Debian stable just jumped from the previous etch 4 to the new lenny 5. For those looking for an easy upgrade path, there actually isn't much to it. I ran through an upgrade a short while ago and if you're interested in the process, here were the steps I followed:
I had previously setup a few FreeBSD systems to act as PPTP servers for places that I had them acting as firewalls using mpd. However, I was constantly running into problems with "No buffer space available" and packets would drop, connections would be sluggish, etc.
I was just doing some system upgrades and decided to look at other options. I found a port called poptop "the pptp server for linux" in the ports distribution, and even a howto online detailing what my configs should look like. So I gave it a shot:
Having just acquired some new hardware at work, I decided to do some tests to see how well this system would run. Here are the specs of the system running the benchmark:
- Supermicro X7DA3+ MB w/Intel 5000X (GreenCreek) chipset
- (2) Intel Xeon Quad-Core E5450 (3.00GHz/1333FSB/2x6MB) CPU
- 3Ware Escalade 9650SE-16ML PCI-E 256MB w/16 PORTS + BBU
- (8) Kingston 2GB PC2-5300 DDR2-667MHz FB ECC CL5 (16GB)
- (12) Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFD 150GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 1.5Gb/s Hard Drive (RAID 50 array)
To test it out I installed FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE AMD64. Install completed flawlessly, so it was time to do some compiling.
A vanilla make buildworld: 48 minutes
Not bad.. but not amazing either. So I decided to do some threaded compiles to stress the system a little bit. Since it's an 8 core system, I used the following:
time -h make -j8 buildworld
The resulting time of: 12m 33s was nothing short of impressive.
Following up with a:
time -h make -j8 buildkernel KERNCONF=GENERIC
Resulted in: 52s
Quite impressive.
Gentoo 2007.0 has been out for some time, but I just now got a chance to setup a few new Gentoo systems. Previously I've always installed via the 2006.1 installation media, either the LiveCD or LiveDVD, and used the GTK installer. While the 2006.1 GTK installer was certainly buggy, I was able to get a process worked out that allowed the system to be loaded fairly consistently each time. However, it was *much* more difficult with the 2007.0 LiveCD and DVD.
Here are some of the trials that I ended up going through..
There has been much buzz recently about google buying Grand Central, which was started as a free service that helped people organize their phone numbers, route calls, record messages, set distinctive ring tones, and much more... for free. Upon hearing the news, I immediately signed up for an account and began to test things out...
It looks like the long awaited Firefox 2.0 will be released on Tuesday according to news reports.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/289490_firefox21.html
This is following closely on the heels of Microsoft releasing Internet Explorer 7 last week:
http://news.digitaltrends.com/article11561.html
I've loaded RC3 of Firefox, and I've got IE7 installed on a few systems. Here are some of my reactions to what I've seen so far.
Caller ID spoofing is a service that allows a caller to masquerade as someone else by falsifying the number that appears on the recipient's caller ID display. Just as e-mail spoofing can make it appear that a message came from any e-mail address the sender chooses, caller ID spoofing can make a call appear to come from any phone number the caller wishes.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/etel/2006/10/18/solving-the-caller-id-problem.html
There is growing concern over the interaction of VoIP systems with the legacy PSTN, and the transmission of caller identity data--most notably, Caller ID on the PSTN. It is not always possible, or obvious how, to handle Caller ID data when moving to or from VoIP and the PSTN networks. There are even business models predicated on the ability of Caller ID to be transmitted to the PSTN with a value that is not "expected"; call centers are an obvious example, where customer-support staff make outbound calls with a Caller ID that may be from one of many possible clients. More troubling is the possibility that Caller ID may be used to trick unsuspecting call recipients into certain actions or beliefs, and it is this concern that's currently creating a legislative threat I believe must be averted.
I have a proposal at the end of this article that attempts to address these issues, but first some background.
While looking for an easy way to keep my Slackware install up to date, I just ran across this article:
http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/10/12/1337224
Now that Slackware 11.0 is out, you may wonder what is the best way to update the distribution. Swaret is an open source project that aims to keep various versions of Slackware up-to-date. I use Swaret and some cron scripts to keep my servers current automatically.
A year after the release of 10.2, there is finally a new Slackware release. Please see the release announcement below:
For all of those Slackware fans out there:
Patrick Volkerding, Slackware's benevolent dictator for life, has 'released' Slackware Linux 11.0 Release Candidate 2. From the changelog: "This is mostly frozen now unless bugs (or irresistible upgrades) come up, so I'll call this update Slackware 11.0 release candidate 2."
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=15558
I've installed it on a VM, and must say that I've always liked Slackware, and this release didn't disappoint. I'll be looking forward to the actual 11.0 release.
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