[debian-knoppix] New Quantian release 0.4.9.2 available
[ This email is sent to those whose email addresses are in my quantian
mail folder due to prior emails, plus LWN and DWN who had run previous
announcements, and as suggested, the openmosix-general, clusterknoppix
and debian-knoppix lists. Anybody who considers this unwanted is kindly
asked to send me a private mail and I will immediately remove the
corresponding alias entry. --edd ]
Announcing Quantian release 0.4.9.2
===================================
I What is Quantian?
Quantian is a remastering of the self-configuring and directly bootable
Knoppix cdrom that turns any pc or laptop into a full-featured Linux
workstation. Recent versions of Quantian are based on clusterKnoppix
and add support for openMosix. Quantian differs from (cluster)Knoppix
by adding a large set of programs of interest to applied or theoretical
workers in quantitative or data-driven fields.
See http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian.html for more details.
II What is new?
o New Debian packages:
- R / CRAN packages r-cran-qtl, r-cran-dbi and r-cran-mysql
- Scientific Python packages: python2.3-scipy, python2.3-umfpack and
python2.3-arpack from a contributed archive by Jose Fonseca; also
added standard Debian packages python-scientific and python-numeric
- A+ packages aplus-fsf, aplus-fsf-dev, aplus-fsf-el and xfonts-kapl
providing the APL dialect A+ originally developed by Morgan Stanley
- Massively parallel quantum chemistry standard Debian packages mpqc
and mpqc-support; also added Debian packages ghemical and xppaut
o Retain acroread and lyx packages that were previously removed
o Relative to previous versions, removed blender, scribus and sketch.
o Packages updated throughout
o ClusterKnoppix changes (based on the release dated 2003-11-25)
- Sync with latest Knoppix release 2003-11-19
- Upgraded to openmosix 2.4.22-2
- MFS enabled again (openmosix tmpfs oops fixed)
- chpox upgraded to 0.6b
- nforce2 chipset support added
- xfs support added
- ipsec support added (freeswan 2.03)
- tyd from CHAOS added
o Knoppix changes
- 2003-11-19: Added vpnc (Open Source Cisco client), prelink,
qt3-designer, lots of updated packages. Removed selfhtml, sodipodi,
abiword, karbon.
- 2003-11-14: Euro symbol works again in konsole, but font scanning at
startup is slow (fontconfig?), added bittorrent ncurses client, ALSA
package update, "knoppix testcd" option is now more verbose, changed
default timings in monitor detection (may give better results with
DDC-capable monitors, but may require probably have to use "knoppix
vsync=60" for non-DDC-capable TFT displays), the usual bunch of
Debian package updates.
- 2003-11-03: New background picture, the usual lot of updates,
OpenOffice 1.1 (english and german) [ removed in Quantian, though ],
KDE 3.1.4 (partly, some packages still missing), removed compressed
changelogs for space reasons. Known bugs: Some ISO8859-15 fonts do
not work correctly in the KDE console
- Knoppix 3.3 changelog on knoppix.net
See http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian/changelog.html for more details.
III Where do I get it?
Downloads are available from the two main hosts both of which also
provide rsync:
o U of Washington:
- http://www.analytics.washington.edu/downloads/quantian
- rsync://www.analytics.washington.edu::quantian
o U of Wisconsin/Madison:
- http://franz.stat.wisc.edu/~edd/quantian
- rsync://rsync.r-project.org::quantian
o European mirror, bittorrent site and cdrom vendors will hopefully
catch up over the next few days. See
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian.html
for download info.
IV Known Bugs
o openMosix autodiscovery
In my tests last night,machines were not 'seeing' each other out of
the box using autodiscovery. Following a hint at
http://howto.ipng.be/openMosixWiki/index.php/FAQ
I opted for a quick four-step correction:
1) edit /etc/hosts and a) remove the 'Knoppix' entry from the localhost
definition and b) add a new entry for the hostname Knoppix with the
actual (dhcp-provided) ip address, i.e. change the file to
192.168.1.100 Knoppix
127.0.0.1 localhost
for the machine with IP 192.168.1.100; idem for .101 and .102.
2) edit /etc/default/openmosix.config and set/uncomment
AUTODISC=0
to turn autodiscovery off
3) edit /etc/openmosix.map and define a simple three machine cluster
via an entry
1 192.168.100.3
4) finally force a restart of openMosix via (as root)
/etc/init.d/quantian-openmosix restart
After doing that on all three machines, and starting 'openmosixview' as
root then shows all machines and a test migration of a few Monte Carlo
simulations worked without a glitch.
I'd would welcome suggestions from those more familar with openMosix
and autodiscovery
o KDE panel / kicker
The two entries for XEmacs and openMosixview don't work.
V Other items
o Time for a proper mailing list?
Shall I ask the Debian mailing lists administrators to create a
list debian-quantian (or quantian-user or ...) to allow for a better
exchange of ideas, tips, gripes or praise?
o Feedback / poll on package additions or removal
As always, I welcome comments and suggestions about programs to be
added or removed. Existing Debian packages get pushed to the front of
the line.
Best regards, Dirk
--
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
-- Groucho Marx
_______________________________________________
debian-knoppix mailing list
debian-knoppix@linuxtag.org
http://mailman.linuxtag.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-knoppix
Reply to: