AmigaOne based WebServers

[DaveP]

April is fixing an IDE issue last I read... therefore it could effect disk access... that most certinly effect a server of any kind..

And yet the demonstration of it happening on an A1 has not been shown at least in public by anything other than a zealot and in fact not even by a zealot. ;-)

Would you call Tom a zealout? Or MAIs testing engineers zealouts? Hmmm?

No its this whole A1 is an unknown factor, untested, no April chip fud bandwagon that is going along. It would be nice to see some details of what exactly it fixes and some EVIDENCE that it impacts the A1 board for once but that is OT.

I compared the A1 with IBM 43P hardware for a very good reason. Firstly the A1@600Mhz benchmarks at 30% increase in speed worst case over the 43P  ( Yes it would be nice to see some public tests results I'll see what I can arrange ) and secondly it is demonstration that PowerPC chips are lower rates than the current 2GHz Intel based systems can cope with a reasonable load.

What you get in the A1 package, XE or SE is superior to what I have in my 43p ( rated 332 Mhz not 300Mhz just looked on the front cover ).

Plus when you look in the 43p there are surface mounted ( soldered! ) chips everywhere and that has done quite a few years of service now. Must have been 5 years since i bought it.

If you really piss your pants about surface mount chips go and get an XE.

But Ive seen chips work their way out of sockets before now! Quick front page news! Better not buy socketed chips anyone ;-)

No its this whole A1 is an unknown factor, untested, no April chip fud bandwagon that is going along. It would be nice to see some details of what exactly it fixes and some EVIDENCE that it impacts the A1 board for once but that is OT.

I want evidence 'either way' ... I want to see a good review... I read things from one source it says one thing... another source says another... they all say differant things... I'd like to actually see someone do a non-zealous non-political-motivated review on it... and tom and some mia engineers bieng connected to this with vested intrests in selling their chipsets are not what I call un-biased...

about the RS/6000 I dont claim its any faster...I'm sure it is slower...but for a webserver speed isnt everything...bieng able to handle a wide load of many users/etc matters more...but I trust what your saying about it...I think your on the money with the speed/etc...

I really am not a zealot either way and I'd like to see an unbiased review of Pegasos/A1 in a server enviornment with Linux on both of them...and see who does what..

[DaveP]

@mips_proc

"I want evidence 'either way' ... I want to see a good review... I "

Yep. Me too, and Id rather see well documented /objective/ evidence either way before I see any more "AmigaONE doesn't have the April chip " implying that the AmigaONE is somehow fatally flawed.

Sure there may be a flaw, but how it impacts system stability or performance or manifests itself whilst running an operating system is totally undocumented - at least in the public and private domains I have access to. I see a lot of hype but not a lot of meat on the bone.

I want to see a technical review of Pegasos and AmigaONE SE and XE variants on a trusted third party site done by trusted engineering test staff but the only problem is are anyone other than zealots going to buy these boards? Probably not. :-(

"but for a webserver speed isnt everything...bieng able to handle a wide load of many users/etc matters more...but "
Definately.

Enjoy your weekend!

[Rogue]

mips_proc wrote:
.this 'april' fix implimented in hardware apperantly is only done to the pegasos...

The difference is that the fix on the AmigaOne wasn't given a fancy name. Other than that, there isn't anything in this April chip that isn't in the AmigaOne fix...

I personally like May better than April - the wether tends to be better in May  :-D

[zacman]

>Other than that, there isn't anything in this April
>chip that isn't in the AmigaOne fix...

Why not tell us how and where you did test the
AmigaOne board? What did you use to test it?

[JoannaK]

Rogue wrote:

The difference is that the fix on the AmigaOne wasn't given a fancy name. Other than that, there isn't anything in this April chip that isn't in the AmigaOne fix...

Well.. It's good to see that there are experienced Hw professionals on making that system too. But I allways thought you at Hyperion were only supposed to do game ports, not to be specialized on designing and testing hardware?  :-D

[anarchic_teapot]

mips_proc wrote:
differance is that 604 chip is 64bit... its got better memory management...and its a time proven platform... not an unproven machine.

So the 604 is a chip, but the 750CXe is a platform? Come ooonnnnnnnn. And no way can you argue that the G3 (and G4) chips currently on the market are untested and unproven; at least, not if you're being honest and not trying to win a losing argument with fudge and innuendo.

As for the 604 being 64-bit, it's high time you read (and digested and understood) something like
this. If the maker says it's 32-bit, then I tend to believe the maker. Not you.

Gentle hint: next time you make a statement, back it up with credible documents/reasoned proof. Next time you use a comparative, tell people what you're comparing with.

(solder coming loose)

I've seen it happen to solderd on cyrix chips used in cheap POS terminals... its not a pretty sight...

Eurgh. However, there's little danger of that with the A1: PPC chips don't run anywhere near as hot as comparable x86 ones.

[anarchic_teapot]

JoannaK wrote:
 But I allways thought you at Hyperion were only supposed to do game ports, not to be specialized on designing and testing hardware?  :-D

Hyperion is part of the hardware testing team . Moreover, if you don't know the hardware how in the name of sanity are you going to write/port software to it? Especially if that software happens to be an OS?

[Colin_Camper]

Is it possible to use an AmigaOne computer or several AmigaOne clusters as web server?

Yes this is easily done using Linux. Just compile Apache and away you go. Use a Cisco CSS1100 for load balancing and/or session persistance.

On OS4 you will have to check out the Amiga Apache folk who I believe anounced that they would be supporting OS4 - check out their site. Again just use a CSS1100 for your LB/SP requirements.

In these dot.com bust days you can pick up CSS1100's on ebay quite cheap.

[anarchic_teapot]

Dagon wrote:

What is the best "secure" OS for such Server?

They say OpenBSD is the most secure OS (not linux :-P)

No, "they" say the most secure OS is one which is kept up to date with all the patches and properly configured.

[Colin_Camper]

No, "they" say the most secure OS is one which is kept up to date with all the patches and properly configured.

Well there is an openBSD host sitting on the internet for quite some time waiting to be hacked and with prize money attached to it.
There are also current patched hosts of many OS flavours that are being hacked every day!

It's no good having a fully patched host if you give it a root password of 'password'.

[DaveP]

"Well.. It's good to see that there are experienced Hw professionals on making that system too. But I allways thought you at Hyperion were only supposed to do game ports, not to be specialized on designing and testing hardware? "

Ah oh fountain of fud, what fun you are.

To suggest that MAI do not have the expertise in hardware design and testing to come out with TeronCX, TeronPX, Artica* and many other hardware products not only denies their current portfolio of delivery but it also denies the credentials of the staff that work there. As if it was ever in doubt!

Secondly to imply, as you do here, that Hyperion are somehow just a bunch of game porters is further to turn the FUD screw and is doing them a subtle discourtesy but a discourtesy nonetheless.


I wonder, what are your engineering credentials ( assuming of course you have any ) that makes you think that testing hardware cannot be done by people that actually use that hardware for the purpose that was intended by it?  I don't want a link to something you just read on the web I want to know what your experience and credentials are that you think people should really listen to your opinion without substantiation?

Im sure I would rightly get a whole bunch of screaming loonies on here having a go at me if I said "but I thought you at BPlan were only supposed to do flawed accelerator cards, not to be specialised in designing and testing complete motherboards?".

If your motives werent so transparent every time you posted Joanna I would be suspicous of them.

[minator]

No, "they" say the most secure OS is one which is kept up to date with all the patches and properly configured.

By that argument a properly configured and patched Windows (any version) system is just as stable as a properly configured and patched Unix system.

The whole idea behind OpenBSD is that security is built right into the system and the code is audited for bugs, so there are still exploits that will work even with a fully patched and hardened system on (otherOS) but not on OpenBSD because of this.

[zacman]

>that makes you think that testing hardware cannot
>be done by people that actually use that hardware
>for the purpose that was intended by it?

Hyperion already was wrong the last time they said
that there are no bugs in Articia. So why should
somebody trust them this time?

[DaveP]

"The whole idea behind OpenBSD is that security is built right into the system and the code is audited for bugs, so there are still exploits that will work even with a fully patched and hardened system on (otherOS) but not on OpenBSD because of this."

So because OpenBSD is audited and has security built in ( as do all Unixes to one degree or another ) it means that all other systems can be exploited?

Or are you saying that OpenBSD cannot be broken into regardless of patch level ( not credible ) or are you saying that Linux does not undergo security reviews ( wrong ) or are you saying that no other OS has security built in ( wrong ) or are you saying that OS with ESMs are not as secure ( wrong )?

I've lost count of the number of security holes that have had to be patched with Apache that are security holes regardless of host OS ( including BSD ).

Any system is proportionally more vulnerable the more back level its security PATCHES (typo) are.

Nah, I think that OpenBSD, fearful of Linux popularity has decided to build up a wee bit of mythology around itself to help it survive. Encrypting swap aside ( as if you could really get to it ).

Plus, what idiot runs an out of the box non "hard" Linux distro?

From http://www.developer.com/open/article.php/990711

AIX
10 vulnerabilities[6 remote, 3 local, 1 both]
Debian GNU/Linux
13 vulnerabilities[1 remote, 12 local] + 1 Linux kernel vulnerability[1 local]
FreeBSD
24 vulnerabilities[12 remote, 9 local, 3 both]
HP-UX
25 vulnerabilities[12 remote, 12 local, 1 both]
Mandrake Linux
17 vulnerabilities[5 remote, 12 local] + 12 Linux kernel vulnerabilities[5 remote, 7 local]
OpenBSD
13 vulnerabilities[7 remote, 5 local, 1 both]
Red Hat Linux
28 vulnerabilities[5 remote, 22 local, 1 unknown] + 12 Linux kernel vulnerabilities[6 remote, 6 local]
Solaris
38 vulnerabilities[14 remote, 22 local, 2 both]

[DaveP]

>that makes you think that testing hardware cannot
>be done by people that actually use that hardware
>for the purpose that was intended by it?

Hyperion already was wrong the last time they said
that there are no bugs in Articia. So why should
somebody trust them this time?

Why is this relevant to the question at hand? Do you think that testing cannot be performed by actually using the hardware for the purpose intended?

I also see this said a lot of times "Hyperion already was wrong the last time they said that there are no bugs in Articia. "

Can you or someone else point to a link where Hyperion actually said precisely that?