[Leaplist] Recommended 4-port USB KVMs

[John Kramer]

I'm looking for recommendations for a 4 port USB KVM. I have one made by
IOGear (Miniview III) which works fairly except that it doesn't play well
with my wireless logitec mouse/keyboard - which I like! I've talked with
their tech support to see if they had any suggestions to resolve the issue
or if they could recommend a wireless mouse/keyboard that did play well --
they were not much help.

So, if you have a USB KVM that you like that plays well with wireless
devices, let me know. 4-ports is the minimum and I'd could probably
rationalize go up to an 8-port for something that worked well.

Thanks,
John


-----Original Message-----
From: leaplist-bounces at leap-cf.org [mailto:leaplist-bounces at leap-cf.org] On
Behalf Of Bryan J. Smith
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2008 2:48 PM
To: This is the Leap Main List
Subject: Re: [Leaplist] Partitioning Software ??

On Mon, 2008-03-24 at 16:27 -0400, William H. Ferguson wrote:
> Would anyone with experience in using software for partitioning please 
> recommend which program is the best one to buy?

Why "buy"?

I use two things ...

- GParted for legacy PC BIOS/DOS slices (primary/logical partitions)

- Fedora-based system-config-lvm for LVM management

o  GParted

GParted uses all sorts of tools, including ntfsprogs, which can _safely_
resize/move NTFS often better than even native NT itself.  I've had a
Windows Pre-installation Environment (WinPE) _toast_ a NTFS filesystem,
because it was wholly ignorant of things.  Only use WinPE solutions
_after_ you've run "sysprep" to wipe the Secure ID (SID) and related
Access Control Entries (ACEs) tied to the Security Accounts Manager
(SAM).

GParted currently doesn't touch LVM.  Ironically, it shouldn't be
difficult for it to add it, and it's currently the #1 feature request.

o  system-config-lvm

Use of system-config-lvm will be obvious to those that know LVM, and why
we use it on those distros where it exists.  Typical volume management
becomes cake.  With Xen, it's a godsend, including the ability to
natively use a single volume with writable snapshots for each instance
(i.e., each Xen domU creates its own changes to the "base" filesystem).

I recommend everyone learn LVM who maintains servers or systems that
otherwise change a lot.  I've never seen a LVM data loss on its own, but
always either ...

- Running on top of MD (commonplace, not due to MD, but other things
"touching" MD meta-data because they think it's "regular Ext2/3")

- Dual-boot with Windows (although very rare on this, if people fire up
"Disk Management" in "Administrator Tools" on older Windows versions
they can dork it, although that's no different than MD/AutoRAID and
other things too)

If you don't use LVM, don't use it.  That means if your distro defaults
to LVM, manually partition without LVM.  I.e., only use LVM if you know
it (and that goes for volume management in general, including NT5+
Logical Disk Manager, LDM, aka "Dynamic Disc").

o  Regarding MD

I recommend you use the command line interface (CLI) _only_ when you
have MD.  MD is solid, but extremely flexible, and you can dork it up
easily (which many 3rd party software packages do).  As such, I cannot
recommend using MD.  I have only limitedly used MD inside of LVM (not
vice-versa which 99% of people do, leading to the #1 complaint of LVM,
which it's not LVM), but Device Mapper's built-in stripe/mirror in
kernel 2.6 removes the need.

o  RAID Considerations

As always, if you want to use RAID-1, use either a hardware RAID card
($100 3Ware 9590SE-2LP solutions are cost-effective PCIe x1 cards), or
if you dual-boot and want to save on costs, mainboard-integrated (100%
BIOS, 100% software, 0% hardware) Fake RAID (FRAID).  The cost is worth
the headache in the case of servers.  If you don't like either, then
just mirror partitions onto a second drive, or just rsync a copy.

FRAID is now a viable solution in Linux, using Device Mapper RAID
(dmraid) in 2.6 (to organize as the FRAID BIOS and Windows driver
assume) and leveraging the kernel's software RAID.  Rebuilding is the
only issue (dmraid doesn't offer it), which is why I only recommend this
solution on dual-boot systems so you can boot into Windows and use the
vendor's tools to rebuild the volume when you lose a drive.

I personally think 90% of people make RAID more difficult (and cost
themselves, or worse yet, their company far more in "downtime/management
costs") than it needs to be.  Sometimes $100 is worth it.

> I tried "Acronis" products maybe three years ago and it caused bad 
> problems

Which "products"?

I see Acronis not only offers data management, repartition, etc...
products, but they have varying "boot" options from varying Linux to
Windows Pre-installation Environment (WinPE) based.

I will re-stress the fact that people need to name _specific_ models, 

> --likely due to my ineptness.

I wouldn't call it ineptness.

Even I'm naive and ignorant when it comes to storage layout, and I
_actively_ track this stuff.  It's a real PITA to follow.  I have
difficulty explaining it enough, and often just "do it myself" when
people ask.  They complain about me "not showing them," but the second I
start, they say, "I don't understand."

It's not something that is easily taught because it's a massive set of
eccentric (to vendors, products, etc...) issues.  At the same time, its
understanding is largely and absolutely _useless_ for 99.999% of IT
operations.  Seriously, not worth understanding.

GParted works extremely well.

> Is "Parted" still used and do Users say it's very good?
> Other similar programs?

Parted is just one application.  GParted uses many, many different
toolsuites to do things ...
  http://gparted.sourceforge.net/features.php  

-- Bryan

P.S.  On that note, Fedora has _finally_ integrated such a solution into
Anaconda.  Yeah, that's one of the areas where Fedora's Anaconda was
really lacking.  Most of it was political (liability), but that's been
gone for awhile.



-- 
Bryan J  Smith              Professional, Technical Annoyance
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org  http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith
-------------------------------------------------------------
           Fission Power:  An Inconvenient Solution

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