Linux

• MirrorManager at Red Hat Summit

  Fri. Apr. 18, 2008
  by Matt Domsch, Linux Technology Strategist

  I'll be presenting Fedora's MirrorManager project at the Red Hat Summit in Boston.  The Summit runs June 18-20, my presentation is on Thursday afternoon at 4pm.  If you're attending FUDCon (the Fedora User and Developer Conference) that's running parallel to the Summit, you'll be able to get in for free to the Open Source track presentations in the Summit, including mine.  Dell is sponsoring the Summit, so you'll hear more from us here on the blog as it approaches.

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• Linux Discussion with Computerworld

  Wed. Apr. 16, 2008
  by John Hull, Manager of Linux OS Engineering

  Several of us here at Dell sat down last week with Todd Weiss from Computerworld to discuss our Ubuntu Linux program. Todd's article from that discussion can be found here.
  

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• Why I like conferences

  Wed. Apr. 09, 2008
  by Matt Domsch, Linux Technology Strategist

  I like conferences.  Done right, they're exhausting, as you spend every waking minute talking with people, making new friends, and making new connections.  For example, at last night's Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit reception, I was chatting with Chris Wright, a noted Linux kernel developer.  Tim Gardner stepped over to join us, and I made introductions.  "Chris, Tim.  Tim, Chris."  Then, to add context, I mention,  "Chris maintains the stable kernel series.  Tim is a kernel maintainer for Ubuntu."  Lights go on in both their eyes.

  Chris: does Ubuntu carry a bunch of patches, bug fixes really, that might make sense for the stable kernel?
  Tim: we do cherry-pick fixes out of mainline, yes, but we keep them separate so we know what we pulled and why.
  Chris: it should make your life easier if you sent them to me - got them out of your hair.
  Tim: I think you're right.  I can think of a dozen patches that fit that bill.  Let me find them and send them to you.

  And just like that, a new connection, which will benefit Ubuntu immediately, and will improve the stable kernel series by pointing out several more bug fixes that are appropriate, thereby helping everyone who uses the stable series.  Goodness all around, and all due to a "chance" meeting.  I'm sure there will be hundreds of stories like this resulting from the summit this week.
  

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• Dell at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit

  Tue. Apr. 08, 2008
  by John Hull, Manager of Linux OS Engineering

  The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit runs April 8-10 this week here in Austin, and a number of people from Dell will be attending to discuss the current status and future direction of Linux. On Tuesday, Matt Domsch will be participating in a panel discussion titled "State of Linux Roundtable – Kernel Hackers", while I will be participating in a discussion on titled "We're Shipping Linux on PCs -- Now What?". Others from Dell will also be participating in other sessions throughout the week. If you happen to be attending the event as well, please come up and chat with us.
  
  Matt and I will be blogging more about the events this week to give our take on the summit.The full schedule for the summit can be found here.
  

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• [BETA] OMSA 5.4 in the Dell hardware repository

  Mon. Mar. 31, 2008
  by Michael E. Brown—Linux Eng. OSS Advocate

  Dell OpenManage Server Assistant (OMSA) 5.4 was publicly released last week. We now have OMSA 5.4 available for testing in the Dell hardware repository at http://linux.dell.com/repo/hardware. OMSA 5.4 is not yet the default install, you will need to follow the steps below in order to install or upgrade to it (This is in addition to the regular repository setup). If we have a few success reports, we will change this to be the default repository after a week.

  What is in the Dell hardware repository:

  • Dell OpenManage Server Assistant 5.4
  • Linux drivers and updates for Dell platforms, such as PERC adapters, network controllers, and other hardware bits.
  • Utilities such as Dell-updated "ipmitool", Rac administration utilities, and others.
    

  To install OMSA 5.4, bootstrap the repository as normal (see http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Repository/hardware), then change the config as follows:

  YUM:

  In both /etc/yum.repos.d/dell-hw-indep-repository.repo and /etc/yum.repos.d/dell-hw-specific-repository.repo, find the string "repo_config=$repo_config", and change it to read, "repo_config=OMSA_5.4".

  UP2DATE:

  same as yum, except you need to change the string in /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources in two places, rather than in the yum repository files.

  RUG/ZYPPER/SUSE 10:

  No idea. Anybody who knows how to do this should let me know. :) See above for the general outline.

  Note that the repository is still community-support only. If you have problems with the repository, please email linux-poweredge@dell.com, do not post problem reports to the blog, thanks. :)
  

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• Update: Linux on Dell's "Business Client" Systems

  Mon. Mar. 31, 2008
  by John Hull, Manager of Linux OS Engineering

  Since many of the Linux blog posts over the past nine months have focused on Ubuntu Linux on consumer systems, I'd like to give a quick update on some of the work we've been doing for "business client" systems, such as our Precision Workstation, OptiPlex, Latitude, and Vostro product lines:
  
  

  • In the late fall, Dell launched three new Precision Workstation desktop systems: the T3400, T5400, and T7400. From day one, these systems could be purchased with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL 5) x86_64 pre-installed, and are also certified with RHEL 4.

  • Beginning in November of 2007, for the first time at Dell, we began selling Linux pre-installed on Precision Mobile Workstation systems. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 can be purchased factory-installed on the Precision M4300 and M6300 Mobile Workstations. This has been a popular request from our Precision Workstation customers, so we're happy to now offer Linux across that line of systems.

  • We are continuing to certify OptiPlex, Latitude, and Vostro systems with Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (SLED 10). Recently certified systems include the OptiPlex 755 and 330; the Latitude D430, D530, D630, and D830; and the Vostro 410 and 1200. The latest SLED-certified Dell systems can always be found at www.novell.com/dell.
    

   

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• DKMS v2.0.19 released

  Tue. Mar. 25, 2008
  by Matt Domsch, Linux Technology Strategist

  DKMS 2.0.19 is out.  The big improvement here is that Fedora rawhide (will be Fedora 9) now includes rpm hooks, similar to Ubuntu's triggers, to invoke the DKMS autoinstaller at the end of an RPM transaction when a new kernel is installed.  This means we don't have to wait for a reboot to invoke the dkms_autoinstaller - it is now invoked right after a new kernel is installed, so can rebuild drivers immediately and include them in the initial ramdisk.  This makes it easier to update storage drivers in particular.  With any luck, when you install your new kernel, the DKMS autoinstaller will see that you have an even better driver in the kernel than DKMS is managing.  If so, it won't install the "older" driver.  This encourages people to get their needed fixes into kernel.org and thus into their distribution's kernels.
  

  Thanks to the Ubuntu kernel team for devising the method for hooking into linux-image deb installs and uninstalls, and to the Fedora kernel team for implementing the same hooks (so as to not reinvent the wheel needlessly).  I hope few packages will need this feature, but DKMS definitely benefits from it.
  
  I've built this for Fedora rawhide, and will build it for F7 and F8 shortly.  Watch for it in the updates-testing repositories.
  
  For Ubuntu Hardy, I've missed the deadline for including this version. But that's OK, Hardy has 2.0.17.6.  There is only one change here relevant to Hardy: with 2.0.17.6 and earlier you should invoke the mkdeb command as:
    LANG=C dkms mkdeb ...
  to avoid the wrong date string getting put in your debian/changelog file.
  

  git:      http://linux.dell.com/git/dkms.git/
  tarball: http://linux.dell.com/dkms/permalink/dkms-2.0.19.tar.gz
             http://linux.dell.com/dkms/permalink/dkms-2.0.19.tar.gz.sign
  RPMs: http://linux.dell.com/dkms/permalink/dkms-2.0.19-1.noarch.rpm
             http://linux.dell.com/dkms/permalink/dkms-2.0.19-1.src.rpm
  DEB:   http://linux.dell.com/dkms/permalink/dkms_2.0.19-0ubuntu1_all.deb
  
  

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• Fedora's MirrorManager now with Internet2 lookups

  Tue. Mar. 18, 2008
  by Matt Domsch, Linux Technology Strategist

  With thanks to Ken Tossell for some critical information, Fedora's MirrorManager now tries to direct Internet2 clients to Internet2 mirrors.  N.B. when I say Internet2 here, I mean Internet2 and all the high speed educational and research networks that peer directly with Internet2, such as GEANET2.
  
  Basically, the yum client lookup order now is:
  

  1. mirrors in the client's netblock (no change)
     
  2. mirrors on Internet2 in the same country, if the client is on Internet2
  3. rest of the mirrors in the same country (no change)
  4. rest of the mirrors in the same continent (no change)
  5. rest of the mirrors in the global list (no change)
     

  It turns out that because Internet2 peers with several fast networks in other geographies, roughly half of the listed mirrors are available over I2.  I2 networks/peers account for ~5% of the total IPv4 address space.
  

  I'll be presenting MirrorManager at OLS in July.

  We're always looking for more mirrors, especially in parts of the world where we have few (see the map).
   

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• New ipmitool available in Dell yum repositories

  Thu. Mar. 06, 2008
  by Michael E. Brown—Linux Eng. OSS Advocate

  As part of the recent upgrade of OMSA to version 5.3 in the Dell yum repository, we have also included a Dell-enhanced version of ipmitool.

  There are a couple of very interesting things to note about this enhanced version of ipmitool. First are the new features that have been added to ipmitool by Dell developers: Dell formatted Sensor and SEL reports, LCD display control (for the Server systems front-mounted LCD information display), power monitoring functionality, and updated sysinfo. For more information on these commands, see the updated ipmitool man page, which has extensive documentation on each of these new options.

  Next, the way this has been packaged is somewhat of a first for Dell-distributed system-management software. Instead of making our own "dell-ipmitool" that installs in parallel with the system ipmitool and doesn't track any OS-vendor enhancements or packaging, or even worse, packaging our own version that supersedes and overrides the normal version of ipmitool that comes with the operating system, we have chosen what we believe is the lowest-impact, and easiest way to packaging our changes. We have taken the OS-vendor distributed version of ipmitool, for example on SLES10 x86_64, "ipmitool-1.8.6-13.4.x86_64.rpm", and added our changes to produce "ipmitool-1.8.6-13.4.DELL.13.x86_64.rpm". We then used the "mock" build tool to produce native RPMs for each modified source rpm. This means that you as an end-user don't run into issues like running i386 binaries on x86_64 machines... everything is native and packaged exactly as your OS vendor intended. We have done likewise for RHEL, the rpm containing ipmitool there is called "OpenIPMI-tools".

  Next, the Dell engineers working on this project are working through the final issues internally to get the source code to this published and submitted to the upstream ipmitool project. At this time, we are just tracking down some final paperwork bits, look for this to be posted to the ipmitool mailing lists sometime in the coming days. This is part of a continuing tradition of Dell working to get our software into the upstream versions as quickly as possible.

  Last, note that due to space constraints, the source to our enhanced ipmitool version is not distributed on the OpenManage CD, but I have uploaded the full sources here: http://linux.dell.com/repo/hardware/OMSA_5.3/platform_independent/ipmitool-srpms/

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• OpenManage Server Administrator 5.3 posted in Dell yum repositories

  Mon. Mar. 03, 2008
  by Michael E. Brown—Linux Eng. OSS Advocate

  We have updated the Dell yum repository with the latest version of OpenManage Server Administrator, version 5.3. The repository with OMSA is at  http://linux.dell.com/repo/hardware/, while more information can be found at http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Repository/hardware.

  Dell OMSA is a suite of tools provided by Dell for server monitoring and administration. Yum is a software distribution mechanism that is supported in all of the Linux operating systems shipped on Dell servers. You can do initial installs or upgrade OMSA using the yum repository. The advantage of installing OMSA from the yum repositories is that you can receive future upgrades through the same mechanism that you receive upgrades to all the rest of your operating system components, all done automatically, or through your favorite software administration tools.

  My personal thanks to all of the people who tested the repository last week. We found and fixed one minor problem with the bootstrap process, but other than that, there were no reports of issues. Anybody who helped in this effort should now consider reverting their config back to default in order to receive future updates.

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