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168 lines
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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
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<title>USENIX LISA Vendor Exhibit Trip Report LG #36</title>
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<H4>
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"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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</H4>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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<center>
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<H1><font color="maroon">USENIX LISA Vendor Exhibit Trip Report</font></H1>
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<H4>By <a href="mailto:plussier@BayNetworks.COM">Paul L. Lussier</a></H4>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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Thu, 10 Dec 1998 <BR>
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I went into Boston yesterday, 09 December, for the Vendor Exhibit at the LISA
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conference. My most immediate and overwhelming feeling was one of major
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disappointment in myself for not having pushed on my management to send me to
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this conference :( It looks like it's a really great conference. Alas, I'm
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trying to be positive and look at it from the point of view of "Why waste a
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trip to your own backyard that might be better spent traveling elsewhere :)"
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<P>
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Anyway, the vendor exhibit was fantastic, though my guess is it's only really
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good for those of us who do hard-core sysadmin'ing for a living. The average
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Linux enthusiast might have been bored, since it really is nothing more than
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a lot of vendors hawking their wares (Though *everyone* would have enjoyed all
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the free stuff :)
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<P>
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Ironically, the one major vendor who was conspicuously absent was Sun. All the
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other vendors were there, Network Appliance, Auspex, Compaq (never did see
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maddog though), IBM, SGI (at least I saw a booth with an INDY in it).
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<P>
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There were a lot of what I call "Want-Ad" booths to. Collective Technologies
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(formerly Pencom System Administration), Sprint Paranet, Fidelity, and
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several other companies there for sole reason of trying to recruit people.
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<P>
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The Open Source contingent was there in full force with booths for RedHat
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OpenBSD, The Free Software Foundation, etc. There were several booths
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from various software companies, most of whom I've heard of, and even several
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I haven't.
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<P>
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I spent a lot of time talking to various companies for things directly related
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to my needs here at work, and got in some personal geek talk re: Linux
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as well.
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<P>
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I stopped by the RedHat booth, and was kind of disappointed. They just didn't
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seem excited to be there. Maybe it was because I keep to much up-to-date
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on them and they had *absolutely nothing* new to tell me that I didn't
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already know. I got the distinct impression they were tired of being there.
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It very well could have been that they wanted to be talking to those who
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aren't yet converted to Linux yet, but instead kept getting inundated with
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the RH fan club :) I don't think they've adjusted to be on top of the
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world yet. I heard someone come by and say, "Hey, we're planning on another
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10 RH Linux servers in then month of so!" The RH response, was an
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un-enthusiastic "Oh, that's cool." As if they had heard the same thing
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all day long, and really didn't want to hear it anymore. I don't think
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they knew how to deal with their success. It could also have been that this
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particular guy was one of the RH developers, not a PR/Marketing person.
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<P>
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I spoke with a guy at the OpenBSD booth, I think it was Theo de Radt himself.
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I mentioned I tried to get the latest release from amazon.com last week, which,
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according to the OpenBSD site, is selling it. Yet amazon doesn't have any
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mention of 2.4, only 2.3. He basically got really upset at that, mentioning
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that *they* sent him an e-mail the same day of the 2.4 release announcement
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stating they had already gotten 170 requests for it. His only response
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was "Well then fix your web page. You just lost $1700US. They all bought
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it off the OpenBSD site!" So, needless to say, I'll be getting 2.4 directly
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from them :)
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<P>
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There were 3 sw booths I stopped at that really got me intrigued. First there
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was Aurora Software from Pelham, NH (I think). Their product is called
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SARCheck. It's for Solaris, and it's a front end reporting mechanism for
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ps and SAR. Supposedly it assists in performance monitoring and tuning by
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taking the output of ps and sar, translating it into English, and then making
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recommendations on what to change, why, and how. I think the sw is $150 per
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system, not per CPU (this means that I can use it on my 14 processor Sun E4500,
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and only pay $150). This sounds really good, and I'm hoping to be able
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play with it real soon.
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<P>
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The next company was Shpink Software (yes, really!:) . Their product is the
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Network Shell (nsh). This looks *really, really, really cool*. In short,
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it's a client/server system where you can 'cd' to a UNC path on another
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machine. This differs greatly from NFS in that nsh has the ability to
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*execute commands* on the remote system. For example, say I have 3 systems,
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a Linux box, an NT box, and a Solaris box. From my Linux system I can:
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<pre>
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linux> tar cvf //solaris/foo.tar //nt/users
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</pre>
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or:
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<pre>
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linux> cd //solaris/etc
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linux> vi passwd
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</pre>
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Basically, nsh removes the need for rlogin/telnet sessions to a system and
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provides for heavily encrypted sessions, user/machine ACLs, and many other
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niceties. The price is incredibly reasonable at $150 per seat. The advised
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way of using nsh is to set up a limited number of machines as "administration"
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hosts, and run the server daemon where ever else you need to. Nsh comes
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with Perl modules to allow access from perl programs, and works on all major
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versions of Unix/Linux, with the nsh daemon available for W95/NT.
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<P>
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Now, for the last, but one of the neatest! Spiderplant. This is an
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environmental monitoring gizmo that can connect to the serial port of any
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system. In short, you can designate any system as an environment
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monitoring station and connect this little black box to your serial port.
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It costs $100 for "The little black box" and 1 probe, $15 extra for each
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additional probe. The software is Open Source so you can hack it to
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your heart's content :) Here are the vital stats:
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<pre>
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Temperature Range:
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-55/+125 C in 0.1 C.
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Accuracy:
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0.5 C.
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Sensors:
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15 (or more) per device, 16 devices per serial line.
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Data Connection:
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RS-232, 1200 baud, 8,N,1.
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DB9 or DB25 connector to computer.
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Size:
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Main unit measures 3.5" x 2.25" x 1".
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Comes with 14-foot serial cable, 10-foot probe cable.
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Certification:
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Complies with FCC rules part 15
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(Class B, for home or office use, US and Canada).
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</pre>
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Here are the URLs for the products mentioned:
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<pre>
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http://www.openbsd.org/
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http://www.sarcheck.com/
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http://www.shpink.com/
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http://www.spiderplant.com/
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http://www.shpink.com/
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</pre>
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Hopefully someone will provide a trip report of the rest of the LISA conference
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for those of us unfortunate enough to have missed it.
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<P>
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-- <BR>
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Paul
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<!--===================================================================-->
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<P> <hr> <P>
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<center><H5>Copyright © 1999, Paul Lussier <BR>
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Published in Issue 36 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, January 1999</H5></center>
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