[ale] Distro Reply
Jerald Sheets
jsheets at yahoo.com
Mon Jan 3 23:10:31 EST 2005
Mostly Lawson and Cerner stuff today. (didn't we chat about this in the
past?)
With SELinux now, it should be even easier to satisfy HIPAA.
Unfortunately, that's not what my most current book is about. I'll
definitely look into it for the next one.
Jerald M. Sheets jr.
Sr. UNIX Systems Administrator
McKesson, Inc.
(404) 293-8762
**********
>su -
Password:
# cat /dev/flood > /dev/earth
# rdev noah+beasts
# dd if=noah+beasts of=/dev/earth
PGP Key: 0x6267F183
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GIT d+ s++: a C++++ UL++++ P++ L+++ E--- W++ N+ o-- K+ w--
O M+ V PS- PE++ Y+ PGP++ t++ 5++ X+ R* tv- b+ DI++++ D++
G+ e h---- r+++ y++++
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of James P.
Kinney III
Sent: Monday, January 03, 2005 11:04 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: RE: [ale] Distro Reply
I hope you are writing a book on how you did this, what the challenges were,
what problems you had to overcome, etc. This is EXACTLY the kind of stuff
that becomes more ammo for somewhere else to make the switch to sanity-based
systems. The medical community is in dire straits with HIPPA on one hand and
WinXP on the other. Several of my doctor clients are still using DOS apps
(they _do_ work) because the smaller stuff is still not HIPPA compliant. The
FOSS medical managment software is beta quality but some of it is very HIPPA
savy. It's getting the foot in the door...
On Mon, 2005-01-03 at 22:28, Jerald Sheets wrote:
> But you have to understand, that to foster widespread acceptance of
> the Linuxes in the enterprise, we must drop our zealotry to a degree.
> (I had to learn this the hard way, and speak of myself here)
>
> Something Microsoft has been so good at is embrace and extend. In the
> Linux world, we still hav IT managers that were educated in the 60's
> and 70's and view Linux as nothing more than a toy. If instead you
> approach them with a small entry (DNS server, for instance) and
> provide them all the trappings of their paid-for "supported" os, you've
won.
>
> It doesn't matter that it isn't GNU/Linux. It doesn't matter that
> it's "Free and Open". What matters to today's IT manager
> (decreasingly so) is that when Linux admin X gets pissed and leaves,
> he can call company Y to support solution Z. That's all he cares about.
>
> Again, from the ENTERPRISE perspective, we're newcomers to this game
> with something to prove.
>
>
> When I was at Our Lady of the Lake hospital, when I arrived in 2001,
> there was *NO* Linux in house. Not desktop, not server. When I left,
> there was RH on RS6000/Power PC, a clustered HIPAA compliant patient
> radiology records system writing to Optical disks running on RH AS
> 3.x. (Which, incidently, was used in the first hospital in America
> going completely filmless in their entire radiology farm) I had 2 DNS
> servers on IBM 435 machines with over 200 days uptime, running on RH
> 9.x. The IBM p690 Regatta had a RedHat partition onboard, and we had
> Linux 390 on the mainframe. Finally, the entire UNIX-based
> Administration team was running in a 100% linux desktop environment. (11
people).
>
>
> ALL SERVING HOSPITAL PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENTS.
>
> My key to success in a Linux-hostile environ was to start slow. The
> DNS servers were first. We ran them in test for 6 mnths before they'd
> let me go live with them. When I did, both machines were on IBM
> maintenance, and were running an (at the time) supported Linux system.
> I also had hardware flat out fail, and had *ZERO* downtime. This type
> of event spoke VOLUMES. Next, I upgraded everything to RH AS 3 before
> I left. As of today, the Linux environments (as *we* would all be
> aware) have been the most stable, zero-maintenance environments
> in-house. However, to Joe IT manager, this must be proven through
> time and trial. You can't just run in and install Gentoo and hope it
works.
>
> In my time at the hospital, I can count total downtime (unscheduled)
> within an afternoon's cofee-break time. We *NEVER* went down without
> planning, and then only once (or less) a year. At one point, our
> systems were up more than the mainframe (it has to come down for an
> hour tice a year for
> time-change)
>
> Why do I say all this?
>
> While a simple throw-it and forget-it Linux system may be fine for Joe
> shopkeeper, it won't work in the Enterprise.
>
>
> Don't take that as a slam. It isn't. It's real-world, eterprise
> (read
> data-ceter) class expereience in mission critical (read patient's
> records and lives) data environments. If we want to take over the
> world in the Linux arena (read, oust Microsoft) you have to start
> grassroots and enterprise simultaneously, and converge toward
> Microsoft's territory from both ends so their only place to go is the
margins...marginalized.
>
> Thanks for listening.
>
> Jerald M. Sheets jr.
> Sr. UNIX Systems Administrator
> McKesson, Inc.
> (404) 293-8762
> **********
> >su -
> Password:
> # cat /dev/flood > /dev/earth
> # rdev noah+beasts
> # dd if=noah+beasts of=/dev/earth
>
> PGP Key: 0x6267F183
>
> -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
> Version: 3.12
> GIT d+ s++: a C++++ UL++++ P++ L+++ E--- W++ N+ o-- K+ w-- O M+ V PS-
> PE++ Y+ PGP++ t++ 5++ X+ R* tv- b+ DI++++ D++
> G+ e h---- r+++ y++++
> ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
> Jeff Hubbs
> Sent: Monday, January 03, 2005 9:43 PM
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
> Subject: RE: [ale] Distro Reply
>
> I guess what bothers me about the attitude described here (not saying
> that Jerald holds it) is that I had thought that part of the whole
> point of using Linux and FOSS in general is that you *weren't*
> dependent on a single source or *any* source of conditional support -
> the idea being that you as an IT implementor/integrator had inviolate say
over how your software behaved.
> This "viable, supported alternative" talk sounds like nothing so much
> as wanting the ball and chain back.
>
> I *know* what it's like to be stuck in a certain kind of closed-source
> hell where you can't get your app fixed or your peripheral to behave
> properly for love *or* money, and I also know what it's like for paid
> support reps to turn their nose up at you because the way in which you
> needed to adapt their product to your needs was, in their eyes,
> "unsupported." There's nothing about the OS in question being Linux
> that keeps implementors out of that wasteland.
>
> Jeff
>
> On Mon, 2005-01-03 at 17:26, Jerald Sheets wrote:
> > Again, from a business perspective you'd never sell Debian as a
> > viable, supported alternative to the pinhead suits.
> >
> > They're getting better, it's just not considered viable on a
> > widespread basis yet.
> >
> > Jerald M. Sheets jr.
> > Sr. UNIX Systems Administrator
> > McKesson, Inc.
> > (404) 293-8762
> > **********
> > >su -
> > Password:
> > # cat /dev/flood > /dev/earth
> > # rdev noah+beasts
> > # dd if=noah+beasts of=/dev/earth
> >
> > PGP Key: 0x6267F183
> >
> > -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
> > Version: 3.12
> > GIT d+ s++: a C++++ UL++++ P++ L+++ E--- W++ N+ o-- K+ w-- O M+ V
> > PS-
> > PE++ Y+ PGP++ t++ 5++ X+ R* tv- b+ DI++++ D++
> > G+ e h---- r+++ y++++
> > ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
> > Raylynn Knight
> > Sent: Monday, January 03, 2005 5:12 PM
> > To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
> > Subject: Re: [ale] Distro Reply
> >
> > On Mon, 2005-01-03 at 12:41 -0500, Geoffrey wrote:
> > > John P. Healey wrote:
> > > > Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org> writes:
> > > >
> > > >>Yeah... I don't get that either. The most mature products on
> > > >>the planet are not an option...
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > He's probably looking to broaden his horizons and explore
> > > > packaging systems that aren't rpm based. Also, I fail to see
> > > > how Debian is any less mature than redhat, mandrake, and fedora.
> > >
> > > Stable Debian running a 2.2 kernel. To me, that is not mature,
> > > that is old. Personal opinion.
> > >
> > Stable Debian is 3.0r4 released on 1 January 2005. Debian supports
> > many hardware architectures, some of which only have a 2.2 kernel.
> > Debian 3.0 was originally released 19 July 2002 so the default
> > install kernel is a 2.2 based kernel, however a 2.4 kernel is
> > optional and available on
> > x86 hardware at boot time.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Raylynn Knight <audilover at speedfactory.net>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Ale mailing list
> > Ale at ale.org
> > http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >
> > --
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> >
>
> _______________________________________________
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--
James P. Kinney III \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \ one Linux user /
Local Net Solutions,LLC \ at a time. /
770-493-8244 \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com
GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com> Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659
6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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