If you take a look at the graphic below, the spike in the middle will probably stick out quite a bit.  Oddly enough, the spike I noticed in CPU percentage used (which is regulated for VPS at Linode) also spiked up disk usage…mainly because I began to swap when cpu/ram use skyrocketed.  All of this happened with Ubuntu 10.04 installed.  CentOS was the first distro I tried but I quickly switched to Ubuntu when I spotted a really nice how-to in the Linode document library.  Oh, and please excuse my horrible gimp skills on the image below…it was a quick and dirty editing of the image:

cpu usage

After switching to Ubuntu, I began receiving alarms for my account due to the high usage of CPU and disk.  I attempted to tweak settings and configuration files for about a week and realized it just wasn’t going to work for me.  I switched to Debian Lenny and the move was a positive as is reflected in these pictures.

disk usage

I was hoping Ubuntu 10.04 would fit for me since it is a long term support (LTS) release.  CentOS is my normal server distribution of choice and I really wanted to branch out and go with something different.  I used a Linode Stackscript for WordPress for CentOS but elected for vanilla installs of Ubuntu and Debian aftwards (I didn’t like NOT knowing what was installed when I first logged in…call me a control freak).

I just found it interesting that Ubuntu 10.04 did so horribly in this instance.  After investigating, I found a couple of likely suspects:

1. Default Apache install in Ubuntu leaves a lot to be desired..even after tweaking both it and PHP for days I couldn’t get them to lay off the resources.  Even switching to mpm_worker and FastCGI did little to settle things down.
2. Ubuntu swappiness is bad…it is set at 60 (I use 10 normally) and it swapped every chance it could get…it’s set by default to swap more than it should.
3. mod_php on Ubuntu is hungry for all your cpu and ram and disk; be warned!

Debian, as the parent distribution of Ubuntu, would most likely suffer from the same problems…except it doesn’t.  Things are working great with it and I’d recommend it for any of your server needs!  Has anyone else seen this oddity with Ubuntu 10.04?  If so, please drop me a comment below.

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Interesting Statistics originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on July 13, 2010.

I’ve been working pretty hard through the holidays at my full time job where I am a server administrator for a medium sized hospital in the U.S.  Recently (in December), I moved 2000+ users from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007.  We considered farming out our Exchange environment to the cloud or perhaps going with Microsoft Exchange Hosting services but in the end, upper management decided they’d rather underpay someone to work exceedingly long hours with minimal training on a system not built by him.  So, that’s why I’ve been pretty inactive as of late.  As you can imagine working with Microsoft technologies…I always have something to fix and things are always unstable.

I know that some of you might be saying “why not use linux based exchange alternatives in your enterprise?” and I’d say, why indeed.  But I inherited this beast and it’s been Exchange since Exchange came out.  Not only that, but the primary application for all departments (ERM app) runs completely on Windows and plugs into Exchange and nothing else.  Talk about vendor lock in eh?  Well, it’s a job.

I used to work with Linux when I worked for rPath but parted ways with them about a year and a half ago when I had to move away to help out after a death in the family.  I was very sad to leave but am very happy with the large pay increase that came with my current position.  However, migrations do take their toll…lots of hours worked and frustrations vented.  Now that I’m over the hump, I’ll be able to get back into a normal swing of things.

For those of you who might be Exchange administrators in your day to day work, I’ve begun blogging about my experiences and setup a community to share tips, tricks, powershell commandlets, and a place to talk shop.  I figure if I have to work with closed source at least I can open source some help.  Find my Exchange blog at http://teknologist.net

Thanks for hanging in there everyone, and sorry for the inactivity.  Now that I’ve hit 6+ years blogging (in December) here I have even more incentive to continue sharing great Linux help with everyone.  I’ve got some good tips directly in the pipeline and here’s to a great 2010!

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Status Update for Devnet originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on January 5, 2010.

So have a look around!  Some posts are pretty silly sounding and others are downright hilarious.  And have a great day or you’ll probably have to walk the plank somewhere

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YALB – ITLPD originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on September 19, 2009.

• How Yet Another Linux Blog looked in 2004
• 1st Major Redesign of YALB – Happened around April 2006.
• 2nd Major Redesign of YALB – Around August 2006
• 3rd Major Redesign of YALB – Happened around February 2007
• Current State of Redesign – how the blog looks on the date of this post, March 18, 2009.

Next, I looked at some of my most popular posts.  Most of these were written quite a while ago.  2 of them are reviews, one is an opinion piece and the last 2 are how-to’s:

• Enlightenment e17 Review (an older review done by guest editor Misunderstruck)
• ClarkConnect, Enterprise Linux for the Home.  A Review of version 3.2
• Installing Extra Themes and Icons in PCLinuxOS
• What Sets PCLinuxOS Apart from Others?
• KDE and XOrg, Fonts and DPI
• Host Your Own Webserver at Home

And then, there are the most commented articles.  The winner here is Ubuntu articles…but that’s a dubious honor in my opinion as most of the comments weren’t particularly friendly:

• Why Ubuntu ISN’T for New Users – Done in 2006 and why I felt at the time, Ubuntu didn’t offer new users the best out of box experience.
• Ubuntu 5.04 Final Rating – An experiment where I took my wife and made her use Linux for a week and give each distro a rating.  Ubuntu bombed on this one.  Of course, the community came back with lots of name calling and “why didn’t you do this dummy” to help her as a new user.  To this day she despises Ubuntu for the comments left there by their community members.
• Enlightenment e17 Review – Once again, guest editor Misunderstruck’s review of e17.  Lot’s of positive feedback and some questions.
• Is Ubuntu CE Needed? – I questioned what the point of having a separate distro versus a Meta-Package.  If you recall the release of Ubuntu CE, you’ll remember that there was some controversy surrounding the motivation of doing this as well as a quick release of Ubuntu Satanic Edition.
• Why Open Source Isn’t Succeeding – My take on what made open source fall short of achieving its goal…in 2004
• Why Open Source Isn’t Succeeding, Part II – A follow up and clarification of the first article…done so boneheads that “don’t read too good” could understand “more better” what the article intended.

It’s been many years, many reviews, many editorials, and many blog revisions.  Through it all, I’ve tried to stay focused on what matters to me…sharing knowledge with others.  I don’t have any plans to stop blogging and am looking at starting another blog soon that covers Windows administration stuff as well (I work in a mixed environment of Unix/Linux/Windows now as a server admin).  I feel that even if the software isn’t free, the knowledge on how to use it should be.  Thanks for reading!

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Self Musings originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on March 18, 2009.

I may write up a “reasons why I switched” article as well and post it if anyone is interested…but that’s solely if anyone is interested. Otherwise, I’ll keep this as the only reference to it.

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Switched to WordPress originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on September 3, 2008.

Now there are so many…I don’t even know how to plug them all in

Which services are most important?  Which ones are you, the reader, using?  Thus far, the easiest way I’ve found to manage things is to choose one service like Tumblr or Pownce and aggregate all other services into it.  THEN to use friendfeed.com to envelop them into a stream.

I’m curious as to how others are managing things…I’d like to make Yet Another Linux Blog reach a larger audience and I think that this is a good starting point.  So if you have suggestions, please let me know

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How do YOU Plug Your Blog to Web 2.0? originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on June 13, 2008.

Back then, it was all about trying new Linux desktops and finding things that worked for my wife and I. Today, it’s still all about the Linux Desktop. YALB hasn’t changed its focus and has made some weak minded enemies along the way, but still is managing just fine.

Today, I’d like to take the time to reflect a little bit and post some links of my favorite posts, as well as share some statistical information about YALB.

The New Distro is Microsoft

These companies are now paying Microsoft. Sure, Microsoft is paying them as well…but the kicker is this: These companies are paying Microsoft for Linux.

Oh, but ask the CEO who made the deal if they think Linux infringes patents and they’ll say “No way! We don’t think Linux violates any patents…we’re just paying in case Microsoft tries to sue us”. Well, let’s put this into perspective shall we?

If I was a store owner in Anycity, USA and paid the mob to not rob my store blind…you know, not because they were robbing it…but just in case. Does that mean that I’m not part of the money that the mob uses to do their dirty deeds? Does that make the cash I’m sending back to them clean? Should my conscience be clear?

Now, I’m not saying Microsoft is the mob…I’m just using that as an example. But they do have a good racket going on here. They get many highly publicized deals where Linux appears to be ‘giving in’ to Microsoft. Microsoft looks to be reasonable with these deals as well saying “hey, we won’t sue you…see, we’re the good guys”. The bottom line is though that Microsoft has no claims on Linux at all…if they did, they would have revealed it already. The reason they don’t reveal anything is because they don’t have anything to reveal. It’s all talk and no walk.

What about the Community?

These companies forgot one thing…the power is with the consumer. The power is in the community. Ubuntu realizes that…they’ve embraced the community and look what’s happened! The community holds the power to make or break…the power of spoken word cannot be underestimated. These companies have either forgotten that or don’t care. My guess is that they don’t care…they worry about making money and not about the tread marks they’re leaving up the back of the community. The community isn’t part of their formula even though it should be the common denominator.

The open source business model hasn’t been around for very long and many are still learning about it. The one no-no that these companies have completely ignored is that they have alienated their own PR system; their own word of mouth. In the end, they didn’t look at what it could cost them to do this deal or they didn’t care. One thing is certain by looking at many examples in the last 20 years…the community doesn’t forget.

MS Now Makes Money from Linux

Microsoft has carved a niche way for itself to make money off of Linux. Are you one of those that are paying Microsoft to use Linux? Are you helping them establish an umbrella Linux distribution made up of all the Linux distros signing up to be a part of their ‘protection’? If so, congratulations on buying your new Microsoft Linux. Have fun over there with Novell, Xandros, LG, and whoever else believes the vaporous and non existing threats from a callow company trying to keep itself meaningful. For myself, my family, my friends, and my distribution…we shall never pay any company that brokers this patent protection deal with Microsoft…you can take that to the bank.

UPDATE 06-14-2007

Looks like I was right! Linspire has also signed a patent racket er…protection agreement with Microsoft. Up next, the other two big hitters in Linux…Mandriva and Ubuntu. 1 down, three to go Microsoft.

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YALB – A Look Back after Three Years originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on May 20, 2007.

Thanks for reading!

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Update your RSS Feeds… originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on March 3, 2007.

I’ve worked in quite a few different IT jobs the past 8 years. My current job allows me to work with many diverse individuals and technology. Diverse backgrounds, diverse ethnicities, diverse cultures, and diverse experience. Whenever the main business system can’t do what the users’ want it to do, they call me. Whenever they need information from that antiquated database (runs on AIX…not current) they call me. However, since we have a small staff being a small agency, I also get to answer some helpdesk calls. The odd part is, I like answering helpdesk calls. Why? Because it tells you more about the users and allows you to help them better. It also gives you a pulse for your users…something to measure them against.

Having done this for quite some time now, I can honestly say that if we rolled out Linux desktops tomorrow to these people in my agency our productivity would be seriously inhibited (for a while…until everyone got used to things). This is despite the standard business system running via telnet to an AIX Box. It’s not because of Linux…but rather because of the people. See, Linux is ready for the average power user…someone who went to college, graduated, and now works happily in department X of your business or someone who went to high school in the last 5-10 years (depending on where you grew up of course…we didn’t even have a computer at my school and I graduated in the early nineties)…and people all agree that government should be pushing Linux first and foremost. Since my current job is for a state agency, one would figure we’d be looking into FOSS, but this isn’t the case. The average power user isn’t the majority in this goverment agency and I’m sure it isn’t in many government agencies so we continue to look to MS for all solutions because they are the defacto standard.

So is Linux to blame for all of this? For not making headway onto the deskop? Nope. Linux is what Linux is. It is a fantastic operating system that is stable, secure, and customizable. The problem does not lie with Linux…sure, Linux could get better with increased usability and UI reconfigures, but in the long run, it can only do so much. Somewhere along the way the user must meet Linux halfway.

I’ve said in the past with my posts and I’ll say again…Linux ISN’T where it needs to be to appeal to the masses. It’s getting close and making fantastic strides. However, in order for it to make headway on the desktop, it needs to increase usability. Once again, I stress that this doesn’t require the “dumbing down” of the operating system. It requires a shift in the target audience to which Linux ‘aims for’. Instead of being designed with power users in mind…we should design it with standard users in mind. Here again, many people will take this to mean that we have to dumb down the operating system…but that’s not the case. You can make things quite usable without dumbing things down…some Linux programs prove this to be true. Please don’t confuse usability for dumbing down…they’re not the same thing.

Some readers of this blog think that I’m preaching out against the Linux “elite” (don’t confuse the use of this word…it’s used as in hacker speak to signify someone who is VERY knowledgeable on a subject: wikipedia entry) that is, those Linux users with a higher than usual knowledge level. They think I’m trying to say that these users should be persecuted for their knowledge and that I’m generalizing that all people with knowledge are elitists. This isn’t the case…those with knowledge I call on to not hoarde knowledge but rather to share it…to open source their knowledge. To teach those new users who have no idea how to do searches and RTFM the correct way. To have patience and understanding that people trying something new aren’t going to respond well to criticism.

What I’m trying to convey is that the Linux desktop CAN get friendlier. It CAN get better. And it MUST get better to make headway in the PC Desktop market. What i’m NOT saying is that we need to ‘dumb down’ Linux in any way, shape, or form. What I’m not saying is that we need to carry new users on our backs throughout the move to Linux. What I am saying is that we need to make it more friendly, more inviting. We need to give the standard user more victories than defeats on the desktop to give them confidence to WANT TO LEARN more about Linux.

Hopefully, people will understand my take on desktop Linux now. There’s been confusion on this topic in the past and I’d like to clear this up right away. It’s no fun to have people pointing fingers at you accusing you of being a geek basher (when you are a geek). I sure hope that this clears things up on my side of things.

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Clarity on the Linux Desktop originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on November 24, 2006.

If anyone has any feedback on the current theme, please let me know…I can change it pretty easily or hack it to pieces on a whim.

I’ve been somewhat busy having launched http://mypclinuxos.com as a PCLinuxOS projects site to assist the PCLinuxOS development team with various projects and to provide the community with a platform on which to develop their own projects. Therefore, I haven’t had a ton of time to blog as of late. I should be back to a normal schedule within the next month or so. If not, this blog might go dormant for a while until I am able to relenquish my administrative duties at mypclinuxos.com. I have a review of a server distro I started a few weeks ago, but I haven’t finished it yet. Hopefully, I will be able to get that review out in the next week or so. I won’t hold my breath, I’ve got a ton of stuff going on at the projects site that keeps me oh so busy. Thanks for reading and sticking with me through the lean parts of this blog. Cheers.

Devnet

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What’s Up With the New Look? originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on May 3, 2006.