Hitting the Reset Key the Linux Way

By: Paul Ferris
Friday, May 19, 2000 09:07:11 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/1859/1/

Running a Hotel on Linux

Recently Nicholas Petreley was going on about how Windows veterans migrating to Linux have problems because they reboot things instinctively, and how reboots are not necessarily a good thing. I thought about what he was saying and I realized that a lot of people have trouble adjusting to new things, and that anything like that is likely to be stressful, what with pouring over manuals, reading man pages and trying to get things working in the fast paced IT world of today.

Well, I agree, for the most part. But rebooting is not all that bad. Sometimes the process table can become so full that getting the most minor task accomplished seemingly takes forever. Things begin to slow to a crawl, the task switching becomes more and more painful, and a reboot is simply the best thing you can do. We're not talking killing off a few processes--we're talking complete and disorderly shutdown.

Which is why, this past Monday, my wife Lisa stepped into the room, pried the phone out of my right hand, pulled my laptop out of my other hand, and drug my butt kicking and screaming off to Put-In-Bay, Ohio, where I was sure to down a bottle or two of wine. After that, I would emerge fresh as a Linux box after an init 6, albeit the world would be short a few bottles of the good stuff.

I'm glad she did it, because I was getting seriously stressed out, and it takes some extremely hard work for her to put me into a more balanced state.

Note, I didn't say "on balance" or use the term "balanced" or even hint slightly at "lopsided"--my world of late is one of the seriously over-the-edge-geek. We're talking spouting php3 manual excerpts and mySQL joined queries in my sleep--that kind of thing.

She used the Web to choose the hotel, where the rooms had hot tubs and a view of Lake Erie. Lisa is the kind of person that doesn't go near a body of water without forcing me to stop the car, so she can at least put her feet in it. In other words, she relaxes from time to time, and that's a Good Thing (TM). So, the Marblehead Inn in Marblehead Ohio, a scant few miles from Put-In-Bay and right on Lake Erie, was where we landed.

I know what she was thinking too. She thought to herself, "Here's a place at least, where this guy can relax and forget about Linux and work for a while." Little did she realize that I would get a hardware review out of the deal. You see it turns out that unknown to her, and to my incredible delight--the Marblehead Inn runs Linux.

Lisa tends to sleep in during the mornings, while I'm an early riser. The next morning after the major portion of the wine consumption was over I went foraging for some coffee and possibly some donuts to wash it down.

I spent part of the early morning talking with the hotel general manager, Rick Dinan--a really cool guy who was extremely polite. Rick and I exchanged Windows horror stories and the usual observations about Microsoft in general. From what I could tell, he'd never even heard of Linux at all. So it was quite to my pleasant surprise to find out that he had heard of Caldera, and that they were indeed running it behind the front desk.

Rick shared with me that the Linux-based system had not been his first choice, but overall it worked fine, and the overall cost of the system, software, and operating system was a third of the cost of the system he had envisioned. It turned out that a good portion of hotels across the United States were running it too, and at that point I remembered seeing a newswire story about the subject. It's hard to be advocating Linux to somebody who's been using it, doesn't even know it, and near as you could tell, was completely satisfied.

Unfortunately, there were more important things to do than Linux advocacy, as we had to catch a boat over to Middle Bass Island and the Lonz winery. Lonz is really not a winery anymore--it's just a huge, castle-like building, as the wine making was over long since.

But the view is incredible, and we usually have a good time if we can get there at a reasonable hour, and not on a weekend. It turns out that the boats only run three times a day during the off-season, and I had to go. I'm sure Rick had better things to do anyway. Besides, I'm sure some of the guests needed that coffee more than me.

As we drove off for more reset-action, I realized that since the Marblehead Inn ran Linux, it would only be fitting to do a hardware review. One of my friends, Scott Courtney, had just done a very fine piece on the IBM S/390 mainframe running Linux, I've seen Jim Gettys demonstrate it on something that looked like a pack of matches--why not a hotel? And how does it run, anyway?

I was sure that querying minds wanted to know (or maybe it's a case of too much wine, or just a case of wine in general--you decide). So I sat down and did my evaluation from memory.

Setup and Installation

The hardware setup for the MI was incredibly simple. Most hardware requires you to read a couple of manuals, plug some things in, and go from there. I found that, to my delight, setup at MI was simply a matter of inserting a key into the door slot, and we were on our way. The keyboard, however, provided limited functionality, as it would only bring up a few cable selections. Even still, I was able to find a re-run of Bewitched in just a matter of a few minutes--and that was good enough, as far as I'm concerned.

The screen was a 27-inch unit, with pretty poor resolution--your stock television set, albeit a new one, but since the application (in this case, watching re-runs) was not dependent upon a high-resolution computer display, I can't really cite this as being all that bad.

Overall System Operation
All in all, I found the layout of the hardware to be extremely ergonomical, and the hot tub was great at relieving stress. Given that a good portion of the computer hardware I come in contact with seems to cause more stress, this was a real plus. Still, I must add that if you come to the Marblehead Inn, you should not expect to sit in the hot tub, get relaxed, and compute.

Besides the fact that you will likely be mixing a more stressful action (computing) with a stress-relieving action (sitting in a hot tub), you're likely to get the laptop wet. Possibly worse, you or the laptop might die of electrocution. I'm sure Rick would not be amused, either.

The beds were firm, but very comfortable. Rick explained to me that some of his customers do complain about the beds being just a bit too firm. I have to say, however, as a seasoned road warrior, that these people must not stay very many places or they must be used to quicksand or something, because the beds were just right.

I found the general arrangement of the room to be fine for setting up a laptop although I wasn't able to test the quality of the phone lines, as Internet access was strictly forbidden. Not by Rick, but by my wife, who threatened that she would throw my CDs out of the car at the next opportunity if I didn't stop thinking of work. That alone might not be so bad until you realize that I keep my CDs in a case with the laptop, and that at that point she would be in no mood to sort out which was which.

So, I kept it low key. I spent some time in the hot tub, drinking ice water (we were done with the wine by this time) and enjoying myself. All in all, I have to say it was one of the most relaxing and pleasant experiences I've ever had with Linux hardware.

And what did Rick have to say about using Caldera and his hotel application? Well, it just works. The application support people might improve the product if it worked with more varieties of laser printers, and it's a pretty stable product. They do reboot it about once a week when they update software, and no, I don't know if that's necessary. After all, a good system reset from time to time can't be all bad. Who knows? I am sure of one thing--the Marblehead Inn likely has very few problems with viruses in their management software.

I recommend that if you're up in the Marblehead area, you at least stop in and say hi to Rick. Maybe get some wine and rent a room. The room rates are reasonable and the hot tub is sure to undo some of the tension you recently incurred configuring sendmail.

And you'll likely find that running Linux doesn't have to be a stressful experience at all.