Re: [BLUG] Server monitoring tools

It kind of seems that all of this is a matter of need and design more so than there being legitimate debate over there being a clear cut dominant tool. Comparing Nagios to Zenoss seems like an apples vs. oranges comparison - namely comparing a tool vs. a turnkey application.

If you want to, for instance, not have your monitoring software bother you during maintenance windows, or require x number of failures prior to notification, or setup ACLs for various people to see various things, or integrate your graphing stuff, and don't want to invest a whole lot of time into building these pieces yourself, a turnkey style application such as Zenoss is probably better suited for your purposes.


Lord Drachenblut wrote:

Just to drop a name that I haven't used personally. Opennms

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 10, 2010, at 10:15 PM, Steven Black <yam655@gmail.com> wrote:

I've used Nagios, though not the current version. I'm currently migrating to Zenoss as it does a lot more. (Especially with some tweaks.)

I like Python, though, so mucking around with Python to extend it is something I sort of enjoy. My setup displays all the installed packages, as well as the more typical system info.

On Mar 10, 2010 6:49 PM, "Kirk Gleason" <kgleason@gmail.com> wrote:

All,
 Recently I went to a demo from a vendor about server / service
monitoring. One of the presenters kept telling us how "sexy" it all
was. I do have to admit that you can do some cool stuff with WMI and
server monitoring. Of course once they were asked about providing the
same stuff for non-Windows servers, the crowd was presented with the
blank stare and babbling response that no sales person ever wants to
give.
 However this presentation got me thinking. What is out there? I am
currently using a Nagios install for availability monitoring and Cacti
for historical performance graphing. I do like what I can get from the
NSclient++ and WMI monitoring on the windows machines, but the same
type of functionality for linux always seem kludgy and clunky to me.
Maybe it is me. I don't really have any specific example (I am at
basketball practice for one of my kids as I type this), but it seems
like I should be able to get more.
 I've tried Groundwork Open Source and Zenoss in addition to Nagios
with various combinations of Cacti and/or mrtg. I always seem to come
back to Nagios, and I always seem to start immediately looking for
something else.
 Which brings me to my question: is anyone doing any type of
monitoring / graphing out there? If so, what tools are you using?  How
would you rate your current solution to other things you have tried?

--
Sent from my mobile device

Kirk Gleason
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
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 _______________________________________________ BLUG mailing list BLUG@linuxfan.com http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug   

--
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NetMusician helps musicians, bands and artists create beautiful, professional, custom designed, career-essential websites that are easy to maintain and to integrate with popular social networks.
www.netmusician.org
joe@netmusician.org

Re: [BLUG] Install Fest

Hi Mark

Ok, well that sounds pretty close to what I had in mind.  So far as I understand media direct is supposed to allow viewing of DVD's without launching into the OS, I have not made much use of it though.  I think you are right that blowing everything away and repartitioning from scratch is a better idea.  But do I really need to be installing windows 7? If I can get my hands on an XP disk, why bother with windows 7?  I even have a Vista installation CD among my recovery CDs, so if windows 7 were to be installed, it seems I could use my Vista installation CD and then install windows 7 over it.  You mentioned earlier that you would be willing to help me set this up.  If you really are willing to do this, then maybe we could arrange a time for it soon.  Thank you for all of your advice.

Best wishes,

Erik

On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 5:39 PM, Mark Warner <markwarner1954@att.net> wrote:

If it were mine I'd backup/image/whatever, then blow everything away,
and repartition the raw drive with a target NTFS basic partition for
Windows, and an extended with a swap, root, and home partition for
Linux. (I don't know what the Media Direct thing is all about.) Then
install Windows using the recovery disks, followed by the Linux install.

OEM installs with all the hidden partitions and whatnot are a right
PITA. It appears you are affiliated with IU? You can get a Windows 7
disk for $20. An install of XP or Vista is a prerequisite, but that's
easily accomplished -- get a copy of the IU XP disk (everybody in town
has one), do a quick base install, then install Win 7. After going
through all that nonsense, the Linux install will be a breeze, and
you'll have a much greater appreciation for what FOSS is all about.

Erik Wallace wrote:
> My computer is a dell laptop.  I have all of the original recovery disks
> (still unopened).

--

Mark Warner
MEPIS Linux
Registered Linux User #415318



_______________________________________________
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Re: [BLUG] Server monitoring tools

Just to drop a name that I haven't used personally. Opennms

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 10, 2010, at 10:15 PM, Steven Black <yam655@gmail.com> wrote:

I've used Nagios, though not the current version. I'm currently migrating to Zenoss as it does a lot more. (Especially with some tweaks.)

I like Python, though, so mucking around with Python to extend it is something I sort of enjoy. My setup displays all the installed packages, as well as the more typical system info.

On Mar 10, 2010 6:49 PM, "Kirk Gleason" <kgleason@gmail.com> wrote:

All,
 Recently I went to a demo from a vendor about server / service
monitoring. One of the presenters kept telling us how "sexy" it all
was. I do have to admit that you can do some cool stuff with WMI and
server monitoring. Of course once they were asked about providing the
same stuff for non-Windows servers, the crowd was presented with the
blank stare and babbling response that no sales person ever wants to
give.
 However this presentation got me thinking. What is out there? I am
currently using a Nagios install for availability monitoring and Cacti
for historical performance graphing. I do like what I can get from the
NSclient++ and WMI monitoring on the windows machines, but the same
type of functionality for linux always seem kludgy and clunky to me.
Maybe it is me. I don't really have any specific example (I am at
basketball practice for one of my kids as I type this), but it seems
like I should be able to get more.
 I've tried Groundwork Open Source and Zenoss in addition to Nagios
with various combinations of Cacti and/or mrtg. I always seem to come
back to Nagios, and I always seem to start immediately looking for
something else.
 Which brings me to my question: is anyone doing any type of
monitoring / graphing out there? If so, what tools are you using?  How
would you rate your current solution to other things you have tried?

--
Sent from my mobile device

Kirk Gleason
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Server monitoring tools

I've used Nagios, though not the current version. I'm currently migrating to Zenoss as it does a lot more. (Especially with some tweaks.)

I like Python, though, so mucking around with Python to extend it is something I sort of enjoy. My setup displays all the installed packages, as well as the more typical system info.

On Mar 10, 2010 6:49 PM, "Kirk Gleason" <kgleason@gmail.com> wrote:

All,
 Recently I went to a demo from a vendor about server / service
monitoring. One of the presenters kept telling us how "sexy" it all
was. I do have to admit that you can do some cool stuff with WMI and
server monitoring. Of course once they were asked about providing the
same stuff for non-Windows servers, the crowd was presented with the
blank stare and babbling response that no sales person ever wants to
give.
 However this presentation got me thinking. What is out there? I am
currently using a Nagios install for availability monitoring and Cacti
for historical performance graphing. I do like what I can get from the
NSclient++ and WMI monitoring on the windows machines, but the same
type of functionality for linux always seem kludgy and clunky to me.
Maybe it is me. I don't really have any specific example (I am at
basketball practice for one of my kids as I type this), but it seems
like I should be able to get more.
 I've tried Groundwork Open Source and Zenoss in addition to Nagios
with various combinations of Cacti and/or mrtg. I always seem to come
back to Nagios, and I always seem to start immediately looking for
something else.
 Which brings me to my question: is anyone doing any type of
monitoring / graphing out there? If so, what tools are you using?  How
would you rate your current solution to other things you have tried?

--
Sent from my mobile device

Kirk Gleason
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Server monitoring tools

If the rest of you want to skip most of this, you might check out the
special note for everyone at the end of this e-mail.

On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 11:47:49PM GMT, Kirk Gleason [kgleason@gmail.com] said the following:
> All,
> Recently I went to a demo from a vendor about server / service
> monitoring. One of the presenters kept telling us how "sexy" it all
> was. I do have to admit that you can do some cool stuff with WMI and
> server monitoring. Of course once they were asked about providing the
> same stuff for non-Windows servers, the crowd was presented with the
> blank stare and babbling response that no sales person ever wants to
> give.

It doesn't matter how sexy it is if it doesn't send you an alert you
properly when a service is down. I don't care how pretty/not pretty
nagios looks, its not a public service.

> However this presentation got me thinking. What is out there? I am
> currently using a Nagios install for availability monitoring and Cacti
> for historical performance graphing. I do like what I can get from the
> NSclient++ and WMI monitoring on the windows machines, but the same
> type of functionality for linux always seem kludgy and clunky to me.
> Maybe it is me. I don't really have any specific example (I am at
> basketball practice for one of my kids as I type this), but it seems
> like I should be able to get more.

Nagios is a lot of configuration I'll admit, but I've made it much
easier for myself by writing a program that does an SNMP walk and TCP
port scan of the hosts and auto generates the configuration accordingly.
If you want a copy, I can post it to the list or put it somewhere.

Thank you for acknowledging that Nagios has one purpose and Cacti has
another. I've been doing performance and availability monitoring and
graphing for over 10 years now and have used a few solutions. And on
each of them there have always been people who want to combine the
graphing with availability notification. But they really are different
things, just like a database is different from a webserver. Sure, you
can use them together and when a service finally fails you can go back
through graphs and see if anything led up to that crash, but programs
that try to combine the two together, usually don't do either one good
enough.

> I've tried Groundwork Open Source and Zenoss in addition to Nagios
> with various combinations of Cacti and/or mrtg. I always seem to come
> back to Nagios, and I always seem to start immediately looking for
> something else.

Zenoss doesn't see all that bad, but I was already pretty familiar
with Nagios and Cacti. The other thing that worried me is that I may
start using it and then the company will start closing up parts of it or
make it difficult to add onto it without starting to go the pay route.
I don't mind paying for software, but I usually do my homework enough
that I shouldn't have to. And I don't mind doing the homework because it
pays off.

* SPECIAL NOTE *
Speaking of monitoring, Suso recently bought a couple of domains
(www.bloomingtonnetworks.com) for the purpose of displaying information
about the heath of Bloomington's area and regional networks. It is going
to be a portal so that the general public can go there and see what
might be down so that they can better determine what problem they might
be experiencing. Also, the idea is to get companies in the region to
care more about the quality of service of their networks. Mostly
targeting ISPs, web hosting providers, schools, etc.

Right now the website doesn't have anything publically, but I do have
a nagios installation setup that has already been monitoring some
networks. RIght now I plan on monitoring these networks.

Bloomington City Government
Indiana University
Smithville
Suso
Egix/Kiva
Comcast
AT&T
Verizon
Internet hosts
Some providers in Indy
Common backbone providers in Indy and Louisville
Popular Interet websites

With many of these networks, its a little more difficult to monitor
because a network's own website being down might not necessarily mean
that their internet connectivity is down, so I was going to write some
simple clients that people could run from cron or something and "check
in" with a central server. Then if 3+ of them are unavailable at once,
then its more obvious that there is a problem.

If this is something that you'd be interested in running, please let
me know. Also let me know if you'd be interested in helping out with
this project or if you have suggestions for networks/hosts to monitor.

Thanks,
Mark

--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

[BLUG] Server monitoring tools

All,
Recently I went to a demo from a vendor about server / service
monitoring. One of the presenters kept telling us how "sexy" it all
was. I do have to admit that you can do some cool stuff with WMI and
server monitoring. Of course once they were asked about providing the
same stuff for non-Windows servers, the crowd was presented with the
blank stare and babbling response that no sales person ever wants to
give.
However this presentation got me thinking. What is out there? I am
currently using a Nagios install for availability monitoring and Cacti
for historical performance graphing. I do like what I can get from the
NSclient++ and WMI monitoring on the windows machines, but the same
type of functionality for linux always seem kludgy and clunky to me.
Maybe it is me. I don't really have any specific example (I am at
basketball practice for one of my kids as I type this), but it seems
like I should be able to get more.
I've tried Groundwork Open Source and Zenoss in addition to Nagios
with various combinations of Cacti and/or mrtg. I always seem to come
back to Nagios, and I always seem to start immediately looking for
something else.
Which brings me to my question: is anyone doing any type of
monitoring / graphing out there? If so, what tools are you using? How
would you rate your current solution to other things you have tried?

--
Sent from my mobile device

Kirk Gleason
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Install Fest

If it were mine I'd backup/image/whatever, then blow everything away,
and repartition the raw drive with a target NTFS basic partition for
Windows, and an extended with a swap, root, and home partition for
Linux. (I don't know what the Media Direct thing is all about.) Then
install Windows using the recovery disks, followed by the Linux install.

OEM installs with all the hidden partitions and whatnot are a right
PITA. It appears you are affiliated with IU? You can get a Windows 7
disk for $20. An install of XP or Vista is a prerequisite, but that's
easily accomplished -- get a copy of the IU XP disk (everybody in town
has one), do a quick base install, then install Win 7. After going
through all that nonsense, the Linux install will be a breeze, and
you'll have a much greater appreciation for what FOSS is all about.

Erik Wallace wrote:
> My computer is a dell laptop. I have all of the original recovery disks
> (still unopened).

--
Mark Warner
MEPIS Linux
Registered Linux User #415318

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Install Fest

My computer is a dell laptop.  I have all of the original recovery disks (still unopened).  As far as creating a reliable image of my HD, I was planning to use clonezilla or partimage.   I am well aware that Kubutu is not the most stable version (I have tried several distros on Live CD).  However the particular approach I described (e.g. using a separate home partition) was influenced by a fellow math graduate student here at IU. He also mentioned that gimp *with* plug-ins will have most if not all of what photoshop has to offer.  Gimp without plug-ins will not cut it, as I have already tried it.  But I will also need replacements for flash, fireworks, illustrator, and dreamweaver.

I don't particularly care who makes the software so long as it works for my purposes.  The only way to know that is if I try it, so until I am confident that GIMP and other programs will work for me, I really need to keep photoshop, flash, etc.  Also my scanner was bought speciffically for the purpose of scanning from transparencies, and I heard on the linux forums that the linux software for that particular scanner does not support transparency scans.  The recommended solution, was to run Epson's software in virtual box in XP.  Wine was also offered as a possibility for the adobe software.  But keeping a windows operating system on the HD, would take care of both problems.  Usually though I would boot straight into Linux.

When I first emailed Mark Krenz about this, and signed up for the BLUG email list, there was a lot of talk about getting meetings going again, and in particular an install fest, and then nothing happened.   I could probably get my friend here in the math department to help me, but I was really looking forward to meeting some other linux people in Bloomington.  I would certainly appreciate the help from someone, even if it is only general guidance.

Best wishes,

Erik

On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 12:26 PM, Mark Warner <markwarner1954@att.net> wrote:

Erik Wallace wrote:
> Hi,
>   I was one of the two new users wanting to learn about linux.  When
> are we going to have this install fest?   At the time I first wrote to
> Mark Krenz about installing linux, I didn't even know what distro I
> wanted.  By now I know that I want to dual boot windows and kubuntu,
> with adobe creative suite and scanner software on windows, and tex/cas
> software on kubuntu.  I even have some idea of what it will take to
> set up the dual boot.  Currently my partition structure is as follows:
>
> 49MB Dell Utility
> 11GB Recovery
> 67GB OS (Vista)
> 2.1GB Extended
> - 2.1 GB Media Direct
>
> I would like to repartition as follows:
>
> 49MB Dell Utility
> 26GB Vista
> 54.1GB Extended
> -10GB /
> -2GB swap
> -40GB /home/
> -2.1GB Media Direct

Is this a desktop? If so, the simplest and safest solution would be to
add a secondary hard drive and give it over to Linux entirely.

I don't know about any Install Fest, but if you'd like I can assist you
live and in person, my place or yours.

As far as Kubuntu is concerned, I hope you understand that it stays
close to the bleeding edge, and may not be as stable or bug-free as some
of the alternatives. IMO, KDE4.x and Grub2 are just a little too fresh
for a production environment. That said, with the *buntus, there's a
huge user base to draw on for help and support.

Again, JMO. YMMV.

--
Mark Warner
MEPIS Linux
Registered Linux User #415318

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Install Fest

Erik Wallace wrote:
> Hi,
> I was one of the two new users wanting to learn about linux. When
> are we going to have this install fest? At the time I first wrote to
> Mark Krenz about installing linux, I didn't even know what distro I
> wanted. By now I know that I want to dual boot windows and kubuntu,
> with adobe creative suite and scanner software on windows, and tex/cas
> software on kubuntu. I even have some idea of what it will take to
> set up the dual boot. Currently my partition structure is as follows:
>
> 49MB Dell Utility
> 11GB Recovery
> 67GB OS (Vista)
> 2.1GB Extended
> - 2.1 GB Media Direct
>
> I would like to repartition as follows:
>
> 49MB Dell Utility
> 26GB Vista
> 54.1GB Extended
> -10GB /
> -2GB swap
> -40GB /home/
> -2.1GB Media Direct

Is this a desktop? If so, the simplest and safest solution would be to
add a secondary hard drive and give it over to Linux entirely.

I don't know about any Install Fest, but if you'd like I can assist you
live and in person, my place or yours.

As far as Kubuntu is concerned, I hope you understand that it stays
close to the bleeding edge, and may not be as stable or bug-free as some
of the alternatives. IMO, KDE4.x and Grub2 are just a little too fresh
for a production environment. That said, with the *buntus, there's a
huge user base to draw on for help and support.

Again, JMO. YMMV.

--
Mark Warner
MEPIS Linux
Registered Linux User #415318

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Install Fest

On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 9:47 AM, Josh Goodman <jogoodman@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> If you are just starting out I don't recommend going down the repartitioning
> path. You might end up in a bad part of town and I'd hate to see that happen
> to a potential new user.
>
> Depending on your CPU and memory specs you might want to give
> virtualization a try first. In fact, I would try it even if you have an older machine.
> I recommend VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org/) but there are other
> options out there.

The biggest issue I know with virtualization is that you need gobs of
RAM or the performance is crap due to swapping. I'd hate a new user to
think Linux is slow and crappy because they're trying it on VM without
enough RAM (either in the host machine or allocated to the VM). Ubuntu
can swap, Vista can swap, and in the wost circumstances both can swap.

If you're interested in trying one of the Ubuntu-based distributions
such as Ubuntu or Kubuntu, you can try them out with their new WUBI
product instead of even using a virtual machine.

WUBI installs Ubuntu within your Windows partitions. You boot in to
Ubuntu, so it gets the whole CPU and all the RAM, though it is still
slower than usual (and suspend doesn't work) as it needs to jump
through some special hoops to share the hard drive. It is *guaranteed*
to be faster than virtualization.

> On 03/09/2010 10:39 PM, Erik Wallace wrote:
> > I would like to repartition as follows:
> >
> > 49MB Dell Utility
> > 26GB Vista
> > 54.1GB Extended
> > -10GB /
> > -2GB swap
> > -40GB /home/
> > -2.1GB Media Direct

The best advice I can give *any* potential new Linux user is: Make
DVDs/CDs recovery media from your recovery partition!! Until you have
Linux installed and working well, there is no guarantee that anything
will go as smoothly as you originally expect. There is something to be
said about being capable of switching back to Windows until you can
get more research or find someone who can help.

Number 2 reason for having physical media for your recovery partition:
If you ever plan to pawn the computer or give it to friend/family, it
becomes significantly more valuable if it has the original recovery
media. Pawn shops won't even touch the computer without original
recovery media.

Physical media sometimes even has the ability to regenerate the
recovery partition.

Though if you know you can *reliably* make an image of the whole
drive, that would definitely be the way to go to try it out. However,
in the long term you'd still want the ability to recover Windows via
recovery media for the reasons I mentioned earlier.

As a new user, I recommend you don't bother with a separate /home
partition. One big partition will give you a lot more flexibility.
There are a *lot* of packages out there, and new users sometimes want
to try every option to solve a particular problem.

As a Windows user you have literally no idea just how many packages
are available for immediate download via the package manager. (There
are more than 25,000 packages for any of the Debian-derived
distributions.) Ubuntu distributions makes it nice and easy and
provide just a core set of packages on the install CDs, but you would
need a Bluray disc to actually hold all of the available packages.

> On 03/09/2010 10:39 PM, Erik Wallace wrote:
> > Of course I'm not a huge fan of keeping vista on my computer, but I
> > need to be absolutely sure that my scanner and adobe software are
> > fully functional. I am not entirely convinced that open source
> > replacements will be sufficient. If I discover that they are, then I
> > can remove vista, otherwise I think it is safer to keep it around
> > rather than doing an adhoc fix with virtual box or wine.

IIRC, there is a Linux program which uses the Gimp libraries while
providing more of a Photoshop-style interface. That only covers image
editing, though. (Gimpshop <http://www.gimpshop.com/>) Note that
Gimpshop is not a standard Ubuntu package (yet).

If you're a fan of the Adobe products, then you'll likely find
yourself shackled to a Windows partition. (Or a Windows VM if you have
the resources.) While many people find they can avoid using the Adobe
products, if you're actually a fan of them (and have the money to
afford keep using them -- not an issue if you're an IU student, but it
becomes an issue afterwards) then it is quite possible you'll just
find yourself unwilling to commit to the learning curves of other
products.

There isn't anything particularly wrong with that -- particularly if
you're interested in contributing to FLOSS projects to bring the
free/libre projects up to a point where you would be happy to use it
regularly.

Cheers,
Steven Black
_______________________________________________
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Re: [BLUG] Install Fest

If you are just starting out I don't recommend going down the repartitioning path. You might end up
in a bad part of town and I'd hate to see that happen to a potential new user.

Depending on your CPU and memory specs you might want to give virtualization a try first. In fact,
I would try it even if you have an older machine. I recommend VirtualBox
(http://www.virtualbox.org/) but there are other options out there.

To get started you would install VirtualBox on Vista, create a new virtual machine, download the
Kubuntu ISO, start the new virtual machine, point it at your Kubuntu ISO, and away you go. When in
full screen mode you will never know that windows is lurking in the shadows. This also has the
advantage of letting you run two OSes at the same time without the hassle of dual booting.

Cheers,
Josh

On 03/09/2010 10:39 PM, Erik Wallace wrote:
> Hi,
> I was one of the two new users wanting to learn about linux. When
> are we going to have this install fest? At the time I first wrote to
> Mark Krenz about installing linux, I didn't even know what distro I
> wanted. By now I know that I want to dual boot windows and kubuntu,
> with adobe creative suite and scanner software on windows, and tex/cas
> software on kubuntu. I even have some idea of what it will take to
> set up the dual boot. Currently my partition structure is as follows:
>
> 49MB Dell Utility
> 11GB Recovery
> 67GB OS (Vista)
> 2.1GB Extended
> - 2.1 GB Media Direct
>
> I would like to repartition as follows:
>
> 49MB Dell Utility
> 26GB Vista
> 54.1GB Extended
> -10GB /
> -2GB swap
> -40GB /home/
> -2.1GB Media Direct
>
> I have already been warned that Media Direct may not work after
> repartitioning, but it is worth a try. Vista does not respond well to
> resizing done outside of itself, and is unwilling to do it from within
> (because the MTF file is placed at the end of the partition). So the
> best approach seems to be to delete both the recovery and os
> partitions, create a new primary partition for vista and expand the
> extended partition into the remaining space, then install vista,
> followed by Kubuntu, and all appropriate software. It also may be a
> good idea to create an image of the whole hard drive before trying
> this feat. I do have an external hard drive to work with so that is
> perfectly reasonable.
>
> Of course I'm not a huge fan of keeping vista on my computer, but I
> need to be absolutely sure that my scanner and adobe software are
> fully functional. I am not entirely convinced that open source
> replacements will be sufficient. If I discover that they are, then I
> can remove vista, otherwise I think it is safer to keep it around
> rather than doing an adhoc fix with virtual box or wine.
>
> Now I am willing to listen to suggestions, but if we don't have this
> install fest soon, then chances are I will already have done all of
> this.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Erik
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