Archive for the 'Fedora' Category
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007
Fedora 8 sees strong first week adoption; but what will it take to quadruple or exponentially grow?
While the Fedora camp may be excited about 54,000 users, I have to admit given the stats I’ve seen 54K users is a small drop in the Linux user base ocean. I’m not sure exactly how they track this …
I’m actually one of those 54,000 users as I installed Fedora 8 on my home PC which now dual boots Fedora and Vista (solely for Photoshop and my Sony HD camcorder video editing). I actually replace Ubuntu Gutsy with Fedora to try out the new virtualization features in Fedora 8. I must admit, when it comes to virtualization, no distro comes close to Fedora (I tried Ubuntu 7.10 and OpenSuse 10.3). The polish, focus, and achievements with Xen and KVM are second to none. The Fedora 8 Virtual Machine Monitor is fantastic – worth testing the distro out alone. I have not (yet) seen any other distro port this with as many features available.
However, from an end user experience perspective, I would recommend every Fedora developer force themselves to use Ubuntu for the next month. The Ubuntu competition has a huge leg up on Fedora from a user experience perspective and it’s as if they don’t even know it (or Fedora has decided just to not care). For instance, just try watching an MPEG movie, try even finding how to use the licensed, paid for codecs, try listening to an MP3, try enabling 3D desktop with nVidia drivers, try customizing the 3D effects. When you need help, does the Wiki really help? Does the FAQ that is still stuck on Fedora 7 content apply? Fedora has now released quite a few well done releases – why are there still issues?
It truly was difficult to accept that Fedora was still as far behind as it was from an end user perspective. Now, I don’t want to scare anyone off – as a Linux user – I’ve grown accustomed to self help and working through these issues one by one. None are insurmountable and Fedora 8 is no more complicated for these things than Fedora 7. However, Fedora 7 should not be the bar against which you’re competing. I’ve said many times that Linux distros should ignore Windows and focus on the value Mac OS X offers its users (security holes, firewall issues, and upgrade dilemmas aside).
Thursday, November 8th, 2007
Fedora 8 is Out; KVM is the default virtualization technology
I’m installing Fedora 8 and just noticed that when you add “Virtualization” during the install, the default is KVM (not Xen). Very interesting and very cool. Xen is also an option.
You can grab Fedora 8 yourself over here:
http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
Using Linux KVM Virtualization on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10
I _really_ like KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machines) . It’s extremely simple to setup and use and lacks the intrusiveness of hypervisors like VMware and Xen. In this post, I’ll show you how to setup KVM on the latest Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”. Ubuntu already has a decent howto available here that walks you through the steps, but I’ll go a few steps further in places (and shorter in others) using the new Gutsy Gibbon release.
First off, you need a system with full virtualization enabled processors, or virtualization assist. AMD calls this Secure Virtual Machine (or SVM) and Intel calls its technology VT-x (or vmx). You can read more about this at LWN if you would like here.
I’m using Ubuntu 7.10 64-bit on an AMD64×2 dual core processor that has the AMD hardware virtualization assist extensions . To find out if your processor supports this, use the following command:
# egrep ‘(vmx|svm)’ /proc/cpuinfo
Example output from an AMD system (hence, “svm” is highlighted). If this were Intel based, you would see “vmx”:
First, start by installing KVM and QEMU using apt-get or Synaptic Package Manager
# apt-get install qemu kvm
# modprobe kvm-amd (or kvm-intel for intel procs)
Note that if you do not modprobe the KVM module, you will get an error such as the following when you try to start KVM in the steps that follow:
Installing an Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon server guest OS
# qemu-img create gutsy-server.img -f qcow2 6G
This creates a file for your virtual machine image in your current directory. QEMU and KVM actually support many other useful file formats as described in the qemu documentation. One of the more userful options here is to use “-f vmdk” as the vm image that you create and setup will be compatible with VMware 3 and 4. Obviously the ability to export and use the same image with VMware can be valuable.
One question you may have at this point is “why use KVM; doesn’t QEMU do this too?”. The simple answer is that KVM uses processor extensions for virtualization whereas QEMU uses processor emulation. QEMU emulates the processor and system devices. KVM does not need to emulate the processor but relies on QEMU to do its device emulation. The interesting use case for QEMU is that it can also emulate other processor architectures such as SPARC, PowerPC and MIPS (see this website) on an x86 host. While the difference may seem subtle, there are definite performance advantages to KVM (and once can assume stability advantages). Someday, we may see them merge… but I doubt it. You can find a great overview of the differences between various Linux virtualization technologies at developerWorks here.
Back to KVM, the command above creates an image file that grows as the VM requires. With an inflatable disk image, your VM grows with the space used by the virtual machine up to 6GB (versus pre-allocating a full 6GB disk image). Now, let’s startup an Ubuntu install for our new virtual machine.
# kvm -m 750 -cdrom /home/user/ubuntu-7.10-server-amd64.iso -boot d ubuntu-server.img
For new users, the /home/user/ should just be the path to where you stored your Ubuntu iso download. If you execute this command and only see a black window pop up that looks empty, you can hit enter to start the install and the screen will come back. Or, you can add “-std-vga” to the kvm command above to help with the framebuffer Ubuntu startup.
This will start up KVM and boot the virtual machine off of the Ubuntu iso image. You can also boot from a CD/DVD drive by using this command:
# kvm -m 750 -cdrom /dev/cdrom -boot d ubuntu-server.img
Once you execute the command, QEMU will startup and you will see the normal boot options as if you started your computer with an Ubuntu install disk in the drive. I had to use -no-acpi with Ubuntu 7.10 or else I would get kernel panics once it went to install. The title bar should show QEMU/KVM. If you just see QEMU (as in the image below), then KVM failed (you most likely forgot to load the KVM module in the steps above) and you should exit even though it appears to be working. If you see QEMU/KVM, you should now have a working KVM install. Continue with the server install process and configuration as usual.
Once installation is finished, the Ubuntu guest will try to restart. This will fail, and that’s fine. You can close out the QEMU/KVM window, return to the command line, and start up your KVM guest Ubuntu server for the first time. I also tend to give running guests less memory than during the install…
# kvm -no-acpi -m 500 ubuntu-server.img
(note that I installed the text based version of Ubuntu server with no GUI or X windows)
Fedora Core 8 Beta as a KVM Guest
I’ll create an image for Fedora 8 first, using vmdk as the file format to later use this same image with VMware. You can click here for more information on how to use a QEMU created vmdk file in VMware.
# qemu-create fedora8.img -f vmdk 6G
# kvm -no-acpi -m 750 -cdrom /dev/cdrom -boot d fedora8.img
# kvm -no-acpi -m 500 fedora8.img
Windows Server 2008 in KVM with Ubuntu:
See my post here for setting up Windows Server 2008 in KVM
Next up: managing KVM processes, KVM networking, and sharing files between host and guests.
Other Resources to Check Out:
Virtual disk images: http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/qemu-doc.html#SEC24
KVM Wiki: http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki/Front_Page
Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007
Ohio LinuxFest 2007 was a LinuxSuccess
The crew organizing Ohio LinuxFest in their spare time… must be glad to have their spare time back this week! What a show, and what an effort by the regional Ohio LUGs that put on this event.
It’s been a few years since I last attended and at that time, I don’t believe I even registered – I just popped in, went to a few talks and left. But at that time there were maybe a couple hundred people there. I heard estimates that over 1,000 were in attendance although that figure seemed to underestimate the full number of people there. A couple of the speaker hall sessions were absolutely packed (and they were big halls). Ohio LinuxFest gives LinuxWorld a pretty big challenge. It was great to see all the regional corporate supporters but I was a bit surprised by all the “big IT” vendors with booths. There were sponsors from Google, IBM, HP, Novell, Red Hat, Fedora, Ubuntu, Vyatta and even Sun (although they seemed to be using Linux to try getting visitors to listen to their Solaris story).
Some of the sessions were fantastic, others less so but on the whole, it was an outstanding lineup of speakers. “Maddog” was a speaker and did a great talk on computing off the grid. Grega… wow, what energy for usability. Somehow I ended up being an impromptu speaker at an “IBM Virtualization” session. I was followed by Alena from IBM who did a great job covering the details on how NationWide uses Linux on an IBM System z mainframe with z/VM for their mission critical web based systems. Alena had a last minute “laptop issue” (ahem… Windows) but we were able to copy her presentation onto an USB key and present from my Linux laptop (Linux saves the day… again).
The special prize for those who made it was the untold number of great ideas, best practices, and partnering or finding others in similar situations that these networking events create. I actually met someone with a similar background who went to law school and passed the bar, he moved to D.C. as an attorney and he’s now managing IT systems for the federal court systems. He was looking to start consolidating some of the applications they run in every court onto a central system (mainframe most likely).
Anyway, here’s an obligatory picture from the show (apologies for not having my good camera with me). I encourage anyone who will be near Columbus next year to check this event out – it was a great show, a great place to meet others working in the Linux/FLOSS arena, and overall a great time. And somehow this whole event is put on by volunteers – truly amazing.
Note the body density in this picture – this place was packed.
Monday, August 13th, 2007
If you’re in the Midwest, head to Ohio Linux Fest 2007 Sept 29, 2007
This is a phenomenal, community-driven annual event that has really “grown up” over the years without losing its user-focused flavor. If you’re anywhere near Columbus, Ohio or even a highway or an airport that goes there, I highly recommend it. Just to tease you, the keynotes are Max Spevack (Fedora Project Leader) and Bradley Kuhn (a founder of the SFLC, former Exec Dir of FSF).
You can read all about its history here.
You can register (it’s free) for the event here: http://www.ohiolinux.org/register.html If you have the means, check out the All Conference Pass as it helps fund the event.
The Ohio LinuxFest Corporation is an non-profit corporation registered in the state of Ohio to promote the education of Linux and Free and Open Source software. The corporation was founded by people from various Linux User Groups in the midwest to promote and manage the Ohio LinuxFest. The corporation is non-profit and is an all-volunteer organization. If you would like to contribute your time and talent to the conference, then please write us at team@ohiolinux.org.
Wednesday, June 27th, 2007
The current crop of Linux distributions, Ubuntu, Fedora and Solaris 10…
I often tell those who ask about Solaris and (or vs) Linux to just download Solaris 10 and give it a try… see for yourself, why listen to me. It appears Indigo Jo did just that all on his own. From Indigo’s blog:
As things stand, it’s not worth it for any Linux user to migrate to Solaris 10, even if it is free.
Indigo Jo also seems to have chosen Fedora 7 over Ubuntu which is an interesting twist of late… I’ve heard of a couple (literally 2) people moving back to Fedora – not a trend by any stretch, but I like v7 and might eventually move one of my systems to Fedora to leverage the Xen/KVM workloads… maybe…
Tuesday, June 12th, 2007
Fedora 7 lets you “spin” your own version with Revisor
http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2007/05/31/remixing-fedora-7/
Article giving you an overview of “remixing” Fedora 7 – it’s a nice balance between a “roll your own” and “full standard” distro.
Thursday, June 7th, 2007
Fedora 7 hardware profiling: open data collection for the community’s benefit
If you’ve tried Fedora 7, you must have noticed the setup screen that asks to submit your hardware profile. It’s for a good use – to identify popular hardware to target. Did you know that data is also public – that’s a good thing! Other’s too can also track what hardware is most popular. I love this idea and would like to see other distros follow suit (and actually combine the results). Check out the hardware results at the smolt website: http://smolt.fedoraproject.org/
I also find it nice to see the newer distros competing on polish (no I won’t define it) and also producing some amazing graphics/eyecandy. The new Fedora splash screens and artwork are *very* nice.
Wednesday, June 6th, 2007
Fedora 7 based Systemtap LiveCD
Will Cohen at Red Hat has recently put out a Fedora 7 based LiveCD with a fully installed SystemTAP built in. You can download this LiveCD here:
ftp://sourceware.redhat.com/pub/systemtap/livecds/Fedora-7-systemtap-20070606.iso
Thursday, May 31st, 2007
Fedora 7 looks good – really good
I have to try this out. The artwork and polish on the interface look fantastic although in the past I’ve found Fedora to be lacking in the “actually works” department. I’ll post once I’m done testing this.
http://fedoraproject.org/?sc_cid=bcm_bnrhpfedora_055
Wednesday, April 18th, 2007
Cell BE processors can dramatically change your view – and performance – 50x traditional processor configurations
I wonder what the results would have been had they used a Terra Soft PS3 Cluster? :-)
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=236239
“Collaborators from Mayo Clinic and IBM (NYSE: IBM) have exploited parallel computer architecture and memory bandwidth to dramatically speed up the processing of 3-D medical images.
Through porting and optimization of Mayo Clinic’s Image Registration Application on the IBM® BladeCenter® QS20 ‘Cell Blade,’ the application produced image results fifty times faster than the application running on a traditional processor configuration.
With the images properly aligned over one another, a radiologist can more easily detect structural changes such as the growth or shrinkage of tumors.
This improvement with the application running on Cell, will achieve two things — allow for Mayo’s doctors and radiologists to achieve in seconds what used to take hours, which in turn will significantly decrease the wait time and anxiety for a patient waiting on news from the doctor.”
Tuesday, April 17th, 2007
Enterprise Linux Log: Linux Distro Timeline
Found this a fascinating walk through history…. I’m sure rms appreciates the start with “GNU/Linux”
http://enterpriselinuxlog.blogs.techtarget.com/files/2007/04/44218-linuxdistrotimeline-72.png
Preview:
Tuesday, March 13th, 2007
Dell asks: “What flavor/distribution of Linux”?
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/corp/linux
Also, “how should we support you?” Very interesting set of questions – I’d be interested in the results myself. I voted for Ubuntu and must disagree with them listing it as “non-commercial” – ever here of Canonical? No Gentoo offered (shocking…)
Tuesday, February 20th, 2007
Dell Ideastorm: #1 is Preloaded Linux
Interesting news via /. – check out the #1 request… it has 2x the #2 request…
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
Fedora Core 6 lands on systems from over 1M unique IPs in just 74 days…
Saw this debate over at /. and thought I’d chime in with a comment. First, this is unique IPs… that would mean 1 count on FC6 servers would be 3 Linux systems in my house. Now I happen to run OpenSUSE, Ubuntu/FC6, and Gentoo now, but were I a straight FC user, that unique IP stat would undercount the true # of systems.
So I do think it’s ok to “count” users? First, “privacy” arguments/fears are mostly unfounded with a method like Fedora implements. Tracking unique IPs connecting to your yum server (or to your xyz server) is nothing that interferes with privacy. But it does offer an estimate into the size of the community and that lets people make informed decisions on where to invest.
If you ask IDC for the # of Linux desktops out there, it’s likely less than what Mark Shuttleworth would say Ubuntu has – and that’s just 1 distribution.
I also know other open distros are counting in their own ways, and I think all of this is good. What would be nice+ would be an automated collection process so that 1 site could aggregate all the distro stats together via an RSS/Atom/unameit feed. So take the Fedora count, add in an Ubuntu count, etc. The community could do good things by aggregating the mass # of voices out there for say hardware support from some market blinded company that won’t release Linux drivers. Once you have the hardware, next stop is ISVs who refuse to support the Linux desktop environment. Some catch flack over it when users voice in aggregate, maybe catch some bad pr, but can turn that around and respond positively.
Thursday, December 14th, 2006
Red Hat’s Pinchev: Customers not afraid of Microsoft and calls out Oracle’s “cheaper pricing”
I tend to agree…. this is a pretty candid Pinchev interview and worth a read.
http://news.com.com/Red+Hat+Customers+are+not+afraid+of+Microsoft/2100-7344_3-6143516.html
Couple of interesting quotes:
One thing Larry (Ellison, Oracle chief executive) says on stage, another in reality. It’s half our list price without volume discounts and it’s just vanilla support. With Oracle, there’s one 24-7 support, the same subscription for all your environment. You are buying support you don’t need. We discuss with customers different service levels for dedicated parts of their infrastructure.
There were 18 security breaches in 2005 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Ninety percent were fixed within one hour. You will not see that at Microsoft.
Tuesday, October 31st, 2006
Fedora Core 6: Nice but there’s just something missing… nvidia
So I installed FC6 and have been using it for a couple days now. My quick summary includes:
1) Getting nvidia drivers running… what a mess. Don’t download from nvidia.com – get them through the livna repository (similar to Packman if you’re a Suse user).
2) Even when you figure out the nvidia trick, don’t expect AIGLX comes easily. I have been able to run AIGLX and XGL on my system under multiple distros but after 2 hrs of dedicated work, couldn’t get AIGLX on FC6. I looked at the popular sites describing how to (lunapark6 for instance) but no go.
3) Not a FC issue, but I’m so tired of not being able to use the nvidia drivers on a Xen kernel…. arrgghhh.
4) OpenOffice – not the Novell kind – when will these go upstream Sun?
5) The “development” options in the install… somehow fail to install kernel sources.
6) I LOVE the double helix graphic art.
7) Really like the LVM partioning maturity – very nice.
8) SELinux – who knew it could be mindlessly simple (ok, maybe not for grandma, but if you know what you’re doing, this is awesome)
9) Virtual Machine Manager – ok, this is really cool, but… lacks the ability to install a virtual image from CD/DVD – you can only do via kickstart or ftp/http???? Why?
10) System Monitor – love it.
11) Frysk fully enabled! Whooaa! Did you see that? I couldn’t believe it.
12) Disk Usage Analyzer – this came out of nowhere.. have never seen this before but it’s really useful. Makes du and df look dumb.
13) GDM is AWESOME – beats any other system’s login screen hands down. The graphics and layout are very polished – sorry Mark S….
14) Is it just me or does the RHEL based distro seem more “standardized” than the Suse stuff? No weird zdm stuff pushed in… I prefer standard.
15) In all my trials with AIGLX, I experienced the most robust xorg implementation and stability than I have ever witnessed.
16) Package Management: it’s much better in FC6. Much. It’s no Portage and it’s not apt-get, but it’s coming along. Even the yum implementation is better than previous experiences.
17) Don’t expect your broadcom wireless to work out of the box. It’s never worked for me out of the box and I’ve done ndiswrapper enough times to see the commands in my sleep.
18) Power management on my laptop WORKS – it’s never worked (not even in Windows). I don’t know what to say – I’m shocked.
Overall, I give FC6 at solid 7.9 out of 10. Once nvidia catches up to FC6 I could easily give this an 9.0.
SLED10 is probably still the best – and I never liked Suse – ever. I’m about to install Edgy so the game’s not over yet.
Oh, almost forgot to mention – FC6 has this “two tier” type menu for Grub. I was puzzled when I saw it for the first time. Not sure if it’s just a new grub or a new facelift for FC but it was cool.
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006
Fedora Core 6 is Out (and I need to try it)
If you haven’t seen, Core 6 has been released and reviewed here. I haven’t used Fedora in a while so I’m definitely going to give this one a test.
Interestingly when I hopped over to fedora.redhat.com I was greeted by this.. not a healthy launch message…
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