Toutatis for server now?
(This topic serves two purposes. At first it serves as an encouragement for students to go for Free Software solutions. Unexpectedly good results can happen by doing that. The second purpose is for me to become aware of things I haven't thought myself.)
Alright, I have finished my bachelor's thesis. Very surprisingly my (sucky) thesis about Sage as a replacement for Matlab in higher education rose interest in the teachers on my school. Now my job is to install and configure Sage server for my school, and educate Mathematics teachers to use Sage. It is greatly awesome beyond words that those doctorates of mathematics and physics are interested enough about Sage so that they are willing to spend time watching me demonstrate Sage and talk about Sage. So, go for it people with Free Software. You can never know what you can do with it.
Now to the next issue.
I need to install Sage server for my school. The options for OS are:
-Debian: Either stable or testing. The bad thing about stable is that it will be soon replaced with current testing version and hence not supported so long as current Ubuntu or Toutatis. The bad thing about testing version is that it is testing version and possibly not so secure.
-Ubuntu: The very good thing about Ubuntu is that just a moment ago LTS version of it was released. So in theory the same Ubuntu server could be used next 5 years.
Trisquel: Toutatis is the only version of Trisquel to consider. The good thing is that Toutatis is basicly current Ubuntu LTS, so it should be stable and secure and supported for a long time. However, Toutatis is not ready yet, and even though there might be no differences between packages on the server installation without X-server between Toutatis and ubuntu LTS, is it too risky to make the server of Toutatis at this point? Is there plans to support Toutatis for the same time as curernt Ubuntu LTS is to be supported?
What would you chose :)
Well, I think I must go for maximum customer satisfaction with Free Software. If I ever start a real business that will be my guiding principle.
I am a member!
Your in a hard spot. I'd probably go with Debian stable. Debian shines on the server and the kernel is already free. Just don't add the non-free components. The main issue with Debian I believe is its endorsement of non-free software (website has a lot of information on how to add non-free software). There are some other issues with firefox I know.. you won't need those though. Debian is easy to upgrade so I wouldn't be too concerned about security.
You could plan to move to the server version of Trisquel when it is released.
I'd go for this too, just be careful not to use non-free software or install non-free firmware, which is easier on Debian's kernel since it's stock Linux without any non-free bits, where Linux-libre prevents loading non-free firmware.
В 13:28 +0200 на 11.10.2012 (чт), name at domain написа:
>
> Alright, I have finished my bachelor's thesis. Very surprisingly my (sucky)
> thesis about Sage as a replacement for Matlab in higher education rose
> interest in the teachers on my school.
Well done! You might have heard about it, but just FYI, Octave is
another Free Software alternative to Matlab. It missed some
functionality few years ago, but I've personally used it to do many
projects in my university years.
> -Debian: Either stable or testing.
> The bad thing about stable is that it will
> be soon replaced with current testing version and hence not supported
There is always upgrade. You edit /etc/apt/sources.list and replace the
old stable release name with the new one. If "stable" is used instead of
release name transition would probably be transparent. I do not remember
did I encounter new stable release while I was on Debian.
Next:
sudo aptitude safe-upgrade
sudo aptitude full-upgrade
Of course it could break bad, but for that you should prepare a backup.
> The bad thing about testing version is that it
> is testing version and possibly not so secure.
Not so sure about that. There are constant updates and security updates
as well as far as I remember. I've spent almost two years on testing
+unstable on a desktop machine and it broke badly only once. I think
I've used testing for a server available on the Internet.
If it is going to be stable soon, then I would expect it to have minor
issues or no issues at all. Debian after all has very long cycle for
marking something stable.
>
> -Ubuntu:
Not an option for me for philosophical and technical reasons. I'm amazed
Trisquel is relatively stable while it is based on Ubuntu.
> Trisquel: Toutatis is the only version of Trisquel to consider.
> However, Toutatis is not ready yet,
> and even though there might be no differences between packages on the server
> installation without X-server between Toutatis and ubuntu LTS, is it too
> risky to make the server of Toutatis at this point? Is there plans to support
> Toutatis for the same time as curernt Ubuntu LTS is to be supported?
There is always upgrade. As in the Debian case I've mentioned above.
A week or so ago I've upgraded a server from Taranis to Brigantia. Only
two packages required hacking of dpk scripts to install and unblock the
migration process. There were bug reports about those exact packages
with proposed solutions. If I were you I would either install Brigantia
and upgrade to Toutatis when released or install Toutatis and upgrade to
the next release when available. And keep upgrading to every future
available release. This theoretically should provide smooth transition
and no breaking like in my case from Taranis to Brigantia.
Hey and thank you very much of the suggestions, much appreciated.
I know of Octave. Years ago I had plans with a mathematics teacher to do my thesis of Octave as a replacement for Matlab.
Now we talked about GNU Octave too, but then I found Sage, which is a very interesting alternative in mathematical analysis and what not in schools because of the web browser interface, server/client model, feature to share and publish worksheets, individual user accounts with disk space for worksheets, and because Sage uses Python by itself.
Sage has gathered and united nearly 100 Mathematical Free Software programs under one and same user interface, which means you can in theory do tons of stuff by just installing one package. Among those are GNU Octave, so you can actually use Octave from Sage, if there is a reason for that.
My job is now to install and configure Sage for the school and educate the teachers how to use Sage. Next month I will have to get a new job xD So I am not maintaining Sage on the school, and that's why I want to make them a system which is running without problems after 5 years. Thus upgrading the OS after a year or so is not a choise.
Edit: Ooops, Sage does not include GNU Octave, but it can use GNU Octave if it is installed. A slight correction.
The problem with Trisquel being used in a corporation, school, or government is the lack of support options. Plus, with it being a one man show, the releases are 6 months behind schedule. If a company or large organization invests in Ubuntu, they have some security in Canonical being a real company and provide paid support. Trisquel relies on free and u.predictable help in their documentation and forums.
That is why Trisquel isn't considered a option for servers right now.
В 22:49 +0200 на 11.10.2012 (чт), name at domain написа:
> The problem with Trisquel being used in a corporation, school, or government
> is the lack of support options.
Any same administrator or not-so-administrator, capable of maintaining
Debian or Debain-based system can support it.
> the releases are 6 months behind schedule.
Who's schedule? AFAIK Trisquel's schedule is - release 6 months after
upstream release. There is no other schedule.
> That is why Trisquel isn't considered a option for servers right now.
(and to repeat myself) Any same administrator or not-so-administrator,
capable of maintaining Debian or Debain-based server can support it.
It depends on the financial status of that organization. In some cases it may cost more to have a full time and on-site salaried employee than using contractors or support contracts from a company like Canonical and Red Hat.
Another hurdle is finding qualified workers who know how to use a pure free software os. Many skilled Linux admins are in CentOS/Red Hat, SuSE, and Ubuntu. I know that a lot of those skills can transition into Teisquel, but you have to find an admin willing to try new things and exit comfort zone.
I am a member!
This is total FUD. Who exactly is this fictional administrator you speak of? They sound too incompetent to actually be running GNU/Linux let alone administering it. I might buy that there are a handful whom might only be willing to administer a Redhat box. However any administer with any experience at all on a few different Debian or derived distribution (even just having tried them for a few minutes) is going to know there aren't any significant learning curves or major differences between Debian derived distributions.
If you have Debian background on the server you'll already know Trisquel, Mint, Ubuntu, and others. These may not all be good choices for a server although the differences are not significant enough for there to be a 'learning curve'. Not even a small one. About the only 'major' difference is in naming schemes.
I could easily use Trisquel for servers I maintain.
The only problem with Trisquel for this server is will the server in sources.list address exist next 5 years. If I could be as sure of that as I can be of that ftp.fi.debian.org* will exist next 5 years there would be no probs.
To get some knowledge of that I would have to know better who exactly is maintaining current Trisquel mirrors or the official Trisquel server.
* Edit: And security.debian.org.
I am a member!
I've never seen a problem with this. You can probably safely point to any number of mirrors and be confident they will exist in 5 years. For instance the FSF mirror.
Hmm, FSF mirror, thanks of the suggestion. Now I think Trisquel it shall be.
Awesome, a thesis for what course?
I am a control engineering student and did not even think about making a thesis out of free software in engineering. I once spoke to the course coordinator about the research lab he works in and he told they usually work with free software, but what he meant was free software developed in-house, not the actual tools they used. I asked if they used Windows as a development platform there (rhetorical question, but I thought it sounded more appropriate than being straightforward in such situation), he replied "The majority of us yes, but you can use 'Linux' if you want, but I never used it myself and I don't know how to use it (yes it is a redundancy)".
When one thinks of software related engineers, she might think that they know all the tools available and choose the best one. However, there is, actually, a dearth of information/interest about/in alternatives rather than alternatives themselves.
As of now, I am far from being the most compelling spokesman for freedom in engineering, but if I can make a degree out of that, I have a greter purpose in this job. Stuff is kinda boring like it is now.
I am not sure what it will be. It has been information technology and computer engineering.
I actually did not have plans to do a thesis related to Free Software either at first. I had other plans more into economics. It would had been highly theoretical and 100% fun project for me. But then I spoke about GNU Octave with one Mathematics teacher who taught us basics of Matlab. Later we talked more and he said that maybe a thesis could be done of GNU Octave. I agreed right away.
Interesting. I will see what I can get here once my classes are back.
Thank you (moilami) for posting this :D I was about the post almost the same question (I wanted to stop relying on Ubuntu LTS for my personal server and I was looking for an alternative, with the idea that, if I can't find a good Free alternative, I would go for Parabola as a Server (like I used to have at home my Arch Linux as a server).
But I have a question for the community (if you (moilami once again) allow me to do this). I was thinking about Debian as my server OS, but then I thought.. it this a good idea ? I mean how easy it is to install non-free software ? Is there only a simple repository that makes the different between those two or are there non-free packages already included on an original and non modified debian installation ?
PS: I have time to edit and change everything on my server at anytime, but I also want something to rely not only for now, but for the future (if, by luck, I grow as a developer with a good infrastructure).
Thanks in advance for all the answers :D
Debian is optionally free. You have the main repository which becomes enabled, the contrib repository (free software dependent on non-free software) which comes disabled, and the non-free repository, which is self explanatory, is also disabled. Their installer asks you if you want to enable proprietary firmware in the kernel if they think you need it. Just say no.
Other than that, the DFSG (Debian Free Software Guidelines) approves Artistic License 1.0 which is considered non-free by the FSF.
I installed Debian 6, updated it (only 1 update available), and didn't enabled the "contrib" and the "non-free" Debian repository. But I have to admit... don't know if it is because of good choices from Debian, or because of the outdated packages but.. it is using 110Mb of RAM on my Virtual Machine, and it is actually quite faster on my VM than Trisquel on the same machine :D... Maybe I will start to use Debian when the version 7 is out, or when a version with only Free Software is available :D
Outdated software probably helped. I doubt Wheezy will be as resource efficient, or even less if used with Gnome 3. I tried the alpha2 live cds for wheezy and it is way slower than squeeze.
And what I really like about Trisquel and fully free distros is that they separate people who actually care about free software from the "windoze suk to mush virus linux mush beter" mentality from some other distros. I would not frequent another distro forum or vocally support something else. It is better here.
I actually agree with you on that at 200%. Every community I went trough:
- Windows Community (Portuguese, French and English)
- Ubuntu Community (Portuguese French and English)
- Arch Linux Community (General)
- Hackintosh Community (Yes I had my time xD)
And a lots of others community that I'm sure I forgot. This one is actually the best to talk about everything we love in this Software world. And having a place where I can share my views without having someone saying "That is stupid and you should feel stupid" is quite good indeed :D I hope it will never disappear.
If you do not enable the "non-free" repository, Debian GNU/Linux now is 100% free software (including the kernel)... but you may want to enable this repository because, as far as I know, it contains some packages that most people consider free, notably the documentation under the GNU Free Documentation License (see Debian's position on this license). Notice that, even if that the "contrib" repository only includes free software packages, some of them only aim at loading separately distributed proprietary programs. Finally, the installer may invite you to install proprietary firmware.
Hum.. I know understand the real problem to not be approved by the FSF... It is a little bit confusing indeed :S...
I installed it and I'm having a look at it, until now I'm very happy with the memory consumption being very low (even with a Graphical User Interface).
Just one question. Is Trisquel viable as a server? I mean, I don't mind updating it everytime a new version (mostly LTS) is out but I don't really know if this is a good idea :S... This is why I thought about Parabola, because I could do whatever I want with it... if it was working then there was no need to update, but if something was missing I could only update this single package (if possible of course)... am I wrong?
Trisquel GNU/Linux is viable for a server. But for Sage in school, hmm, there can be more viable OS. Sucks it can be that way.
You could provide support from home using SSL (that could be paid) :D (it is a solAution and you can win with this).
But yes for a school that only wants a piece of software to work I think that something already configured is good for anytime. I mean, why update when everything is working like a charm :D
This is why I taught of a Free Rolling Distribution like Parabola, because the servers wouldn't be "disconnected" at any time soon like the Trisquel or Ubuntu ones after the support time, and I could even keep on updating just what is important, letting the rest that isn't that important outdated until it is really necessary to update it. But I may be not seeing the thing with the right point of view.
That is a very interesting concept and it could be the best way to go in theory. However, to know what should be upgraded because of a security bug fixed would be far too hard, and at some point some update could force other things you don't want to update to become updated, unless you backport security fixes by yourself, which is not that easy to do properly.
Hmm, they are combining IT-resources of several schools. My school will be combined with some other school, there is no way that giant organisation would pay anything to me. I am about 99% sure that they will trash Sage alltogether not long after I am gone. That's why I hope I can do my best in educating the mathematics teachers about the Sage so that they want to use it. Some teachers has been quite enthusiastic of it already, and why would they not be? Sage is very awesome especially for schools.
It they organize themselves like they do here in the Portuguese Universities, then showing professors that the Software is good and it could be used instead of the non-free ones is a good value that they could share at the meetings they have when those very important meetings about what will they buy and/or use as Software and Hardware for all the integrated schools.
Exactly. That is what I am trying to show to them. I firmly believe Sage is better than Matlab for teaching mathematics. If they see that too, there is hope.
В 21:45 +0200 на 17.10.2012 (ср), name at domain написа:
> Is Trisquel viable as a server? I mean, I don't mind
I'm using it for a year. Haven't noticed a change (technical; in
practice) compared to gNewSense and Debian before that for the
"same" (as a purpose) server.
> updating it everytime a new version (mostly LTS) is out but I don't really
> know if this is a good idea
I would upgrade on every release. This would (theoretically) provide
smoothest transition. Still depends how unstable/testing you consider
STS releases and how comfortable you are with such on a server. I'v
recently migrated my server from Taranis to Brigantia and some packaged
required hacking of dpkg/install scripts for the upgrade to complete.
Being unable to upgrade from old LTS to new LTS is a real issue IMHO.
> if it was working then there was no need to update,
Update is a must for security reasons.
Yes you are right I totally forgot the security section :s.... So then again, why not a Rolling Distribution ? I mean yes like moilami said this could break something at any time, and even if I wouldn't only want to update package X or package Y, those package X or package Y could update a package A that could be not as stable or worse, with a big security whole, but in general that could be solved quickly... no ?
В 22:38 +0200 на 17.10.2012 (ср), name at domain написа:
> could be not as stable or worse, with a big security whole, but in
> general that could be solved quickly... no ?
Speaking for Debian, yes. For Ubuntu I don't know, because I've never
dealt with it. Trisquel as Ubuntu derivative is probably following its
life cycle for security. I think I've read once that the security
section in Trisquel is updated more often, but I can't link to the
source and don't know did I really read that. I suspect it is. Anyone
can point to or state the Trisquel policy about security repositories?
The other thing is, if one updates Trisquel on every release, the
chances are lower to have such issue fixed or not have it at all.
I probably should consider Trisquel as viable option for Servers then... I've adapted myself very quickly to Ubuntu Server, and to be honest, even if I love ArchLinux (Parabola by the same mean) as an Operating System and for Server (because everything is Vanilla and we can do whatever we want), I have to admit that, sometimes a lot of work could be done by a simple "apt-get install", like the old (but always good) Debian taught us :D
I will install Trisquel and see what the performance looks like :D... The "bad" thing is the Hardware Compatibility... If I want to buy something like the Raspberry Pi, I would need to find another distribution that would work in there with only free software (like ArchLinux ARM and Debian). But that's another problem.
Thanks for the advises :D
В 02:03 +0200 на 18.10.2012 (чт), name at domain написа:
> Server (because everything is Vanilla and we can do whatever we want),
Well with Debian (&& Debian-based) you still can, but it is not as much
vanilla and a lot of things are pre-configured.
> I have to admit that, sometimes a lot of work could be done by a simple "apt-get
> install", like the old (but always good) Debian taught us :D
It is better to use aptitude install/uptade/safe-upgrade etc. etc.
because it has better dependencies handling. AFAIK it is the recommended
tool. It has an ncurses TUI when ran without arguments which is also
powerful, but I prefer the interaction with arguments.
>
> I will install Trisquel and see what the performance looks like :D... The
> "bad" thing is the Hardware Compatibility... If I want to buy something like
> the Raspberry Pi, I would need to find another distribution that would work
AFAIK the only non-free thing in the Raspberry PI is the video chipset,
but I might be wrong. The other thing is that there is no ARM port in
Trisquel.
Is there any libre arm kernel :s. ?
Debian GNU/Linux supports ARM.
Otherwise, I guess Linux-libre supports all architecture the vanilla Linux kernel supports. You would probably have to compile it though (no pre-compiled package).
About the Raspberry Pi, you probably want to read this article.
I think the standard text installer does not offer you a chance to install non-free software. Expert installer does do that. It asks if you want to enable non-free and contrib.
For GNU manuals it could be best to install gnu manuals deb from gNewSense. They have made one, and by installing it you don't have to enable contrib or non-free.
В 21:47 +0200 на 17.10.2012 (ср), name at domain написа:
> I think the standard text installer does not offer you a chance to install
> non-free software. Expert installer does do that. It asks if you want to
> enable non-free and contrib.
I think if a network card requires non-free firmware, the installer will
prompt you to provide it, if it is missing in the install image. That is
for the latest stable version of Debian (6.0.4/5) tested a month or two
ago. Th only thing I do not remember is did I used the default (text) or
the expert (text) install.
This is not exactly true if you are using the FSF/GNU definition of free software. The FSF/GNU considers the Artistic 1.0 license to be non-free while Debian considers it to be free. Thus they have packages under the Artistic 1.0 license and if you go by the FSF/GNU definition you could install non-free software out of their main repository.
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Le 12-10-17 02:38 PM, name at domain a écrit :
> Thank you (moilami) for posting this :D I was about the post almost the same question (I wanted to stop
relying on Ubuntu LTS for my personal server and I was looking for an
alternative, with the idea that, if I can't find a good Free
alternative, I would go for Parabola as a Server (like I used to have at
home my Arch Linux as a server).
>
Regarding Debian:
"[...] the "most-typical" Debian release is released about 2 years after
the previous one (the often cited example of Debian Sarge being quite an
exceptional event in Debian history), leaves users about 1 year to
upgrade to the next one once this latter itself gets released, has (from
release to the end of security updates) a total lifetime of about 3 years.":
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases
Regarding Ubuntu:
"Normal Ubuntu releases are supported for 18 months. Starting with
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, LTS releases will be supported for 5 years on both the
desktop and the server. " LTS releases come out every 2 years, leaving
users 3 years to start testing/ upgrade to the next LTS. Upgrading
LTS-to-LTS is part of this release schedule.
Regarding Trisquel:
5.5 is based on Ubuntu 11.10. The upcoming 6.0 will be based on 12.04
LTS, you should not have to upgrade before, at most, April 2017 (to
whatever other Trisquel-based-on-the-current-Ubuntu-LTS is available at
the time). So, technically, if Trisquel 6 came out this month, you would
not have to upgrade it before 4.5 years.
tl;dr: if/when Trisquel 6 comes out, it will be the least risky,
lowest-upgrade-path/least-problematic-upgrade, 100% server distribution
available among the above 3.
> But I have a question for the community (if you (moilami once again) allow me to do this). I was
thinking about Debian as my server OS, but then I thought.. it this a
good idea ? I mean how easy it is to install non-free software ? Is
there only a simple repository that makes the different between those
two or are there non-free packages already included on an original and
non modified debian installation ? [...]
Regarding Debian's approval by the FSF as 100% free distribution, there
is an ongoing effort. Anyone interested should join this mailing list:
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/fsf-collab-discuss
See the last comment on this by John Sullivan , Executive Director, Free
Software Foundation:
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/fsf-collab-discuss/2012-September/000281.html
Cheers,
Fabian Rodriguez
http://trisquel.magicfab.ca
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No probs, and be free to derail and hijack as much as you want threads started by me. I am a child of Usenet/Sfnet in my Internet life, hence I am not bothered at all who talks what and where. In Sfnet someone started a topic, some people maybe talked about the topic but usually very quicly several people were talking OT as much as they wanted. If someone would had said "this is my thread" people would had laughed so hard that several of them could had died of heart attack.
As an update by my side I can tell that I at first installed Ubuntu LTS to the school because I noticed Toutatis still have packages named *ubuntu*, which would had meant that every single package would had been upgraded at some point. I however very quicly became pissed of Ubuntu as each time I booted the machine I saw some "manage this server in "landscape.ubuntu.com" login greeter. The final thing pissing me off was that I had to write a custom init script, and I read that Ubuntu uses Upstart. The benefits of Upstart were mainly for desktop machines, IMHO, so I thought fuck this shit gimme System V init or GTFO.
As a result I installed stable Debian and was very happy. Seriously, for important servers I rather play it as safe as I can. One failure on the server is simply too much, if it can be avoidable with different OS. So, goodbye support for 5 years and hello maximum performance with Free Software.
I think Red Hat Enterprise or Cent OS could be alternatives for Debian, but since I am so much on the .deb camp in general I don't have to make things more difficult by considering them. Debian GNU/Linux should be 100% free without non-free and contrib repositories, which are not enabled by default.
Anyway, in my opinion Parabola GNU/Linux people have done the best job. They are not saying "it is upstream bug lol no can do" but have done impressive job in making Parabola better than the distro it is based on. I have used Parabola as a server in my home, and it worked like a charm. I would not use Parabola for anything serious though because it is rolling releases. For serious servers things are best to not change untill they must change.
For those (like me) interested in this. I created a page in the Wiki showing how to turn Trisquel into a Server :
https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/server
For now I only have the Installation page but with time (maybe tonight) I will create the GLAMP, OpenSSH, GitWeb, Drupal etc... tutorial since they are quite easy to understand and reproduce.
Nice job mate! I fixed a few typos.
I didn't know there was a netinstall, I'd been hoping for one! :D
Thank you :D
Good work, which also fits perfectly under the topic :D
I did not know Trisquel have that nice text based installer. It is good to know.
It is quite sad because Trisquel has a lot of features that most of the people don't even know ! I know that this isn't a good example, but anyone could use Trisquel with Unity since it is based on Ubuntu, and this is quite amazing. But better, if you install compiz and ccsm:
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-gnomeAnd then you just did "ALT+F2" and typed
compiz --replaceYou will have your normal Trisquel DE (Personalized Gnome 3 Fallback) but with transparency, window snapping (buggy but still), and a lot more :D
Nice work :-) Just a comment on step 18: I know there is are a "linux-image-server" available at repos (apt-cache search linux-image). Wasn't it be better than the generic one?
Excellent question.. To be honest I didn't knew that this kernel was available at all, and I don't even know what is the difference :s... I will have a look at this and report later. But I'm pretty sure that the linux-image-server would be more appropriated.