I am just heading out the door to drive a concrete truck for the rest
of the day and wanted to get this note out to everyone. Astute
readers of my previous messages will note that I typically start the
releases of sysklogd out with the latest news from the Upper Midwest.
I wish that I had more time to compose this but the following is what
brevity requires.
The weather has been hot and dry most of the summer. A radical
departure from the last release in which I was snowbound in my office
at home. The other big news is that I am no longer officially
associated with the Roger Maris Cancer Center. Hence the reason why I
am headed out the door to drive a concrete truck.
As many of you know the Cancer Center has used Linux since its very
inception. There is now a network of 30+ Linux workstations that
power the clinical information support system that we developed at the
Cancer Center. The greatest pride of my life has been establishing
this network and using Linux as an application base that positively
affects the lives of each and every one of our Cancer Patients.
I have been forced by organizational politics to make some rather
significant changes in my life. The most notable being my resignation
from the Cancer Center. Those of you who know me personally know the
magnitude of this decision. Leaving the Center and the patients that
I have grown to love will leave a void in my life that will not be
easily filled.
The positive news is that my departure was not forced (totally) by my
selection and dependence on Linux as an application platform. It took
some rather ugly machinations to force a situation where the top three
people who were responsible for building and moving the Center forward
were pressed into offering their resignations.
The dependence of the Cancer Center on Linux and our free software
based applications was so strong that the mother organization extended
a one year contract with me to maintain the system until a suitable
replacement can be found. I cherish this as testimony of what an
international collaboration of hard-working individuals can achieve.
Individuals who are not satisfied with the status quo and believe that
better mousetraps can still be constructed.
My heartfelt thanks go out to everyone who helped us accomplish what
we did at the Center. I want everyone who has contributed to the
kernel or to the free software movement to know that there are
patients afflicted with a tragic disease who have experienced a better
quality of life because of their efforts. I have been given the
treasure of seeing the heartfelt thanks in people's eyes who have had
better and faster care because of our software solutions. More time
is the greatest gift that can be given to a terminally ill patient.
My thanks to one and all who helped us extend this treasure to our
patients.
Just as we ask patients who have been diagnosed with cancer to look
forward rather than back so must I. Those who know me will typically
acknowledge that I may be bowed but I will not be beaten. To that end
I have taken a job with a construction company owned by a close
personal friend. It has been an interesting summer as I have
intertwined the maintenance of Perceptions and the Cancer Center with
construction work.
I tell the above story to apologize in a manner for the delay in
getting the beta-test of sysklogd out the door. As you can imagine
the summer has been frantically busy and I have had to squeeze work on
Linux and the package into whatever free minutes I could steal at the
end of the day.
With apologies aside I would like to formally announce a call for
beta-testers for the upcoming release of the sysklogd package. The
sysklogd package contains a network aware version of syslogd and a
companion program called klogd that is responsible for the logging and
processing of kernel messages.
I would encourage everyone who would like to test this release to
forward my an e-mail message. I will send all individuals wishing to
test the package a 3 patch set which will update a virgin copy of
sysklogd-1.3 to 1.3-3. The virgin 1.3 distribution can be found on
all popular Linux archive sites.
After beta-testing my plans are to release a 2.0 version which is
intended to be the companion to what will be the stable 2.0.x version
of the kernel. I will continue forward with a 2.1 release so I would
like to limit any additional changes primarily to bug fixes. The 2.1
version will be reserved for whatever new features are desired by the
international Linux community.
The three patches address a number of bugs which were present in the
1.3 release and add a considerable amount of functionality, especially
in the area of debugging kernel protection faults. The most notable
feature is that klogd now supports debugging of protection faults
which occur in loadable kernel modules. Astute readers of the kernel
patches will note that I included documentation in the
oops-tracing.txt file as to how this works.
My current e-mail address should stay valid for the immediate future.
I have registered a domain name and have put my network at home onto
the INTERNET. I can be reached through either one of the following
e-mail addresses:
greg@wind.rmcc.com
greg@wind.enjellic.com
I will look forward to hearing from anyone who would like to test the
new distribution. I hope that it proves to be a useful contribution
to the Linux software pool.
Future directions?
I'm not sure.
A lot of people have told me that I probably have a book in the story
of Perceptions, Linux and the Cancer Center. I have already put
some concept chapters together and will probably work some more on it
when the weather gets cold. There are a lot of important elements:
the power of intra-nets, the power of the INTERNET, the tremendous
difficulties faced when confronting information technology issues in
medicine and of course the tragic effects of technology gap. If
nothing else it would be a palliative exercise.
I have given some thought to consulting. We have developed a
tremendous amount of experience with data integration and integrating
intranets into heterogenous computing environments. There is a
tremendous role that Linux and free software solutions can play in the
development of interrogatory agents and in building dynamically
adaptable user-interfaces to corporate information stores. We made a
huge difference in the Cancer Center and we only scratched the surface
of what was possible.
In the meantime I have probably 3000 yards of concrete that my new
boss needs me to break up and haul away. Hopefully the combination of
accomplishing that, contributing sysklogd to the Linux community and
the open skies of North Dakota will bring a needed sense of
palliation.
I will look forward to hearing from the beta-testers. Have a pleasant
weekend.
As always,
Dr. G.W. Wettstein
4206 N. 19th Ave. INTERNET: greg@wind.rmcc.com/greg@wind.enjellic.com
Fargo, ND 58102 Phone: 701-281-1686
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"Snow removal teaches all the important elements of succesful corporate
politics: 1.) Be the first one to work. 2.) Always signal your
intentions before moving. 3.) Be damn sure you're driving something
big enough to deal with anything that decides not to get out of your way."
-- Dr. G.W. Wettstein
Guerrilla Tactics for Corporate Survival