As expected, VMware has decided to make VMware Server free to use. VMware Server is a nice product that has some great methods for creating, managing and deploying virtual machines. It is a great product for consolidation and testing.
At the same time, Microsoft has made VirtualPC free. This is the desktop product rather than the server product, Windows Virtual Server 2005, which is already free.
The Sun Fire T1000 Server on loan from Sun in the US arrived just a couple of weeks ago, but its taken me a while to find the time to set up the machine and start some testing.
While the T2000 I tested a couple of months ago was a general purpose server, the T1000 is designed more as a compute node, where the primary purpose is to make use of the power of the T1 CPU, rather than to provide storage. That means it supports only two SATA disks, and is therefore in a much smaller package, at 1U high and about 2/3rds the depth of the T2000.
The Sun Fire T1000 Server on loan from Sun in the US arrived just a couple of weeks ago, but its taken me a while to find the time to set up the machine and start some testing.
While the T2000 I tested a couple of months ago was a general purpose server, the T1000 is designed more as a computer node, where the primary purpose is to make use of the power of the T1 CPU, rather than to provide storage. That means it supports only two SATA disks, and is therefore in a much smaller package, at 1U high and about 2/3rds the depth of the T2000.
I had a query from a reader today as a follow up to my System Administrators Toolkit: Time and event management article at developerWorks:
How do I execute a script at a specific interval, for example 28 days, rather than on a specific day or date?
It is the one limitation of cron that it doesn’t support such an interval, although there are some systems (including many Linux installations) that provide an alternative method. There are some solutions to the problem that will work on any platform that uses the cron/at system.
One way is to run the script every 7 days, and have it record how many times it’s been called in a file.
All you have to do is, in the script, load the current count, work out if this is the fourth time, and run the script accordingly.
For example:
count=`cat counter`
count=`expr $count + 1`
if [ $count -eq 4 ]
then
echo 0 >counter
echo 4th time called, going for it
# Do everything else
else
echo $count >counter
fi
I suggest you put the counter file into a usable location, but you get the idea.
The other alternative is to use at, rather than cron, and then add a line in the script to execute the script again in 28 days time. For example, using this line at the end of your script:
at 9pm + 28 days <myscript .sh
Because you are specifying the same time, but a different day, this will execute at the same time every 28 days.
If your script takes a long time to process and you run it, for example, at 23:59, put the ‘at’ line at the start of the script, rather than the end, so that the request gets registered on the same day.
Finding an alternative method of getting into your data is becoming big business. Google is a perfect example, not only does their search engine provide the information in different ways, but the various extensions they have made to that information (Froogle, Google Local) have turned publicly available, but largely unformatted information into something that has structure and utility.
WinFS, which now now been Dropped from Longhorn, was going to offer a different way of accessing and referring to the information you store in files on your computer, and on others. Again, there have been different, and previous, attempts at this. Apple's Spotlight provides methods of searching the document, the comments and tags you add to documents and by other metadata attached to files.
Finding an alternative method of getting into your data is becoming big business. Google is a perfect example, not only does their search engine provide the information in different ways, but the various extensions they have made to that information (Froogle, Google Local) have turned publicly available, but largely unformatted information into something that has structure and utility.
WinFS, which now now been Dropped from Longhorn, was going to offer a different way of accessing and referring to the information you store in files on your computer, and on others. Again, there have been different, and previous, attempts at this. Apple's Spotlight provides methods of searching the document, the comments and tags you add to documents and by other metadata attached to files.
Finding an alternative method of getting into your data is becoming big business. Google is a perfect example, not only does their search engine provide the information in different ways, but the various extensions they have made to that information (Froogle, Google Local) have turned publicly available, but largely unformatted information into something that has structure and utility.
WinFS, which now now been Dropped from Longhorn was going to offer a different way of accessing and referring to the information you store in files on your computer, and on others. Again, there have been different, and previous attempts at this. Apple's Spotlight provides methods of searching the document, the comments and tags you add to documents and by other metadata attached to files.
Well, Apple have started the trend, and I suspect many others will follow. Just as CRT TVs are disappearing, Apple have dropped the CRT from their eMac and introduced an LCD version.
I still like CRTs, and there are still colour issues with many LCDs that need to be addressed (most cannot match even a cheap CRT for colour range), but LCDs have many other advantages, like lower power costs, lower desk space costs, and are generally easier on the eyes.
Well, Apple have started the trend, and I suspect many others will follow. Just as CRT TVs are disappearing, Apple have dropped the CRT from their eMac and introduced an LCD version.
I still like CRTs, and there are still colour issues with many LCDs that need to be addressed (most cannot match even a cheap CRT for colour range), but LCDs have many other advantages, like lower power costs, lower desk space costs, and are generally easier on the eyes.
Well, Apple have started the trend, and I suspect many others will follow. Just as CRT TVs are disappearing, Apple have dropped the CRT from their eMac and introduced an LCD version.
I still like CRTs, and there are still colour issues with many LCDs that need to be addressed (most cannot match even a cheap CRT for colour range), but LCDs have many other advantages, like lower power costs, lower desk space costs, and are generally easier on the eyes.