20010124: RedHat 7.0 Linux

>From: "Happel, Shelly" <address@hidden>
>Organization: USF
>Keywords: 200101242231.f0OMVIX17275 McIDAS-X RedHat 7.0

Shelly,

Long time no hear!

>Shelly here in Florida - Arlene and I are still working on setting up the
>lab (in some ways, we probably always  will be setting up the lab!). We were
>discussing the pros and cons of moving to Red Hat 7.0 - what are your
>thoughts on this - does unidata have any comments to provide in that area?
>Let me know when you can.

We are using RedHat 7.0 Linux here on one of our workstations and at
least one site is using it for their LDM, GEMPAK, and McIDAS
applications.  Our observation is that it appears reasonably stable,
but there are some gotchas related to the new X window manager.

The other comment I can make is that the setup for McIDAS ADDE remote
serving (through the schell script mcinet7.7.sh) does not work with RH
7.0.  The reason is that RH 7.0 no longer runs inetd.  Instead, it runs
xinetd, and the configuration for xinetd is significantly differnt that
it was for inetd:

inetd  -> /etc/inetd.conf        <- single configuration file for inetd

xinetd -> /etc/xinetd.d/         <- directory of configuration files for xinetd

What this boils down to is the need to setup the ADDE remote server "by
hand":  one has to edit /etc/services and then create two files in
/etc/xinetd.d.  I provide information about what to do in the Notes and
Warnings online docuemnt:

http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/mcidas/770/mcx/warnings_mcx.html

The other thing I can tell you is that executables compiled on RH 6.2
can run under 7.0, but not visa versa.

When I asked another one of my Linux sites if they planned on upgrading
to RH 7.0, they commented that they never install the '.0' release
of Linux (e.g., 6.0, 7.0).  Instead they wait until the next release
so that most of the kinks have been worked out.

The other thing I can suggest is to go to the RedHat web site and look
through the list of patches that have already been made available for
7.0.

One last comment.  The Linux 2.4 kernel is now out for adventerous sites.
To me this means that there will undoubtedly be a new Linux release in
the near future.

>Thanks so much!

You are welcome.  I hope that this helped.

Tom

>From address@hidden Thu Jan 25 05:41:35 2001
>Subject: RE: 20010124: RedHat 7.0 Linux

Thanks for the info, Tom - I'll discuss this with Arlene. It does help a
lot!

Shelly