|
I mention this article because I think RHELCS has something
to do with LVS, although this being Linux J, you won't find
out from the article (I'm dropping my subscription, by the
way, after 3 bad articles on LVS).
The only clue you get about a possible involvement of LVS is
on p2 of the article where, after waxing lyrical in
market-speak on the virtues of RHELCS, the author finally
reveals what it does - it's high availability with load
balancing - and the load balancing used to be called
Piranha. Piranha has a special spot in my heart.
http://www.austintek.com/LVS/LVS-HOWTO/HOWTO/LVS-HOWTO.unsupported.html#pbs_nutshell
The references at the bottom of the RHELCS article are all
to Linux-HA websites and none to LVS.
The article aside, it would seem that RHELCS has all the gui
bells, whistles and monitoring tools that LVS lacks and that
are an essential part of a commercial product. But
underneath RHELCS is likely functionally equivalent to
ultramonkey. (Why isn't RH sending patches back to us?)
The author, Daniel Bartholomew, lives in NC (as I do). A
google search finds that he's a member of TriLUG (as I am,
but I don't go to meetings much and I don't recall having
met him). His postings to TriLUG show him to be a normal
helpful nice guy. google reveals no hits for the author with
RHEL Cluster Suite but he did post to one thread in the
Linux-HA mailing list.
Other articles in this month's Linux J, written by people
who aren't involved in the project they're writing about,
include an article on Beowulfs, by David Morton, who doesn't
post to the Beowulf mailing list.
So why have I, after reading 3 bad articles on LVS in Linux
J, not written a good one myself?
The bigger question then is why don't people involved in
projects write about them for magazines. An even bigger
question is why do I subscribe to Linux J, when I can't
think of anything I've learned from it in 10-15yrs of
subscribing (if I want to understand/install/use a project,
I usually download the docs). I enjoy reading Maddog's
articles in Linux J - he has a more global picture of Linux
and the social effects of computers than any of the coders.
o After the first bad article on LVS, I wrote to the
editors, listing the missconceptions and errors and offering
the services of the LVS team to review any further articles
on LVS. I got an unconvincing "sure, sure, we'll contact you
next time", and they never did.
o It takes time and after answering posts here and
maintaining the HOWTO, I want to do other things with my
time. Recently I posted a presentation I gave on LVS at UNC.
They've been asking for a presentation for over a year and I
haven't wanted to do it. Heaven's knows, if anyone should be
able to give a presentation on LVS, I should and anyone who
wants a presentation on LVS would reasonably wonder why I
don't have one ready to go and be ready to give next week.
The presentation took about a month of spare time to write.
o There seems to be little overlap between people who write
for magazines and people involved in the projects written
about. When I post here, it doesn't take real long (since I
know, before I post, whether I have the answer) and I'm
attempting to solve someone's problem. Most of the time I
get a reply telling me whether it was useful or not and I
learn something. Writing for a magazine would take a long
time and I won't hear anything back from the readers. Is
anyone any better off, or did the magazine just fill another
issue with content that takes up a subscriber's spare time,
but doesn't help them?
I wonder if all the other (non-technical) magazines I
subscribe to have as little to do with the topics of the
articles as does Linux J? Maybe I should drop all my
subscriptions.
Books on the other hand are usually written by experts in
the field. At least the books I read are written by
academics who are expected to write as part of their job and
the books enhance their reputation. I doubt if anyone
writing for magazines gets these benefits.
Joe
--
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant map
generator at http://www.wm7d.net/azproj.shtml
Homepage http://www.austintek.com/ It's GNU/Linux!
|
