DonsDeals Blog: CAOS Linux - CAOS NSA 1.0.29.i386 to version 2.6.31.6-2.caos

Update: Many of the links in this Article are no longer there. So, I Updated Links, as of 05-18-13. The new links are Below the Article. The first set are the new links...

Don

I have been running my Web Site on CAOS 1.0 for 6 or 8 Years now (can't remember for sure). And I love CAOS!:) It is ready to go for Serving a Web Site, FTP File Server and a Mail Server (which ever options you choose upon installation). And it is very easy to Install and Setup. Just remember, that the Installation Process will Format All Drives in the Computer you install CAOS On. I had a drive that was full of files, that I wanted to have FTP access to. So, I left it unplugged during installation. After installation, I do have to manually mount the drive to access it in CAOS. But that's ok for me and my purposes. My Server runs all the time, so one mount of the drive, each time I reboot is all I have to do. CAOS takes No Maintenance (updates nightly automatically). I'm currently up to CAOS Linux version 2.6.31.6-2.caos. I'm running mine on an old P3 with about 350mb of RAM and it runs great! I noticed today that there is a newer version, CAOS-NSA 1.0.29.i386 available on the CAOS Web Site. Well, newer than the Version 1.0 that I originally installed. They have two different Web Sites, http://www.caoslinux.org/ and http://www.infiscale.com/html/caos_linux.html now. And that was confusing to me. They also have a CAOS Version 2 out. I saw this at http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=02642 and then later noticed it is on the http://www.infiscale.com/html/caos_linux.html Page. But, I can't find a Download link to it. And the Mirror list link, http://mirror.caosity.org/Mirror-list.html. Just goes to some Search Site. Maybe, they will fix that soon, I hope... Anyway, I thought I would Post the info. Below is some details from their sites...

Don

ABOUT CAOS LINUX

CAOS is maintained and managed by a team of computer science experts with numerous proven skills. With resources pooled together they created a multifunctional operating system with mission critical dependability. CAOS Linux is designed to run on all x86_64 and i386 based hardware ranging from clusters and servers to production level appliances to personal desktops and laptops. Scientific research labs, public agencies, ISP's, private enterprise, virtualization and cloud computing ventures will find CAOS Linux to be an integral component to their operation. Supporting a wide variety of software, CAOS Linux is based on the best aspects of GNU/Linux and has full binary compatibility with the most popular enterprise distribution of Linux.

The CAOS Linux installer would be found easy to use by both an experienced admin or a Linux newcomer. Users can either have a fully automated install (including HD partitioning) or they can take full control from the install prompt. The automated CAOS Linux installer, Cinch, is a very user friendly, written from scratch and open to use by other distributions. Your CAOS system has the advantage of grabbing the latest packages from our online repository during installation, guaranteeing your system is up to date. Post-installation configuration is simple through either Sidekick, our server administration Swiss Army Knife, manually, or via the web using an industry compatible webmin tool.

We have heard one administrator suggest that CAOS Linux was a "super hero cape" because it enabled a big job to be accomplished fast. Your experience too with CAOS Linux will give you an appreciation for its efficiency and power.

The CAOS Vision

The CAOS Linux Project was first initated because of the need for an openly managed, RPM based version of Linux. CAOS NSA (Node, Server, Appliance) pursues the "sweet spot" concept for a Linux distribution, which has the following characteristics:

Offers a balance of bleeding edge package versions and stability
Has a long life, offering updates for more than 3 years
Always be freely available and distributable
Managed and maintained openly by the community itself
Utilizes known standards in the industry
A general purpose distribution, working for many solutions

CAOS NSA focuses on being a lightweight, fast, efficient, stable, and secure distribution of Linux that is appropriate for servers, compute nodes, network appliances, and even the latest desktop and laptop computers. Because CAOS focuses on High-Performance Computing, we have the benefit of tuning our system at a massive scale. Small incremental performance regressions may not seem like much or even be noticeable on a single machine, but when run at a large scale with tightly coupled parallel processing jobs, those slight regressions collimate into a very noticeable performance drop. Since our target development is for HPC and performance for systems of large scale, we exercise extreme care in the prevention and elimination of such performance regressions. Thus, when our system is multiplied to a massive scale, you have an OS that is fast, clean, and stable. Our focus on large scale system performance benefits all of our users because the optimizations that bring speed and stability to a 50,000 node cluster also bring speed and stability to a single server. Our development practices assure that you are getting the best OS for the job with CAOS NSA no matter the scale of your deployment.

CAOS Linux will continue to grow and become more popular. As this happens, we will gain more developers, contributions, and Infiscale will make more support partners. This will make the CAOS Project and Infiscale more successful and grow financially, which will enable us to develop infrastructure and fund developer salaries. With a full time development staff we will be able to spend more time developing even stronger software. That will in turn help us grow further, and thus complete the cycle.

Go there...
http://www.caoslinux.org/about.html

LATEST DOWNLOAD [DOWNLOAD]



The Caos core operating system is meticulously managed to be fast, lightweight and as simple to manage as possible. The original target of Caos Linux is high performance computing, where even minute regressions in performance are amplified into major slowdowns when the system is taken to scale. Therefore, we have taken great care in the design and testing of Caos Linux to identify and resolve such performance regressions prior to release. Once this optimized core operating system was in place we and our users found that it is a perfect foundation for building any type of system, as the light and clean core effectively facilitates expansion into many different feature sets.

Our core operating system is always fully self hosting (which means it is a tightly coupled set of packages fully capable of rebuilding itself in its entirety). This is important as the build environment may be completely controlled and isolated from any non-core artifacts.

Caos-NSA comes with complete HPC Clustering right out of the box with full versions of Perceus and Warewulf available in the default install. Pre-made VNFS images are also available from our mirror sites.

In more detail you will find the following features in Caos-NSA:

System

     The Linux 2.6 kernel with GRSecurity and PAX (initial release with 2.6.28)
     The Gnu Compilers (GCC) version 4.3.3
     File systems (at installer): ext3, ext4, xfs, reiserfs, and jfs
     The RPM package manager version 5.1
     Scripting languages: Perl, Python, Ruby
     Virtualization: KVM
     Configuration: Sidekick system configuration toolkit
     Architectures: ia32 (i386-athlon), x86_64 (AMD64 and EM64T)
     Operating system is self hosting

Services

    Web: Apache 2.2, NGINX, PHP (hardened)
    Email: Postfix, Qmail, Dovecot (imap/pop), Spamassassin (spam filter), ClamAV (antivirus)
    Windows services: Samba 3.2
    Database: MySQL 5
    Printing: CUPS

Clustering

    Management: Perceus
    Monitoring: Warewulf
    Scheduling: Slurm, Torque
    InfiniBand: OFED 1.4
    Parallel file systems: Gluster2
    Cloud virtualization: Abstractual
    Message Passing: Open MPI

Graphical Environment

    Base: X11R7 and XFCE
    Web: Firefox
    Email: Thunderbird
    Messaging: Pidgin

Maintenance

    3-5 year life cycle (from release)
    Community and commercial support available

    Go there...
http://www.infiscale.com/html/caos_linux.html

DOWNLOADING CAOS LINUX

The latest versions of Caos NSA can be obtained from our download mirrors by following the download links below. Installation ISO's can be found in the install/ directory of the appropriate CAOS version. MD5 checksums are provided on the mirrors for you to verify your downloaded data integrity, and we recommend that you check them.
GET CAOS LINUX NOW CAOS NSA 1.0 for i386 - DOWNLOAD CAOS NSA 1.0 for x86_64 - DOWNLOAD Downloads are graciously hosted by the OSUOSL

If you want or need to access a particular mirror, check The CAOS Download Mirror List Caos NSA will boot to an installation prompt. Here you can take full manual control of the installation on a single command line, or go with the default guided installation with configuration prompts from Sidekick. Cinch is used to install a core Caos NSA 1.0 system on your computer, which will bootstrap the rest of the system build. It walks the user through a series of steps to build a fully functioning Caos NSA system. Docs for the Caos NSA installation can be found at the CAOSity wiki: http://wiki.CAOSlinux.org/. Please feel free to get an account on the wiki and contribute to the documentation.