There was a time when Novell ruled the server…a time when CNE was a mark of technical excellence and server uptime was measured in years not weeks…a time and when Novell Directory Services (NDS) provided a single point of administration for every aspect of the enterprise environment, including the then evolving Active Directory!.

Yet just when everything was coming together for Novell the attraction of owning the desktop led them to acquire Ximian, the coolest Linux desktop on the block, before joining forces with IBM and acquiring SuSE – possibly the biggest competitor to RedHat at the time.

It was not long after the SuSE acquisition that Novell announced their intention to phase out NetWare, a move that saw many IT Managers faced with the decision of migrating their servers to the then largely untested OES (Open Enterprise Server) or crumbling under the ever increasing pressure of Active Directory and Exchange. Needless to say not many survived to log in via the Novell Client…

I personally focused my energy on FreeBSD and other OpenSource solutions, occasionally rolling out OES to companies that required enterprise support, secure file synchronisation (iFolder) or a rock solid collaboration platform (GroupWise). Novell have always had sensible license fees that were often based on the user model and not server providing massive cost savings.

It was cost savings that I was looking for recently while searching for a cross platform LDAP solution that was easy to manage, secure, reliable and had enterprise support to boot. It was exactly those requirements that led me back to Novell, back to eDirectory, which after all this time continue to offer the Full Service Directory promise that ruled the enterprise several years ago.

Installation of eDirectory on SuSE is seamless, RedHat however required a few dependencies (yum install) but still took under 10 minutes, and that included bolting on iManager the secure web interface to many Novell products (think Console One). Configuring the RedHat clients was just as easy, in fact using the authconfig tool you can configure the client to talk to eDirectory with a single command:

authconfig --enableldap --enableldapauth --enableldaptls --ldapserver=myserver --ldapbasedn=o=myorganisation --enablemkhomedir --updateall

As for adding a replica for resilience, well you only need to install eDirectory onto another server on your network (yes it runs on Windows too!), and as long as you select your existing tree during the install process you have a secure read/write replica – simple eh!.

So it seems Novell never gave up. They focused their energy into migrating all the great tools we took for granted with NetWare while combining the best of breed Linux tools into SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 – Novell’s latest enterprise server platform.

With features such as .NET support for System z mainframes, OCFS2 / cLVM2 and new fine-grained management of CPU, memory, storage and networking resources, it looks like Novell have a worthy contender to the enterprise Linux throne!.
Could Novell be ready to pick up where they left off with NetWare?, only time will tell….now if only eDirectory ran on FreeBSD.

I know it’s a little late but the usual drive of new year innovation and releases within the Open Source world have been keeping me busy recently.

New years resolutions

1. Package AuthStor
2. Learn another RDBMS – Oracle / MSSQL?
3. Upgrade my local servers to FreeBSD 7.1
4. Pick up the guitar at least once a week
5. Lay down my first audio track in Ableton Live

The year started with my attempt at some resolutions (you know the ones you never keep) of which I am already making good progress on.

First on my list was AuthStor which is working on a basic level at the moment but there is so much more that can be done to make it easier to use. Why has it taken so long you may ask?

Well apart from being the only developer last year, I made several attempts to re-write the app in something like JSP or Zend Framework, partly because there is a lot of activity in those communities but mostly due to the complications faced with packaging around 50 Perl modules that each have their own compile time dependencies – some of which change frequently often breaking the application (no strict API/Interfaces to adhere to).

So after several prototypes why did I decide to stick with Perl?
Well for starters the changes that did break the application often forced me to change the app in a way that was more logical or introduced a more structured design. I also found that JSP and Zend although cool frameworks tended to feel incomplete and introduced complexities elsewhere e.g. containers / authentication / roles. Catalyst is simple and extremely powerful providing both a development environment and production framework that takes little effort to introduce new features quickly. I can start 2009 in the knowledge that Perl and Catalyst are the right language / framework for the job. I just need to work on the packaging now!

The next item on my list is to learn yet another RDBMS. Why? Enlightenment first and foremost, plus I am a big believer in gaining as much knowledge as possible in my chosen field. You’ll never complete the jigsaw if you have several pieces missing, and seeing as I spent a good part of last year getting to know DB2 I decided this year that my focus would by Oracle and MSSQL, thus completing the picture.

With the release of FreeBSD 7.1 there are now so many cool features that I decided to upgrade some of my older servers that have been sitting in the corner running nicely on FreeBSD 6 (they never fail). DTrace and ZFS put a stop to FreeBSD slipping behind OpenSolaris and the ULE scheduler helps improve performance over your average Linux distro, and with ULE 3 due for release in FreeBSD 8.0 (June) you can expect to see further dramatic performance improvements.

Last on my list will be to pick the Les Paul at least once a week!. One of my prezzies in 2008 was a new orange amp! If that does not encourage me to pick up the guitar I don’t know what will!. You never know I might even mix something up with the copy of Live I got for Christmas

After spending the best part of an hour installing the latest OpenSolaris 2008.5 release, which I may add was straightforward and a massive improvement on previous releases (ZFS default filesystem – very cool!) I headed over to the IBM website to download DB2.
After spending the best part of 10 minutes navigating the website and filling in forms I found no sign of the Solaris x86_64 version of DB2 9.5 Enterprise, all I could find was the SPARC install.

Never mind I thought, the Express-C release will do for now and the documentation does say that DB2 Enterprise will run on Solaris x86_64 so I can upgrade later if needed (that is if I can find the install ).

Having downloaded and untarred the install files I ran the setup program db2setup only to be greeted with an empty command prompt. The Getting Started guide did mention this might happen so I proceeded to run the fix xset fp+ /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/TTbitmaps only to find TTbitmaps missing….

Frustrated with the lack of support for OpenSolaris and the BSD’s from both Oracle’s 11G database and IBM’s DB2 9.5 Enterprise, I resigned to the fact that I would have to leave playing with Solaris for another day and install Linux instead. Gentoo to the rescue!.

It’s been a while since the last Gentoo release and I have to admit I gave up waiting for a release about a year ago. It was my desire to roll with BSD that prompted me to wander over to the Gentoo website – if only out of curiousity. What a surprise it was to see a 2008.0 release, Gentoo may not be Unix but if you are a BSD fan it is similar enough to enjoy working with it. Portage rocks!.

Installation may not be the fastest and certainly isn’t the easiest, but it is the most rewarding in that you get to watch your server grow from /mnt/gentoo to a high performance server right before your fingertips. It may take all day , but you get to control every step of the install giving you a better feel for how things work – you might even learn a thing or two along the way!.

The DB2 install under Gentoo was painless, all it took was a few USE entries and several emerge statements to get the OS ready to install the tarball.
All I have to do now is find the client tools for OSX….

It’s been a busy month so far and with Easter now upon us the year is showing no sign of deceleration.

I spent the last few weeks working hard to recover from my initial attempt at passing the Zend Certified Engineer exam. Having used PHP and other languages for several years I grabbed a copy of the Php|architect’s Zend PHP 5 Certification Study Guide, bought a few online practice tests from Zend and spent a few days scoring Excellent before heading down to the test centre confident I would be leaving with a Pass.
Forty five minutes into the exam I was racing through the questions thinking I had it in the bag only to be presented with a Fail upon clicking the End button…..Bummer

The score report gave no real indication of how close I came to passing, so wondering where I went wrong I scoured the net for any information that could help me prepare for my next attempt (which you get a 10% discount on if you ask Zend nicely). During my search I found the Zend Certification Forum, however it was broken and I had to ask for it to be fixed (which took a couple of days) before I could read others views on the exam. The Zend forum and site I have to say are not good adverts for PHP. The site often takes ages to load (is this down to PHP? people will think) and the forum feels pre web 2.0.

After a few hours of searching I finally found this PDF, the PHP 5 course material that outlines everything you need to focus on for the exam and provides enough examples to to get your head around the “gotchas” that are hidden in many of the questions. Second time round I passed, although many questions were similar to my first attempt and I answered them no different, I can only put my initial fail down to the PHP “gotchas” like:

What is the output of echo 09;

Post certification I had to ask for the Yellow Pages entry to be added (a common problem it seems), and after finally getting the page updated it seems to have reverted to its former state…..If only it was written in Java I keep thinking to myself.
Don’t get me wrong I am a big fan of PHP but feel its place is within the presentation layer (this site is written using PHP). When it comes down to middle tier processing I am yet to be convinced…

Speaking of Java, I decided that along with moving house this Easter (I need a server room ), I would open my mind to the world of software that is Oracle. The Oracle Database is hardly Open Source, however Oracle as a company do support the Open Source Community and to be honest I’m a knowledge junkie and need something fresh to feed my mind with (fear not MySQL).
Besides at the end of the day everything I learn from taking apart Oracle can be directly applied to the Open Source world, that is if it has not been applied already.

You may have noticed the Easter Bunny pic included with this post and if you are into Open Source you would have recognised him as Big Buck Bunny the star of the upcoming open movie Peach. That’s right there are only a few more weeks to the release of the movie and you can now take a look at the trailer before downloading your copy of Blender and having a go yourself – I can’t wait!

I’m sure by now you would have read the great news that is Sun Microsystems acquisition of MySQL!

Sun have been forging ahead in the Open Source world with OpenSolaris, an Operating System that scales to Enterprise proportions and is an ideal host for the number one Open Source Database Server that is MySQL.

Whether this will have any impact on the MySQL Linux / FreeBSD / Windows offerings is something I am sure the community will be watching closely, but in my experience Java runs much faster on Solaris as it can take advantage of the MultiThreading libraries that help Solaris set those performance records.
Don’t forget, it was not that long ago that combined with Sun hardware MySQL was able to set it’s own world records!.

With that in mind it should only be a matter of time before we will begin to see the fruits of Sun / MySQL’s labour and I don’t know about you but I can’t wait!.

How this move will affect the future of other database servers such as PostgreSQL and Oracle I cannot begin to imagine.
Personally I never understood how Oracle devoted so much attention to Linux when the Oracle server (and App servers) have such a dependency on Java (which as I say always works better running under Solaris )?
As for PostgreSQL, Sun have always endorsed PostgreSQL on Solaris, will we see this focus switch to MySQL in the near future?.

One thing is for certain, MySQL combined with Solaris makes for one world class package that is going to be hard to beat!!.

Whenever I decide to take a holiday I can usually guarantee that something cool will occur in the IT industry in my absence.

Now this holiday has been slightly different in many ways. I had to cancel my flight due to a sudden onset of Vertigo 1 day before I was supposed to fly. If like me you have never experienced Vertigo before, thank yourself lucky!. Having no sense of balance and intense room spin whenever you open your eyes is no fun at all, it took at least 2 days for me to stop being sick.

Having been able to actually use my laptop in the last couple of days I notice that the “cool thing” I usually miss on holiday turns out to be big trouble all over OpenSourceVille, the majority of which seems to revolve around licensing and intellectual property.

Who could miss the BSD vs GPL debate that I’m sure will rage for a long time after the ath5k driver had the BSD license removed in favour of the GPL. Stealing code was suddenly the headline for this action and the rift between the “Linux” developers and “BSD” developers increased once more.
Personally I feel the license should be as “Open” as possible and always apply the BSD license where I can. I want to be recognised as the author of any work I produce and protected against any misuse of such work (liability). With OpenSource development taking place in clear view nowadays, such visibility can only enforce your ideas and intellectual property. Why complicate things with over restrictive licenses…

While still on the topic of licensing it seems John Birrell is having to start all over again with a new port of DTrace on FreeBSD. The CDDL this time preventing kernel hooks from being added to the FreeBSD kernel. This seems such a shame as DTrace technology provides a massive benefit for software developers and will starting afresh really change the situation?, If not through licensing I am sure there must be patents on the intellectual property that Sun could enforce on any DTrace port? Just look at what is going on between NetApp and Sun at the moment.

So from licensing issues to patent infringement where it seems ZFS may not be as revolutionary as Sun claim and in fact NetApp actually came up with some of the functionality back in 1998. Dave’s Blog outlines all the details in what I can only describe as an excellent explanation as to how NetApp have had to file a lawsuit against Sun. Strangely enough I originally heard about this from the MySQL Planet! and not from any of the Solaris / OpenSolaris Planets each of which have around 45 Sun employee feeds?

We develop software to improve our way of life. Licensing and Patents although often necessary seem only to be hindering progress… Still it keeps us busy re-inventing the wheel.

On a good note, I was around to see the launch of the iPod Touch – if you can call that good…I might just wait until the drive space increases before I buy one, 16Gig seems tiny these days but then again the Touch would come in handy for on the go web browsing.
I also noticed Oracle 11g had been released (I obviously missed that one), although only for Linux at the moment?. I’m no Oracle expert but seeing as Oracle provide Java based development tools and my previous installs had a lot of Java involved surely Solaris would make a better fit?

Image combined using artistry from Project TIMEMACHINE – http://www.timemachine.ne.jp/