FAQ
Bobcat Open Systems is a company dedicated to solving your
computing and networking problems using "open-source" or GPL-ed
operating systems, applications, and tools.
Open Source
"Open source" means that some entity holds the copyright
to the source, but it is open to inspection, and to some extent,
modification by others than the copyright holder. If the copyright
holder goes belly-up, you can still fix or modify the source
code, recompile it, and continue to use the software.
GPL
"GPL" refers to the General Public License (sometimes called
a "copyleft") which means that anyone can sell, rent, or give
away some given software, but they must provide the user, on
request, the source code for it. Further, the user can similarly
modify the code, and sell or give it away, but they must also
provide the source code.
Why should I care?
What this means for you is that such software tends to get
bugs fixed sooner, and in the hands of the user, usually at
no additional cost, than with commercial software. In general,
most such software is freely available (no restrictive licensing),
costing little more than the price of the media and shipping.
In fact, I can install the latest version of Linux (the operating
system), a suitable windowing system, and a suite of applications
and tools on your computer(s) without violating any licensing
restrictions.
With commercial software, you pay up front for a license
to install the software on one or more computers, and that
may include some limited customer support, but not usually
for long. Bug fixes are usually part of the next version of
the software, assuming the seller owns up to the bugs. And,
of course, the next version upgrade will usually cost more
money.
Ok, so what is your angle?
What we are selling is our expertise in installing and using
Unix (Linux is a variant of Unix) and the associated applications
and tools. We charge by the hour or by the project, depending
on the customer's needs.
What do I gain?
- Lower upgrade costs, and usually lower installation costs.
- Freedom from the threat of viruses.
- No more "blue screens" or spontaneous or "therapeutic" reboots.
You need to reboot only for an operating system kernel update.
- Choice of a wide variety of window managers.
Ok, I'm interested, but be honest. What's the downside?
You may not be able to replace some of your specialized applications
that are designed to run on the Windows OS. But most Linux
distributions come with several word processors, spreadsheets,
web browsers, and email applications. There's even a freeware
work-alike for Quicken. Also most Linux distributions
come with a Windows emulator that may well load and run
your Windows application.
But, if you must
have your Microsoft-based application, you can set up the computer
to have both Windows and Linux installed, so that you can either
boot to one OS or the other, or you can install a commercial
product, VMware, to allow
both OSs to run simultaneously.
Do you do custom software?
We certainly do, as long as it's for a Unix or Linux platform.
At the risk of overworking a phrase, "We don't do Windows." We
work primarily in C and Perl (and Perl/CGI, Perl/Tk, and
Perl/DBI).
I take it I can replace Windows on most of my workstations.
How about my:
mail server?
Yes. Most Linux distributions include services for incoming
and outgoing mail, using Sendmail or Postfix for SMTP,
and servers for
both POP and IMAP.
file server?
Yes. There is the standard NFS server as well as an SMB server
that emulates an NT server.
web server?
Absolutely. The de facto standard of web servers is Apache,
and is in use in more than half of the web servers in the world.
This system, of course, is using Apache. If you are serving
up HTML, CGI, PHP, or Java, Apache will handle it just fine.
If you are doing ASP or some other proprietary arrangement,
it won't work, but can probably be converted to another (better?)
method.
database server?
If you are running Oracle, Oracle will be happy to sell you
a license to run it on Linux. Most other databases will need
to be converted to something that runs on Linux like MySQL
or PostgreSQL, but that's not rocket science.
Do I have to convert everything in my enterprise?
Absolutely not. You can convert a workstation or one server
at a time. As mentioned before, you can
add Linux to an existing Windows workstation so you can work
either alternately, or back out if you change your mind. Most
linux-based word processors, for instance, can import
and export .doc and .docx
files.
Well, you're biased. Does anyone else think Linux is that
great?
IBM has thrown
their marketing power behind Linux, and, in fact, has ported
Linux to their "big iron" mainframe computers, and ported their
big-time database application, DB2, to Linux.
Oracle has started
to convert all of their corporate computing to Linux, and heavily
supports Linux.
You're familiar with the Google search
site? It's all Linux servers.
The US Postal Service is converting all its office computing
to Linux.
What's your experience level with Linux and Unix?
I've been doing Unix-based projects as a contractor since
1992. One of my most recent projects was to port a major application
from HP-UX (Hewlett-Packard's variant of Unix) to Solaris (Sun's
Unix) and Linux. I've been running Linux for over five years,
and currently have five machines running Linux, including my
workstation, my notebook, and our company's web/mail servers,
file server, and firewall.
For a comprehensive listing of my qualifications and accomplishments,
see my resume.
I'm interested. How do I get started?
Give us a call at 800-929-5513, and let's have a chat about
your needs and what we can provide. The initial consultation
is free. Email also works. See the links at the top of this
page
I'd really rather do it myself.
Ok, you may well be able to handle it. Here are
some helpful resources.
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Linux distributions
Q. What Linux distribution do you recommend?
A. If you are new to Linux and coming from a
Windows background, I understand that
Ubuntu is very friendly to
Windows users. Another candidate is Linux XP which is designed
to look very much like Windows.
That said, the bulk of my experience is with
Red Hat and its
derivatives, CentOS and
Fedora. Red Hat is a
commercial product that you buy or download and install, but you must
buy a support subscription to get updates or telephone support. Many
businesses feel more secure with this kind of product, especially if
their IT people are not well experienced in Linux. Minor version
upgrades come out about every 18 months, and major version upgrades
every few years. Red Hat is very stable and will work on all but the
most cutting-edge hardware.
CentOS is nearly identical to Red Hat, derived from the same software
base with only the product branding changed. CentOS is entirely free
including updates, but there is no company support, so is more
suitable for companies or individuals with more experience with Linux,
or who contract with a consultant like us to support them. Version
upgrades closely follow Red Hat.
Fedora is the cutting-edge testbed whose features eventually make it
into Red Hat/CentOS distributions. For instance, Red Hat v4 was based
on Fedora Core 3, Red Hat v5 was based on Fedora 6, and Red Hat v6 is
based on Fedora 12. Fedora upgrades come out about every six months,
so is probably not suitable for server use unless you like changing
software often.
So which one? All of my servers and my clients' servers are running
Red Hat or CentOS. My own workstation, however is Fedora because I
like the latest and greatest, and there's a greater variety of
software in Fedora than Red Hat/CentOS, and I don't mind the frequent
upgrades as long as it's just one machine.
Text vs. GUI login
Q. I don't want a GUI login screen, just plain text.
Where is that determined?
A. In /etc/inittab. There is a line that
says
Use an editor (vi or nano or emacs) to edit that file and
change the "5" to "3", then save and exit the editor. Then
either reboot or
The 3 and 5 are called runlevels. Here are the runlevels supported
in Red Hat/CentOS/Fedora Linux:
0 - halt
1 - single user (maintenance)
2 - multi-user, minimal networking
3 - multi-user, full networking
4 - not used
5 - multi-user, full networking, X login
6 - reboot
Once you are in runlevel 3, you can bring up an X session
with startx.
Connecting to your Linux box.
Q. I can't telnet or ftp to my Linux machine from
another machine.
A. That is a Good Thing(tm). See the discussion of security.
Backups
Q. What should I back up, and how?
A. I recommend backing up /etc/ (your configuration
files), /root/ (if you have anything important in there), /var/
(spools and other configuration things), and /home/ (arguably
the most important). I consider the system stuff
restorable from the distribution disks. I also have a /u
partition, but I consider
everything in there as replaceable or expendable.
I have a separate hard drive
installed in my workstation and file server that is dedicated to
backups. Early on Sunday morning an automated process does a full
backup of the above-mentioned directories to the backup drive, and
then I burn the backups to DVDs and move the disks to a storage
building. The rest of the days of the week, the process backs up only
the files that have changed since the Sunday backup.
If you want anything more sophisticated, I recommend Amanda
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