On 11-07-27 12:01 PM, Yasha Karant wrote:
> On 07/27/2011 11:46 AM, Chris Tooley wrote:
>> On 11-07-27 10:25 AM, Yasha Karant wrote:
>>> I have found that modern CUPS printer support configuration tools under
>>> EL have a fairly complete data base of the drivers/parameters needed for
>>> vendor specific printers.
>>> To some extent, this seems to include even reverse engineered data for
>>> printers for which the vendor will not provide any detailed public
>>> specifications and only provides proprietary "drivers" to the monopoly
>>> (and sometimes, Apple).
>>>
>>> Given various comments and suggestions that have appeared concerning the
>>> proper Linux formatting/partitioning and use of some current SATA hard
>>> drives that no longer present the 512 byte standard to the operating
>>> system, could SL (or RH or something equivalent to the CUPS team or ...)
>>> provide a data base for drives similar to the CUPS one for printers?
>>> For example, during the initial installation of either a new drive or a
>>> new major release of the OS (e.g., going from EL 5 to EL 6), the drive
>>> partitioning/formatting utility would recognize the drive(s) in use and
>>> automatically set either acceptable or "optimal" parameters.
>>>
>>> If such a data base exists, relevant URLs and/or RPMs would be
>>> appreciated.
>>>
>>> Yasha Karant
>>
>> This may be a suggestion that would be more pertinent to the upstream
>> vendor, as I understand it SL doesn't actually do any development to
>> modify or add to the EL base upon which SL is built. :)
>>
>> If it's already been done, I haven't heard about it - that's not to say
>> it doesn't exist though ;)
>>
>> -Chris
>
>
> My understanding is that "CUPS is the standards-based, open source
> printing system developed by Apple Inc. for Mac OS® X and other
> UNIX®-like operating systems" quoted from http://www.cups.org/  .
>
> Thus, CUPS is from a .org, not from a vendor, or even an
> academic/government entity such as Fermilab or CERN.  Hence, although SL
> and even RH would not the establishing body, it is appropriate for SL,
> not just RH, to spearhead such an initiative for another appropriate
> .org entity .   If Fermilab/CERN have sufficient resources, they could
> develop such a data base for use with gparted or other open source
> non-volatile storage (e.g., disk) subsystems.
>
> Yasha

True, however, Redhat has more resources with regards to development of 
new software (people who are extremely familiar with linux architecture, 
at least) than SL.

I'm not trying to say that you *shouldn't* suggest this stuff to the SL 
list, just that it would be more *likely* to get implemented if 
suggested to RH - or perhaps even a large server HDD vendor such as 
Seagate(unlikely) or Intel(SSDs, right? Also they do a lot of work in 
the kernel).  Not to mention that the rate of uptake in the rest of the 
Linux community would be greater if supported by a larger vendor.

As I understand SL's structure, they have about 3 people who are 
dedicated to implementing a RH-branding free EL for the scientific 
community so they "reduce duplicated effort of the labs, and have a 
common install base for the various experimenters".  If there are people 
developing for SL - it's most likely for software to do with scientific 
applications which run *on* SL - for instance, ROOT.  I think it's out 
of scope for the SL maintainers to spearhead a software initiative... My 
interpretation could be wrong though, anyone from SL care to correct me 
on that?

However, I do think it would be a good idea to have some sort of 
database that would allow optimization of file systems on specific HDDs. 
  But then again, I've been quite happy just using the default HDD 
formatting options from SL when I install - so far I've not had any 
problems.

-Chris