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Comment Re:Is it too hard... (Score 1) 837

by itomato (#30590030) Attached to: Uniforms For the Help Desk?

Bravo..

Forget the tie, and offer *really nice* but mandatory lanyards with honkin' USB drives.

Engrave those USB drives with some quantitative representation of commitment; resolved tickets, highest number of hours clocked in one pay period, or some company-relevant measure of success.

Turn that frown upside down, cowboy - that's a conversation starter and respect-earner around that neck, not to mention the effective "keys to the kingdom"..

*IF* you can manage a shirt with more than 3 buttons, and a decent pair of trousers.

Hmm, forget 'Dickies' Brand, what we need is 'Dilbert' Brand workwear. Buy 3, get 2 FREE! Line your closet with freedom from decision!

Comment Struggle? What struggle? (Score 1) 289

by itomato (#30464214) Attached to: VMware Workstation vs. VirtualBox vs. Parallels

And better, how?

Just BETTER?

There are cases where VMWare may be preferable, but unless you're running 16 systems, I don't see how it's "BETTER" for general use.

VirtualBox is at least $189 less than any other product. That makes it 189 times "BETTER" than anything else, especially when you start in with the feature comparisons.

- Virtual CPU count
- OpenGL
- Manageability/portability
- Live migration/teleportation
- Scriptable backend
- Dead Simple Interface

BTW, what could you possibly be struggling with?

I was just going to read and mod.. Oh well. It's worth it.

Comment Marketing: not my thing, but here goes.. (Score 2, Insightful) 113

by itomato (#30394208) Attached to: Quebec Data Center Built In a Silo

- reuse of existing structure (one with nice, thick walls)
- vertical scale-out (think cup stacking)
- leverages magic of physics (hot ring, cold ring - inherent strength of tubular structure)
- shorter-than-typical cable runs (~10m)
- tubes use less concrete and steel than cubes
- free-air cooling

The only impressive re-use of a concrete silo structure I have seen is a retrofit into a rock-climbing gym (http://stoneworksrockgym.com/photogallery.htm).

Comment Spoiled by Sun (Score 1) 347

by itomato (#29341285) Attached to: Running Old Desktops Headless?

All recent and new Dell servers are designed to run headless.

They actually have (gasp!) working management interfaces! You can have your head, with some keyboard and feature availability in a browser window, yes, even Firefox.

Leverage the intelligent platform management interface with 'ipmitool' for even greater control!

Things are actually progressing, though it has taken the better part of ten years..

Comment Re:RTFLDP (Score 1) 347

by itomato (#29341111) Attached to: Running Old Desktops Headless?

I quess it depends on your machine and your grub version.

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#Serial-terminal

Here's an interesting tidbit on the subject: http://www.advogato.org/person/pedro/diary/64.html

However, grub does not understand USB *anyway*, so unless you are lucky enough to have a BIOS which supports USB serial ports as native devices (like it does for keyboards and mice), your USB dongle will not allow you to control your bootloader. Period. This is because making a USB serial port work requires a functional USB subsystem, which is more than a bootloader is supposed to handle. As of now, it's not clear if or when grub will support USB. So laptops are screwed.

But a desktop machine can us a PCI card, right? You'd like to think that, wouldn't you? Unfortunately, grub only knows the standard IO ports (memory addresses and IRQs) for COM 1-4 (units 0-3 in grub parlance) -- which means if your PCI serial card appears at a different address, grub will not be able to use it. There is code in the pipe for PCI expansion serial ports in grub, but I'm not sure of its status. It doesn't work in my Hardy Heron Ubuntu, although I'm hopeful that this will work reliably in the future. (If so, then PCI cards could be a good solution for "desktop" PCs.)

Comment RTFLDP (Score 5, Informative) 347

by itomato (#29332803) Attached to: Running Old Desktops Headless?
From the Remote Serial Console HOWTO http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Remote-Serial-Console-HOWTO/configure-boot-loader-grub.html
GRUB:

Define the serial port and configure GRUB to use the serial port, as shown in Figure 4-6. Figure 4-6. GRUB configuration for serial console

serial --unit=0 --speed=9600 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal serial

--unit is the number of the serial port, counting from zero, unit 0 being COM1. Note that the values of --parity are spelt out in full: no, even and odd. The common abbreviations n, e and o are not accepted. If there is mysteriously no output on the serial port then suspect a syntax error in the serial or terminal commands. If you also want to use and attached monitor and keyboard as well as the serial port to control the GRUB boot loader then use the alternative configuration in Figure 4-7.

Kernel:

The Linux kernel is configured to select the console by passing it the console parameter. The console parameter can be given repeatedly, but the parameter can only be given once for each console technology. So console=tty0 console=lp0 console=ttyS0 is acceptable but console=ttyS0 console=ttyS1 will not work. When multiple consoles are listed output is sent to all consoles and input is taken from the last listed console. The last console is the one Linux uses as the /dev/console device. The syntax of the console parameter is given in Figure 5-1. Figure 5-1. Kernel console syntax, in EBNF

console=ttyS<serial_port>[,<mode>]
console=tty<virtual_terminal>
console=lp<parallel_port>
console=ttyUSB[<usb_port>[,<mode>]

Quite a bit more info at tdlp.org..

Comment Counters (Score 1) 76

by itomato (#29239343) Attached to: Oracle To Sell Sun's Hardware Business To HP?

* They are trying to focus more on their services business, having recently spent $14 Billion acquiring EDS

See the dog food argument, above

* The SPARC line and the Solaris operating system would go head-to-head with HP's high-end servers (Itanium-based) and HP-UX operating system. While it would take a strong competitor off the table, it would also create uncertainty with the large SPARC installed base, especially in the financial community.

There is no longer a need for 4 distinct architectures in non-specialized high-end computing. HP could be in a comfortable position to weigh the options for cost/profit, per platform, and for a relatively minimal investment, weigh what had been a primary opponent against their own assets. In light of their services business, the systems with the most attractive service projections would be the cards to keep.

H-P's acquisition of COMPAQ...

Compaq isn't a solid comparison, and neither is the reign of Fiorina.

Mark Hurd is extremely cost-conscious and very focused on quarter-to-quarter results for Wall Street. A big acquisition like this would be very disruptive and require some significant writeoffs and future earnings impairments.

See the dog food argument above, and the results deliverable from owning Sun's hardware business compounded with EBS results. This economic phase provides an excellent, stable ebb for acquisition and staging.

Comment Change is just a press release away.. (Score 1) 76

by itomato (#29239235) Attached to: Oracle To Sell Sun's Hardware Business To HP?

Announcer: The robustness and performance you have come to expect from Sun and Oracle is now backed with names with robustness and longevity to match. Run Oracle on SPARC, now from Hewlett Packard.

Sun and Solaris provide a "preferred" environment for Oracle.

"Oracle has based entire our middleware strategy on Java and J2EE integration," Ellison said. "Our approach is all built around Java." He said the move was sparked by requests from customers.

That Oracle would tout the performance of an ally is no surprise, regardless of whether an acquisition was in the works.

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