Speeds Kills But Thrills

Besides wearing his underwear outside, SuperMan is also a good competitor of the most powerful man in the universe. The other competitors being Batman, Sipderman, He-Man, Phantom, Arnold Schwarzenegger and George Bush. Everybody wants to have supernatural powers to push themselves a bit more that what ordinary men like you and me. The legendary researcher Mr. Shivapratap once said Speeds Kills, But Thrills. All super powers are fast, stable, wise and strong (no comments here on George Bush though).

The operating System world is no different. It has it own share of He-Man, Phantom, Arnold Schwarzenegger and George Bush. And ofcourse it also has Linux, The SuperMan in the OS world. Linux is stable, secure, fast and ...... it's free. What's more we get the code too. Interestingly most of the articles on the benefits of Linux mostly focus on one point - the code is free. And yet only a handful would have ever seen the code or modified it ever. Most of the Linux articles are about how great the GNU revolution is and the rest are on which distro is better.

This article focuses on just one point making your own Linux distro. Until some years back to most of us ordinary mortals making a Linux distro was just a dream but then thanks to Gerard Beekmans, the project leader and initiator of the project Linux From Scratch (LFS), this dream made easy. The first question one would ask is - Why would I want an LFS system?

As taken from the LFS site in Gerard Beekmans own words-

There are a lot of reasons why somebody would want to install an LFS system. The question most people raise is why go through all the hassle of manually installing a Linux system from scratch when you can just download an existing distribution?. That is a valid question which I hope to answer for you.

The most important reason for LFS's existence is teaching people how a Linux system works internally. Building an LFS system teaches you about all that makes Linux tick, how things work together, and depend on each other. And most importantly, how to customize it to your own taste and needs.

One of the key benefits of LFS is that you are in control over your system without having to rely on somebody else's Linux implementation. You are in the driver's seat now and are able to dictate every single thing such as the directory layout and boot script setup. You will also know exactly where, why and how programs are installed.

Another benefit of LFS is that you can create a very compact Linux system. When you install a regular distribution, you end up installing a lot of programs you probably would never use. They're just sitting there taking up (precious) disk space. It's not hard to get an LFS system installed under 100 MB. Does that still sound like a lot? A few of us have been working on creating a very small embedded LFS system. We installed a system that was just enough to run the Apache web server; total disk space usage was approximately 8 MB. With further stripping, that can be brought down to 5 MB or less. Try that with a regular distribution.

If we were to compare a Linux distribution with a hamburger you buy at a supermarket or fast-food restaurant, you would end up eating it without knowing precisely what it is you are eating, whereas LFS gives you the ingredients to make a hamburger. This allows you to carefully inspect it, remove unwanted ingredients, and at the same time allow you to add ingredients to enhance the flavor of your hamburger. When you are satisfied with the ingredients, you go on to the next part of putting it together. You now have the chance to make it just the way you like it: broil it, bake it, deep-fry it, barbecue it, or eat it raw.

Another analogy that we can use is that of comparing LFS with a finished house. LFS will give you the skeleton of a house, but it's up to you to install plumbing, electrical outlets, kitchen, bathtub, wallpaper, etc.

Another advantage of a custom built Linux system is added security. You will compile the entire system from source, thus allowing you to audit everything, if you wish to do so, and apply all the security patches you want or need to apply. You don't have to wait for somebody else to provide a new binary package that fixes a security hole. Besides, you have no guarantee that the new package actually fixes the problem (adequately). You never truly know whether a security hole is fixed or not unless you do it yourself.

One of the reasons why Macs perform better than the Intels is that the software is made specifically for the hardware hence one gets all the benefits of the hardware. However with most of the intel based systems everything is written for i386 and because the newer processor is faster one sees better performance but never the peak performance that these modern processors are capable of. LFS can change this one aspect to a great extent. Generally LFS is compiled on the target system. This means that the software can be compiled for the particular hardware thus resulting in maximum performance. Until I was exposed to LFS I used to use the fastest processors with the maximum amount of RAM I could afford. But now I am happy with a PIII 800. I run the latest kernel as well as KDE and most of the heavy apps that one can think of and yet I feel good about the computer. And in this case Speed thrills and yet it doesn't kill. Or maybe it kills the other distros. ;-)

Now that we are all convinced that LFS is the way to go, we'll talk about how to go about implementing LFS. To make our own distro we would first need to have a good Linux system in place. For that matter we can have any system which can compile the Linux code i.e. a GNU system with a GNU C++ compiler should do the trick. This is called the host system. The host system can be any flavor of Linux such as Redhat, Fedora, Debian , Slackware etc. or any Unix such as FreeBSD, NetBSD etc.. The host system should have a compiler, linker and shell to build the new system. The host system should also be able to read and write on a file system which is recognized by the Linux kernel such as ext3, ReiserFS, XFS etc.

Once a good host system with the required development environment is installed, the next step is to create an empty native linux partition where LFS would be compiled. This partition needs to be formatted with the required file system. A number of packages are then installed which would form the basic development suite or the toolchain. The toolchain is a temporary system which is then used to build the actual distro. The toolchain is built in two stages - first a host-independent statically built toolchain is installed with a compiler, assember, linker, libraries and other useful utilities. The other essential tools are then built on this first stage system.

The chroot (change root) program is then used to enter a virtual environment and start a new shell whose root directory will be set to the LFS partition. The LFS packages are then compiled inside this chrooted environment after which the boot scripts are installed. Finally the kernel and the bootloader are installed and the machine is rebooted to the all new custom Linux distro.

The process may look a bit complicated but it is fun all the way and the results are really wonderful.

I had taken a workshop in the beginning of 2004 in our office on this subject. I am quoting mine as the views of the team that attended the workshop.

Amarjyoti Krishnan heads bobcares.com, a tech support company for webhosts and ISPs. He is the co-founder of Poornam Info Vision Ltd., a software and IT services company which specializes in Linux based solutions for Webhosts and ISPs. Poornam Info Vision is an ISO 9001:2000 certified company with a team of over 100 engineers.

Amarjyoti is a Computer Engineer based in India and has over 7 years of experience in the hosting industry. He has spoken and written extensively on the subject. His articles have been published both online as well as in print in magazines.

http://poornam.com
http://bobcares.com
http://amarjyoti.com

Long Arm of the Law Reaches New Internet (RIAA Internet2 i2hub Lawsuit)

Have you heard of the new Internet? It?s called Internet 2 and this time they?re not fooling around. The Abilene Network , begun in 1999 provides the main backbone and they?re a pure optical network wired for speed.

According to their website, (on the plain old regular Internet) ?The Abilene Network, which currently connects over three million users, 220 research and education institutions, and 34 state education networks, operates at a speed 15,000 times faster than the average household broadband connection and with a capacity to send 9.7 million five-paragraph e-mails in one second.?

This means we?re soon going to get nuclear powered spam!

Everyone knows speed is addictive. Not only for Indy 500 racecar drivers, but also for computer science mega-geeks who will one day finally rule the world. They?re shooting for speeds in the Terabyte range; that?s a trillion bits of information every second.

?We now wish to be called ?Tera-geeks, you puny sub-creatures!?

?Do I need all that speed for my email?? one might ask. You do if you?re attaching astrophysics, fusion energy computations, and bioinformatics with your message. The present Internet can?t handle this kind of math. But will Internet 2 be used only for noble purposes? I haven?t heard of any holographic lap dances yet, but some people are definitely not happy with what Internet 2 users are doing.

Like the beginning of the first Internet in the 70?s and 80?s, Internet 2 is the domain of universities and research organizations for the purpose of advancing the aspirations and higher thinking of humanity. University students are already benefiting from the technology by illegally downloading movies and music at warp speed. A full-length movie only takes five minutes to download on the Internet 2 instead of an hour or more by cable modem. Songs come at a pithy twenty seconds.

?Not so fast!? says the record and movie industry. They?re nipping this one in the bud. The RIAA announced that it?s suing 405 individual students for copyright infringement violations using the ?i2hub?. The movie industry is suing an undisclosed number of students as well. What?s i2hub? It?s like a Napster on crack. But you need to use it on Internet 2 to really fly - and that?s not open to the general public yet.

According to the Motion Picture Association of America, there were 7070 users sharing 99.2 TB of files in one recent snapshot of time. Ninety-nine terabytes is enough storage space to hold all the movies that are available in a local Blockbuster store, yet people are swapping those movies entirely free, said an outraged and very frustrated Dan Glickman, President of the MPAA.

The RIAA will sue a handful of students per university to plant the seeds of fear widely. UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, & the University of Southern California are among the 18 Universities where students are being served papers.

Can they stuff the electronic genie back in the bottle? If they can?t, the RIAA and MPAA are not going down easy. Imagine 405 students calling home telling Mom & Dad to be ready to put up the house because they thought the Internet 2 was a private network and they just wanted to fill up the iPod they were given for Christmas. The highest offenders, according to the RIAA, were caught with up to 13,600 MP3?s, and 72,700 total files (such as audio, software and video).

?Son, what were you thinking, I?ve got ?Planet of the Apes? at home!

Rick David writes a humor column called, Don't Laugh It Could Happen To You for http://sandiego.merchantamerica.com

T1 Line Prices

T1 lines are paid for on a monthly basis and the rates vary according to the services used and the complexity of the data transfers and the traffic. It will also depend on the number of lines you use for your needs. The lesser lines you need, the lower the rates. Many businesses will not need all 24 channels of a T1 line, and pay lower monthly rents than large business concerns that use all 24 channels.

You can get T1 line connections for a monthly rent of $350 to $ 1200 dollars per month depending on the kind of services you will be utilizing. This will include Internet services like email, web browsing, mail servers and data transfers and phone services like long distance and local calls and PBX.

There are many websites from where you can get T1 line price quotes by providing certain basic data about yourself. You will get a comprehensive list of comparative prices from various T1 line providers and you can choose one for your particular need sets.

DSL.net provides T1 lines for as low as $299 dollars per month for a two year contract and for a speed of 384 kbps. The features for this connection include 10 email accounts, unlimited IP addresses and optional web hosting, firewall, VPN and dial-up services. DSL also has one year contract for $329 dollars monthly for the same features. They also have high speed access of 768 kbps and 1.5 Mbps for one and two year contracts and higher monthly rent rates. These connections have special features like static IP types, domain name management and a 30 day no risk free trial. The monthly rent for a 1.5 Mbps connection is $379.95 dollars and $349.95 dollars for one year and two year contracts respectively. The rates for one and two year contracts for a 768 kbps connection, on the other hand, will work out to $359.95 dollars and $329.95 dollars respectively.

T1 Lines provides detailed information on T1 Lines, T1 Line Prices, How To Test T1 Lines, Cheap T1 Lines and more. T1 Lines is affiliated with T3 Bandwidth.

Freedom And Responsibility On The Internet

As this year draws to a close, it also brings down the curtain on what we could effectively call the first Internet decade. While the Internet has been around for much longer than a decade, in many ways 1995 was the year when many of today's biggest names on the Internet were founded.

What a dynamic 10 years it has been for the Internet, comprising both the flight to stratospheric heights and the crash followed by a more cautious approach to get back on the feet. Thankfully, we seem to be running again...

However, this article is not about the impact the Internet has had on all aspects of our life - that is far too well documented already. Rather, I'd like to reiterate and highlight the striking parallel that the Internet has to some of the core values that American society cherishes (and I suspect, most of humankind does too)--freedom, democracy, and unlimited opportunity.

Isn't that what the Internet is all about? Freedom to cut across geographic barriers and interact with people from any part of the world; the freedom and the democratic rights to voice opinions and comment on matters that affect you, and the unlimited professional and personal opportunities that emanate from the first two mentioned attributes.

Blogging is one example of how virtually anyone can become a writer, with the only obstacle to getting one's thoughts published being one's desire and willingness to write or voice an opinion.

For that matter, consumers rate products and companies, complain about customer service levels, frustrated employees let out steam against employers--quite literally making an individual so much more powerful, because in the hyperlinked world of the Internet, the significance of word of mouth gets on to a completely different level.

On the positive side, the Internet makes a person altruistic: review a song or music you have heard, a movie you saw or a book you read, or you rate the quality of service by a service provider, and lo- you are helping another potential customer like you in their decision making process. Amazon.com and a website like epinions.com have epitomized the benefits and powers of consumer recommendation.

Likewise, there are business and social networking websites, that are just getting recognized for the value they deliver to the participants and the immense potential to marketers looking to target a fairly engaged and Internet-savvy audience.

The Burden Of Responsibility

Yet, with the freedom and democracy that empowers us with certain rights, comes the weight of ensuring that these rights are used responsibly. With the power to judge and rate that the Internet, and more specifically, sites such as the newly-launched Response Planet gives us, we almost become duty-bound to see that the power is used constructively.

Else, we run the risk of not trusting ourselves with the power of the tools we have at our disposal, and thereby failing to capitalize on the enormous opportunities offered by them. So, when we rate and post comments on sites that allow us to, there is an obligation to make a conscious effort not to be vicious or malicious. Or, as Google's stated motto was, Don't be Evil

About The Author:

Jonathan Gropper is President and Founder of Vortech Web & Business Solutions LLC and COO of OnlyOpenHouses.com, a comprehensive portal to list and find open houses in New Jersey. He is also a co-founder of ResponsePlanet.com, designed to be a place to read and rate everything on the planet.

More Smart Consumers are Saving a Bundle!

The new year saw a massive 25% increase in consumers saving money by signing up for a broadband bundle, a new study has just revealed. The research, conducted by broadband comparison site www.broadbandchoices.co.uk, found that more and more of us are buying both broadband and home phone from the same company, making bills simpler and saving a bundle of cash.

?Bundling? is a simple way to organise your home phone and broadband bills, and it makes sense for both companies and consumers. Chris Eagle, Commercial Manager at www.broadbandchoices.co.uk, explained: ?As people add more services to their household bills, they save more money and they?re less likely to switch providers. You?re unlikely to just remove one service, as the cost of your remaining services will increase. So unless you?re happy to switch everything, you?ll stay put, keeping your current provider very happy!?

One particular bundle has been making the news recently: TalkTalk?s ?free broadband? offer, where broadband is offered free if you take up TalkTalk?s international phone call package and line rental. The marketing for this certainly did the trick, with over 25,000 people registering their interest in just a few days.

But the TalkTalk deal (brought to you by Carphone Warehouse) might not be the best option for you. According to expert Chris Eagle, ?Most consumers probably think the new TalkTalk package is the cheapest bundle on the market. But if you take things like connection charges, line rental, phone package and broadband fees into account then, over a year, Toucan still offers the light phone and broadband user the best value for money.?

For example:

(i)Toucan ?Two-for-All? phone package comes with free weekend calls with no call package fee?s, line rental at ?8.99 a month and 512k broadband at ?13.99 a month giving a total of ?22.98 a month or ?275.76 for one year.

(ii)TalkTalk free broadband offer has line rental at ?11.00 a month, ?9.99 for free local and national calls anytime, and a ?29.99 connection fee, giving a total of ?20.99 a month or ?281.87 for one year.

Its worth looking at the full year cost as you have to sign at least a 12 month contract. (18 month for the TalkTalk offer).

It looks like this type of deal will be offered by more companies in the coming months: in a competitive market like this one, the other providers will have to keep up.

The future is mobile

Most bundled offers currently include broadband and home phone, but we could see mobile phone contracts being added in the near future. With NTL buying Virgin Mobile and Wanadoo about to re-brand Orange, it looks like the home and mobile phone markets are in the process of merging to offer you a better deal. And if you could get your home phone, broadband, cable TV and mobile charges all reduced and on a single bill each month, you?d do it, wouldn?t you?

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