This case applies to most Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, from i386 to i686 machines, i’ve successfully used it on our Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 4 (Nahant Update 6):
To use it for other systems / architectures, check the packages given at (check).

1. Get the main packages

(check) http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/yum/

$wget http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/yum/yum-2.4.2-0.4.el4.rf.noarch.rpm

(check) http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/
search.php?query=libsqlite.so.0&submit=Search+…&system=&arch=

$wget ftp://fr2.rpmfind.net/linux/PLD/dists/ac/ready/i386/libsqlite-2.8.15-1.i386.rpm

(check) http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/
search.php?query=python-elementtree&submit=Search+…&system=&arch=

$wget ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/dag/redhat/el4/en/i386/dag/RPMS/python-elementtree-1.2.6-7.el4.rf.i386.rpm

(check) http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/
search.php?query=python-sqlite&submit=Search+…&system=&arch=

$wget ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/dag/redhat/el4/en/i386/dag/RPMS/python-sqlite-0.5.0-1.2.el4.rf.i386.rpm

(check) http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/
search.php?query=urlgrabber&submit=Search+…&system=&arch=

$wget ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/dag/redhat/el4/en/x86_64/dag/RPMS/python-urlgrabber-2.9.7-1.2.el4.rf.noarch.rpm

2. Install Rpm’s

$rpm -ivh libsqlite-2.8.15-1.i386.rpm
$rpm -ivh python-elementtree-1.2.6-7.el4.rf.i386.rpm
$rpm -ivh python-sqlite-0.5.0-1.2.el4.rf.i386.rpm
$rpm -ivh python-urlgrabber-2.9.7-1.2.el4.rf.noarch.rpm
$rpm -ivh yum-2.4.2-0.4.el4.rf.noarch.rpm

3. Setup the Repository
(check) http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/rpmforge-release/

$wget http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el4.rf.i386.rpm
$rpm -ivh rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el4.rf.i386.rpm

4. Yum update all packages

$yum update

Source: Here

The second and also the last release candidate for Mandriva Linux 2010 is now available on public mirrors: “This RC2 version is available through following images: Free version, 32 and 64 bit DVDs; One version, KDE or GNOME (available on Monday); and Virtual images based on One images (available on Monday). These ISOs are hybrid ISOs which means you can dump it on an USB key to install it. Use Mandriva-seed available in ISOs repository, it’s as easy as a click! This RC2 version is all focused on bug fixing but you will find also Moblin, KDE 4.3.2, GNOME 2.28, Poulsbo, guest account, and Nepomuk. Please note that final graphical design will be available only in final release. Please do not use this RC2 version to upgrade an existing Mandriva Linux installation.” See the release announcement and release notes for more details. Download: mandriva-linux-free-rc2-2010-i586.iso (3,978MB, MD5), mandriva-linux-free-rc2-2010-x86_64.iso (3,998MB, MD5).

Source : Here

Alexander Tratsevskiy has announced the release of Calculate Linux 9.9, a Gentoo-based desktop and server distribution. Changes in this version include: built on top of Calculate Linux Scratch; switch to Aufs as the live file system; replaced XChat with Konversation and GStarDict with GoldenDict, added KDE Partition Manager; Mozilla Firefox is now the default web browser; Compiz has been integrated with the Xfce desktop; added proprietary NVIDIA driver to the CLDX edition; updated to Linux kernel 2.6.30 and KDE 4.3; initrd and kernel are now packed using LZMA compressions; various other speed optimisations. Here is the full press release (in Russian). Calculate Linux comes in the form of live DVDs with either KDE (CLD) or Xfce (CLDX) desktops; download the ISO images from here: cld-9.9-i686.iso(1,712MB, MD5, torrent), cldx-9.9-i686.iso (1,015MB, MD5, torrent), cld-9.9-x86_64.iso (1,804MB, MD5, torrent), cldx-9.9-x86_64.iso (1,144MB, MD5, torrent).

Source : distrowatch.com

There are a lot of differences between Linux version 2.4 and 2.6, so first we’ll cover the tuning issues that are the same in both 2.4 and 2.6. To change TCP settings in, you add the entries below to the file /etc/sysctl.conf, and then run “sysctl -p”.

Like all operating systems, the default maximum Linux TCP buffer sizes are way too small. I suggest changing them to the following settings:

  # increase TCP max buffer size setable using setsockopt()
  net.core.rmem_max = 16777216
  net.core.wmem_max = 16777216
  # increase Linux autotuning TCP buffer limits
  # min, default, and max number of bytes to use
  # set max to at least 4MB, or higher if you use very high BDP paths
  net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 4096 87380 16777216
  net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 4096 65536 16777216

You should also verify that the following are all set to the default value of 1

  sysctl net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling
  sysctl net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps
  sysctl net.ipv4.tcp_sack

Note: you should leave tcp_mem alone. The defaults are fine.

Another thing you can try that may help increase TCP throughput is to increase the size of the interface queue. To do this, do the following:

     ifconfig eth0 txqueuelen 1000

I’ve seen increases in bandwidth of up to 8x by doing this on some long, fast paths. This is only a good idea for Gigabit Ethernet connected hosts, and may have other side effects such as uneven sharing between multiple streams.

Also, I’ve been told that for some network paths, using the Linux ‘tc’ (traffic control) system to pace traffic out of the host can help improve total throughput.

Starting with Linux 2.4, Linux has implemented a sender-side autotuning mechanism, so that setting the optimal buffer size on the sender is not needed. This assumes you have set large buffers on the receive side, as the sending buffer will not grow beyond the size of the receive buffer.

However, Linux 2.4 has some other strange behavior that one needs to be aware of. For example: The value for ssthresh for a given path is cached in the routing table. This means that if a connection has has a retransmission and reduces its window, then all connections to that host for the next 10 minutes will use a reduced window size, and not even try to increase its window. The only way to disable this behavior is to do the following before all new connections (you must be root):

       sysctl -w net.ipv4.route.flush=1

More information on various tuning parameters for Linux 2.4 are available in the Ipsysctl tutorial .

Starting in Linux 2.6.7 (and back-ported to 2.4.27), linux includes alternative congestion control algorithms beside the traditional ‘reno’ algorithm. These are designed to recover quickly from packet loss on high-speed WANs.

Linux 2.6 also includes and both send and receiver-side automatic buffer tuning (up to the maximum sizes specified above). There is also a setting to fix the ssthresh caching weirdness described above.

There are a couple additional sysctl settings for 2.6:

   # don't cache ssthresh from previous connection
   net.ipv4.tcp_no_metrics_save = 1
   net.ipv4.tcp_moderate_rcvbuf = 1
   # recommended to increase this for 1000 BT or higher
   net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 2500
   # for 10 GigE, use this
   # net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 30000

Starting with version 2.6.13, Linux supports pluggable congestion control algorithms . The congestion control algorithm used is set using the sysctl variablenet.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control, which is set to cubic or reno by default, depending on which version of the 2.6 kernel you are using.

To get a list of congestion control algorithms that are available in your kernel, run:

   sysctl net.ipv4.tcp_available_congestion_control

The choice of congestion control options is selected when you build the kernel. The following are some of the options are available in the 2.6.23 kernel:

• reno: Traditional TCP used by almost all other OSes. (default)
• cubic: CUBIC-TCP (NOTE: There is a cubic bug in the Linux 2.6.18 kernel. Use 2.6.19 or higher!)
• bic: BIC-TCP
• htcp: Hamilton TCP
• vegas: TCP Vegas
• westwood: optimized for lossy networks

For very long fast paths, I suggest trying cubic or htcp if reno is not is not performing as desired. To set this, do the following:

	sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control=htcp

More information on each of these algorithms and some results can be found here .

More information on tuning parameters and defaults for Linux 2.6 are available in the file ip-sysctl.txt, which is part of the 2.6 source distribution.

Warning on Large MTUs: If you have configured your Linux host to use 9K MTUs, but the connection is using 1500 byte packets, then you actually need 9/1.5 = 6 times more buffer space in order to fill the pipe. In fact some device drivers only allocate memory in power of two sizes, so you may even need 16/1.5 = 11 times more buffer space!

And finally a warning for both 2.4 and 2.6: for very large BDP paths where the TCP window is > 20 MB, you are likely to hit the Linux SACK implementation problem. If Linux has too many packets in flight when it gets a SACK event, it takes too long to located the SACKed packet, and you get a TCP timeout and CWND goes back to 1 packet. Restricting the TCP buffer size to about 12 MB seems to avoid this problem, but clearly limits your total throughput. Another solution is to disable SACK.

If you are still running Linux 2.2, upgrade! If this is not possible, add the following to /etc/rc.d/rc.local

   echo 8388608 > /proc/sys/net/core/wmem_max
   echo 8388608 > /proc/sys/net/core/rmem_max
   echo 65536 > /proc/sys/net/core/rmem_default
   echo 65536 > /proc/sys/net/core/wmem_default

Source Here

Whoever finds Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Subscriptions tough sell to management used for customer service is time Microsoft license for Windows must emphasize that there are more factors to consider, especially the return on investment, Red Hat officials said Friday.

The question was raised by a participant during a session of questions and answers between senior officials from Red Hat and the public at Red Hat Summit 2009 Conference in Chicago. The participant said that it was difficult to convince policy makers to move away from windows and buy Red Hat Linux. They are sold on a cost of acquisition time Microsoft updates and security, “he said. “With the subscription model for RHEL, you must continue to pay,” said the participant.

[Red Hat is looking for ways to establish standards for the rest, as InfoWorld has reviewed. ]

Technically, Linux is more stable and better than Windows, but management focuses on the duel from a different perspective, “he said. Management sees “a subscription model as an expense that you have forever,” said the participant, who asked for a management approach to persuade to embrace open source.

Red Hat officials said return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership. “We have many, many, many data and many models to prove that what we have is a better investment over time,” said Paul Cormier, executive vice president of Red Hat and president of products and technologies.

Red Hat Linux can save on personnel costs related to IT management, “said Katrinka McCallum, vice president for the unity of management solutions company Red Hat. “[Users] can do much more with some management tools,” she said. Buyers should consider hard money, business value, reliability and cost of people, “says McCallum.

From a total cost of ownership (TCO) perpsective, Red Hat comes out ahead each time, claimed Marco Bill-Peter, vice-president of group support Red Hat.

Application Server for appsAlso Ruby conference this week, company officials boasted separate projects to provide an application server for Ruby applications and also make it easier to use Red Hat technologies.

TorqueBox is a project to provide an application to run Ruby applications. A successor to the Rails project JBoss TorqueBox is an open source effort that may or may not become a product, “said Bob McWhirter, an engineer at Red Hat’s JBoss.

With TorqueBox, Ruby applications could benefit similar to what Java has had with Java application servers. She could run Ruby on Rails applications as well.

“I just think we have seen that [as] Java matured over the years, we finally have an application server for Java,” said McWhirter. “Application servers solve many problems we have in development of enterprise software and Ruby has no application server. Ruby did not get that maturity yet. I believe in providing a application server in Ruby, it makes life easier for developers. ”

The Red Hat initiativeRed Andiamo Andiamo’s effort aims to make it easier to use its products. Before any initiative JBoss, Andiamo is to make Red Hat products more accessible to more people. Technologies such as JBoss Enterprise Application Platform will be equipped with technology Andiamo. Andiamo is an Italian word meaning “forward,” said Mark Little, vice president of Red Hat engineering for middleware.

“Any effort to strengthen our out-of-the-box experience, which makes it easier to manage everything we do”, such as configuration and management of performance, Little said. “Our audience has changed,” Little said. “Not only for developers of cutting edge [more].”

Red Hat has announced the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.4: “Red Hat is pleased to announce the availability of the latest update of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, release 5.4. New Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 is a reorganization of the material release note, now the release notes are a condensed set of highlights major version. The following list summarizes the enhancements in this version:

* Hardware
  - 10 GigE drivers with GRO support
  - FCoE support on standard NICs
  - SR I/OV support

* System
  - Kernel tracepoints for systemtap use
  - Per process I/O accounting
  - FIEMAP support

* Virtualization
  - Hypervisor scalability to 192 cpus
  - Additional hypervisor - Kernel Based Virtual Machine
    (KVM)

Kernel Version:
kernel-2.6.18-164.el5

Family of products:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Advanced Platform for x86,
   AMD64/Intel(r) 64, Itanium Processor Family, Power
   Systems and System z
 - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Server for x86,
   AMD64/Intel(r) 64, Itanium Processor Family, Power
   Systems and System z
 - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop for x86 and
   AMD64/Intel(r) 64