No subject

the Enterprise version of LINUX. We'd prefer to use the Enterprise AS and not
the WS version, since not having DHCP, NFS, mail servers, etc, is unaccaptable.

Please advice what IRAF, STSDAS, and AIPS will likely do, so we can do the most
sensible LINUX upgrade, and only do it once. It would also be good if all three
of your groups set a common standard for astronomy and advertized this clearly
on your web-pages.

Thank you very much!

Rogier A. Windhorst         Tel: 1 480 965 7143 or 480 965 3561 (secr)
Professor of Astronomy      FAX: 480 965 7954  E: Rogier.Windhorst at asu.edu
JWST Interdisciplinary Scientist www.jwst.nasa.gov  or  www.stsci.edu/ngst
Dept. of Physics & Astronomy     ast.asu.edu/directory/facultydir.asp
Arizona State University         www.asu.edu/clas/hst/www/midUV.html
Street: Tyler Mall PSF-470       hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/2003/05/
P.O. Box 871504                  hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/2001/04/
Tempe, AZ 85287-1504, USA        hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/1996/29/


Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2004 15:08:11 -0700
From: Paul Scowen <scowen at mainex1.asu.edu>
To: DL.ORG.LA.PA <PHYAST.ALL at mainex1.asu.edu>
Subject: RedHat Linux

As many of you know, RedHat made a decision last year to essentially stop
supporting their free Linux distribution and are moving to a 2-product model:
Fedora which is a smaller, lower-featured version of the OS, and Enterprise
which is their flagship product.  Support for the older RH9 OS will stop
working as of April 30.  This does NOT mean the OS itself will stop working -
but all security patching will stop, as it did on Dec 31 for RH versions prior
to version 9.

Interestingly the industry is experimenting with Fedora to see if they can move
in that direction, but as yet no decisions have been made.  For example, RSI
(which markets IDL) has stated that they cannot as yet adopt Fedora as a
platform standard and will probably end up adopting Enterprise as their
standard, even though they state they are uncomfortable with the proprietary
nature of the product (they should talk...!).

ASU's IT dept. has negotiated a site license with RedHat for their Enterprise
product.  The plan comes in two flavours:  the WS license is intended for
workstations and is priced at $25 per year per machine and covers machines up
to two CPU's inboard.  The AS license is intended for servers and is priced at
$50 per year per machine and allows for any number greater than 2 CPU's - and
is therefore intended for Beowulf clusters, etc.

We are collecting information together to submit a block request for licenses
under this plan.  If you would like to participate in this, please send your
name and the IP address of the machines involved, which license you want/need,
along with a grant number to charge the fee to, to Lois Lehman at
lois.lehman at asu.edu.  Remember that the fee will be charged annually - this is
not a one-off.  Once we have them collected we will submit the order and
hopefully have media in hand to do the migration well before the April 30th
deadline.

As Jeff Hester pointed out at the Faculty meeting this afternoon there is
indeed a functional difference between the WS and AS versions or levels of
RedHat Enterprise - it is NOT simply a matter of how many CPU's they will
support.  The functionality matrix is available here:

http://www.redhat.com/support/service/sla/rhel3.html

and you will see that if you use half the things we've all been used to using
in UNIX you will indeed need to purchase the AS license to retain that level of
functionality - which is $50 per year per machine.

And one more piece for the puzzle - this is more explicit in what it
does, but note the box at the bottom of the page in terms of what server
functionality is missing from the workstation version:

    http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/features/

Paul A. Scowen
Research Professional
Mail:     Department of Physics & Astronomy
            PO Box 871504
            Arizona State University
            Tempe, AZ 85287-1504
Tel:       (480) 965-0938
FAX:     (480) 965-7954
Email:   paul.scowen at asu.edu
Web:    http://ast.asu.edu/scowen