[Web4lib] blue sky thinking

Thu Jul 27 14:22:19 EDT 2006

Ok, I'm going to try very hard to stop posting on this point (I'm sure everyone is getting tired of me), but your experience very much relates to why I posted my response in the first place.

Your experience a year ago pretty much approximates my experience with Debian a month ago.  It took me about a week to get it installed, and another week to give up on trying to get all the packages I needed to play nice with each other.  I probably could have eventually figured it out, but I was completely demoralized.

And that's what made my jaw hit the floor with Ubuntu Server's LAMP install.  And I don't mean to sound like an advertisement for Ubuntu.  It's not a panacea, and it does still have a learning curve, but it is a very good example of what can happen when the focus of development is on how the product is used.

The LAMP install comes with Apache2, MySQL, PHP, Perl, etc. pre-installed.  Packages for software come out soon and often.  Package installation, and even system upgrades can often be performed with a single command, and does not even require a reboot.  The system is pre-hardened for security.  

More significantly, there is a crazy amount of (often informal) online documentation for just about every step in the process that isn't clear.  For just about every moment of head scratching that I had (I never got to fist-pounding), there seemed to be a wiki entry or a blog post or some kind of step-by-step article covering it.  The community is responsive, vocal, and very inclined to help.

I was absolutely stunned at how quickly I was able to get the server up and running and production-ready, and I'm excited about this use-oriented direction that open-source technology is taking, the headway that is being made, and the size and strength of the community.  There are other examples (Wordpress, for instance).  It's an opportunity to approach technology and gain experience with it without having to be an expert first.

Should you jump into something like this for a production server with no prior experience?  Probably not.  The more I think about it, and the more responses I read, the more I am drawn to the idea of using a hosting service.  But I still think that there is a benefit from having an inexpensive in-house server, at least for development.  It provides a very good environment for trying out products, technologies, etc., and getting comfortable.  And that last bit is the most important part.  The more comfortable we are, the easier it is for us to learn, and perhaps to innovate!

Keith

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org [mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] 
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 11:25 AM
To: web4lib
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] blue sky thinking

Keith D. Engwall wrote:
> Aside from having a good firewall to sit behind, what is the biggest reason against doing this in-house?
>
> We just put together an Ubuntu linux server for about $600 with 1 GB of RAM and 400 GB of storage space.  
>
>
>   
Having heard many statements/arguments for using open source software, about a year ago I decided to do the experiment myself. I meant to keep notes about how long things took me, what problems I ran into, etc. but it was so frustrating that I just couldn't immortalize it in a fixed form. But it went something like this:

1) Get operating system and burn to disk. Since I was starting with a blank slate, I had to find a copy of the OS and get it onto a CD so I could install it. The particular application I was aiming at wanted that to be Debian. This was easy, maybe a half hour (note: I read the install documentation before downloading most software).

2) Insert disk and boot up. Answer install questions. Here I got stuck for an entire afternoon, believe it or not. First, there were lots of questions to which I did not know the answer, so I was back to my other machine to read more documentation. Then there was one menu that absolutely stumped me -- not because I didn't know the answer, but because I didn't know how to make an "x" appear before my choices. I moved the cursor (tab tab tab) to the right spot and typed "x" - nothing. I typed "a" "b" -- basically I went through the entire keyboard
- nothing. Added "ctrl" before them - nothing. Shift - nothing. I looked at the online documentation. It just said "select the ones you wish to install." Nothing on how to select. The next day I tried again, and only by accident did I hit the space bar - BINGO. So I wasted 4 hours because nowhere did it say that the way to select an item in a menu is to use the space bar. OK. I got over that.

3) I now had a basic OS installed, but in order to run my app I would need things like MySQL, Apache, etc. I would need "packages." I have some experience with Red Hat (until they abandoned all of us desktop users), with Suse, and with something else that I don't remember now. 
Each has its own way to install software. I was on the phone to a friend who is quite well versed in Unix, so he offered to help me go through the package process. The first thing he told me to do was type "dselect". De-select? To get things? No, it means something like debian select, and you go through menus to get to a huge list of possible software packages to select and install. All I can remember about this is hours spent going through lists, selecting something I needed, only to get a screen saying something about dependencies, but no explanation of what I should DO about them. Many many hours. Eventually, I had stuff installed, but no idea if any of it would work. I didn't write it down, but this took days -- days because I would occasionally install the wrong thing and then want to uninstall it, or I'd go to install something and it would ask me questions I couldn't answer. In the end, the thing that always frustrates me about Unix is that I don't know WHERE my installed software is. There's a logic to it all, I'm sure, but I've yet to find a clear explanation.

4) Now I installed the app I wanted to run, although it then needed some changes to things like Apache, etc., to work properly. I spent another day or so doing all of this. In the end, I actually was able to start my app. But at that point I had run out of steam, and the machine has been turned off since then. Maybe I'll spend my summer actually getting the app up and running as a functioning system. Then again, maybe not.

kc

--
-----------------------------------
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant kcoyle at kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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