“A company that specializes in running Linux on Macs said Wednesday that it has landed a deal to supply the U.S. Navy with 260 Apple Xserve servers.
Terra Soft Solutions said the machines will be used as part of a sonar imaging system that defense contractor Lockheed Martin is building for the Navy. Rather than using the Mac OS, the Apple servers will run Terra Soft’s Yellow Dog Linux operating system.” Read more at CNET News.com
oh boy no osx. find it odd they’d not use it expecially since it comes included with it. strange
I don’t blame them, those X-servers look so nice!! I would also put linux on them if I had one!
Well, looks like important people are still deploying Linux. Yesterday, I read that SGI is doing a 128-processor Linux machine. I think most people are seeing right through the SCO case.
They probably just want to strip it down to the bare essentials, and they probably have more experiance stripping linux down, than OS X.
Or maybe it just has to do with politics…Linux is an “approved” OS Mac OS X Server isn’t?
Or perhaps the software they’re writing for this system is written for Linux and takes advantage of the MANY features that Linux has that OS X lacks.
Just a thought. BTW this isn’t a flame against OS X, just that it lacks a few of features that the Navy probably needs.
I like the X serves, but it’s a shame that the darwin BSD core isn’t as fleable as Linux. I just hope they get upgraded to the 64-bit G5 soon.
http://www.apple.com/xserve
“This brings to fruition two years of effort with an intense recent six months of research, coordination, prototype development and testing,” Terra Soft CEO Kai Staats said in a statement.
The above sentence explains why Linux was picked instead of MacOS X. It’s a good thing for Apple too because they provide the hardware (260 Xserve servers, that’s a lot of dough).
I doubt that Terra Soft had to pay for OS X. This is a far cry from the old clone days because Apple is probably getting a good price for the hardware. And this is great news for Apple because they could use a vote of confidence in their server hardware.
How well do X-Serves work with non-Darwin flavors of BSD? I hear the FreeBSD port to PowerPC is in VERY early stages, so I’ll ignore that for now, but has anybody ever run OpenBSD or NetBSD on one of these puppies? How’s the hardware support, stability, performance?
If you have never run Linux, on any platform, YDL is an amazing opportunity. I’d suggest it to anyone who is interested in learning Linux, but only has a Mac.
It really is no surprise that the DOD entities are getting on the PPC/Linux bandwagon. The math that these boxes can do is incredible, and I am sure the engineers at Terra Soft have busted there arses to make things work just right for the Navy. Way to go.
The answer to “Why not OS X?” is really quite simple. You don’t need Aqua to crunch sonar imaging data!
Kit
“but only has a Mac.”
Why the “only”?
“but only has a Mac.”
Why the “only”?
—————–
Because YDL only runs on Apples.
I assume there must be some special requirement that only this configuration (XServe + Linux) satisfies. Good thing YDL was there to get the deal. Go YDL!
“Because YDL only runs on Apples.”
But that’s not the context he was using it in. He was saying, if you want to use this great OS, but only have this computer, use this bla bla bla…
It makes it sound as if Linux on the Mac is second rate…. or that there is only one Linux distro for PPC… both statements are wrong.
I wonder if software licensing costs factored into the decision?
Can YDL take advantage of the altivec registers? Can any ppc linux program use altivec?
Or, perhaps the programs the Navy is using run just fine and dandy under Linux, but are not yet avalible under OS X. I mean, I know that just about any *nix program can be converted to run under OS X, but why go through the bother of that plus installing X windows on OS X.
I wonder if software licensing costs factored into the decision?
Maybe, but I doubt it.
Can YDL take advantage of the altivec registers? Can any ppc linux program use altivec?
Yes, any software running on the chips can. Just like you don’t need Windows to use MMX/SSE/SSE2/etc on x86 chips.
Or, perhaps the programs the Navy is using run just fine and dandy under Linux, but are not yet avalible under OS X. I mean, I know that just about any *nix program can be converted to run under OS X, but why go through the bother of that plus installing X windows on OS X.
As mentioned above, chances are this is it. They just want raw computation and don’t need the computer doing things like displaying a fancy interface. They just need a command line, so they went with Linux. OS X can give you a command line, but all the other stuff is still installed. Also, remember that the Linux kernel and all the rest of the software are far more flexable than a copy of OS X for when you’re customizing a computer to do one task and ONLY one task.
Any one got any hints on downloading yellowdog linux. I am running OS X2.6 but would really like to give linux a try. I have tried to download it from their web site but no luck! Any help would be appreciated.
http://www.linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=12
Apple hardware run Linux very well.
Mac OS X keeps getting better and better…
Aerospace engineers love Motorola processors. That means that much of the specialized sonar software is probably already running on embedded PPC & 68040’s [think 90%+ of military aircraft, tanks, radar stations…] already in service. Porting all that perfectly good code to intel just to prototype something–then changing it back to implement it in hardware–just seems like a waste of time.
Also, only Apple and IBM make any large numbers of PPC boxes that you can buy off the shelf. And IBM’s all use highly specialized hardware/software combos–you can’t easily get to bare metal–leaving only the macs. I also have a suspicion that the Xservers have obsenely simple hardware layouts. Reduced complexity, lower power requirement, 1-unit form factor…and compatibility with battle-proven software…what’s not to love.
Yeah, too bad The Navy doesnt agree with you. (sheesh)
Found it on a german site.
Kinda very old numbers but still gives you a picture.
http://drmirage.clustermonkey.org/~laz/pbook/rob.lmbench.txt
Mani P.
>It really is no surprise that the DOD entities are getting on
>the PPC/Linux bandwagon. The math that these boxes can do is
>incredible
Could you point me in a direction for comparisons between this platform, say dual 133 “cluster” nodes and comperable x86 type boxen with respect to floating point and integer math speeds?
Anyone who works in the DoD subcontracting circles knows that this press release is nothing big to write home about. Its the same as doing a report on a millionaire finding a penny on the street. A million dollars is chump change in circles where any budgetary proposal under $10 million usually doesn’t get given the time of day, and grants upwards of 100 million are more commonplace.
Has anyone used Yellow Dog? I’ve never used Linux, but tonight I’m going to download it.
IMO Apple should purchase YDL now while it is still early, and use them to work on Apples server efforts.
That is just My Opinion.
“IMO Apple should purchase YDL now while it is still early, and use them to work on Apples server efforts.”
I don’t know what the YDL team could offer Apple that Apple’s staff isn’t already tackling…. and doing so quite well.
That is unless you were suggesting that Apple scrap its OS server efforts, replace it with YDL then put Aqua on it. In that case… that’s just what Apple needs… Y.A.O.S.S. (Yet Another Operating System Switch).
“Anyone who works in the DoD subcontracting circles knows that this press release is nothing big to write home about. Its the same as doing a report on a millionaire finding a penny on the street. A million dollars is chump change in circles where any budgetary proposal under $10 million usually doesn’t get given the time of day, and grants upwards of 100 million are more commonplace.”
For a smallish Linux distro like YDL, it may not be the gold rush, but it isn’t chump change either.
“Anyone who works in the DoD subcontracting circles knows that this press release is nothing big to write home about. Its the same as doing a report on a millionaire finding a penny on the street. A million dollars is chump change in circles where any budgetary proposal under $10 million usually doesn’t get given the time of day, and grants upwards of 100 million are more commonplace.”
It is something to write home about if your small company is the one getting the subcontract which was probably also bidded by SAIC, IBM, Apple Federal and Dell.
On top of that they are purchasing 260 XServes as if that is common place to begin with, I don’t think it is.
sorry this post is replying to Kon:
“Anyone who works in the DoD subcontracting circles knows that this press release is nothing big to write home about. Its the same as doing a report on a millionaire finding a penny on the street. A million dollars is chump change in circles where any budgetary proposal under $10 million usually doesn’t get given the time of day, and grants upwards of 100 million are more commonplace.”
It is something to write home about if your small company is the one getting the subcontract which was probably also bidded by SAIC, IBM, Apple Federal and Dell.
On top of that they are purchasing 260 XServes as if that is common place to begin with, I don’t think it is.
Probably a couple of reasons:
1) Linux is a better server kernel. OS X has gotten a lot better, but as the lmbenchmarks point out, as of Darwin 5.1 (I guess that corresponds to about OS X 10.1 or so), OS X was half as fast running lmbench (which measures how fast the kernel is at running kernel-y stuff like mmap() and fork()). That gap probably hasn’t been closed, because if you look at the changelogs, most of the improvements to OS X have not been at the kernel level.
2) Linux is a more well-understood server platform at the moment, because OS X is relatively new in server space.
PS> As for AltiVec, the short answer is yes, LinuxPPC apps can use AltiVec. The long answer is it really doesn’t matter. The kernel doesn’t do anything that can really benifet from AltiVec, its involvement with the vector unit is limited to remembering to save the values of AltiVec registers when process switching. And its not like server apps do anything that would really benifet from AltiVec anyway.
Sorry, the above reasons are not true.
Terra Soft’s LinuXserve was chosen because it “meets the Navy’s requirements for form-factor, density, performance, and use of Linux.”
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/news/2003-08-06.shtml
Also,
the Xserve was chosen over that of competing options because it is: “twice as dense, less power consumptive, and higher performance” than the similarly-priced systems it’ll replace.
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/news/2003-08-06.shtml
Its not a question of imporved kernel or not, and even the kernel of MacOsx has been really imporved with Jaguar after Puma, and now with panther.
They use Linux because they have reasons to use it, as the software they want to use on the xserves, and what kind of modification they want to do in the kernel for their own purpose (which is more easier to do with linux than MacOsX).
The important point here, is that this deal is a very great success for apple, because their hardware is considered as robust, reliable, and fast, ans this is very good for the image of apple and their hardwares.
they really don’t need a dumbed down os that doesn’t let you recompile a kernel. They caN also use a faster filesystem with ydl. I think its a great purchase because Apple doesn’t lose. OS X isn’t for everyone, especially IM network environment, I deploy linux on almost every server we got.
Sorry, the above reasons are not true.
>>>>>>>
Care to explain why? Are you contesting that Linux is a better server kernel, that its more well understood, or that the first two reasons aren’t the reason for the purchase?
Terra Soft’s LinuXserve was chosen because it “meets the Navy’s requirements for form-factor, density, performance, and use of Linux.”
>>>>>>>
Why do you think using Linux is a requirement? Most likely because its got the best mix of properties as a small server OS.
is Yellowdog Linux, Im glad the navy is going to the Linux OS, OS X server is still to immature to put any kind of faith into it. Also guys Lockheed Martin has had a contract with Terrasoft for a long time now. Yellowdog Linux is more mature than OS X and is more robust.
Haven’t used the latest-greatest incarnations of OS X Server, but I’m not sure it’s entirely politics; given the complexity of OS X Server, and given some problems we’ve had in our organization with OS X Server stability, not to mention issues like filesystem performance, inexplicable changes between updates like lowering AppleFileServer priority, etc., it would be a hard sell, IMHO, trust mission-critical systems to OS X Server.
I can see it now:
“Captain, we had to take down the XServe boxes to run in singleuser mode. After we fsck’ed the partitions,we found that fsck couldn’t fix the problem, so we’re running some customized Drive 10 CDs we made. Took about 15 minutes to boot the CDs; it’ll only take 2 hours or so to rebuild the volume structure trees. After that, we have to make sure to run Disk Utility again to run Repair Permissions. That performance problem we’ve been having, sir? Uh, yes sir, as it turns out, HFS+ isn’t as efficient at using free space as we thought, so we need to defrag the drives. Should only take a couple of hours per machine. And even though it’s not necessary anymore, we found on some of the machines we had to run update_prebinding -root / just to make sure. We should be up and going in a matter of hours!”
Of course I dont know what are the requirements set by Navy. However one of the reasons might be that Mac OS X server is rather lightweight. We did test Mac server ~1.5 month ago. The price was great so why not. However it tourns out that OS X server is not designed for heavy load. For example I could not get it above 170 virtual servers. I thought that I am doing something wrong but I found similar reports on the internet (dont asks for links. I dont collect them, if really needed look for questions about OS X and possible ISP applications). There are also other server applications that confirmed the first impression). In general that would be a confirmation of Hubbards opinion that OS is designed for small Mac shops. Now if you look at specs of incomming Panther (10.3) server it also is not designed to work under heavy load ( for example OpenLDAP capabilities under OS X are 10-15 times lower that you could get form the software without tweaking)
So maybe Navy needs OS that could work under more demanding conditions. Still it tells that the hardware is very nice.
What are the advantages of the YDL over, say, debian/ppc ?
Or perhaps the software they’re writing for this system is written for Linux and takes advantage of the MANY features that Linux has that OS X lacks.
Such as? I am curious what is it that Linux can do that Mac OS X can’t.
BTW…this too is not a flame…I honestly am curious.
Perhaps the Navy has their own in-house Linux distro. After all Linux is open source…they could download the source code…make their own mods for their own security protocals and start distributing among themselves. That is just a hypothesis why that migh consider Linux. After all, they have their own in-house software engineers.
Further, it sure is cheaper for them to build and configure Linux the way they want rathr than to deal with the licensing problems they may run into with other OSes.
RE: Jason (IP: —.dsl.sntc01.pacbell.net)
Bascule, IIRC, outlined what was missing from MacOS X in comparison to the FreeBSD and Solaris kernel. Maybe that is what was lacking?
RE: regeya (IP: —.rasserver.net)
Firstly, why were you using HFS+ when using UFS on the server is the main filesystem that is being pushed. Secondly, why use Apple share when one can use OpenLDAP + NFS and if you want security, pipe NFS through OpenSSH.
In another (german) article it is stated that the Navy want Xserve clusters. So I think thats the main reason for Linux. The clustering capabilities of Linux are much more advanced (and free :-))
Bascule, IIRC, outlined what was missing from MacOS X in comparison to the FreeBSD and Solaris kernel. Maybe that is what was lacking?
Where?
Is it in another forum? Because I tried running “find in this page” in Mozilla Firebird and I am getting no results.
I would be interesting in reading the differences.
I have seen a few posted here and there, but nothing from Bascule, IIRC.
The clustering issue makes a lot of sense to me. I can’t really see OS X really pushing as hard on clustering as Linux…course that could change with Panther and the new server software Apple is developing.
Course, I really doubt that the Navy is interested in having their machines displaying pretty/translucent interfaces. My guess is that they could give a crap about the appearance of any interfaces they use. If it gets the job done then it is fine for them. It isn’t a consumer machine.
Linux won on every server benchmark last time on Byte. OS X is a poorer performer even on Xserver.
isnt the itunes store running purely on xservers? I would guess that is a heavy load application.
…actually runs on Solaris
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.applemusic.com
Look in the archives. He is a big *BSD and Solaris fan.
Actually apple.com is running on Mac OS X according to Netcraft and if you go to applemusic.com in a browser it just redirects you to apple.com/music. It looks like Apple is just using the Solaris to redirect.
the apple music store is running on os x server, not solaris
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/06/02/xserve/
i ran ydl 3.0 on my iMac for about 3 months and it was
excellent. no problems at all. i have no complains but my wife was so used to os ox that i had to re-install it.
but give it a try if you want to try linux on your mac. you won’t regret.
– 2501
Such as? I am curious what is it that Linux can do that Mac OS X can’t.
This link might give you a few ideas why YDL is a favorable option:
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/why/comments.shtml
Also, http://conferences.oreilly.com/presentations/macosx02/peterlin_ed.p…
Important highlights:
*BSD is a SUPERSET of Mac OS X and Darwin
10.2 is much more complete, but still not a perfect mirror of the other *BSDs
Just because Steve says its BSD doesn’t mean its MODERN BSD.
(It was forked from 4.2 BSD.)
Also there are major differences in shared library handling which cause problems for systems that use dynamic loadable modules. (Darwin shared libraries end in .dynlib vs. the typical .so and Darwin lacks the dl* functions but has a similar, but completely incompabitble set or replacements)
In addition, as others have pointed out, MacOS X Server is lacking in crucial areas such as performance, scalability, and clustering capabilities.
I’m not saying it’s a bad server OS, just that Linux has some extra features that MacOS X Server doesn’t have (yet)
I work with the realities of enterprise computing every day by helping maintain it, and you really do need to make the “right choice” when choosing your hardware and software base. Lockheed Martin believes they’ve done so, and I wish them the best in their endeavors with it.
There seems to be an impression that Mac OS X Server is not a serious server system, that it is a hacked-up version of Mac OS X designed to look pretty for small-time sysadmins running on Macintosh hardware. This is, of course, absurd; there is much more to Mac OS X Server than the interface. Mac OS X Server has a ways to go in maturing and becoming a good server system, and this is confirmed by plenty of benchmarks and testimonials; probably a real reason why Lockheed Martin weren’t interested in it.
so painfull ,they didnot choose your MacOsx
oh ah MAC OS X fanatics are hurted
Why should any Mac fanatics be hurted? The Navy’s still using Apple boxes…that’s still a big win.
i mean os not hardware
If this really is going into a non research application, which would suprize me, the are lots of rules about the parts of the system. It is a small number of nodes but that would be a minor part of a operational procurement. The work and lifecycle would be far more costly then any peice of hardware. The hardware is supportable in the long term and platform independant if it runs linux. Even if apps have to be re-optimized the navy doesn’t need apple. And so they are getting nice hardware without the tie in of porting. It is a really easy decision. Especially if the code is already ppc optimised. I would imagine the boxes themselves are being heavily modified for the application. But who knows could just be someone’s congressman made a call. Assuming rationality in goverment policy is always a losing battle.
I work with the realities of enterprise computing every day by helping maintain it, and you really do need to make the “right choice” when choosing your hardware and software base. Lockheed Martin believes they’ve done so, and I wish them the best in their endeavors with it.
There seems to be an impression that Mac OS X Server is not a serious server system, that it is a hacked-up version of Mac OS X designed to look pretty for small-time sysadmins running on Macintosh hardware. This is, of course, absurd; there is much more to Mac OS X Server than the interface. Mac OS X Server has a ways to go in maturing and becoming a good server system, and this is confirmed by plenty of benchmarks and testimonials; probably a real reason why Lockheed Martin weren’t interested in it.
I used to work for Lockheed Martin. You are right…they wouldn’t know what made a computer system if it bit them on the ass. Glad I’ve moved on to greener pastures.
I used to work for Lockheed Martin. You are right…they wouldn’t know what made a computer system if it bit them on the ass. Glad I’ve moved on to greener pastures.
Umm, is that supposed to be some sort of assault on Linux?
Actually apple.com is running on Mac OS X according to Netcraft and if you go to applemusic.com in a browser it just redirects you to apple.com/music. It looks like Apple is just using the Solaris to redirect.
I just tried Netcraft to detect what OS Apple is using to host. It came back as Solaris. It might also be since Apple uses Akamai for their music store (at least I think it is restricted to just the music store – guess I’ll have to check with the people I know at Akamai and Apple to see if everything of Apple’s is hosted at Akamai).
I wonder if what we are seeing is the result of Netcraft not being able to detect properly an OS X server? All over the place you hear that Apple’s site is running on OS X. Course it could be them just picking up on something hosted at Akamai.
Umm, is that supposed to be some sort of assault on Linux?
No. Just that they probably don’t realize that OS X is a good platform. Lockheed Martin has a habit of just grabbing something without really seeing if it meets their needs.
Linux is fine. Why would I attack something that I use anyway?
I am critical of Lockheed…not Linux.
I think they glossed OS X over and simply made assumptions about it. I found that is what often happened there.
No. Just that they probably don’t realize that OS X is a good platform. Lockheed Martin has a habit of just grabbing something without really seeing if it meets their needs.
Nobody disputes that Mac OS X is a good system, but that doesn’t mean it was the best for the job, as the previous posts of myself and others have indicated, it probably would not have been as good of a “fit” for this project as Linux is. Given that they ended up using PPC hardware, I have little doubt that they carefully considered OS X, NetBSD, and Linux, possibly even OpenBSD.
I agree with you totally. For small to medium sized workgroups MacOSX Server does a very good job. We run dhcp, file, web, ftp, smb, print and database services on one MacOSX box and it is fine.
Setup is fast, admin is easy, updates don’t break or slow down the server and viruses are almost non-existant.
It may not break speed records but we are running it on an old G3 also.
1. MacOS X, good or not, is not as tested as Linux. How are you going to ensure 3 years of uptime when it hasn’t been around for all that long? This is a real concern: win95, should you recall, had a bug which would crash it after ~90 days of uptime _no matter what_. It wasn’t caught for a long time because no one ever saw those kinds of uptime, but you get the point. No one wants high-uptime-needed stuff on untested software and/or hardware.
2. MacOS X performance is good, but it’s not as fast as Linux. It’s been proven over and over on benchmarks. Nothing wrong with that, but if you’re going for the bang-buck factor, Linux is top-notch.
I wonder if IBM should try to get into the XServe market with Linux… I know I would consider using them.
-Erwos