[LDM #WAD-467112]: LDM hardware recommendation

Hi Todd,

re:
> Thanks for your time.

No worries.

> I'm a little disappointed by the news because
> it complicates matters for us a great deal.

I was afraid of that!

> Our school is small
> enough that we do not have any support staff who are allowed by union
> rules to work on Linux platforms...

Union rules!?  A union actually governs which operating systems an
employee can work on?  That is simply incredible!!

> It is impossible for our school
> to migrate to Linux anytime in the foreseeable future (to my great
> consternation).

I really do wish that there was not a BIG gotcha with MacOS-X.  We
are hoping (but not hopeful) that the new release (coming out this
summer or thereabouts) will fix the problem we are seeing with our
LDM.  One of our active sites, San Francisco State University, is
using a Mac for his LDM in spite of the problems.  He has had to resort
to setting up a procedure of restarting the LDM twice per day to get
around the problem being seen.

FYI: the problem is that the LDM builds and begins running fine.  After
a certain period of time, the data flowing in on the various feeds
trickles down to a "drip".  There is no reason for this happening, and
it has been investigated at SFSU, U. Oklahoma, and at Unidata.  Nobody
has been able to get a handle on the problem, and Apple has, from our
perspective, been completely unresponsive to our requests for a fix.
I have not been intimately involved in those discussions, but I have been
kept abreast of the situation by our LDM developer and the system administrator
at OU.

> That being said, if this became something that I had to maintain - how
> maintenance intensive is it to keep the LDM running on a Linux
> platform?

Keeping the LDM running is very easy.  The thing that could be a time/energy
sink is the system maintenance (security patches).  Linux has gotten much
better over the years by including default configurations that automatically
check for OS updates and alerts the user to their availability.  It is,
however, very useful for the person in charge of the machine to understand
OS-related issues at some non-cursory level.

> I'd have to fit this in around the 4 classes I teach so an
> honest idea of the time necessary to keep things moving is definitely
> required.  Additionally, are their concerns about using a Linux based
> LDM and an otherwise MacOS based lab, or must the whole thing be Linux.

Macs work well for virtually all of the other packages we provide.  The
issue with the LDM is relatively new and completely unexpected by us
given the use of Linux in the MacOS-X core.

> Wow, I'm somewhat less hopeful about our chances to upgrade our
> systems now.  Is there someone at Apple I can talk to to ask them to
> expedite their support?

The system administrator at OU is a registered (certified?) Mac developer.
That fact that his reporting of the problem to Apple resulted in no
fix was a huge disappointment to us (to say the least).  Given this,
I am not sure that you contacting anyone would have much of an impact
(unless you are a registered/certified Mac developer?).

> What about the folks at OU - is there someone
> there I can chat with about prospects?

The person we worked with is Dr. Mark Laufersweiler <address@hidden>.
I don't know how much time/effort Mark has put into the Mac issue
lately, however.

If your participation in the IDD (Internet Data Distribution system) came
down to yes if you have a Mac, or no otherwise, then I would cautiously
advise you that you could go down the Mac route, but you would have to
be aware of the problems that you _will_ experience.  I am not sure
that the SFSU approach is acceptable, but it is apparently working
well enough for them that they have not moved their LDM-related ingest
functions to some other platform.

> Thanks again for the help,

No worries.  I hope that something can be worked out so that you can
participate in the Unidata community!

By the way, I love the Crash Davis quote in your signature:

> "I don't believe in Quantum Physics when it comes to
> matters of the heart"
> -- Crash Davis, Bull Durham

Bull Durham is one of my favorite movies...

Cheers,

Tom
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Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: WAD-467112
Department: Support Platforms
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed