Red Hat Releases RHEL 4 Public Beta

Posted Sep 30, 2004 10:20 UTC (Thu) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501)
Parent article: Red Hat Releases RHEL 4 Public Beta

A couple of questions, if I may:

I recently tried installing Centos 3.3 (a RHEL 3 recompiled clone). The installer made a silly mistake with the X configuration and X refused to load: simply got stuck, getting 100% CPU. I eventually got over the problem (by a small manual edit to XF86Config), bvut on my way there discovered that:

* redhat-config-xfree requires an X server to run(!)

* X -configure did not give a working configuration.

* A text-based Xconfigurator was not around anymore.

* xf86cfg was not part of default installation, if at all present.

So for a non-guru user the system would have been inconfigurable without
a heavenly intervention to fix X. All of the redhat-config-* require X. Contrast that with YaST that runs well in a terminal.

Are there any improvements in that front?

Other notes:

CVS vs. Subversion:
I know that CVS is a dead end and considered a security hole. But can subversion replace it as a simple and srtaight-forward version-control system that is not a hassle to set up and uses existing file-system permissions? Is the cvs "client" still present? (the "client" can actually function as the server)

uw-imap vs. cyrus:
wu-imap is very easy to set up. It fits well to a scenario where users have their own home directories. Cyrus is built for a scenario where the users are mail-only users and you want to avoid escalating their priviliges furtrher. So why *replace* wu-imapd with cyrus? they serve different goals. It may make sense to replace uw-imapd with dovecot or a preperly configured courier-imapd.

lvm2:
is lvm1 still there for backward compatiility? What happens when you install it on a system with LVM1 volumes?

Does it default to install LVM, like FC3?

Red Hat Releases RHEL 4 Public Beta

Posted Sep 30, 2004 14:44 UTC (Thu) by rmini (subscriber, #4991) [Link] (1 responses)

uw-imap vs. cyrus:
wu-imap is very easy to set up. It fits well to a scenario where users have their own home directories. Cyrus is built for a scenario where the users are mail-only users and you want to avoid escalating their priviliges furtrher. So why *replace* wu-imapd with cyrus? they serve different goals. It may make sense to replace uw-imapd with dovecot or a preperly configured courier-imapd.

uw-imapd has a less-than-stellar security history, whereas cyrus has the benefit of not running as root (the most that will get compromised is the mail).

Red Hat Releases RHEL 4 Public Beta

Posted Sep 30, 2004 20:02 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

dovecot is available on the RHEL-4 I am pretty sure. The case where cyrus vs. uw-imapd is on large sites where scalability and speed are seen more as an issue.

Red Hat Releases RHEL 4 Public Beta

Posted Sep 30, 2004 23:00 UTC (Thu) by bronson (guest, #4806) [Link]

...and I suppose I'll handle the Subversion question.

Personally, after a few days of use, I find SVN every bit as straightforward to manage as CVS. The new FSFS backend (in 1.1, released today) uses filesystem permissions, and does away with the database hassles (and there are many: requires write access just to read the repository, stale locks, dump/restore, dedicated server, ...). FSFS is a little green, but it appears entirely usable today.

Definitely give SVN a look.

Red Hat Releases RHEL 4 Public Beta

Posted Oct 1, 2004 13:49 UTC (Fri) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link]

And that leaves the X problem. ;-)

I definitely see improvement, I hardly ever have trouble configuring X nowadays. The problem you describe sounds more like a small bug that slipped in somewhere than a sign that X configuration is in a deplorable state.

Most of the times it Just Works, and if it doesn't, there are lots of places where people can turn for support -- you don't need to be a guru to solve simple problems.

Red Hat Releases RHEL 4 Public Beta

Posted Oct 7, 2004 17:29 UTC (Thu) by marcw (guest, #25271) [Link]

1. X

X configuration does not require a working X config as before.
The X config I got after the install did not work. A text initiated
installer came up after boot indicating that X could not be started.
Asked me some minimal questions about my hardware and figured
out how to launch a scaled down X session to complete the
configuration. I have a dual headed workstation (2 different
cards and 2 different monitors) which was nicely accomodated
by the setup code. I had lots of trouble getting this working
on older versions of X.

2. CVS vs. Subversion:

Subversion 1.0 does not use existing filesystem permissions. There
is some support for it in 1.1 which is in beta. To get the full
functionality of subversion you must integrate it with Apache-WebDAV.

The CVS client included in RHEL 4beta1.

3. uw-imap vs. cyrus:

Don't know why they did this. Guess you'll have to build your
own imapd.

4. LVM2

LVM2 can read LVM1 volumes. LVM1 volumes can be converted to LVM2
volumes. I had LVM1 volumes on my old system. I migrated these
to an external disk, did a root based lvm install of 4beta1,
converted my old volumes to LVM2 and merged (the extent size must
match between the volume groups being merged) the old volume group
with the new one that was created on install. Everything worked great
except that pvmove didn't work. There was a module that needed to
be loaded that wasn't. I reported it as a bug and a developer
responded that this module will be added to the mkinitrd process
in future releases.

I did a fresh install on my internal disk with my external disk
disabled. Don't know what would have happened if the installer
could have seen my LVM1 volumes.

Red Hat Releases RHEL 4 Public Beta

Posted Oct 7, 2004 17:30 UTC (Thu) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

I second the dovecot recommendation. No shared folders support yet,
otherwise perfect.