[wplug] I'm a Linux whimp (need kernel help)

[Poyner, Brandon]

> 	Not as much Red Hat as the ISVs (although arguably no one tests
> an Enterprise-designed kernel like RH).  Case in point, Oracle checks
> for kernel checksum when requesting support in some cases.  
> 	If you can't grasp the logic behind this type of mandated
> package use there's likely little point in you running RHEL.

I grasp why ISVs care, but also grasp that everybody has different
needs.  I, for one, have started deploying RHEL AS 4 and I'm not using
Oracle or anything specifically requiring RHEL.  Why?  7 years of
security patches for $50/server/year (academic pricing).  I don't really
need to get into the extreme details of why RHEL over distribution X,
but trust me that it makes sense for our situation for such a relatively
low price.  Like many other people running servers I don't have the
luxury of being able to take systems down for an OS upgrade at any old
time.

> 	If this is true there is something decidedly wrong with your
> box.  On a functional system it's barely a blip on the radar.  Once
> again, if you can't understand / appreciate what the RHN daemon is all
> aboot you likely don't need to be running RHEL.  Also note - 
> it's not a required package - just pull it.

Checking one of my RHEL boxes the VSZ of rhnsd is 5 megabytes, but the
RSS is 532k.  I'd agree that it's a blip for me and really necessary
with RHEL if you want to stay secure/stable.  And yes, you can go
without it.  In fact I run a rather minimal install and turn off many
services that RHEL enables by default.

I have seen userland Linux in general becoming far too bloated without
adding any real new features.  The newest libraries are sacrificing
memory/storage for speed.  Even very simple things like /usr/bin/yes
have increased nearly 50% since RHEL 8.0.  Don't get me started on how
little disk space you could install earlier versions on.

RH8.0  -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 10488 Aug 29  2002 /usr/bin/yes
RH9    -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 11100 Oct 29  2003 /usr/bin/yes
FC2    -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 14532 May  4  2004 /usr/bin/yes
FC3    -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 15216 Oct  5  2004 /usr/bin/yes
RHEL 4 -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 15216 Feb 22 11:18 /usr/bin/yes

Brandon Poyner
Network Engineer III
CCAC - College Office
412-237-3086