feizhou

Running Openindiana 147 here. Using Virtualbox to run one instance of Windows Web Server 2008 for that java-based sql frontend called Oliver. It has samba 3.5.4 and opends which made things really easy to setup a winbind account/authentication backend. If you want it for a desktop, you can get KDE if you are a KDE user. Some issues with mice and power management but otherwise okay. However, Nexenta CP3 has proven to offer better performance than Openindiana 147 or OpenSolaris b134 but Nexenta uses Hardy userland...YMMV

Hi CyberNerd, I was poking around Oliver and found a whole bunch of parameters that seem to imply AD integration and even single sign on. Running version 4.2 here. Is that what you have too?

/me rotfl. Of course they recommend that kind of setup because their design sucks. Oliver would not be able to run with anything less. No RAM, no work. Amazing that it seems to be the only one that demands that kind of resources just to run. 600 kids and 50 staff? We have just a wee bit more at 720 kids and 60 staff. Maybe you can make sense of this: "15232 Bibliographic Resources, 27844 Copies, 8189 Authors, 2423 Subjects, 1120 Publishers, 1713 Series" as to what is stored besides user data. Connecting to the MSSQL database to fix records via python on Linux and running big updates was pretty much instantaneous so any slowness has nothing to do with MSSQL or the hardware. It's that big slow frontend called Oliver that needs uber amounts of RAM. If you are willing to allocate a big box just to run the frontend, fine. I, for one, am not going to allocate anything more than the 4GB of RAM and 4 Cores that I have already done. I ain't asking the school to spend 8,000USD just to run one stupid instance of Oliver.

If I had a choice, we would be using something that runs on UNIX, uses lesser hardware and still run circles around Oliver with the current setup.

Oliver stores squat. MSSQL stores the actual data but I don't see it chewing up 1GB of RAM. Yeah, so I am running the express version of MSSQL. I had 2GB and 2 Cores allocated to it initially. Now I have 4GB and 4 Cores allocated to it and it is behaving better. In other words, Oliver is crap. At one point it was chewing almost 1.5GB of RAM. So you want to tell me a dumb frontend to a sql database needs to use 1GB of RAM just right after startup? PicPaste - oliver_chews_1GB_RAM-XPOV6rll.png PicPaste - oliver_needs_4GB_RAM-aJFxykzL.png Like CyberNerd has pointed out, other library systems are way more efficient that this excuse for a sql db frontend called Oliver

Get a Nvidia card. AMD has yet to raise the quality level of the ATI drivers apparently which is rather sad. I finally dropped ATI in favour of Nvidia two years ago and now I enjoy good quality drivers whether it is on a Linux distro or on an OpenSolaris distro.

Oh, I believe I have had at least one experience of the spooler service blowing up...I wonder if it is the pcl6 drivers...anyway, I don't have that as a constant problem and these HP 2600N are probably due for replacement unless the dude helping me out actually goes to China and get transfer belt film to fix up these aging machines for real cheap. Thanks for the heads up. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I had problems too with the pcl6 drivers for the HP 4005 CP. Switched back to pcl5 and now I am happy as a fish in water.

Really? I have not had any driver problems with the HP2600N (besides, you cannot buy them anymore) but then they are connected logically via Windows 2000 Server so maybe the drivers are just well behaved on Windows 2000 Server. They have been in use for five years over here and the only nuisance they have given me is the need to clean the mirror array which takes about 45 minutes per printer.

We have had very good experiences with the HP 2600N for each year group with four classes of 30 pupils. Only problem being that model is rather old. Look for something that supports ethernet and comes with a duplexer. Or you can perhaps look into managed/leased heavy duty printers from say Ricoh? Not sure if they have that kind of service in the UK but we use that over here too for our office. I don't have numbers but reports from elsewhere seem to indicate that the latter can be really competitive - costs less, better print out, faster printing but you need some space for the leased beast.

Try opennms. Let's you draw a map based on discovered stuff.

So are you running OI_147 yet?

Thanks, just got my hands on the manual earlier and found out about where CSV templates are defined. The Wisdomlib guy (Softlink's representative in HK) had created a Maze template that had a lot of fields...I also like how they don't tell you to not include field headers...sigh. Oh well, not the only thing 'forced' upon me by HQ. They also torpedoed my asterisk project to replace the school's keyline telephone system but I suppose it should be a plus that I get to play around with Cisco Unified Communications Manager. Another bonus was that I still got to do some asterisk...integrated it with UCM so that I can add sip lines to the system and chop off more ripoff landlines from the local telco monopolist.

Why do you think I would know anything about integration with Moodle IF they did not specifically claim that by moving to Jboss they have made it easy to integrate with VLEs? What I did not know about was integration of Active Directory. This I did not read about from their sites. I don't care why they are using Jboss and SQL. In fact, I am rather irked by the fact that they chose to only support MS SQL when they could have easily tacked on support for Postgresql and made the whole thing available on Linux/UNIX instead of just Windows whatever Server. Then there is what appears to be their inability to make proper use of the tools that they have chosen. Just because they are using Java and SQL does not automatically mean it will scale. I don't know about you but as far as I am concerned, using a lot of memory is a sign of incompetency and that especially shows when Oliver chews 1GB of RAM and yet cannot perform when it is just, ironic that you should mention 3 users, 3 users and not all are on at the same time too. The kids are not logging on and using OPAC yet and already the thing is a misfit. To add insult to injury, it is running on a box with 16GB of RAM, 12 cores in total and with 12 disks on SAS. You want to tell me that I am simply slagging off a product just because I think it uses too much memory? I have run/managed clusters of servers totalling just 60 boxes that handled over 200 million smtp transactions and 2-5 million deliveries daily. Most of these where just dual PIII boxes while a few where Xeons with a bit more RAM and 9 of these boxes were mysql servers for the clusters. I believe I know what I am talking about when I have had to make crap hardware perform because I ain't getting anything new/better. You are highly mistaken about the part: Oliver used a lot less RAM but then worked poorly. It is: Oliver uses truckloads of RAM and still works poorly.

I don't care. Don't advertise integration with stuff like Moodle when the current release 4.2 does not have it yet. Oliver is on my list of software to avoid if at all possible. The thing runs in spurts. One minute it is instantaneous in response, the next it takes a few minutes to show anything. The entire Jboss setup chews up to 1G of RAM when it is running. I have never seen such a huge program that is supposed to serve a fair amount of users (hopefully I never get anymore than a few dozen connecting to it) such as a library. No wonder the specifications said 2G minimum. The thing is a COMPLETE joke. And unintuitive. Finally got a copy of the manual and so I have import the kids into the system. Now I just have to remap all the old Alice accounts to the new ones and the thing will hopefully never need my attention for the rest of the year. I am so glad there is such a thing as pymssql. I cannot imagine having to 'fix' the loan history in Windows dot-net or not.

Hi, do you know what the fields are for the cvs imports? I have Oliver forced on me so I have deal with this 1GB of RAM chewing excuse of a database frontend. Looks like I can forget at integrating it into our moodle too...