Обсуждение: Linux distro

Hello,

I bought a Dell server and I am going to use it for installing PostgrSQL
8.2.4. I always used Windows so far and I would like now to install a
Linux distribution on the new server. Any suggestion on which distribution
? Fedora, Ubuntu server, Suse or others?

Thanks in advance,
Paolo Saudin

paolo@ecometer.it wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I bought a Dell server and I am going to use it for installing PostgrSQL
> 8.2.4. I always used Windows so far and I would like now to install a
> Linux distribution on the new server. Any suggestion on which distribution
> ? Fedora, Ubuntu server, Suse or others?
>

There is no "right" answer to this.

For a Postgres server though I would probably not go for Fedora or
Ubuntu as they are more desktop oriented and have frequent updates and
relatively short life cycles.  If I were to recommend anything I would
suggest CentOS - or even RHEL if you need enterprise level
support/certification.

Eddy

On 01.08.2007 13:29, paolo@ecometer.it wrote:
> I bought a Dell server and I am going to use it for installing PostgrSQL
> 8.2.4. I always used Windows so far and I would like now to install a
> Linux distribution on the new server. Any suggestion on which distribution
> ? Fedora, Ubuntu server, Suse or others?

You need to learn general Linux/Unix administration first, what
distribution is not so important in the first step. If you have some
basic knowledge chose the distribution that fits your needs best. I'm
sure Google or Wikipedia will come up with a comparative list with pros
and cons of each.

As you say it it's a server, I assume you'll have it in a production
environment. It's never a good idea to have anything in production with
an OS you are not familiar with.


--
Regards,
Hannes Dorbath

Paolo, I started with linux 6 years ago after being a confirmed
microsoftie my entire career, this is the experience I can offer:

Ubuntu: What Windows wants to be, what the Mac is w/o the $$$$ and with
more control.  I just replaced a hard drive in a dell machine.  A
generic windows CD (the customer did not have the specific recovery CD
for that box) could not install drivers for the network, the video, or
the sound.  Ubuntu did all of them.  Ubuntu however is a desktop OS.
Great graphics, great package management.  However, it is still Linux
and you still have to do some Googling here and there to find a HOWTO.
Perhaps the most annoying problem is lack of support for widescreen
monitors, you have to type tech data into an X config to get that
working.  Also, IMHO stay away from 7.04, I've tried it on two machines
and had troubles on both, to the extent of wiping one and starting over
at 6.10.  Stay with 6.10.

Suse: going for the same space as Ubuntu.  I tried it first, 6 years
ago.  It was ok at the time but can't tell you about the modern stuff.
I don't trust Novell to get it right though, just a personal feeling.

Fedora I don't use but as I understand there is a large body of people
with a lot of cultural knowledge about how it works.  So when you go
Fedora you join the club as it were and do things their way.  I tried
Red Hat back when it was Red Hat some 9 years ago and again 6 years ago
and I always found myself stuck on some detail that I could not find an
answer to.

Now if you want a hardcore distro to learn everything about linux, go
with gentoo.  There are no binary packages (at least not that I use or
can easily find), but you end up knowing *everything* about how Linux
works.  Very active community.  I used this as a desktop for 3 years as
a sort of long-term boot camp.  It did make me very comfortable with all
things linux.

Conclusion: I use gentoo on my servers and Ubuntu on my desktops.
Except for the virus ^H^H^H^^H gaming machine that I have for the kids
running XP.

paolo@ecometer.it wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I bought a Dell server and I am going to use it for installing PostgrSQL
> 8.2.4. I always used Windows so far and I would like now to install a
> Linux distribution on the new server. Any suggestion on which distribution
> ? Fedora, Ubuntu server, Suse or others?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Paolo Saudin
>
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to
>        choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not
>        match
>


--
Kenneth Downs
Secure Data Software, Inc.
www.secdat.com    www.andromeda-project.org
631-689-7200   Fax: 631-689-0527
cell: 631-379-0010

On Wed, 2007-08-01 at 13:29 +0200, paolo@ecometer.it wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I bought a Dell server and I am going to use it for installing PostgrSQL
> 8.2.4. I always used Windows so far and I would like now to install a
> Linux distribution on the new server. Any suggestion on which distribution
> ? Fedora, Ubuntu server, Suse or others?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Paolo Saudin
>
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to
>        choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not
>        match

Is this going to be a production server. or a learning server, or a i'm
learning all things linux server/desktop?

If it's a dedicated production server, look at UBUNTU 6.10 server.
If you're planning to connect a monitor and run X-windows ( i.e. I
bought a server, but i'm going to use it as a learning platform for
LINUX in general also), i'd suggest either UBUNTU 6.10 or 7.04 desktop
( or, start with the 6.10 server, and use apt/synaptic/etc to add
whatever additional packages you want )

On Wed, 1 Aug 2007, paolo@ecometer.it wrote:

> I bought a Dell server and I am going to use it for installing PostgrSQL
> 8.2.4. I always used Windows so far and I would like now to install a
> Linux distribution on the new server. Any suggestion on which
> distribution ? Fedora, Ubuntu server, Suse or others?

If this is a server you intend to keep around a while, the most
straighforward way to proceed is to install either RedHat Enterprise Linux
5 (if you can justify paying for the software and want official support)
or its free but not officially supported clone CentOS (which lags the real
RedHat a bit but is otherwise fine for many people).  It's straightforward
to remove the PostgreSQL that comes with the operating system and install
the 8.2.4 binary builds from
http://www.postgresql.org/ftp/binary/v8.2.4/linux/rpms/redhat/ , and
enough of us here do that regularly that if should you run into a problem
it will be easy to get help.  That's really the main strength of using
RedHat--the problems you do run into, typically lots of other people know
about as well.  One thing to be aware of going in is that the default disk
partitioning scheme may not be right for you, which can bite you down the
road; make sure you consider that carefully before installation.  I always
customize the partition layout myself.

The related Fedora distribution isn't aimed at server use in the long
term.  I consider it quirkier and less reliable than the real RedHat
releases, which are also bad qualities for a server, and only recommend
Fedora for general tinkering with Linux.

SuSE used to be a reasonable alternative instead for server applications,
but the recent backlash from their dealings with Microsoft have made their
future too uncertain for me to recommend any new installations use their
distribution.

Ubuntu might be a reasonable alternative for you, especially if you have a
lot of software besides PostgreSQL that you want to install on the
machine.  The ease of adding new software to Ubuntu is much better than
most other distributions, particularly when it comes to applications that
are more desktop oriented.  The downside is that getting the latest
PostgreSQL on there using the standard packages takes some work, and the
way the database server is managed is a little different from other
distributions which adds a layer of things you'll need to learn.

Gentoo can be a good server environment, but the learning curve to get
started is probably harder than you want to take on if you're new to
Linux.

--
* Greg Smith gsmith@gregsmith.com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD

paolo@ecometer.it wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I bought a Dell server and I am going to use it for installing PostgrSQL
> 8.2.4. I always used Windows so far and I would like now to install a
> Linux distribution on the new server. Any suggestion on which distribution
> ? Fedora, Ubuntu server, Suse or others?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Paolo Saudin

First, let me echo Hannes; You do not want to go into production with a
network operating system you are not familiar with! Doing so is just
begging for down time. Unless this is a server you will have time to
learn on and/or you have someone with a Linux background to help you,
stick with MS for now.

With that caveat out of the way, Linux as a server is amazing! I, too,
was a MS-kids from way back (DOS5.2). I switched about five years ago to
Linux (RH5.2, coincidently) and honestly have never looked back. It's my
servers OS, my desktop OS and my laptop OS. It is very much worth the
learning curve from a sysadmin and stability point of view. You just
need to give yourself time to feel it out.

As for which distro; that's a question you are likely to never get the
same answer twice. :)

/Personally/, I love Debian on servers.

It's not quite as 'hardcore' as Gentoo (a great distro, but not one to
start with!). It's the foundation of many of the popular distros
(Ubuntu, Mepis, Knoppix, etc) and the Debian crew is very careful about
what they put into the 'stable' repositories. I had been a Redhat/FC fan
from when I first switched to Linux until v7.3 (the best version Redhat
ever put out, in my opinion). After v8 though, things went south... Too
many "Redhatisms" in the Redhat derivative distros (Fedora Core, RHEL,
CentOS, etc) reminded me of the reasons why I left Windows.

On desktops though I am a big fan of Ubuntu. Oddly though, I found the
6.x series less than great, and have found 7.04 to be *way* better. I
run it on my desktops and my laptop. I also had the problem with my main
desktop's widescreen, but that seems to be a Linux-wide issue. The fix
is easy if you know how to edit '/etc/X11/xorg.conf' (in my case, change
the '1440x1440' entries to '1440x900' and restart 'gdm'), but that would
be troublesome for people new to Linux.

Ubuntu is a great desktop... My boyfriend's 83yo grandma uses it with no
problems. I've moved several people over to the recent Ubuntu versions
and have yet to have any ask to go back to Windows. They've all had
nothing but compliments for it. It's just not a great server OS, as
Kenneth explained.

IANAL, YMMV, etc... :)

Madison

I'm about to install a new Linux server, and I've followed this thread
with interest, being a tinkerer rather than any sort of expert.

I'm going to try out Debian, which I haven't used before - the server
it's replacing is running an old RedHat - and would be interested in
people's comments.

This machine will be running PostgreSQL and nothing else, and I'll
probably compile Postgres from source.

Ray.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Raymond O'Donnell, Director of Music, Galway Cathedral, Ireland
rod@iol.ie
---------------------------------------------------------------

-----Messaggio originale-----
Da: pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org
[mailto:pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org] Per conto di Reid Thompson
Inviato: mercoledì 1 agosto 2007 15.15
A: paolo@ecometer.it
Cc: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Oggetto: Re: [GENERAL] Linux distro


On Wed, 2007-08-01 at 13:29 +0200, paolo@ecometer.it wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I bought a Dell server and I am going to use it for installing
> PostgrSQL 8.2.4. I always used Windows so far and I would like now to
> install a Linux distribution on the new server. Any suggestion on
> which distribution ? Fedora, Ubuntu server, Suse or others?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Paolo Saudin
>
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of
> broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to
>        choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not
>        match

>Is this going to be a production server. or a learning server, or a i'm
>learning all things linux server/desktop?


This is going to be a test server holding meteorological data (100 tables
with 1-2 millions rows each) that will serve as a kind of replica/backup
for others databases (pull data from an FTP server via perl scripts). No
matter for data loss since all the other databases are backed-up on a
daily basis.


>If it's a dedicated production server, look at UBUNTU 6.10 server.
>If you're planning to connect a monitor and run X-windows ( i.e. I
>bought a server, but i'm going to use it as a learning platform for
>LINUX in general also), i'd suggest either UBUNTU 6.10 or 7.04 desktop
>( or, start with the 6.10 server, and use apt/synaptic/etc to add
>whatever additional packages you want )

>---------------------------(end of
>broadcast)---------------------------
>TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to
>       choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not
>       match

On 8/1/07, paolo@ecometer.it <paolo@ecometer.it> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I bought a Dell server and I am going to use it for installing PostgrSQL
> 8.2.4. I always used Windows so far and I would like now to install a
> Linux distribution on the new server. Any suggestion on which distribution
> ? Fedora, Ubuntu server, Suse or others?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Paolo Saudin

Be careful when rolling something out you are not familiar with.  You
really shouldn't go into production with an OS you don't know.

As for Linux, using an *Enterprise OS* is the ONLY type of OS you
should use.  Others may say that they "never had any problems" with
non-enterprise OS versions, but they have missed the point.  An
enterprise OS is something that is tried-and-true, has long term
support, and has been proven to be stable and working.  That basically
leaves RedHat Enterprise (and it's clones) and some versions of SuSE.
Ubuntu claims to have a "long term support" version, but it hasn't
been around long enough to be proven.

My recommendation is to go with CentOS, which is the best clone of
Redhat enterprise (redhat even works with them behind the scenes).
They release updates within 1-7 days of when an update comes out from
redhat, and it has been around a long time; tried and true.

Another important point to make is that if you plan on having more
servers in the future, you really want to have the same OS on
everything.  It's not a good idea to try one OS here, then try another
OS there.  That's fine for your desktop or for doing research, but is
an unsuitable strategy when deploying things in production.

Ubuntu, fedora, and many of the others are "desktop" linuxes, and are
not suitable for use on a server.

On Wednesday 1. August 2007 16:15, Madison Kelly wrote:

>/Personally/, I love Debian on servers.
>
>It's not quite as 'hardcore' as Gentoo (a great distro, but not one to
>start with!). It's the foundation of many of the popular distros
>(Ubuntu, Mepis, Knoppix, etc) and the Debian crew is very careful
> about what they put into the 'stable' repositories.

I agree totally. Debian in a server configuration is quite easy to get
started with, and is rock solid. My first Linux "test server" (my old
Pentium 133 MHz desktop) way back in 2002 ran Debian Woody. I kept it
running until it died from old age a couple of years ago. Later I fell
in love with Gentoo. But if I'd have to run a server with maximum
stability and uptime, I think that I'd still prefer Debian.
--
Leif Biberg Kristensen | Registered Linux User #338009
http://solumslekt.org/ | Cruising with Gentoo/KDE
My Jazz Jukebox: http://www.last.fm/user/leifbk/

Raymond O'Donnell wrote:
> I'm about to install a new Linux server, and I've followed this thread
> with interest, being a tinkerer rather than any sort of expert.
>
> I'm going to try out Debian, which I haven't used before - the server
> it's replacing is running an old RedHat - and would be interested in
> people's comments.
>
> This machine will be running PostgreSQL and nothing else, and I'll
> probably compile Postgres from source.
>
> Ray.


Hi Ray,
    Good luck with this endeavor.  I would urge you to consider using the debian-packaged version of PostgreSQL unless
youhave a  
good reason not to.   I would include the following as legitimate reasons to want to build from source:

1.  You're interested in learning about stuff and the machine isn't slated to be "in production"

2.  You need features from a newer version than is available in Debian.

3.  You need to build in functionality that is not available in the standard Debian package.


    If you do build from source it's often possible to use the debian tools (dpkg-buildpackage) to assist you in making
yourown .deb  
files (which may make long-term maintenance of the server/software easier than if you choose to take a generic
PostgreSQL tarball  
and do ./configure; make; make install).

    be well,
        ~c

At 4:52 PM +0200 8/1/07, Leif B. Kristensen wrote:
>On Wednesday 1. August 2007 16:15, Madison Kelly wrote:
>
>>/Personally/, I love Debian on servers.
>>
>>It's not quite as 'hardcore' as Gentoo (a great distro, but not one to
>>start with!). It's the foundation of many of the popular distros
>>(Ubuntu, Mepis, Knoppix, etc) and the Debian crew is very careful
>>  about what they put into the 'stable' repositories.
>
>I agree totally. Debian in a server configuration is quite easy to get
>started with, and is rock solid. My first Linux "test server" (my old
>Pentium 133 MHz desktop) way back in 2002 ran Debian Woody. I kept it
>running until it died from old age a couple of years ago. Later I fell
>in love with Gentoo. But if I'd have to run a server with maximum
>stability and uptime, I think that I'd still prefer Debian.

As an alternative viewpoint, I've been running the latest postgres on
Mac OS X Server 10.4, and it's been great for me.  It was my first
time using a server, and my first serious use of postgres (although I
have had a lot of previous unix experience.)  All the power of unix,
all the ease of the Macintosh (and it's server installation gives you
lots of great things for free and already installed - granted most is
publicly available, but it's already installed and ready for use
that's the big advantage).  Not only that, but I can run windoze in
Parallels (or even Boot Camp if I desired).

-Owen

I just moved one of my desktops and my laptop from Fedora 6 to Unbuntu
7.04 because Fedora lacked hardware support that Unbuntu and my Fedora
machines had all sorts of problems like sound dropping out and machines
locking up.  (Also the Fedora installers are terrible).

My small gripes about Ubuntu are:
  1) rpm, for all its faults, is still better than using apt
  2) It doesn't include xen support like Fedora does
  3) Support. The redhat bugzilla is much better than the Ubuntu bug
tracker and the Ubuntu docs are just a very sparse Wiki.

But my big gripe is that it won't let me run 32 bit apps on my 64 bit
system, which means a lot of firefox plugins don't work.  If I had
realized this I would have just installed the 32 bit version to begin
with.  I don't see why this is such a big problem for Ubuntu

charlie derr napisal 2007-08-01 17:37:

> I would include the following as legitimate reasons to want to
> build from source:
>

>
> 2.  You need features from a newer version than is available in Debian.

Martin Pitt - Debian's PostgreSQL package maintainer makes a great job.
You won't wait too long for newest versions - even beta and rc.

Regards,
Tomasz Myrta

Joseph S <jks@selectacast.net> writes:

> My small gripes about Ubuntu are:
>   1) rpm, for all its faults, is still better than using apt

You *must* be joking.  In Debian and Ubuntu, I've never had a tenth of
the dependency hell that you regularly hit with RPMs (though yum has
improved things somewhat).  Besides 'apt' and 'rpm' aren't directly
comparable--'apt' is a wrapper around 'dpkg', which is the direct
equivalent of 'rpm'.

-Doug

On 8/1/07, Douglas McNaught <doug@mcnaught.org> wrote:
> Joseph S <jks@selectacast.net> writes:
>
> > My small gripes about Ubuntu are:
> >   1) rpm, for all its faults, is still better than using apt
>
> You *must* be joking.  In Debian and Ubuntu, I've never had a tenth of
> the dependency hell that you regularly hit with RPMs (though yum has
> improved things somewhat).  Besides 'apt' and 'rpm' aren't directly
> comparable--'apt' is a wrapper around 'dpkg', which is the direct
> equivalent of 'rpm'.
>
> -Doug
>

Please don't start this.  These issues are exactly why one should be
looking at an ENTERPRISE OS for a server.  Fedora, ubuntu, etc... are
not enterprise OSes, and any discussion of such issues are certainly
off-topic for this mailing list.  An enterprise OS has all of the
dependency issues ironed out already.

Incidentally, I really think that all of the "apt lovers" out there
jumped to Debian in the days before tools like yum existed, and have
not been paying attention to the changes made since.  You are correct
that yum handles most of the dependency issues, and it is certainly on
par with apt in any modern system.

Joseph S wrote:
> I just moved one of my desktops and my laptop from Fedora 6 to Unbuntu
> 7.04 because Fedora lacked hardware support that Unbuntu and my Fedora
> machines had all sorts of problems like sound dropping out and machines
> locking up.  (Also the Fedora installers are terrible).
>
> My small gripes about Ubuntu are:
>  1) rpm, for all its faults, is still better than using apt

Heh, see, this is what I meant by "you won't get the same answer twice".
:) Personally, one of the big selling features of Debian (and Ubuntu)
was how much better /I/ found 'apt-get'/'aptitude'/'synaptic' over
'up2date'/'yum'.

You may want to download all the popularly recommended distributions and
play around with them to see which suits your fancy.

The major distributions I would suggest (in no particular order) you
play with:
- RHEL (if you can afford it)
- CentOS
- Debian

Ubuntu is not really appropriate as a server, ditto with FC. Their focus
is too much on the desktop (not bad, just not appropriate here). SuSe is
in the dog house with the OSS community right now and that could
translate into serious support troubles down the road (when did you last
see anyone use Caldera? :) ).

I somewhat agree with Brian's argument of using enterprise-grade
distros, however I think that his particular argument is a little
strict. If you have a healthy budget, then definitely go with a
backed-distro. However if, like many of us, you want very good
reliability without a (heafty if any) price tag, versions like CentOS
and my fav. Debian are mature, tried and tested.

I would never have any qualms recommending some distros as servers that
don't have direct "commercial" suppliers. It's like PostgreSQL vs
MySQL... The formal has a very strong community that makes it viable,
where MySQL has the added benefit of direct paid support, should you
want it. (Ignoring technical differences, please).

Play around and choose what you like.

Madi

"Brian Mathis" <brian.mathis@gmail.com> writes:

> Please don't start this.  These issues are exactly why one should be
> looking at an ENTERPRISE OS for a server.  Fedora, ubuntu, etc... are
> not enterprise OSes, and any discussion of such issues are certainly
> off-topic for this mailing list.  An enterprise OS has all of the
> dependency issues ironed out already.

Like Debian?  BTW, HP has provided enterprise Debian support for a
while now.  I think Ubuntu will be there soon, but as you say the
track record isn't there yet.

> Incidentally, I really think that all of the "apt lovers" out there
> jumped to Debian in the days before tools like yum existed, and have
> not been paying attention to the changes made since.  You are correct
> that yum handles most of the dependency issues, and it is certainly on
> par with apt in any modern system.

Mostly agree; I was just staggered that anyone could consider bare RPM
(and the OP didn't mention yum or apt/rpm) as superior to apt on
Debian/Ubuntu.

-Doug

On Wed, 1 Aug 2007, Joseph S wrote:

> My small gripes about Ubuntu are:
> 1) rpm, for all its faults, is still better than using apt

This is drfiting off-topic for this list, but this statement is so odd I
can't let it go unchallenged.  You must have some odd criteria for
"better" or run into something quite unusual, because it's rare one finds
people suggesting a preference for rpm over apt.  I've spent countless
hours of my life stuggling with rpm over the last decade, and it's only
recently using it has become a more bearable situation due to better
dependency tools such as yum.  apt is rarely hard to deal with.  I'm sure
you've got a story as to how you decided rpm is better than apt, but I
wouldn't agree and I think you'll find it a difficult opinion to defend.

> 2) It doesn't include xen support like Fedora does

Ubuntu has had Xen packages available since the 6.10 release:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/XenVirtualMachine

> But my big gripe is that it won't let me run 32 bit apps on my 64 bit
> system, which means a lot of firefox plugins don't work.

32-bit apps not building/running correctly on a 64 bit installation is not
a problem limited to Ubuntu; it's an equally messy problem on all Linux
distributions, and the workarounds for each are similar.  On the topic of
Firefox plug-ins:

Fedora/RHEL:
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-flash-java-realplayer-under-64bit-firefox.html

Ubuntu:  http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1174435

--
* Greg Smith gsmith@gregsmith.com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD

On 8/2/07, Reid Thompson <Reid.Thompson@ateb.com> wrote:

> If it's a dedicated production server, look at UBUNTU 6.10 server.
> If you're planning to connect a monitor and run X-windows ( i.e. I
> bought a server, but i'm going to use it as a learning platform for
> LINUX in general also), i'd suggest either UBUNTU 6.10 or 7.04 desktop
> ( or, start with the 6.10 server, and use apt/synaptic/etc to add
> whatever additional packages you want )
No offense, but *if* you have to suggest Ubuntu you should be
suggesting 6.06 LTS, not any of the bleating, errrh, bleeding edge
and quickly fluctuating versions.  In a production server environment
people commonly aren't eager to update the whole OS every year. I
certainly wouldn't.

And if you settle for a stable server environment, I, too, would
rather go with the original debian than with ubuntu.  Not that
I particularly like either of them :}



Cheers,
Andrej

On 8/2/07, Rich Shepard <rshepard@appl-ecosys.com> wrote:
> Andrej,
Richard,


>    How quickly people forget about the quiet distribution: Slackware. Ideal
> for servers, and great on desktops and portables, too, for those who know
> what they're doing.
Slackware is my preferred distro by a long stretch, I've
been a happy Slacker for over 6 years now;  but to someone
who's new to Linux as such, and wanting to get a production
system up and running quickly, I wouldn't recommend it.  A
few months of solid experience would be the minimum, I'd say.

> Rich
Cheers,
Andrej

On 8/1/07, Madison Kelly <linux@alteeve.com> wrote:
> Joseph S wrote:
> > I just moved one of my desktops and my laptop from Fedora 6 to Unbuntu
> > 7.04 because Fedora lacked hardware support that Unbuntu and my Fedora
> > machines had all sorts of problems like sound dropping out and machines
> > locking up.  (Also the Fedora installers are terrible).
> >
> > My small gripes about Ubuntu are:
> >  1) rpm, for all its faults, is still better than using apt
>
> Heh, see, this is what I meant by "you won't get the same answer twice".
> :) Personally, one of the big selling features of Debian (and Ubuntu)
> was how much better /I/ found 'apt-get'/'aptitude'/'synaptic' over
> 'up2date'/'yum'.
>
> You may want to download all the popularly recommended distributions and
> play around with them to see which suits your fancy.
>
> The major distributions I would suggest (in no particular order) you
> play with:
> - RHEL (if you can afford it)
> - CentOS
> - Debian

Seconded.

I would tend to choose a distro based on who I know that I trust to
help me out.  If you've got a good friend who is an RHCE, it might be
a good idea to go with RHEL/Centos.  And so on.

Let me add.  If you're going to be using this server in production,
it's just as important to stress / load test it before sending it out
to do the job to make sure it can, in fact, do the job.

memtest86 is a must, as is running some kind of heavy load test for a
few days or weeks if you can afford the time.

Get a good reliable RAID card, pref with battery backed cache.

And the point of this little side line is that whatever you choose for
hardware may well constrain what distro to use, as you'll need to make
sure the drivers that come with the distros works well with your
hardware.

On 06:30 Thu 02 Aug     , Andrej Ricnik-Bay wrote:
> On 8/2/07, Rich Shepard <rshepard@appl-ecosys.com> wrote:
> > Andrej,
> Richard,
>
>
> >    How quickly people forget about the quiet distribution: Slackware. Ideal
> > for servers, and great on desktops and portables, too, for those who know
> > what they're doing.
> Slackware is my preferred distro by a long stretch, I've
> been a happy Slacker for over 6 years now;  but to someone
> who's new to Linux as such, and wanting to get a production
> system up and running quickly, I wouldn't recommend it.  A
> few months of solid experience would be the minimum, I'd say.
>

I love Slackware but have eventually gone back to running my servers on
Debian stable. Most of the Debian derivatives base on unstable to get
the latest version of things but stable is rock solid and will never let
you down. The advantage of Debian over Slackware is the ease of
installation of new packages and updating the latest security patches.

BTW stable versions are only released when they are  bug free (as far as
anything can be) on ALL architectures supported by Debian, which is I
believe, something like 14 different architectures. The 'untus et al support
one architecture or perhaps two. Just to clarify, unstable does not mean
it crashes all the time, although it can if you blindly upgrade
everything every day, it just means that things change frequently. In
stable things hardly ever change and if they do you can be 99.9% sure
they will work afterwards.

Regards, John
--
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography
Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914)

On Wed, 2007-08-01 at 13:29 +0200, paolo@ecometer.it wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I bought a Dell server and I am going to use it for installing PostgrSQL
>> 8.2.4. I always used Windows so far and I would like now to install a
>> Linux distribution on the new server. Any suggestion on which distribution
>> ? Fedora, Ubuntu server, Suse or others?
>>
>> Thanks in advance,
>> Paolo Saudin
>>
My 02c,

I'm pretty promiscuous when it comes to distros, as I want to run
applications, not fuss with an OS, so which ever distro works best for
me gets used. I've recently played with Ubuntu, Mandriva, Debian,
OpenSUSE, SLED, Fedora Core, SImply Mepis & a few others (including
running Postgres/PostGIS on them all)

I don't think it really matters for Postgresql, most distros will run it
fine. If you want a genuine basic server setup, maybe without any GUI,
then avoid distros which focus more specifically on desktop ease of use.
Perhaps look as BSD?

If you want a workstation system, where there needs to be a good mix of
desktop & server capabilities, a more generic system is preferable.

If you want to set up essentially a desktop system, but run Postgresql
on it, then any popular desktop distro will work.



While Ubuntu & Mandriva (for example) focus on ease of use, they also
have less commonly used server versions. OpenSUSE is the distro I
currently prefer, it seems to do all I want better than the others I've
tried recently. All the server stuff with a good set of desktop apps.

I suggest you look at www.distrowatch.com to see their comments (but
remember everyone has different likes & dislikes, so treat any review
with caution, as your opinion may vary)



HTH,

  Brent Wood

On 8/2/07, John K Masters <johnmasters@oxtedonline.net> wrote:

> I love Slackware but have eventually gone back to running my servers on
> Debian stable. Most of the Debian derivatives base on unstable to get
> the latest version of things but stable is rock solid and will never let
> you down. The advantage of Debian over Slackware is the ease of
> installation of new packages and updating the latest security patches.
I'll have to disagree :} on the "new packages" part.  While
apt-get'ing security fixes may be easier than manually ftp'ing
after having received the security alert ( I don't mind the mildly
more involved approach), I have to say that I find trying to
install packages that the maintainers didn't find necessary to
update (and no, just because I want a newer version of postgres
I don't necessarily want to dist-upgrade) I much prefer Slackware
*because* it doesn't have any dependency checks.




> Regards, John
Cheers,
Andrej

On 09:15 Thu 02 Aug     , Andrej Ricnik-Bay wrote:
> On 8/2/07, John K Masters <johnmasters@oxtedonline.net> wrote:
>
> > I love Slackware but have eventually gone back to running my servers on
> > Debian stable. Most of the Debian derivatives base on unstable to get
> > the latest version of things but stable is rock solid and will never let
> > you down. The advantage of Debian over Slackware is the ease of
> > installation of new packages and updating the latest security patches.
> I'll have to disagree :} on the "new packages" part.  While
> apt-get'ing security fixes may be easier than manually ftp'ing
> after having received the security alert ( I don't mind the mildly
> more involved approach), I have to say that I find trying to
> install packages that the maintainers didn't find necessary to
> update (and no, just because I want a newer version of postgres
> I don't necessarily want to dist-upgrade) I much prefer Slackware
> *because* it doesn't have any dependency checks.
>

I must admit I am torn between Slack and Deb but being lazy I have gone
for Debian. I ran Slackware 10 on my laptop for ages but eventually the
hassle of keeping track of all the installed apps led me to change. This
is probably due to my nature being such that I automatically install any
package that looks the remotest bit interesting.

Debian makes it extremely easy to undo mistakes.

To get back to the original point, for a production server running
postgres/linux I would definately recommend Debian and if it is not
mission-critical, debian-testing and if you are feeling adventurous,
Debian-unstable AKA sid.

Regards, John
--
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography
Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914)

Andrej Ricnik-Bay wrote:
> On 8/2/07, Reid Thompson <Reid.Thompson@ateb.com> wrote:
>
>
>> If it's a dedicated production server, look at UBUNTU 6.10 server.
>> If you're planning to connect a monitor and run X-windows ( i.e. I
>> bought a server, but i'm going to use it as a learning platform for
>> LINUX in general also), i'd suggest either UBUNTU 6.10 or 7.04 desktop
>> ( or, start with the 6.10 server, and use apt/synaptic/etc to add
>> whatever additional packages you want )
>>
> No offense, but *if* you have to suggest Ubuntu you should be
> suggesting 6.06 LTS,
oops, pulled the distro number from memory, 6.06 LTS for server is the
one I meant rather than 6.10

>  not any of the bleating, errrh, bleeding edge
> and quickly fluctuating versions.  In a production server environment
> people commonly aren't eager to update the whole OS every year. I
> certainly wouldn't.
>
> And if you settle for a stable server environment, I, too, would
> rather go with the original debian than with ubuntu.  Not that
> I particularly like either of them :}
>
>
>
> Cheers,
> Andrej
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
>

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On 08/01/07 10:37, Owen Hartnett wrote:
> At 4:52 PM +0200 8/1/07, Leif B. Kristensen wrote:
>> On Wednesday 1. August 2007 16:15, Madison Kelly wrote:
>>
>>> /Personally/, I love Debian on servers.
>>>
>>> It's not quite as 'hardcore' as Gentoo (a great distro, but not one to
>>> start with!). It's the foundation of many of the popular distros
>>> (Ubuntu, Mepis, Knoppix, etc) and the Debian crew is very careful
>>>  about what they put into the 'stable' repositories.
>>
>> I agree totally. Debian in a server configuration is quite easy to get
>> started with, and is rock solid. My first Linux "test server" (my old
>> Pentium 133 MHz desktop) way back in 2002 ran Debian Woody. I kept it
>> running until it died from old age a couple of years ago. Later I fell
>> in love with Gentoo. But if I'd have to run a server with maximum
>> stability and uptime, I think that I'd still prefer Debian.
>
> As an alternative viewpoint, I've been running the latest postgres on
> Mac OS X Server 10.4, and it's been great for me.  It was my first time
> using a server, and my first serious use of postgres (although I have
> had a lot of previous unix experience.)  All the power of unix, all the
> ease of the Macintosh (and it's server installation gives you lots of

Pardon me for being the contrarian, but why does a server need a
GUI?  Isn't that just extra RAM & CPU overhead that could be more
profitably put to use powering the application?

> great things for free and already installed - granted most is publicly
> available, but it's already installed and ready for use that's the big
> advantage).  Not only that, but I can run windoze in Parallels (or even
> Boot Camp if I desired).

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!

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On 8/2/07, Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> wrote:

> > As an alternative viewpoint, I've been running the latest postgres on
> > Mac OS X Server 10.4, and it's been great for me.  It was my first time
> > using a server, and my first serious use of postgres (although I have
> > had a lot of previous unix experience.)  All the power of unix, all the
> > ease of the Macintosh (and it's server installation gives you lots of
> Pardon me for being the contrarian, but why does a server need a
> GUI?  Isn't that just extra RAM & CPU overhead that could be more
> profitably put to use powering the application?
Amen =)

Unnecessary waste of resources, plus artificial introduction of stuff
that can potentially make the machine go belly-up...  a dedicated
server should have the bare minimum install; as much as necessary
and as little as possible.

/me cringes at the idea of flying toasters slowing down a query ... :D


> - --
> Ron Johnson, Jr.
> Jefferson LA  USA
Cheers,
Andrej

On 8/1/07, paolo@ecometer.it <paolo@ecometer.it> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I bought a Dell server and I am going to use it for installing PostgrSQL
> 8.2.4. I always used Windows so far and I would like now to install a
> Linux distribution on the new server. Any suggestion on which distribution
> ? Fedora, Ubuntu server, Suse or others?

There are several considerations to think about in choosing a
distribution.  Contrary to some other comments here I think it matters
a lot.

1. support
This is the #1 most important consideration, and why redhat/suse get
paid the big $$$.  For linux, there are only really two choices for
paid support, redhat and suse.  If you plan to pay to have someone fix
your box when it breaks, choose redhat in u.s.a. and suse in europe,
not sure elsewhere.  Also, enterprise distros are supported longer,
meaning you have to worry less about upgrading.  This has a downside
though, for example when redhat AS 5 was released the as 4 kernel (on
2.6.9) was starting to look really dated.

small aside: you asked about linux but solaris is a viable option in
this regard and is really doing some nice things working with the
community.  There is a fair amount of buzz around ZFS.

Non-enterprise kernels are generally moving faster but you have to be
more concerned about upgrades, security, etc.  I would avoid fedora
but have nothing but nice things to say about debian based systems
(ubuntu, debian) in terms of packaging and stability.  Generally, if
you go this route you will depend on support from the community and
from yourself.

2. performance
the general trend is better performance for newer kernels.  Since
redhat AS 5 just came out, this is mostly a wash but consider some of
the work going on in the linux scheduler and other things that might
be interesting from database perspective.  There are claims that the
source compiled distributions (the best of class is probably gentoo)
have a performance edge.

3. binary packaging
While I like the debian distros generally, I dislike the debian
packaging of PostgreSQL.  IMO, it's over engineered.  If you plan to
use binary packaging, you should understand the difference between the
binary packages of the distribution of interest.  RPMs are built and
provided by the postgresql community and are always up to date.   If
not RPM based, pay close attention to how often your binary packages
are updated because you may get stuck waiting for a bugfix otherwise.

You of course always have the option of compiling PostgreSQL yourself.
 IMO, this is a fine way to go but you have to monitor what is going
for updates, etc.

4. hardware support
enterprise distros either support hardware directly or can leverage
vendors to provide drivers which are usually binary RPMs.  Other
distributions generally derive hardware support directly from the
linux kernel.  The kernel actually moves very fast and actually there
is some advantages from having your hardware supported directly...for
example booting from  a hardware raid device is easier.  That being
said, driver quality for server gear is all over the map and it's a
real roll of the dice.

In summary, I think using an enterprise kernel is usually a better
choice for a database box.  If you don't want to spend any money the
best choice is probably CentOS.  However, I hear see tremendous buzz
around ubuntu in the desktop side of things and expect this ultimately
to translate into a play into the server market. I would actually
consider ubuntu server a reasonably choice but I would stick with an
LTS release if possible.  The main advantage of ubuntu is that since
it i generally regarded the best desktop distro you get a more uniform
environment if you develop in linux (which i highly recommend) as well
as deploy it on the server.

merlin

On 8/2/07, Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On 08/01/07 10:37, Owen Hartnett wrote:
> > At 4:52 PM +0200 8/1/07, Leif B. Kristensen wrote:
> >> On Wednesday 1. August 2007 16:15, Madison Kelly wrote:
> >>
> >>> /Personally/, I love Debian on servers.
> >>>
> >>> It's not quite as 'hardcore' as Gentoo (a great distro, but not one to
> >>> start with!). It's the foundation of many of the popular distros
> >>> (Ubuntu, Mepis, Knoppix, etc) and the Debian crew is very careful
> >>>  about what they put into the 'stable' repositories.
> >>
> >> I agree totally. Debian in a server configuration is quite easy to get
> >> started with, and is rock solid. My first Linux "test server" (my old
> >> Pentium 133 MHz desktop) way back in 2002 ran Debian Woody. I kept it
> >> running until it died from old age a couple of years ago. Later I fell
> >> in love with Gentoo. But if I'd have to run a server with maximum
> >> stability and uptime, I think that I'd still prefer Debian.
> >
> > As an alternative viewpoint, I've been running the latest postgres on
> > Mac OS X Server 10.4, and it's been great for me.  It was my first time
> > using a server, and my first serious use of postgres (although I have
> > had a lot of previous unix experience.)  All the power of unix, all the
> > ease of the Macintosh (and it's server installation gives you lots of
>
> Pardon me for being the contrarian, but why does a server need a
> GUI?  Isn't that just extra RAM & CPU overhead that could be more
> profitably put to use powering the application?

A server with a GUI sitting on a login screen is wasting zero
resources.  Some enterprise management tools are in java which require
a GUI to use so there is very little downside to installing X, so IMO
a lightweight window manager is appropriate...a full gnome is maybe
overkill.  Obviously, you want to turn of the 3d screen saver :-)

merlin

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On 08/01/07 21:44, Andrej Ricnik-Bay wrote:
> On 8/2/07, Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> wrote:
>
>>> As an alternative viewpoint, I've been running the latest postgres on
>>> Mac OS X Server 10.4, and it's been great for me.  It was my first time
>>> using a server, and my first serious use of postgres (although I have
>>> had a lot of previous unix experience.)  All the power of unix, all the
>>> ease of the Macintosh (and it's server installation gives you lots of
>> Pardon me for being the contrarian, but why does a server need a
>> GUI?  Isn't that just extra RAM & CPU overhead that could be more
>> profitably put to use powering the application?
> Amen =)
>
> Unnecessary waste of resources, plus artificial introduction of stuff
> that can potentially make the machine go belly-up...  a dedicated
> server should have the bare minimum install; as much as necessary
> and as little as possible.

That's (one reason) why I like Debian.  It's packages are so
granular that you can only install what you want to install.

I.e., Python without the GNOME or KDE language bindings, which would
also drag in GNOME/KDE and X.org.

> /me cringes at the idea of flying toasters slowing down a query ... :D

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!

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On 08/01/07 21:58, Merlin Moncure wrote:
[snip]
>
> 3. binary packaging
> While I like the debian distros generally, I dislike the debian
> packaging of PostgreSQL.  IMO, it's over engineered.  If you plan to

How so?

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!

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On 8/2/07, Merlin Moncure <mmoncure@gmail.com> wrote:

> A server with a GUI sitting on a login screen is wasting zero
> resources.  Some enterprise management tools are in java which require
> a GUI to use so there is very little downside to installing X, so IMO
> a lightweight window manager is appropriate...a full gnome is maybe
> overkill.  Obviously, you want to turn of the 3d screen saver :-)
So you don't consider RAM a resource? :)

I just went and rebooted my workstation, here's a top from
just after the reboot, with the box idling on the xdm login prompt.

top - 15:40:35 up 2 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.79, 0.60, 0.24
Tasks:  65 total,   1 running,  64 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   1800544k total,    95164k used,  1705380k free,    10408k buffers
Swap:   738856k total,        0k used,   738856k free,    53576k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
  4735 root      18   0 52524 7204 4304 S  0.0  0.4   0:00.01 httpd
 4820 root      15   0  141m 6648 3140 S  0.0  0.4   0:00.64 X
  4739 nobody    16   0 52660 5476 2540 S  0.0  0.3   0:00.00 httpd
  4740 nobody    16   0 52660 5476 2540 S  0.0  0.3   0:00.00 httpd
  4741 nobody    16   0 52660 5476 2540 S  0.0  0.3   0:00.00 httpd
  4742 nobody    20   0 52660 5476 2540 S  0.0  0.3   0:00.00 httpd
  4743 nobody    21   0 52660 5476 2540 S  0.0  0.3   0:00.00 httpd
  4756 postgres  18   0 35832 3696 3244 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.12 postmaster
 4762 root      16   0  4052 2872 1260 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.17 bash
  4737 root      18   0 10272 2640 1848 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 smbd
  4635 root      15   0  5920 2036 1400 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.03 cupsd
  4823 root      15   0  3748 1932 1452 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.01 xdm
  4646 root      15   0  6496 1896  920 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 sendmail


Also note that at that stage the X process has had the most
CPU cycles as well (which might be different if I could let it idle
for much longer - but I need to answer this e-Mail :D and gmail
doesn't work with lynx).


> merlin
-- Cheers,
Andrej

Andrej Ricnik-Bay escribió:
> On 8/2/07, Merlin Moncure <mmoncure@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > A server with a GUI sitting on a login screen is wasting zero
> > resources.  Some enterprise management tools are in java which require
> > a GUI to use so there is very little downside to installing X, so IMO
> > a lightweight window manager is appropriate...a full gnome is maybe
> > overkill.  Obviously, you want to turn of the 3d screen saver :-)
> So you don't consider RAM a resource? :)
>
> I just went and rebooted my workstation, here's a top from
> just after the reboot, with the box idling on the xdm login prompt.

I think most of the virtual memory used by X is actually the map of the
graphics card's memory AFAIK, so it's not as significant as you think.

>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>   4735 root      18   0 52524 7204 4304 S  0.0  0.4   0:00.01 httpd
>  4820 root      15   0  141m 6648 3140 S  0.0  0.4   0:00.64 X


--
Alvaro Herrera                         http://www.flickr.com/photos/alvherre/
"Siempre hay que alimentar a los dioses, aunque la tierra esté seca" (Orual)

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On 08/01/07 22:05, Merlin Moncure wrote:
> On 8/2/07, Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> On 08/01/07 10:37, Owen Hartnett wrote:
>>> At 4:52 PM +0200 8/1/07, Leif B. Kristensen wrote:
>>>> On Wednesday 1. August 2007 16:15, Madison Kelly wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> /Personally/, I love Debian on servers.
>>>>>
>>>>> It's not quite as 'hardcore' as Gentoo (a great distro, but not one to
>>>>> start with!). It's the foundation of many of the popular distros
>>>>> (Ubuntu, Mepis, Knoppix, etc) and the Debian crew is very careful
>>>>>  about what they put into the 'stable' repositories.
>>>> I agree totally. Debian in a server configuration is quite easy to get
>>>> started with, and is rock solid. My first Linux "test server" (my old
>>>> Pentium 133 MHz desktop) way back in 2002 ran Debian Woody. I kept it
>>>> running until it died from old age a couple of years ago. Later I fell
>>>> in love with Gentoo. But if I'd have to run a server with maximum
>>>> stability and uptime, I think that I'd still prefer Debian.
>>> As an alternative viewpoint, I've been running the latest postgres on
>>> Mac OS X Server 10.4, and it's been great for me.  It was my first time
>>> using a server, and my first serious use of postgres (although I have
>>> had a lot of previous unix experience.)  All the power of unix, all the
>>> ease of the Macintosh (and it's server installation gives you lots of
>> Pardon me for being the contrarian, but why does a server need a
>> GUI?  Isn't that just extra RAM & CPU overhead that could be more
>> profitably put to use powering the application?
>
> A server with a GUI sitting on a login screen is wasting zero
> resources.  Some enterprise management tools are in java which require
> a GUI to use so there is very little downside to installing X, so IMO
> a lightweight window manager is appropriate...a full gnome is maybe
> overkill.  Obviously, you want to turn of the 3d screen saver :-)

X is network-transparent.

Load the few necessary X libraries (Debian's packages are granular
enough to do this), and then use the GUI on your workstation to run
all those foolish GUI-based server (in a room down the hall, across
town or across the country, with compressed X) apps.

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!

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On 8/2/07, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com> wrote:
> >   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
> >   4735 root      18   0 52524 7204 4304 S  0.0  0.4   0:00.01 httpd
> >  4820 root      15   0  141m 6648 3140 S  0.0  0.4   0:00.64 X
> I think most of the virtual memory used by X is actually the map of the
> graphics card's memory AFAIK, so it's not as significant as you think.
That machine has an on-board chipset (i845) and has only 8MB
shared memory allotted to the card ....


Cheers,
Andrej

--
Please don't top post, and don't use HTML e-Mail :}  Make your quotes concise.

http://www.american.edu/econ/notes/htmlmail.htm

On 8/2/07, Andrej Ricnik-Bay <andrej.groups@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/2/07, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com> wrote:
> > >   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
> > >   4735 root      18   0 52524 7204 4304 S  0.0  0.4   0:00.01 httpd
> > >  4820 root      15   0  141m 6648 3140 S  0.0  0.4   0:00.64 X
> > I think most of the virtual memory used by X is actually the map of the
> > graphics card's memory AFAIK, so it's not as significant as you think.
> That machine has an on-board chipset (i845) and has only 8MB
> shared memory allotted to the card ....

You don't seem familiar with the meaning of VIRT in the memory
allocation listing there.

VIRT includes all the sizes of all the libraries that the process has
opened, whether they've been loaded or not.  i.e. apache shows 52 Meg
there, but only has 7.2Meg resident.  If it manages to do something
that needs the dynamic libs they'll get loaded into real memory and
take up real space.  until then, it's only using 7.2 meg or so.

The same is true of X here.  It has 141M of total memory taken between
resident, shared and all the libs it's linked to, but it's only
actually using 6.6 meg of phyiscal memory.  If those ever do get used,
then they could take up real physical memory.  but on a server, it's
quite likely that they never will.  And if they do, then sit idle for
some length of time, the OS will swap them out to make space for the
OS to do something else in.  If the programs resident in the 6.6 meg
of physical memory don't see much use, they too will be swapped out to
make space for caching etc as well.

I can't imagine that 6.6 meg making a big difference on most servers
nowadays.  I/O bandwidth, network  bandwidth, memory bandwidth, number
of CPUs, all are probably more important than a 6.6 meg chunk of
memory.

On 8/2/07, Scott Marlowe <scott.marlowe@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I think most of the virtual memory used by X is actually the map of the
> > > graphics card's memory AFAIK, so it's not as significant as you think.
> > That machine has an on-board chipset (i845) and has only 8MB
> > shared memory allotted to the card ....
> You don't seem familiar with the meaning of VIRT in the memory
> allocation listing there.
That'll be Alvaro, maybe?  I'm quite aware of it, I just pointed out to him
that the VSIZE is NOT the devices memory mapping.

And I still think that running X on a server is unnecessary,
wasteful and potentially harmful.  The less you run, the less
can go wrong, the less potential exploits you have.


Cheers,
Andrej

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Ron Johnson wrote:
> Pardon me for being the contrarian, but why does a server need a
> GUI?  Isn't that just extra RAM & CPU overhead that could be more
> profitably put to use powering the application?

What I do is install Gnome, "just in case" I need it for some reason
(ie: opening many terminal windows at a higher res that I can alt+tab
between). Then once the install is done I delete the '/etc/rc2.d/S??gdm'
file, then '/etc/init.d/gdm stop'. Problem solved. :)

This gives me the *option* of using a GUI without it wasting any
resources besides some disk space.

Madi

On 8/2/07, Madison Kelly <linux@alteeve.com> wrote:
> What I do is install Gnome, "just in case" I need it for some reason
> (ie: opening many terminal windows at a higher res that I can alt+tab
> between).
ssh and/or screen ...


> Madi
Cheers,
Andrej



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"Merlin Moncure" <mmoncure@gmail.com> writes:

> A server with a GUI sitting on a login screen is wasting zero
> resources.  Some enterprise management tools are in java which require
> a GUI to use so there is very little downside to installing X, so IMO
> a lightweight window manager is appropriate...a full gnome is maybe
> overkill.  Obviously, you want to turn of the 3d screen saver :-)

That's kind of the crux of it. X sessions tend to do things like run 3d screen
savers, periodically check cdrom drives for new disks, periodically wake up to
update load graphs or network graphs, etc.

Even login screens are getting fancier and even the regular non-3d screen
saver is a problem.

For a benchmark machine you really don't want to find out after you run your
benchmarks that there are mysterious spikes or dips and have to waste energy
tracking down where they come from.

I'm unclear why you would be running the enterprise management tools on
individual machines though. Isn't the point of enterprise management tools
that you can manage the whole enterprise? Ie, that they work remotely?

--
  Gregory Stark
  EnterpriseDB          http://www.enterprisedb.com

Gregory Stark wrote:
> "Merlin Moncure" <mmoncure@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> A server with a GUI sitting on a login screen is wasting zero
>> resources.  Some enterprise management tools are in java which require
>> a GUI to use so there is very little downside to installing X, so IMO
>> a lightweight window manager is appropriate...a full gnome is maybe
>> overkill.  Obviously, you want to turn of the 3d screen saver :-)
>
> That's kind of the crux of it. X sessions tend to do things like run 3d screen
> savers, periodically check cdrom drives for new disks, periodically wake up to
> update load graphs or network graphs, etc.

Spent a happy afternoon some years ago trying to figure out why an NT
server would be fine while I was checking its settings, but would seem
to crawl after half an hour.

Turned out it had some funky 3D screensaver enabled - it'd grind to a
halt, I'd come up, hit the spacebar and not find anything slowing the
system down. Obvious once, I'd got the system monitoring turned on, but
PITA until then.

Moral: If it's not doing something immediately useful, I don't want it
running on my server.

--
   Richard Huxton
   Archonet Ltd

On 8/2/07, Gregory Stark <stark@enterprisedb.com> wrote:
>
> "Merlin Moncure" <mmoncure@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > A server with a GUI sitting on a login screen is wasting zero
> > resources.  Some enterprise management tools are in java which require
> > a GUI to use so there is very little downside to installing X, so IMO
> > a lightweight window manager is appropriate...a full gnome is maybe
> > overkill.  Obviously, you want to turn of the 3d screen saver :-)
>
> That's kind of the crux of it. X sessions tend to do things like run 3d screen
> savers, periodically check cdrom drives for new disks, periodically wake up to
> update load graphs or network graphs, etc.
>
> Even login screens are getting fancier and even the regular non-3d screen
> saver is a problem.
>
> For a benchmark machine you really don't want to find out after you run your
> benchmarks that there are mysterious spikes or dips and have to waste energy
> tracking down where they come from.
>
> I'm unclear why you would be running the enterprise management tools on
> individual machines though. Isn't the point of enterprise management tools
> that you can manage the whole enterprise? Ie, that they work remotely?

they do, but experience has shown it is prudent to be able to
administrate the hardware directly from the box.  I expect trend of
desktop style management to continue (for the record, I would really
prefer these devices to present html interfaces vs. java).

Also, I just checked cpu usage of X on my desktop and it was using
0.03 seconds of cpu time every 20 seconds or so, or about 0.18%, some
of which was used to update top on screen (i was running a failsafe
terminal)...gdm, etc are completely idle.  ubuntu, at least, gives you
nothing you have to turn off.

I'm actually recently converted from the 'anti-x' camp.  This is
because I'm now using linux on a desktop and found it to be remarkably
efficient but also was recently in a situation where I regretted not
having it installed.  I completely understand and sympathize with the
other side of the argument however.  I just don't care anymore, maybe
I'm getting old :-).

merlin

mmoncure@gmail.com ("Merlin Moncure") writes:
> On 8/2/07, Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> wrote:
>> Pardon me for being the contrarian, but why does a server need a
>> GUI?  Isn't that just extra RAM & CPU overhead that could be more
>> profitably put to use powering the application?
>
> A server with a GUI sitting on a login screen is wasting zero
> resources.  Some enterprise management tools are in java which
> require a GUI to use so there is very little downside to installing
> X, so IMO a lightweight window manager is appropriate...a full gnome
> is maybe overkill.  Obviously, you want to turn of the 3d screen
> saver :-)

The server does not need the overhead of having *any* of the "X
desktop" things running; it doesn't even need an X server.

You don't need X running on the server in order use those "enterprise
management" tools; indeed, in a "lights out" environment, that server
hasn't even got a graphics card, which means that an X server *can't*
be running on it.
--
"cbbrowne","@","linuxfinances.info"
http://linuxfinances.info/info/x.html
"Linux poses  a real challenge for  those with a  taste for late-night
hacking (and/or conversations with God)." -- Matt Welsh

On 8/3/07, Merlin Moncure <mmoncure@gmail.com> wrote:

> they do, but experience has shown it is prudent to be able to
> administrate the hardware directly from the box.
I'm curious:  which aspect of hardware administration
on a Linux box would require X (to be running)?  If I *really*
needed applet such-and-such I could still run it easily, with
less overhead and w/o the X server even being installed on
the big iron from my desktop ...

ssh -X user@server whizbangGUItool

> I expect trend of desktop style management to continue
> (for the record, I would really prefer these devices to present
> html interfaces vs. java).
I'm afraid you're right - and it was what I dislike(d) most about
Oracles products.  The fact that 10g ships with the actual database
on a CD, and the admin stuff on DVDs.  Friggin nightmare.



> I'm actually recently converted from the 'anti-x' camp.  This is
> because I'm now using linux on a desktop and found it to be remarkably
> efficient but also was recently in a situation where I regretted not
> having it installed.  I completely understand and sympathize with the
> other side of the argument however.  I just don't care anymore, maybe
> I'm getting old :-).
Nuh mate, that's not old, it's inefficient (and too lazy to know
the ropes, relying on an "intuitive GUI")  ;} ...
/me ducks



> merlin

Cheers,
Andrej


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On Fri, 3 Aug 2007, Andrej Ricnik-Bay wrote:

> I'm curious:  which aspect of hardware administration
> on a Linux box would require X (to be running)?  If I *really*

It's not that it can't be done, it's that having a window environment can
make things easier. (I find 24x80 pretty cramped, and I like large
scrollback buffers.)

But like most computer efficiency questions, this whole thread tangent
boils down to how much overhead you want your computer to dedicate to
making your life easier at the expense of whatever else it was supposed to
be doing.

On 8/3/07, Ben <bench@silentmedia.com> wrote:
> > I'm curious:  which aspect of hardware administration
> > on a Linux box would require X (to be running)?  If I *really*
> It's not that it can't be done, it's that having a window environment can
> make things easier. (I find 24x80 pretty cramped, and I like large
> scrollback buffers.)
So I make my xterm on my workstation be 134x80, with a
line buffer of 8000 and then ssh into the server :}


> But like most computer efficiency questions, this whole thread tangent
> boils down to how much overhead you want your computer to dedicate to
> making your life easier at the expense of whatever else it was supposed to
> be doing.
True that.  Same for how many potential vulnerabilities
I'm willing to introduce for the sake of convenience. Not
that I'd find it convenient to drive the 40Km to the data-
centre to get physical access to the servers, mind you.


Cheers,
Andrej


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On 8/2/07, Andrej Ricnik-Bay <andrej.groups@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/3/07, Merlin Moncure <mmoncure@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > they do, but experience has shown it is prudent to be able to
> > administrate the hardware directly from the box.
>
> I'm curious:  which aspect of hardware administration
> on a Linux box would require X (to be running)?  If I *really*
> needed applet such-and-such I could still run it easily, with
> less overhead and w/o the X server even being installed on
> the big iron from my desktop ...
>
> ssh -X user@server whizbangGUItool
>
[...]
> Cheers,
> Andrej

There is of course no *requirement* for this to be the case, but one
must make concessions for the fact that not everyone is at the same
level of administration.  To make Linux more accessible, a GUI is
added for those people.  Those people are just as smart and equally
talented, but simply may not have the time to learn every command line
detail to get a server up.

While I agree that one can also use ssh and a remote X display (and is
personally how I would do it, if not just pure command line), it is
not that much of a stretch to understand that someone else's
circumstances may not allow this without more additional setup which
requires more time.

Also, while the usual runlevel for a system would be 3, keeping a
system at runlevel 5 would not realistically use more resources.  When
the system starts up, it will load the X server and xdm only (not
gnome or anything else until someone logs in), and when not used all
of that will get paged out to disk, so all it is taking up is a
fraction of the CPU to make the login cursor blink.  Any default
screensaver will basically just blank the screen.

Chris Browne wrote:
>
> The server does not need the overhead of having *any* of the "X
> desktop" things running; it doesn't even need an X server.
>
> You don't need X running on the server in order use those "enterprise
> management" tools; indeed, in a "lights out" environment, that server
> hasn't even got a graphics card, which means that an X server *can't*
> be running on it.

Well, sure it can.   Nothing says a X server has to write directly
to a graphics card or anything.   It could write to some frame
buffer in memory and allow access to it through VNC, for example.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/dtg/attarchive/vnc/xvnc.html

But of course I agree it makes no sense for a database server
to also be running a GUI server; and ideally not even wasting
electricity and space in the box for a graphics chip or monitor
connector.

On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 08:22:24AM -0400, Kenneth Downs wrote:
> Ubuntu: What Windows wants to be, what the Mac is w/o the $$$$ and with
> more control.  I just replaced a hard drive in a dell machine.  A
...
> Great graphics, great package management.  However, it is still Linux
> and you still have to do some Googling here and there to find a HOWTO.
> Perhaps the most annoying problem is lack of support for widescreen
> monitors, you have to type tech data into an X config to get that
> working.  Also, IMHO stay away from 7.04, I've tried it on two machines

Sorry, couldn't let that pass. In 3 statements you just proved why
Ubuntu isn't remotely close to OS X. OS X pretty much just gets the heck
out of your way so you can do real work. Networking just works. Video
just works. By and large, you just don't have to mess with anything. Not
only that, but you still have all the unix tools you're used to (though
for development you'll need to install Xcode, but that comes with recent
versions so it's not a big deal).

Of course, that's not for everyone. If you want to really get down and
dirty with your OS, you'll be happier with *BSD, Linux or perhaps
OpenDarwin. Personally, I'm past that. I just want the stupid thing to
work with a minimum of fuss so I can get on to doing database stuff. :)
--
Decibel!, aka Jim Nasby                        decibel@decibel.org
EnterpriseDB      http://enterprisedb.com      512.569.9461 (cell)

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Decibel! wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 08:22:24AM -0400, Kenneth Downs wrote:
>> Ubuntu: What Windows wants to be, what the Mac is w/o the $$$$ and with
>> more control.  I just replaced a hard drive in a dell machine.  A
> ...
>> Great graphics, great package management.  However, it is still Linux
>> and you still have to do some Googling here and there to find a HOWTO.
>> Perhaps the most annoying problem is lack of support for widescreen
>> monitors, you have to type tech data into an X config to get that
>> working.  Also, IMHO stay away from 7.04, I've tried it on two machines
>
> Sorry, couldn't let that pass. In 3 statements you just proved why
> Ubuntu isn't remotely close to OS X. OS X pretty much just gets the heck
> out of your way so you can do real work. Networking just works. Video
> just works. By and large, you just don't have to mess with anything. Not
> only that, but you still have all the unix tools you're used to (though
> for development you'll need to install Xcode, but that comes with recent
> versions so it's not a big deal).
>
> Of course, that's not for everyone. If you want to really get down and
> dirty with your OS, you'll be happier with *BSD, Linux or perhaps
> OpenDarwin. Personally, I'm past that. I just want the stupid thing to
> work with a minimum of fuss so I can get on to doing database stuff. :)

You mean like my Ubuntu Laptop? ;).

Here is the difference:

1. Linux + Gnome (or kde) correctly configured is *almost* as usable as
Mac OSX.

2. Mac OSX is proprietary even down to the hardware. That is enough for
me to not use it. I gave up the whole IBM/SUN/SGI/HP fiasco of closed
door unix and hardware a decade ago.

3. Mac OSX is ugly. I know I just made a bunch of people poo in their
leather pants but it is. It is really ugly. I want clean, out of my way,
customizable interface that works the way "I" work. Not the way the kool
aide drinking fan boys of apple work.

That being said, I sure as heck wish that X + KDE or X + Gnome didn't
give me two paste buffers ;)


And with that beautiful flame... out!

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake




- --

      === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
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Providing the most comprehensive  PostgreSQL solutions since 1997
             http://www.commandprompt.com/

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> 2. Mac OSX is proprietary even down to the hardware. That is enough for
> me to not use it. I gave up the whole IBM/SUN/SGI/HP fiasco of closed
> door unix and hardware a decade ago.
Wow :) Maybe you need to re-visit Sun gear again, OpenSolaris,
OpenCluster are only but a subset of the unix tools that Sun have
provided to the OSS community. Although, as a desktop, SX (Solars
Express) is as freindly as you will currently get, hjopefully it will
get better. However, IMHO, there is *no* better OE than Solaris (Except
maybe Slackware), given the choice, Solaris every time, just cannot beat
the scalability and robustness of the OE :)

On 8/5/07, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
> [...]
> 3. Mac OSX is ugly. I know I just made a bunch of people poo in their
> leather pants but it is. It is really ugly. I want clean, out of my way,
> customizable interface that works the way "I" work. Not the way the kool
> aide drinking fan boys of apple work.
And they're a complete nightmare to maintain or cater for in
a heterogeneous environment.  In my last employment I was
praying that they would just disappear from the surface of
the earth :D ... even Windows was easier to set-up./deal with
there .... mind you, it *was* and AD shop, mostly.  Linux tied
in quite nicely.  The Macs ... AD integration, network integration
in general, stupid features around web-browsing, ...

/me shudders ...


> And with that beautiful flame... out!
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Joshua D. Drake
Cheers,
Andrej


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Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> 3. Mac OSX is ugly. I know I just made a bunch of people poo in their
> leather pants but it is. It is really ugly. I want clean, out of my way,
> customizable interface that works the way "I" work. Not the way the kool
> aide drinking fan boys of apple work.
>
> That being said, I sure as heck wish that X + KDE or X + Gnome didn't
> give me two paste buffers ;)

KDE's kipper application can fix that:

    http://docs.kde.org/stable/en/kdebase/klipper/general-tab.html

with option:

    Synchronize contents of the clipboard and the selection

(I just learned that in trying out PC-BSD on my laptop.)

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

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Bruce McAlister wrote:
>> 2. Mac OSX is proprietary even down to the hardware. That is enough for
>> me to not use it. I gave up the whole IBM/SUN/SGI/HP fiasco of closed
>> door unix and hardware a decade ago.
> Wow :) Maybe you need to re-visit Sun gear again, OpenSolaris,
> OpenCluster are only but a subset of the unix tools that Sun have

I wasn't referring to "current" Sun, but the Sun of a decade ago.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake


> provided to the OSS community. Although, as a desktop, SX (Solars
> Express) is as freindly as you will currently get, hjopefully it will
> get better. However, IMHO, there is *no* better OE than Solaris (Except
> maybe Slackware), given the choice, Solaris every time, just cannot beat
> the scalability and robustness of the OE :)
>


- --

      === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 || 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
Providing the most comprehensive  PostgreSQL solutions since 1997
             http://www.commandprompt.com/

Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
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Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>> 3. Mac OSX is ugly. I know I just made a bunch of people poo in their
>> leather pants but it is. It is really ugly. I want clean, out of my way,
>> customizable interface that works the way "I" work. Not the way the kool
>> aide drinking fan boys of apple work.
>>
>> That being said, I sure as heck wish that X + KDE or X + Gnome didn't
>> give me two paste buffers ;)
>
> KDE's kipper application can fix that:
>
>     http://docs.kde.org/stable/en/kdebase/klipper/general-tab.html
>
> with option:
>
>     Synchronize contents of the clipboard and the selection
>
> (I just learned that in trying out PC-BSD on my laptop.)

Oh wow... that is cool. Thanks for the tip!

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

>


- --

      === The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 || 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
Providing the most comprehensive  PostgreSQL solutions since 1997
             http://www.commandprompt.com/

Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
PostgreSQL Replication: http://www.commandprompt.com/products/

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On 8/4/07, Decibel! <decibel@decibel.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 08:22:24AM -0400, Kenneth Downs wrote:
> > Ubuntu: What Windows wants to be, what the Mac is w/o the $$$$ and with
> > more control.  I just replaced a hard drive in a dell machine.  A
> ...
> > Great graphics, great package management.  However, it is still Linux
> > and you still have to do some Googling here and there to find a HOWTO.
> > Perhaps the most annoying problem is lack of support for widescreen
> > monitors, you have to type tech data into an X config to get that
> > working.  Also, IMHO stay away from 7.04, I've tried it on two machines
>
> Sorry, couldn't let that pass. In 3 statements you just proved why
> Ubuntu isn't remotely close to OS X. OS X pretty much just gets the heck
> out of your way so you can do real work. Networking just works. Video
> just works. By and large, you just don't have to mess with anything. Not
> only that, but you still have all the unix tools you're used to (though
> for development you'll need to install Xcode, but that comes with recent
> versions so it's not a big deal).

I think you nailed it, but the situation is very fluid right now.  I'm
a recent convert to the desktop linux camp and here are some of my
personal observations about what is going as well as some predictions.

I've set up about 6 ubuntu desktop machines with feisty...about half
were relatively easy and the other half had time consuming problems.
It is virtually impossible to set up a high end desktop/laptop without
at least some X tweaking.  Most of the problems were display related
and the new version (gutsy) will have major overhauls of the way X
works and will be a big release.  I am betting the next LTS release,
the one after gutsy will be very successful.  ubuntu already has
tremendous momentum and it's looking pretty clear (at least to me)
that it is going to make desktop linux a reality where so many
previous efforts have failed due to the community and support efforts
that are organizing around the project.

On a very subjective level, I find the Gnome window manager (with
Beryl/Compiz installed) to be much better and easier to use than the
OS/X desktop.  I bet this is mostly because I basically used windows
too long and OS/X is a bigger departure.  For purposes of development
it's a wash,OS/X has some excellent tools (textpad, etc) but years of
server deployment have made me very used to linux and I since I will
probably never deploy PostgreSQL on OS/X (I have seen a lot of
circumstantial evidence that the linux kernel is better for the
PostgreSQL database) using ubuntu I get to work in a virtually uniform
environment.

I see big changes coming.  The real sexy market is corporate
workstations...if linux can crack this market, it will be a huge
victory for open source.

merlin