Hello KCLUG mailing list, Michael Gebbards and my self [Lee Riffel] [ I was the new kid on the block at the first KCLUG meeting in November]; will be attending the KCLUG meeting on 11-17-2004 at the KC Library..
Mike and I are interested in finding out how to extract from SUSE disks the SENDMAIL program. We have been assigned this subject as a project. The following need to be covered: Configuration Options and Setup, The Functions the Package Supports, Examples of use, Security Considerations, Sources of Information and Support , Where Releases of the Package my be Obtained , We need to be familiar with the package manager used by SUSE and reinstall the package from the distribution disks without using the initial install process. We need to demonstarate use and configuartion and setup. We will see you at teh meeting. Thanks Lee Riffel 816 328 3483 - Work
----- Original Message ----- From: kclug-request@kclug.org To: kclug@kclug.org Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2004 12:00 PM Subject: Kclug Digest, Vol 4, Issue 26
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Today's Topics:
- Re: Proposed Web site redesign (beta) (David Nicol)
Message: 1 Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 14:36:15 -0600 From: David Nicol davidnicol@gmail.com Subject: Re: Proposed Web site redesign (beta) To: Steven Hildreth sphildreth@gmail.com Cc: kclug kclug@kclug.org Message-ID: 934f64a2041115123629c372d0@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
On Sun, 14 Nov 2004 22:25:48 -0600, Steven Hildreth sphildreth@gmail.com wrote:
Wow am I ever sorry I brought it up. In my opinion, its now very obvious why the kclug site is static and visually archaic.
you say that like it's a bad thing
-- David L Nicol "Factions are likely, in the course of time, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterward the very engines which have lifted them to unjust domination." -- George Washington
Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
End of Kclug Digest, Vol 4, Issue 26
I recommend the O'Reilly book "Sendmail", by Bryan Costales - http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/sendmail3/index.html
There's really no substitute if you really expect to know the program.
As for you installation/package management questions, I'd start working with a SuSE system now so you can learn them. SuSE's package management is much less flexible than the other distros; in the 9.x and later releases you can only use the GUI interface. (There's always straight RPM, but that doesn't fetch dependencies for you.)
Installing packages off of the distro CD's is how you usually add stuff to a distro, so that's not a significant issue.
Quoting Jonathan Hutchins hutchins@tarcanfel.org:
SuSE's package management is much less flexible than the other distros; in the 9.x and later releases you can only use the GUI interface. (There's always straight RPM, but that doesn't fetch dependencies for you.)
I haven't tried SuSE... yet, but this is interesting. Is there no way to do a command-line only install with no X system? If so, does the package management system use ncurses or something or similar?
If it's really not possible to have a text based SuSE install, then I probably won't bother trying it out. I prefer to keep my servers lean and mean. The less crap I can install on a box the better.
-- Dave Hull http://insipid.com
YAST has ncurses capability. Actually, I think it started there, and later added the GUI.
http://www.novell.com/documentation/suse91/suselinux-adminguide/html/ch03.ht...
Enjoy, Jim
Dave Hull wrote:
Quoting Jonathan Hutchins hutchins@tarcanfel.org:
SuSE's package management is much less flexible than the other distros; in the 9.x and later releases you can only use the GUI interface. (There's always straight RPM, but that doesn't fetch dependencies for you.)
I haven't tried SuSE... yet, but this is interesting. Is there no way to do a command-line only install with no X system? If so, does the package management system use ncurses or something or similar?
If it's really not possible to have a text based SuSE install, then I probably won't bother trying it out. I prefer to keep my servers lean and mean. The less crap I can install on a box the better.
-- Dave Hull http://insipid.com _______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
On Wednesday 17 November 2004 09:54 pm, Dave Hull wrote:
I haven't tried SuSE... yet, but this is interesting. Is there no way to do a command-line only install with no X system? If so, does the package management system use ncurses or something or similar?
Yes, there's a pseudo-graphics mode, but you have to step through all the menus, there's no way to say "yast2 install <package>" (docs claim you can, but it doesn't work). Also no way to save excluded packages.
If it's really not possible to have a text based SuSE install, then I probably won't bother trying it out. I prefer to keep my servers lean and mean. The less crap I can install on a box the better.
SuSE tends to keep it's server-targeted distro's two or three versions behind it's desktop (though both can contain the same packages).
I wouldn't recommend it for a server, but right now I don't know what I _would_ recommend.
Quoting Jonathan Hutchins hutchins@tarcanfel.org:
Yes, there's a pseudo-graphics mode, but you have to step through all the menus, there's no way to say "yast2 install <package>" (docs claim you can, but it doesn't work). Also no way to save excluded packages.
Is it possible to run yast from the cli and have it update everything available, the way one can with up2date -uf on Red Hat?
SuSE tends to keep it's server-targeted distro's two or three versions behind it's desktop (though both can contain the same packages).
We've got a few people here who have been running SLES9 and/or the Novell Linux Desktop beta. They seem to like it, but they are not running production systems like we are in my department.
I wouldn't recommend it for a server, but right now I don't know what I _would_ recommend.
We've had very good results with Red Hat EL AS 3, but our subscriptions are less than 60 days from expiration so we wanted to look at SLES before we renewed our RH subscriptions.
We're running a couple instances of Oracle DB and their Application Server on a few Red Hat servers. But Novell and Oracle are now claiming that SuSE is the fastest platform available for running Oracle, largely due to SLES use of the 2.6 kernel that contains "significant" IO enhancements.
I'm sure this will be a non-issue (not that it really is an issue) when RH starts using the 2.6 kernel in the EL AS line.
-- Dave Hull http://insipid.com
On Thursday 18 November 2004 11:07 am, Dave Hull wrote:
Is it possible to run yast from the cli and have it update everything available, the way one can with up2date -uf on Red Hat?
Not as far as I know. You have to step through the menu selection process. As I said, the documentation claims that you can specify a package on the command line, but doing so just takes you to the selection menu.
We've had very good results with Red Hat EL AS 3, but our subscriptions are less than 60 days from expiration so we wanted to look at SLES before we renewed our RH subscriptions.
We're running a couple instances of Oracle DB and their Application Server on a few Red Hat servers. But Novell and Oracle are now claiming that SuSE is the fastest platform available for running Oracle, largely due to SLES use of the 2.6 kernel that contains "significant" IO enhancements.
I'm surprised at how long it's taking RH and others to get the 2.6 kernel integrated into their distributions.
My clients could never afford RHEL subscriptions. They were ok with the $60/year price, but when RH screwed us all they stuck with their 7.x installations. I really wish I knew what to recommend to them.
On Thursday 18 November 2004 11:17 am, Jonathan Hutchins wrote:
On Thursday 18 November 2004 11:07 am, Dave Hull wrote:
Is it possible to run yast from the cli and have it update everything available, the way one can with up2date -uf on Red Hat?
Not as far as I know. You have to step through the menu selection process. As I said, the documentation claims that you can specify a package on the command line, but doing so just takes you to the selection menu.
Sure it's possible. You can see it all graphically by running 'yast online_update', which launches the curses based online update module. 'yast2 online_update' launches the QT based module, and 'online_update' is the real cli tool, it doesn't provide any output that I know of, but makes sure your system is up to date. 'online_update' is what SuSE runs as a cron job if you turn on the automatic updates feature.
Hell you can even set up apt4rpm on SuSE. SuSE doesn't have an apt repository but there are many well respected package managers in the SuSE community that have their own repositories (such as packman.links2linux.org).
SuSE offers the latest Gnome, KDE, and X.org packages in their supplementary tree on their FTP site. Also, check out ULB Gnome. http://www.usr-local-bin.org/linux.php is a great resource for Gnome on SuSE.
We've had very good results with Red Hat EL AS 3, but our subscriptions are less than 60 days from expiration so we wanted to look at SLES before we renewed our RH subscriptions.
We're running a couple instances of Oracle DB and their Application Server on a few Red Hat servers. But Novell and Oracle are now claiming that SuSE is the fastest platform available for running Oracle, largely due to SLES use of the 2.6 kernel that contains "significant" IO enhancements.
I'm surprised at how long it's taking RH and others to get the 2.6 kernel integrated into their distributions.
SuSE, Gentoo, and Mandrake have offered the 2.6 kernel for quite some time now. Someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe even Debian is offering the 2.6 kernel as an installation option.
My clients could never afford RHEL subscriptions. They were ok with the $60/year price, but when RH screwed us all they stuck with their 7.x installations. I really wish I knew what to recommend to them.
What's wrong with the Fedora Legacy Project? You will have to install YUM, but that's really straightforward, and they seem to be providing timely updates. I use it on an old RH 7.3 box and an RH 8.0 box of mine.
I think there are issues with SuSE that are very dependent on _exactly_ which version you're using, and from what source.
On Thursday 18 November 2004 11:37 am, Rich Edelman wrote:
Is it possible to run yast from the cli and have it update everything available, the way one can with up2date -uf on Red Hat?
Sure it's possible. You can see it all graphically by running 'yast online_update', which launches the curses based online update module.
Does this really work with the downloaded versions of 9.x? The install option doesn't work as documented, I'd be surprised if this does.
SuSE offers the latest Gnome, KDE, and X.org packages in their supplementary tree on their FTP site.
BE WARNED: There have been SERIOUS issues with these packages being corrupt, badly built, and with suites such as KDE not being correctly distributed to all of the mirrors.
I was very encouraged about SuSE's future when Novell hosted 9.0 on their very solid FTP servers, but it's still 9.0 - so much for progress.
On Thursday 18 November 2004 10:54 am, Jonathan Hutchins wrote:
On Wednesday 17 November 2004 09:54 pm, Dave Hull wrote:
I haven't tried SuSE... yet, but this is interesting. Is there no way to do a command-line only install with no X system? If so, does the package management system use ncurses or something or similar?
Yes, there's a pseudo-graphics mode, but you have to step through all the menus, there's no way to say "yast2 install <package>" (docs claim you can, but it doesn't work). Also no way to save excluded packages.
yast2 -i <package> or 'yast2 sw_single' to bring up the software installer/remover portion of yast.
also, if you are at a command line, yast gives you the curses based installer, yast2 gives you the GUI if your DISPLAY env variable is set.
If it's really not possible to have a text based SuSE install, then I probably won't bother trying it out. I prefer to keep my servers lean and mean. The less crap I can install on a box the better.
SuSE tends to keep it's server-targeted distro's two or three versions behind it's desktop (though both can contain the same packages).
I wouldn't recommend it for a server, but right now I don't know what I _would_ recommend.
What is wrong with SuSE as a server? I'm running 9.1 Professional on a dual xeon with 3GB RAM and a 2.5T raid array. Haven't had any problems whatsoever. SLES9 (the server targetted version) I've seen on bigger servers, again with no problems. SLES9 isn't that far behind 9.1, they are essentially the same thing... both are 2.6 based.
It DOES have a text based install, too. You can add the boot parameter 'textmode=1' on the Grub graphical boot screen to force YaST to run in text mode. If you prefer the grub text based screen, press escape first. You can also press F2 to change your video mode and select text mode on there.
If you select Manual Installation, you can tell YaST to use FTP, WWW, NFS, SMB, or even a local directory as the installation source, so you won't have to swap cds. (Using the DVD this isn't a problem, but a local net resource is still faster.)
You can even launch SSH or VNC, so that you can start the install at the server, and complete it from your desk. You can assign a static IP or use DHCP, in which case SuSE advertises the VNC connection using SLP (Service Locator Protocol).
I've installed SuSE 8.0 - 9.1 on many machines, many times, using all available installation methods. If you need help installing, just email me.
Rich
On Thursday 18 November 2004 11:29 am, Rich Edelman wrote:
yast2 -i <package>
Doesn't work in any of the 9.x downloadable versions. It brings up the pseudo-gui menu. (Documentation claims otherwise.)
What is wrong with SuSE as a server? I'm running 9.1 Professional ....
It's entirely possible that the "Professional" distributions have fixed problems that exist in the downloadable version. If I want to recommend a pig-in-a-poke purchase to a client - suggest they buy something that claims to be fixed without being able to test it before buying - I'll recommend the real professional version: Microsoft.
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Dave Hull -
Jim Herrmann -
Jonathan Hutchins -
Leland Riffel -
Rich Edelman