

As anyone that has filed a bug with openSUSE/Novell knows, it is done in Bugzilla. The problem is it is a web only interface with no easy way of dealing with bugs apart from through a web browser. This is not a failing of the software as it was designed this way to ensure global reach, if you have a browser (not many desktops don't, and even mobile devices have them) you can file a bug. Almost all bugtracking services are web only, for that exact reason - Launchpad, Mantis, Trac, JIRA etc. Bugzilla is by far the most common, as not only do openSUSE/Novell use it but so do RedHat, Mozilla (funny that), the upstream Kernel, GNOME, KDE, Apache, Eclipse, OpenOffice.org and many others.

My itch is for a desktop client to Bugzilla and the other bugtrackers. Ideally the other bug trackers could be enabled/disabled via a plugin system. If you think about it the Bugbot in IRC can interface with all of these so why can't we from one app? I first started thinking about it when Lamby created his Debian BTS applet. I spoke to him again about this and my itch at LRL on Saturday. By the way, shame on you Ubuntu for taking his applet modifying it and not feeding back the changes! This provides some of the function I would like to see, as in the main app would minimise to the tray and only show the applet. From this you could access a subset of functions and also get notifications. On the topic of notifications, one item I would like to see this client - which I'll call bugthra (a play on Godzilla's foe Mothra) but not set in stone - deal with is not having to have your inbox battered with bug notification e-mails, yes I know I can set up filters but that's not the point! Instead you get a notification bubble notifying you and possibly also some form of icon change.

So what features would I like to see? In no specific order my thoughts are the following:

• Search - I think this is kind of crucial. It's always good practise to search for similar bugs before filing a new one Being able to save searches etc would be handy.
• Modifiable views - I'm kind of thinking along the lines of being able to have a window/tab for "Bugs I've filed" and any other custom view a user wishes, removing selected fields from view etc.
• Creating/Modifying/Following bugs - Duh, one of the main reasons for the app. Hopefully an intuitive interface to facilitate simple filing/modifying of bugs. Following bugs is also pretty key, as there are times when a specific bug perks one's interest and curiosity. Also you may experience the issue but have no further info to provide.
• Offline facility - not sure how feasible this would be, but certainly falls into the "would be nice" category. Having something similar to a DVCS would be handy and enable bug work whilst offline. User connects to the bugzilla server, and on initial connection does a sort of check out of bugs that the user already is dealing with and stores it locally (SQLite/embedded MySQL/etc). Any additional changes are stored locally and checked back in periodically (connection permitting).
• Ideally cross platform - Again not vital, but to enable maximum uptake being desktop agnostic would be ideal. If I had to choose one, I would possibly say Gtk because I spend most of my time in a GNOME desktop. I will admit I have limited knowledge as to how a Qt works on GNOME and other desktops.

I have no real knowledge about the APIs available, but I believe they're all there waiting to be used. There is currently a proprietry application called Deskzilla that does do a fair amount of what I'm talking about which Open Source project contributors can obtain a free license providing they meet specific requirements. I would like to see a FOSS competitor, which can beat it So please chip in a scratch this itch if you can, would be great if it could be taken up as part of the next HackWeek. As a reward I will donate some of my acquired openSUSE goodies, either a geeko or usb stick, to the first two major contributions. I am also willing to create an official project with associated bits and bobs if people think it plausible. Either leave a comment, mail me or catch me on IRC (I normally go by the nick of FunkyPenguin)

23 Jul 2008 12:09pm GMT

Again we have some nice, new and shiny PromoDVDs, now with openSUSE 11.0. The main goal is to spread them. Some examples:

- you organize or take part of an event
- you want good software in your school/university
- you have a local LUG meeting

To make the process easier Andreas Bauer created an order tool for it, just head over to

http://software.opensuse.org/promodvd

and enter your request there. The old order process, sending mails to me or marketing@whatever is now obsolete.

Everything you need to know is explained on that page. If you want information about the PromoDVD in general:

http://en.opensuse.org/PromoDVD

23 Jul 2008 10:17am GMT

If the doctor is content with the situation the metal in my finger is removed today. Then I'll be able to type normally again, yippee! Ok, after some painful weeks stretching and strengthening the muscles... ;-)

Wish me luck.

23 Jul 2008 9:57am GMT

Customers, Partners Run Top Supercomputers on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for High Performance Computing

Press Release

World's three most powerful supercomputers run SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell

WALTHAM, Mass.- 11 Jun 2008- Supercomputers around the world are running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell®. According to TOP500, a project that tracks and detects trends in high-performance computing, SUSE Linux Enterprise is the Linux* of choice on the world's largest HPC supercomputers today. Of the top 50 supercomputers worldwide, 40 percent are running on SUSE Linux Enterprise, including the top three - IBM* eServer Blue Gene at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, IBM eServer BlueGene/P (JUGENE) at the Juelich Research Center and SGI* Altix 8200 at the New Mexico Computing Applications Center.

Leveraging the economics of open source software and low cost hardware, Novell, together with its partners, is bringing the same high performance computing capabilities utilized in supercomputers to enterprises and mid-market customers in a range of industries, including manufacturing, research and academic organizations.

Customers such as Audi, MTU Aero Engines, NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division, Porsche Informatik, Seoul National University, Tokyo Institute of Technology and Wehmeyer are running supercomputers and computer clusters on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to handle mission-critical workloads with minimal downtime.

Three supercomputers at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division currently operate on SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell. These computers are used to evaluate next-generation technology to meet NASA's engineering and science requirements, control system operation and launch programs, and support NASA's aeronautics, science and space operations initiatives. NASA's next supercomputer, scheduled for completion this summer, will also run on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and when deployed will be one of the largest SGI Altix ICE systems, on par with the current third-ranked most powerful supercomputer.

"At NASA we are working to solve some of science's most complex challenges, so an operating system that can help us achieve the highest level of computational functionality is very important," said William Thigpen, engineering branch chief in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division. "In selecting an operating system, performance and flexibility are two of our top considerations. The right operating system helps us to push the boundaries of computing performance and bring new levels of innovation to our space, science and aeronautics programs."

Partners Leverage SUSE Linux Enterprise

Companies like Appro International, Atipa Technologies, Cluster Resources, HP, Penguin Computing, SGI and Teradata are incorporating SUSE Linux Enterprise Server into the high-performance computing solutions they are providing to their own customers."We recently introduced a new family of platforms from entry-level to active-enterprise data warehouses that addresses many customer needs," said Scott Gnau, chief development officer, Teradata Corporation. "Our solutions are designed to drive powerful business intelligence and real-time decisioning applications, including fraud detection and prevention, customer segmentation, human resources and forecasting. Our solutions run on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell, which, thanks to its extreme scalability, reliability, flexibility and ease of use, is the optimal Linux operating system for our customers' businesses. We selected Novell and its SUSE Linux Enterprise platform because of its full range of industry-leading Linux services to support large-scale, mission-critical enterprises."

Irene Qualters, SGI senior vice president of software, said, "At SGI, our focus is on high-performance computing and robust scalability, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the operating system of choice for many of our Altix and Altix XE customers. As the requirements for high-performance computing continue to grow more complex across industries, the collaboration between SGI and Novell ensures that SUSE Linux Enterprise will continue to be the leading operating system for high-performance clusters that meet those new business needs today."

Michael A. Jackson, president of Cluster Resources Inc., said, "Our partnership with Novell is helping to overcome the complexity and supportability limitations of the HPC market. The resulting Moab Cluster Builder for SUSE Linux Enterprise installs a turnkey, HPC-optimized version of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with easy-to-use resource and workload management. In addition, with Novell's interoperability alliance with Microsoft, we can enable a dynamic hybrid OS cluster. This next-generation solution causes a single cluster to be a mix of both SUSE Linux Enterprise and Windows and to dynamically change the OS mix based on the workload submitted. Novell is truly a centerpiece of both next-generation HPC and making it easy to use, commercially reliable and supportable."

SUSE Linux Enterprise has been a leader in the high performance computing market for more than a decade, based on the strong engineering heritage of the distribution.

"SUSE Linux Enterprise has become the HPC operating system of choice, thanks to its scalability and performance capabilities and the wide variety of open source software and development tools available," said Carlos Montero-Luque, vice president of product management for Open Platform Solutions at Novell. "By leveraging industry-standard servers and clusters running SUSE Linux Enterprise, customers and partners can build and deploy the world's best HPC-class products and applications."

More information on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for High Performance Computing can be found at www.novell.com/hpc.

About Novell

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers the best engineered, most interoperable Linux platform and a portfolio of integrated IT management software that helps customers around the world reduce cost, complexity and risk. With our infrastructure software and ecosystem of partnerships, Novell harmoniously integrates mixed IT environments, allowing people and technology to work as one. For more information, visit www.novell.com.

Novell and SUSE are registered trademarks of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries. *Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Press Contact

Charlotte Betterley
Novell, Inc.
Telephone: +1 781 464-8253
Email: cbetterley@novell.com

22 Jul 2008 9:05pm GMT

On Tuesday of last week we branched Mono for the 2.0 release; Packages are being QAed for our first release candidate and will be available next week. Bug fixing for the final release will happen on this branch.

Meanwhile, the excitement continues on trunk. Zoltan today merged the Linear IL branch.

The Linear IL code has been under development for two years and eight months and it was an effort that we started to address some of the main limitations in our current JIT design. Some of these limitations in the old design made it very hard to bring some code generation optimizations into the JIT, or made the optimizations not as effective as they could have been.

The new JIT engine will debut in Mono 2.1, later this year. Now that Linear IL is the default, the entire JIT team will focus on tuning the engine and extracting more performance out of it. But even without tuning, the new engine is already performing very well as you can see in the results comparing the engines.

Additionally, a number of creative ideas that we have to improve Mono all depended on doing this switch. We have a few surprises for developers in the next coming months.

Congratulations to Zoltan for getting this work merged.

22 Jul 2008 5:58pm GMT

We are standardizing now on the definitions given at http://en.opensuse.org/Bugs/Definitions. The severity definitions are now the same as in most other open source projects, so that we speak the same language and reduce confusion.

The major changes we are doing are basically:

• Severity Blocker means "Blocks development and/or testing work"
• Severity Critical means "Crash, loss of data, corruption of data, severe memory leak"
• We would like to ask you to fill in the "Found by" field correctly, this will be "Beta-Customer" for openSUSE community members before a release and "Customer" if you file a bug after the release.
• Novell will use internally both severity and priority for handling bug reports.

We would like you to use the changed severity definitions for every new bugreport that you are filing and also set the "Found by" field. We hope that these changes reduce some confusion and help us at Novell to better prioritize and fix bug reports.

22 Jul 2008 5:54pm GMT

• Document-centric GNOME

  Here is my presentation from GUADEC: Document-centric GNOME (ODP).

  

  The code for document-centric Nautilus consists of the journal view and the Nautilus extension interface for journal providers. This code is not finished yet (nothing gets displayed to the screen; it's all engine code), but you can take a look here:

  git clone git://gitorious.org/nautilus/mainline.git nautilus-document-centric
  

  The master branch contains the document-centric code, which is built on top of nautilus-2.22.2. You can also visit the Gitorious repository for document-centric Nautilus and create your forks there.

• John Anderson has posted a great little tutorial on Nautilus tips and tricks. Life-savers for me: the list of keyboard shortcuts and enabling the "advanced permissions" view.

22 Jul 2008 5:42pm GMT

Nautilus is the graphical file manager (along with a few other nice features) in GNOME. Most users only use the bare minimum features of Nautilus (including me, as I'm mainly a console jockey) and don't realize how powerful and flexible Nautilus truly is.

• Managing Nautilus from the keyboard
• Advanced file permissions
• Desktop Settings
• Special locations and Remote connections
• Tips and Tricks

Managing Nautilus from the keyboard

You don't have to be slowed down by the mouse just because you are using a GUI. Nautilus has great keyboard shortcuts that will allow you to use it quickly and effectively.

Here is a quick table of the shortcut keys and their functionality

Advanced file permissions

The default UI for managing file permissions in Nautilus is a simple cutdown version that I find hard to use compared to the "advanced" view. Here is a screenshot of the advanced view:

Enable this view by changing the gconf setting show_advanced_permissions in /apps/nautilus/preferences/ to True, either by using gconftool-2 in console or the GUI tool gconf-editor.

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_advanced_permissions True

Desktop Settings

The default icons that show up on your desktop are also managed through gconf. Here are some of the important settings:

Disable the desktop completely (don't show any desktop icons)

gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop --type bool False

Hide the $HOME folder icon

gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/desktop/home_icon_visible --type bool False

Display the computer icon

gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/desktop/computer_icon_visible --type bool True

Hide the trash icon

gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/desktop/trash_icon_visible --type bool False

Hide volumes (sshfs mounts, auto mounted removable disks, etc)

gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/desktop/volumes_visible --type bool False

Tips and Tricks

Preview audio files
You can preview sounds in Nautilus by turning on Edit -> Preferences -> Preview -> Preview sound files. With this enabled, when you hover over any audio file, it'll start playing.

You can also enable/disable this setting through gconf

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/preview_sound True

Custom scripts
Nautilus allows us to create our own custom scripts and have them execute from the right click menu, lets create an open as root menu item. In ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/ create a file called "Open as Root" with the following code in it:

#!/bin/bash
for uri in $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_URIS; do
gnomesu gnome-open "$uri"
done

And now you'll get a menu similar to:

Document Templates
If you've ever right clicked on your desktop, you have probably seen the menu "Create Document" but never gave it any thought because the majority of distros ship this menu blank. But I've found it is really handy when working with files with similar content. To create your own templates you create the folder ~/Templates and place any type of file inside there, it could be an open office spread sheet or a simple text file. You can download a collection of nice default templates from here. Here is what your menu could look like!

22 Jul 2008 4:55pm GMT

From the article:

IBM's Corp.'s Cognos segment has chosen Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise to debut its Cognos 8 business intelligence software on the mainframe.

Cognos, which IBM bought for $4.9 billion last November, bypassed three IBM operating systems (z/OS, z/VM and z/VSE) and instead chose IBM System z for Linux and Novell's SUSE for its entrée into the mainframe market. An IBM mainframe version for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is also in the works.

"System z represents 20% to 30% of software applications on the mainframe, and its lead is growing," said Jennifer Hanniman, a senior product marketing manager for Cognos 8. "And 20% of the growth in demand for System z is for Linux [rather than IBM's other mainframe operating systems]."

Read More.

22 Jul 2008 3:43pm GMT

• H's birthday, some presents in bed, breakfast - packed everyone off for the last day of term. Mail, poked at more splitting action, finally made make_installer.pl obey me.
• Out to Newmarket Open Door to see about keeping their network going during building work - pleasingly the SLED10 system there seems to have been running beautifully as a router and workstation for 'yoof' for the last ~20 months, without any problems; nice.

22 Jul 2008 11:59am GMT

My spousal unit found this and pointed it out to me - oh how it's true….

Check out the rest of Rob's great cartoons at Noise to Signal (click on the cartoon).

Enjoy,

RossB

22 Jul 2008 4:09am GMT