It's been a while...
I can't think of enough bad things to say about Rational's flagship product right now; their Linux port is, to say the least, disappointing. My experiences so far:More playing with HarpiaI've been fighting with this for a couple of weeks now. This wouldn't be an issue if I just had the damned source for their kernel module, but I can't do a thing with this binary glop. Wherefor art thou, Subversion?
- Binary kernel module, with a source code stub. They're obviously hoping that the binary interface remains stable from kernel version to kernel version. Nope, sorry. The first big thing to hit them was the SMP prefixes change (for good reasons), which you have to back out of any new version you want to use ClearCase with. So far, the newest kernel I've successfully built with has been 2.2.17, and I'm making headway with 2.2.19pre17 (strlen_user is now strnlen_user, with new calling semantics; whee!), but I'm considering calling it a lost cause. Forget about 2.4, that's going to be a porting job for Rational.
- Beware slocate. When updatedb hit my MVFS-mounted partitions during it's 4:02 AM run, a non-fatal oops kicked off and MVFS wedged until reboot. I'm going to try this with 2.2.16 and see what happens. Certainly not slocate's fault; ksymoops places the blame squarely on the mvfs module.
- NFS problems. This is both a beef with Rational and with the automounter that ships with Red Hat 6.2 and 7.0. First, NFS exporting of MVFS filesystems seems to be broken (at least, broken when exporting to Linux clients; while I get errors, I can at least mount the export on a Solaris client...imagine that, Linux NFS problems), which is causing our environment some grief. Second, most of the autofs/amd/automounter implementations for Linux don't properly implement the Solaris /net automounting scheme. Luckily, the autofs4 work done by Jeremy Fitzhardinge results in a very fine automounting setup.
Why is noone using ADODB for database access in PHP? Here we have this standardized means for talking to a data repository, and everyone still insists on mysql_this() and mysql_that(). Bleh. I'm trying to decide if it's worth the effort to port Harpia to use ADODB (if the authors would even accept the patch; once I decide if I'm going to do it, I'll ask them before I expend the effort), or if I should just write something from scratch. Just what the world needs: yet-another-weblog. ;-)Solaris netbooting
The last patch that Neil provided seems to have done the trick, but I've lacked the time to post to linux-kernel regarding it to see if anyone has ideas on generalizing it so it might eventually make it into a real release. Plus, I still don't have a booting server; I have a feeling that bootparamd isn't passing some critical values to the client, which might also explain the inability to force an rsize value (which should also solve the NFS packet ordering problem, without a rather ugly kernel patch). More investigation is needed.rblcheck and relaytest
I swear I'll get back to these eventually. I've given era eriksson CVS write access for rblcheck (he has a few ethical issues with relaytest, for which I can't blame him, honestly), and he may be contributing a bit, but my goal is to clean up both and get out the release I've been meaning to get out for a very long time. ;-)Personal
The past two weeks have been hellish. I'm fighting a head cold that's a month old now, my mother ended up having surgery due to complications with older operations, my girlfriend's father had quadruple-bypass surgery, I'm trying to organize a move to a new apartment again (has it been a year already?) since what is essentially a one-room dorm isn't cutting it for space (hard to run a home office out of your living room), we're trying to save up the money to put my girlfriend through training for her MCSE (you can snicker and laugh right up until you see exactly how much you have to know to pass those exams). and work is gearing up for a new product release (meaning everyone is in emergency mode: "My issue has priority." "No, MY issue has priority."). One of these days, I'll slow down. Maybe.