Messages in this thread |  | | From | (G.W. Wettstein) | Date | Fri, 6 Sep 1996 12:16:26 CDT | Subject | Beta-test of sysklogd 1.3-3 with module support. |
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Good day to everyone in the global Linux community. Hopefully this note finds the end of the week going well for everyone.
I am just heading out the door to drive a concrete truck for the rest of the day and wanted to get this note out to everyone. Astute readers of my previous messages will note that I typically start the releases of sysklogd out with the latest news from the Upper Midwest. I wish that I had more time to compose this but the following is what brevity requires.
The weather has been hot and dry most of the summer. A radical departure from the last release in which I was snowbound in my office at home. The other big news is that I am no longer officially associated with the Roger Maris Cancer Center. Hence the reason why I am headed out the door to drive a concrete truck.
As many of you know the Cancer Center has used Linux since its very inception. There is now a network of 30+ Linux workstations that power the clinical information support system that we developed at the Cancer Center. The greatest pride of my life has been establishing this network and using Linux as an application base that positively affects the lives of each and every one of our Cancer Patients.
I have been forced by organizational politics to make some rather significant changes in my life. The most notable being my resignation from the Cancer Center. Those of you who know me personally know the magnitude of this decision. Leaving the Center and the patients that I have grown to love will leave a void in my life that will not be easily filled.
The positive news is that my departure was not forced (totally) by my selection and dependence on Linux as an application platform. It took some rather ugly machinations to force a situation where the top three people who were responsible for building and moving the Center forward were pressed into offering their resignations.
The dependence of the Cancer Center on Linux and our free software based applications was so strong that the mother organization extended a one year contract with me to maintain the system until a suitable replacement can be found. I cherish this as testimony of what an international collaboration of hard-working individuals can achieve. Individuals who are not satisfied with the status quo and believe that better mousetraps can still be constructed.
My heartfelt thanks go out to everyone who helped us accomplish what we did at the Center. I want everyone who has contributed to the kernel or to the free software movement to know that there are patients afflicted with a tragic disease who have experienced a better quality of life because of their efforts. I have been given the treasure of seeing the heartfelt thanks in people's eyes who have had better and faster care because of our software solutions. More time is the greatest gift that can be given to a terminally ill patient. My thanks to one and all who helped us extend this treasure to our patients.
Just as we ask patients who have been diagnosed with cancer to look forward rather than back so must I. Those who know me will typically acknowledge that I may be bowed but I will not be beaten. To that end I have taken a job with a construction company owned by a close personal friend. It has been an interesting summer as I have intertwined the maintenance of Perceptions and the Cancer Center with construction work.
I tell the above story to apologize in a manner for the delay in getting the beta-test of sysklogd out the door. As you can imagine the summer has been frantically busy and I have had to squeeze work on Linux and the package into whatever free minutes I could steal at the end of the day.
With apologies aside I would like to formally announce a call for beta-testers for the upcoming release of the sysklogd package. The sysklogd package contains a network aware version of syslogd and a companion program called klogd that is responsible for the logging and processing of kernel messages.
I would encourage everyone who would like to test this release to forward my an e-mail message. I will send all individuals wishing to test the package a 3 patch set which will update a virgin copy of sysklogd-1.3 to 1.3-3. The virgin 1.3 distribution can be found on all popular Linux archive sites.
After beta-testing my plans are to release a 2.0 version which is intended to be the companion to what will be the stable 2.0.x version of the kernel. I will continue forward with a 2.1 release so I would like to limit any additional changes primarily to bug fixes. The 2.1 version will be reserved for whatever new features are desired by the international Linux community.
The three patches address a number of bugs which were present in the 1.3 release and add a considerable amount of functionality, especially in the area of debugging kernel protection faults. The most notable feature is that klogd now supports debugging of protection faults which occur in loadable kernel modules. Astute readers of the kernel patches will note that I included documentation in the oops-tracing.txt file as to how this works.
My current e-mail address should stay valid for the immediate future. I have registered a domain name and have put my network at home onto the INTERNET. I can be reached through either one of the following e-mail addresses:
greg@wind.rmcc.com greg@wind.enjellic.com
I will look forward to hearing from anyone who would like to test the new distribution. I hope that it proves to be a useful contribution to the Linux software pool.
Future directions?
I'm not sure.
A lot of people have told me that I probably have a book in the story of Perceptions, Linux and the Cancer Center. I have already put some concept chapters together and will probably work some more on it when the weather gets cold. There are a lot of important elements: the power of intra-nets, the power of the INTERNET, the tremendous difficulties faced when confronting information technology issues in medicine and of course the tragic effects of technology gap. If nothing else it would be a palliative exercise.
I have given some thought to consulting. We have developed a tremendous amount of experience with data integration and integrating intranets into heterogenous computing environments. There is a tremendous role that Linux and free software solutions can play in the development of interrogatory agents and in building dynamically adaptable user-interfaces to corporate information stores. We made a huge difference in the Cancer Center and we only scratched the surface of what was possible.
In the meantime I have probably 3000 yards of concrete that my new boss needs me to break up and haul away. Hopefully the combination of accomplishing that, contributing sysklogd to the Linux community and the open skies of North Dakota will bring a needed sense of palliation.
I will look forward to hearing from the beta-testers. Have a pleasant weekend.
As always, Dr. G.W. Wettstein 4206 N. 19th Ave. INTERNET: greg@wind.rmcc.com/greg@wind.enjellic.com Fargo, ND 58102 Phone: 701-281-1686 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Snow removal teaches all the important elements of succesful corporate politics: 1.) Be the first one to work. 2.) Always signal your intentions before moving. 3.) Be damn sure you're driving something big enough to deal with anything that decides not to get out of your way." -- Dr. G.W. Wettstein Guerrilla Tactics for Corporate Survival
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