I found a new site for OS/2 fans that will be a big help. It's also in the Tools and Compilers part of the OS/2 sitelist. The site is mainly about Relational Databases for OS/2 and eCS. But it's not just a site for MySQL and PostgreSQL. There are three web servers, a bunch of scripting languages, and some introduction and training docs for using SQL databases.
For good DB info for OS/2, it covers RDBMS, Web Servers, scripting and more for OS/2 & eCS. Worth checking out for InetPowerServer (IPS) by Terje Flaarnning.
The IDE drive warranty reduction is far more significant than first appearances may suggest. It heralds a negative change in the direction of the IT industry where cost is everything. Major companies know better, but the general public is about to be taken for a ride they won't enjoy. Neither will the stockholders of the IDE manufacturers.
This article has been under construction for a few weeks, growing every time I worked on it. I finally split it into three parts to ease getting my mind around it and earlier posting for the first part. The article is titled "Waves of Change." Starting off is Part I: Sea Changes, about the nature of the change and looking back at recent sea changes. There is also an overview of Part II: Technology Convergence.
Part II will follow in about a week, and Waves of Change will be concluded later by Part III: The New World. This will be where I analyze the convergences and make some predictions about consequences. Each part will be found in the Bill's Writing Index.
In the background I have been working on a better design with navigation and structure improvements. This new design, the third in a year for this site, will bring major changes for better navigation and site organization.
Today I have finalized the structure that will appear when the site changes. Here are the new Section headings (shown in the top pane):
The first three will be much as the current site with a few Subject additions. Grids etc. will get broader Subjects and Operating Systems will add several new ones. Software Life Cycle will try to organize all of the issues with software. Information Tools will deal with the rapidly developing field of organizing large DBs and complex structured files for extracting higher level (meta) information.
While all of the prep work for the new design
goes on, I'll continue to add new work and
updates to the current site. More on the
new site as detailed design and implementation
gets done. Since this will be a major effort,
stay tuned to continuing updates on Bill's
Write, Version 2.
Warning: Some direct links will change with the new
site.
Today I'm adding another section - "Bill's Writing." This is for my other scribblings, such as the one on Microsoft on Sept. 1. The new piece is titled "HP and Compaq - The Dust Settles." My Byte columns will remain where they are, but other writing and articles from other magazines will go into Bill's Writing.
Also in the queue are updates to the Microsoft story, and further work on a delayed project - Installing the Grid. Stay tuned for these in the next few weeks, along with unpredictable additions here and there.
I've posted the Introduction to Capacity Planning and Performance Management writeup. Look for it in the CPPM Index. Also added is a April 2002 column that describes BSD and eCS operating systems as of that date. Look for it in BSD Info or the OS/2 Updates. The latest eCS info is in my September column on Byte. Also in BSD Updates, information on the European BSD 2002 Conference.
To kick off the new month, I've written a special article about Microsoft. You can probably figure the slant simply by the title -_The Fading Microsoft Monopoly_. (Updated Sept2)
You can find info and links in OS/2 Updates. Also, it looks like Byte won't publish my OS column until the week of Sept 1.
Microsoft is often the source of unintended humor, which I usually hear third hand. This morning I managed to see some directly as I visited an unnamed web news site. My white screen displayed only this:
Could not Connect to DB: [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]SHUTDOWN is in progress.
I've added OS/2 Updates and Grid Updates on separate pages that are linked to their respective indexes. I will update these pages about once a week when new information is available. Significant updates will be noted on the Journal.
Also, my next column on Byte.com will cover eight alternative operating systems. It will be published next week.
While I've been working on a number of things, it has become obvious that I will not have time in the near future to develop the Science index site I wanted to build. In fact, I will be making some major site design changes in the next few months to enable easy access to much more information than is currently on this site. I'll post a notice a week before the major change.
I'll make a big effort to not obsolete any direct links into specific articles on this site.
I've added a link to the Sun sponsored Grid Engine site in the grid index. Sun is providing this as an open source project currently at version 5.3 with several binaries available.
The next section to be added will be CP/PM - Capacity Planning and Performance Management. Currently, I'm a week or two from posting the first part of this complex subject.
Two columns, Open Meta Tools and Digital Libraries in the Large , have been added to the Grids index. The Open Meta Tools and Technology a la Carte columns are in the 2002 index.
38 active links survived the selection from my bookmarks list of 60. Just another example of the mutable character of the Web. I'll add good new links that you send me, and those I discover.
I've added an index that collects all of my current information on the subject in one place, divided into four groups: Columns, Primary grid websites, Grid computing sites, and Other information sources. The article on Build Yer Own Grid is in the index.
I've added a forecast I wrote last Christmas in response to a question. This will be followed about once a quarter with an update to a current forecast. Also, the full six part BSOF series is now linked into the Technology Index.
My original columns for Byte were a group of four that outlined ideas I had developed over 20 years as the best way to develop software. The additional column is part one, and is an introduction to BSOF. The first three columns are no longer on Byte. I have made only minor editing changes for clarity.
I have planned for future expansion of the ideas presented here because the subject is quite complex, but no specific deadline exists. Your input and feedback is invited to help pinpoint the parts that need expansion.
Well, the redesign is done, and is much closer to what I originally envisioned. Here are a list of changes:
Notes:
Mozilla 1.0 still puts too much space in
the title navigation, but Internet Explorer
5, Navigator 4+ and Opera get it right. Of
course there is still more fine tuning to
be done.
You have probably noticed the absence of graphics on this site. Many sites use graphics for eye candy rather than content. While text only may be a little plain for some folks, it loads faster and focuses on the content rather than visual aspects. Where graphics will add to the content or improve the site, I'll use them, otherwise not.
Near term I'll be filling out some of the Sections, both existing and new. Each update will be noted in the Journal at the top with the date added. As the Journal gets large, I'll connect the older part of the file by a link. And RSN, I'll find time to finish the install of my own Grid.
The link column has new entries, and I separated the Byte columns out by years. Five new columns were added in July. Year 2002 columns will be added, but I can't co-publish them. They'll get added after the exclusive period expires.
More site changes are in the works - please let me know what you want more or less of. I'm developing a section named 'Design Studies' to explore some design ideas I have created, and extend my thoughts on how best to do design work. BTW, you may have noticed the BW title has changed a bit. :-}
They are: "Digital Libraries and OS/2 Updates" and "Digital Libraries in the Large." Also, work continues on the Globus Toolkit install. Currently, I'm stalled with a set of 'unrecognized pod directives' in the package install part, specifically pod2man..
Sunday I found that having four 7200 rpm drives in pairs made for some very hot drives. Monday, I added a third fan and separated the hot drives, which has worked well since. Tuesday I incorrectly inited the new drives and added them to the fstab before testing. This was a big mistake. The subsequent boot caused fsck to fail and left me with a non-working system, and no usable editor except ed, which I did not know.
I fixed the fstab Wednesday by learning ed. But that day turned out to be our second record breaking heat wave. My 6K BTU A/C couldn't keep the room cool enough with all my equipment when the outside temp went to 94, breaking the old record of 90. In Arizona, that's a cool day. In Washington, at 50% humidity, it's a killer. I had to shut the systems down at 2 PM.
Finally getting to the install process, I ran into an untar failure part way through. According to the response to my help message, I may have a busted download. Since that was a restarted DL, it's possible. I'm redownloading now. Next step: Head => Stone Wall.
Late Note: The package install goes okay, but the server bundle can't find perl-cmd. I'm currently digging into why this happens.
"Know how to make God laugh? Tell him your plans"
He must have gotten some amusement from my weekend upgrade. Right now, it's better called a downgrade. I spent most of Friday selecting good components from three systems idled for various reasons, installing them in my big tower, a 10 bay system. Of course it failed to boot. :-{
I spent Saturday trying to fix various intermitent problems which eventually hardened into a BIOS parity error. I was ready to dump the MB, but decided to check the FIC web site once I remembered who made the board. To my surprise, I found that they had a recovery procedure.
When a bios error is detected, the system jumps to a boot block which attempts to boot from the A drive, loading command.com and executing autoexec.bat. The files needed are the flash write program, the bios binary, and a one line autoexec which executes the flash write calling the bios image with specific parameters. I built the floppy and tried it. You won't be surprised to learn that this did not work.
Multiple tries later, several different errors became "Disk Error." Nice specific diagnosis. So I made another floppy. Nada. I swapped cables. Nope. I swapped the floppy drive. Nyet. I tried more floppies. Not a chance. I unplugged extra hardware. I opened and cleaned out the power supply, which was really groody. All of this was about as effective as burning incense.
I talked to Van on Sunday. Holiday, what holiday? He listened to my tale and said "It's dead, Bill." Not what I wanted to hear, but I accepted that and planned the recovery. Several hours later, I had moved all the hardware except the MB back into my older 8 bay tower and powered up.
Close, but no joy. My FreeBSD booted, but detected obsolete file systems on the two new drives I added. Fsck would not clean them up, so I decided to halt work before I did something wrong and lost even that little bit.
This is probably more than you wanted to know about my 'upgrade'. Today, I'll wipe the two new drives and try again. Wish me luck.
1:00 PM PST: FreeBSD is back up with new drives (Yea!). I had to swap the cables on the Adaptec 3940 because I put the new drives on A, and that got them counted ahead of the boot disk. Boot couldn't find the partitions because they were on drive 3 instead of drive 1. Simplest problem I've had this year. :-}
"Life is what happens while you were planning to do something else"
And that's what happened to me last week. Unplanned events took most of my time. To make matters worse, when I started working on Globus again, I found my FreeBSD system was rapidly running out of disk space. In order to solve that problem, I have to do some serious hardware swapping, which is under way today. I'll have more after the holiday.
All web sites are works in progress, this one is no exception. I expect it will evolve from the basic to a more comprehensive site as I add items and areas. Come back and visit periodically to see what's new.
Thanks for visiting.
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