One of the most important aspects of computer software, is it’s ability
to dynamically evolve with little impact on the end user. There are
many different layers that exist in computer systems and computer
networks, from the kernel and supporting libraries to the higher-level
programming language support and desktop applications.  These are
the various layers of software that provide all of the functionality
that we use … from the initial boot-up of a computer to the core
services and applications for browsing the web or accessing
e-mail.  All of this software, and all of these layers, continue
to evolve … and what is the impact to the end user?

I learned early on, while at Novell, that upgrades and migrations are
two of the most costly projects that an IT department, or small
business, can take on.  Software architects are now making more
and more efforts to ensure that software can be updated and upgraded.

Back in late 2001, we began the deployment of our 80211.net
wireless network.  Back then we started by using Red Hat v7.2 as
the platform for our Internet Cafe’s.  Now we are moving on to
Fedora Core 1 and 2.  One of our first locations had some problems
this last weekend, and I suspected that some of the older application
had some “denial of service” issues that had to be resolved.  I
had the opportunity today to experience the upgrade process from Red
Hat v7.2 to Fedora Core 1 … and was pleased with what I experienced!

I was going to do a completely new installation until the Fedora Core 1
install program offered the upgrade choice.  I thought about it
for a while … and chose to try the upgrade.  There were some
issues that I ran into … but overall I’m pleased and will be
deploying the server tomorrow.

The first issue that I didn’t like, was that after choosing to upgrade,
I didn’t get any opportunity to choose the packages that were going to
be installed on during the upgrade process.  My “stripped down”
server now has a lot more than I ever wanted on it.  I’ll begin
the process of removing and disabling many of these over the next week
or so.

The second issue that I ran into is more related to the Compaq computer
that I am running.  I have never liked Compaq gear, and today’s
experience only added to my continued disappointment with their
products.  Upon rebooting the machine, kudzu complained about a
missing Compaq network card … the one on the motherboard … and then
immediately reported detecting a new one.  I went through the
process of removing and re-installing the network card … only to have
to do this again and again.  I finally told kudzu to ignore the
changes … and it’s working.  I’m not sure why kudzu kept
thinking this is a new card … the other adapter – from Intel – never
had a problem.

The third issue that I had was doing the initial ‘up2date’
update.  When I ran it, up2date complained about unresolvable
dependencies an old version of perl-NDBM_File, and an old version
of  mozilla.  The mozilla requirement was for Galeon … a
browser for Gnome that I was not using.  I uninstalled the galeon
rpm and that problem went away.  I then found a reported bug about
the perl dependency and manually upgraded the new perl-NDBM_File
package … which then allowed perl to be updated.

The final issues were all small configuration issues … like updating
the dhcpd.conf file to include some new directives.  In all … it
was a very smooth upgrade.

I am about to deploy my new Fedora Core 1 server to see how things go
… but after a quick set of tests earlier today I am confident that
the Linux update/upgrade was a success.  We’ll see …

I have again found an interesting web site, that no doubt has been going for quite some time.  Change This. 
I stumbled on it today and have been reading some of the papers that
are posted … some very interesting reading.  I downloaded
several of the papers to read later this week …

I’ve met Eliezer Yudkowsky
a number of times at various conferences.  I once joked with him
about his search for “friendly AI”.  He has often talked about the
possible rapid emergence of a super-intelligence, and how we will want
to be involved to ensure our survival.

In my mind, if there is a super-intelligence that emerges, and it
chooses to neglect humans or to allow for our extinction, then isn’t
that the “super-intelligent” thing to do?  C’mon Eliezer, it’s a
super-intelligence … it only does super-intelligent things!  If
it thinks that humans are irrelevant … it’s super-intelligent … we
must be!  😉

Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics unsafe?.
The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence launched today
its “3 Laws Unsafe” Web site — timed for the July 16 release of the
f… [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News]

There are a number of articles coming out since the OSRM announement of potential patents and Linux. Today, I found the following article that got me thinking about political spin …

“I can assure you that IBM has no intention of using its patents against the
Linux kernel,” IBM’s senior vice president for technology and manufacturing,
Nick Donofrio, told delegates at LinuxWorld.

Well … of course! Note that Nick is very careful to say “against the
Linux kernel”
… which really doesn’t say very much. In my research, while at
SCO, I was looking at what is really contained in a “Linux
Distribution” and the amount of code that qualifies as “the Linux
kernel”. What most people do not understand is that the Linux
“kernel” only amounts to a maximum of 1%-3% of a distribution!

In the case of IBM, I’m sure that they have no issue with the “kernel”
… but I’m not so sure that they think the same about all of the
applications software, and the numerous layers of software that truly
enable Linux to be usable.

So Nick … what about the other 97%? Are you only saying that
you want the “kernel” to move unhindered? What about all of the
other software and components?

I have a feeling that this statement is going to remain very precise
and talk about the “kernel” … I agree with Bruce Perens … I want to
see it in writing. I also would love to see it use much broader
langauge to specify what IBMs intentions are.

This is a good article that reviews the progress that SVG is making in
the computer industry.  SVG is an alternative to the proprietary
solutions by Macromedia and others.  Adobe has jumped into the
game, and event the Gnome desktop is pursuing SVG …

SVG And The Free Desktop(s) [Slashdot]

This is another prime example of the ability to virtualize and/or
simulate a historical PC architecture. I used to write a lot of
software for CP/M 80 … and still have some of the hardware machines
in my basement. (Hmmm … note to self … consider selling on
eBay!)

If I were to want to run some of that software, I’d have to boot an old
PC … which means that I would have to have one around! Now I
can simply run the software on a “virtual” CP/M 80 machine.  I
truly believe that the world is going to move from trading pirated
software, to trading in pirated disk images.  You can provide a
disk image, and simply boot it with the right virtual machine …

Aliados 0.1.1. A CP/M 80 emulator. [freshmeat.net]

I spent some time the last couple of days working on the new release of OpenDarwin 7.2.1 and it’s looking better and better. I have been experimenting with running it in Virtual PC on my Windows XP laptop.

The initial installation looks pretty good. Under Virtual PC I
was able to boot the CD .iso and proceed through the installation with
little effort. The .vhd “virtual hard disk” that was created was
much larger than other operating systems (>3GB!) however everything
seemed to work.

Upon rebooting, I did have one problem where the OS would hang for a
*long* time indicating that it was “Still waiting for root
device”. I went through the archives of the “hackers” mail list
and found a way around this … during boot I hit a key and entered
“rd=disk0s1 -v” to set the root device and verbose mode. This got
me past the problem and on to the next one … a shorter hang
initializing something with DNS … and then finally to a login
prompt.  I ought to comment that I was able to make the “root
device’ definition “stick” by editing the file:

 /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist

and changing the text:

<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string></string>

to be:

<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>rd=disk0s1</string>

I got this fix from another e-mail in the archives …

There still appears to be a networking problem with OpenDarwin
supporting the network interface card that is emulated by Virtual
PC. I had worked with Chuck Remes on this in the past, and I
think this is going to be a simple fix. Related to this, there
appears to be a DNS issue where the OS hangs for a bit during boot as
it attempts to initialize something with lookupd or netinfod …

I’m a little disappointed that in the distro they left out X … there
were too many other packages they wanted to include and so X is left
out as a RPM to install separately. It seems to me that X ought
to be there first, and then allow for the downloading of other
services. However I can see where this version is still oriented
towards the “server” market and the services are more important than
the GUI applications.

I’ll be posting more as I go along … I want to see just how quickly
Darwin and OpenDarwin continuet o advance. I believe that before
long we’ll have another OS that will stand up well beside Linux!

I saw the update to this project a while ago, and believe that this is
a valuable solution for one niche of virtualization. User-Mode
Linux is a good solution for virtualizing Linux on Linux.
Although it does not provide the “processor/hardware” level of
virtualization like a VMware, Virtual PC, or Qemu,
it is able to create the necessary “virtual-Linux” for those who only
require such a solution. This is an “operating system
virtualization” that addresses an important segment. Management
of the “virtual machines” is going to be a critical aspect.

As I continue to look at virtualization technologies, I believe they
are going to become more and more important to users of all
kinds. With the new generations of MULCOTH
processors – multi-core, multi-threaded (hyperthreaded) – we will begin
to easily have the horsepower required to emulate CPUs and hardware at
acceptable levels of performance. I recently read a two part
article by Nicholas Blachford that talkes about some future possibilities for CPUs and then future possibilities for operating systems.
I have to agree with many of the perspectives that he expresses.
We are on the verge of having more computing power than we can
imagine. Raw compute capabilities will begin to outpace the
ability of the human sensory system to keep up with it.

In all of this, it appears that having several “virtual operating
systems” or “virtual computers” running on my laptop at any one time is
going to be the natural progression. Instead of getting rid of
old computers, I’ll simply “virtualize” the data and operating system
that is on them and I’ll have them forever!

I’m just beginning to experiment with this … I have some old laptop
hard drives that I am pulling into Virtual PC with their “virtual disk
wizard”. I’ll now be able to boot and run them if I ever want to
look back. At some point in the future, I’m sure that I’ll be
running my current Windows XP and Fedore Core 1 and 2 on some other
virtualization platform on some new 10Ghz+ laptop. And it might
be in the next couple of years!

UMLazi 1.0.3.1. A management system for User-Mode-Linux-based virtual machines. [freshmeat.net]

I’m blogging this from my laptop, sitting in my travel trailer just
outside of West Yellowstone, Montana.  I’m at least three wireless
hops from the net … and it works.

So how exactly did I get on the Internet from West Yellowstone, Montana?

My friend John Pugh sent me this link last night … I liked it.

Someone posted to a mail list:

A few weeks back I was a party
and someone brought up a product which enabled you to hack into
wireless networks and scan for them similar to Netstumbler. I can not
remember its name or find it using search engines.

What was great, was the response:

I wanna go to a party with you. I’ve never been able to talk about
anything like that at a party. At least not with someone who was
interested in it.

It is a funny sign of the times, when so many people are
becoming so aware of technology. Of course, it also could be a
sign of the location. My other friend Erin Quill indicated that
of course in Silicon Valley this would be a commonplace conversation.

Next week we’ll be having a 4th of July party up in West Yellowstone
with a lot of friends. Of course we’ll be outside bicycling,
hiking, visiting Yellowstone park, etc. with a large group of families … most who have parents that work in high tech.

Of course … out there in the middle of the wilderness … I’ll be on the net the whole time.  There is wireless
Internet access up there … I found it last year using NetStumbler …