I was searching high and low for the above to be done on one of the linux box but couldn't find any hint. Below is the method to accomplish the task:
1. tar cvf filename.tar files
2. gzip filename.tar
The output will be filename.tar.gz. In order to uncompress the file, below should do the job:
gunzip < filename.tar.gz | cpio -icvdum
Happy compressing~
A Linux grid is the power behind the payment system at PayPal, and it's converted a mainframe believer. Scott Thompson, the former executive VP of technology solutions at Inovant, ran the Visa subsidiary responsible for executing Visa credit card transactions worldwide. The VisaNet system was strictly based on IBM mainframes.
In February 2005, Thompson became chief technology officer at the eBay payments company, PayPal, where he confronted a young Internet organization building its entire transaction processing infrastructure on open source Linux and low-cost servers. Hmmmm, he thought at the time.
"I came from Visa, where I had responsibility for VisaNet. It was a fabulous processing system, very big and very global. I was intrigued by PayPal. How would you use Linux for processing payments and never be wrong, never lose messages, never fall behind the pace of transactions," he recalled in an interview.
He now supervises the PayPal electronic payment processing system, which is smaller than VisaNet in volume and total dollar value of transactions. But it's growing fast. It is currently processing $1,571 worth of transactions per second in 17 different currencies. In 2006, the online payments firm, which started out over a bakery in Palo Alto, processed a total of $37.6 billion in transactions. It's headed toward $50 billion this year.
Now located in San Jose, PayPal grants its consumer members options in payment methods: credit cards, debit cards, or directly from a bank account. It has 165 million account holders worldwide, and has recently added such business as Northwest Airlines, Southwest Airlines, U.S. Airways, and Overstock.com, which now permit PayPal payments on their Web sites.
Thompson supervises a payment system that operates on about 4,000 servers running Red Hat Linux in the same manner that eBay and Google conduct their business on top of a grid of Linux servers. "I have been pleasantly surprised at how much we've been able to do with this approach. It operates like a mainframe," he said.
As PayPal grows it's much easier to grow the grid with Intel-based servers than it would be to upgrade a mainframe, he said. In a mainframe environment, the cost to increase capacity a planned 15% or 20% "is enormous. It could be in the tens of millions to do a step increase. In [PayPal's] world, we add hundreds of servers in the course of a couple of nights and the cost is in the thousands, not millions," he said.
PayPal takes Red Hat Enterprise Linux and strips out all features unnecessary to its business, then adds proprietary extensions around security. Another virtue of the grid is that PayPal's 800 engineers can all get a copy of that customized system on their development desktops, run tests on their raw software as they work, and develop to PayPal's needs faster because they're working in the target environment. That's harder to do when the core of the data center consists of large Unix symmetrical multiprocessing boxes or mainframes. In neither case is it cheap to install duplicates for developers, he said.
PayPal "pays very close attention to the Linux kernel development process" lead by Linus Torvalds and the kernel maintainers because future capabilities are being debated and resolved through the process, he said.
PayPal has experimented with virtualization and is watching carefully developments in open source virtualization, still a young field. "One place we see the kernel process at work is in virtualization," Thompson said. VMware's ESX Server can run Linux, as can the open source Xen hypervisor; both work outside the Linux kernel but can be linked to its internal operations. A year ago, Torvalds approved the addition of a contributed Kernel Virtual Machine, which runs inside the kernel and makes use of the kernel's own memory management and other functions.
"If we could fully virtualize our middle tier, that would be another step of cost advantage," said Thompson. More fully virtualized data centers also would allow him to shift workloads across the grid, depending on time of day and traffic volumes, which would lead to additional savings.
"We'd love to shift processing capacity to workloads. That would be a tremendous benefit," and slow the need to buy and manage blade servers, even as PayPal continues to grow, he said.
Virtualization also would help him avoid building out another "power center" or new unit of the data center located close to cheap power. Avoiding added power costs is a much higher priority than it was a few years ago, he said.
But he's not ready to virtualize batches of servers here and there. He wants a plan that will allow "virtualization with a layer of intelligence on top of it" to manage virtual resources. He is experimenting with VMware, but before he implements virtualization throughout the data center, he'll wait until he sees the right intelligence materialize to make it manageable.
Does relying on Linux worry him when Acacia Research, through its subsidiary IP Innovation, filed suit in October against Red Hat and Novell for violating its patent portfolio? And Microsoft claims its patents are violated by Linux? Thompson said: "I'm not worried about those statements. I'm familiar with the issue but I'm not worried about it. We have people in our business who are on top of it."
Dell plans to sell computers with preinstalled Linux outside the United States as well as offer the Ubuntu Linux distribution to small business customers.
More details will be revealed later, wrote Lionel Menchaca, digital media manager for Dell on a company blog on Friday.
"I wanted to be clear that Dell does have plans to offer Linux to more consumers in additional locations outside the United States," Menchaca wrote.
Dell is also encouraging more members of its Linux engineering team to post technical updates about specific distributions and open source projects, he added.
Dell began selling two desktop PCs and a laptop with the Ubuntu 7.04 Linux distribution preinstalled in the United States in May, a move the company said was in response to consumer demand.
Although Linux's success has been squarely in the server market, consumers are showing increased interest in the open source operating system as a desktop OS alternative to Microsoft's Windows. Desktop Linux has tended to have more appeal among developers and computer enthusiasts.
Dell already offers other Linux distributions from market leaders Red Hat and Novell on some of its servers and its Precision workstation line.
The high priests of free software have congregated at Google Inc. (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) headquarters this week to debate the future of the movement and face down recent patent threats by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research).
Leading names of Linux, the world's biggest grassroots software phenomenon, are spending three days to Friday debating whether an increasingly commercial open source community should fight or ignore the world's largest software maker.
Dressed in the alternative software movement's casual uniform of T-shirts and jeans, the group is coming to grips with internal divisions that sap at its success -- Linux is now used to power desktop computers, major Web sites, mobile phones -- since rival factions often create very similar products.
But as many of the world's top tech companies and corporate customers demand ever more from Linux, open source devotees still fight among themselves with the fervor of a tiny monastic order seeking to root out theological error in their midst.
"Guys: Be seekers of truth, not finders of contradiction," Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, organizer of the event, only half-jokingly told the 150 attendees of what is billed their "Collaboration Summit."
Linux is the best-known variant of so-called open source software -- software that is freely available to the public to be used, revised and shared. Linux suppliers earn money selling improvements and technical services. By contrast, Microsoft charges for software and opposes freely sharing its code.
Recently, Microsoft has sown dissension by claiming open source programs such as Linux violate 235 of its patents while striking deals to insulate the customers of two Linux suppliers -- Novell and Xandros -- from patent lawsuits.
On Thursday, Linspire Inc., which sells Linux-based personal computers through Wal-Mart and other retailers, became the third company to strike a patent deal with Microsoft.
MICROSOFT: ENEMY OR PUNCHING BAG?
Collectively, the group is militantly opposed to Microsoft, which some attending the summit openly refer to as "the enemy."
But most believe Linux users control their own destinies and Microsoft's patent threats are just the latest attempts to create "fear, uncertainty and doubt" among customers. After closed-down sessions Thursday and Friday, the group aims to issue a consensus statement next week on what they plan to do.
James Bottomley, who works as chief technology officer at Steeleye Technologies, is in charge of maintaining the software code used by Linux to transfer data between computers and peripheral devices like printers, a job he does for pleasure.
Bottomley says Microsoft is unlikely to sue Linux customers because most Linux users also buy Microsoft. "Their customers are our customers," he said, adding that: "It's just bloody annoying. It gets everyone riled up."
Zend Technologies, developers of an open source programming language called PHP that is used in many Web sites, is seeking to remain neutral. Eighty percent of its customers use open source software, but it recently struck a deal with Microsoft.
"I think Microsoft is a big company trying to make up its mind," said Zend Chief Executive Harold Goldberg, who is not taking part in the event.
"On the one hand Microsoft has a big established business it is trying to defend," Goldberg said. "On the other hand, there are those inside the company, though they won't admit it publicly, who see open source as the future."
WORKING TO WORK TOGETHER
This is the first conference of the Linux Foundation, an umbrella advocacy group formed early in 2007 to unite two predecessors, Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group.
There are as many as 360 rival flavors of Linux, known as distributions, according to Distrowatch.com. This factionalism fuels rapid innovation but splits the energies of developers.
"There really is a sense in many projects that there is an 'us' and a 'them'," said Mark Shuttlesworth, founder of Ubuntu, a free, desktop version of Linux that competes with Windows. "There are the folks who are inside a project and those who are outside a project."
The Linux Foundation boasts 70 corporate and non-profit backers, including Intel (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research), Oracle (ORCL.O: Quote, Profile, Research), IBM (IBM.N: Quote, Profile, Research), Cisco (CSCO.O: Quote, Profile, Research), Motorola (MOT.N: Quote, Profile, Research), Nokia (NOK1V.HE: Quote, Profile, Research), NTT (9432.T: Quote, Profile, Research), Dell (DELL.O: Quote, Profile, Research), Red Hat (RHT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Sun (SUNW.O: Quote, Profile, Research), along with major customers like ADP (ADP.N: Quote, Profile, Research), Bank of America (BAC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Morgan Stanley (MS.N: Quote, Profile, Research).
Linux used to be worked on by professionals doing the work on their own time, said Jason Wacha, an expert on licensing Linux and attorney for MontaVista, a maker of Linux software for mobile and consumer electronics devices.
"Ultimately, I think (Linux) is being pushed by commercial forces ... Now a lot of people are being paid to do Linux as professionals," he said of how many top open-source developers now work for big-name companies like Google, HP and Oracle.
The Gnome Mobile & Embedded Initiative (GMAE), announced Thursday at the Embedded Linux Conference in Santa Clara, California, is open to developers, manufacturers, and others interested in developing applications based on Gnome components for new mobile devices.
Gnome is a free-software project aimed at developing a complete range of desktop applications for Linux and Unix-based operating systems.
The GMAE initiative, which intends to extend this expertise to mobile and embedded devices, "is a good idea," said Nick Spencer, an analyst with Canalys.com in Reading, England. "The Linux market for mobile devices still has much maturing to do. To get developers interested in building applications for open source operating systems and involved in the standardization process is a good thing."
At the end of 2006, Linux accounted for only around 6 percent of the market for smart phone operating systems, compared to Symbian's 67 percent market share and Windows Mobile 14 percent, according to Canalys market research. Blackberry had 7 percent and the remaining operating systems, including Palm, had 5 percent.
Although the use of Linux in smart phones is still comparatively low, demand for the open source operating system will increase as more vendors look to move away from older proprietary phone operating systems, according to Spencer. "Demand in Asia is growing very strongly, particularly in China," he said.
The GMAE platform will launch as a subset of the Gnome platform, but GMAE developers plan to expand the platform to enable new features, according. Components under consideration include the Java Mobile & Embedded (JavaME) platform, the GeoClue geolocation service, the PulseAudio audio management function and the Tinymail mobile e-mail system.
In line with Gnome policy, the GMAE platform will be distributed under LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License) terms, which allow for royalty-free use of the technology but encourages contribution of platform code changes to the Gnome community.
Linux desktop solution that it hopes will push its Linux desktop offering to a far broader audience than exists for its current client solution.
The move is designed in part to compete with Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 platform, which includes SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, which were released in July 2006.
"As we move out with this new desktop strategy, which we will announce sometime over the next few months, we will really look at the desktop from the perspective of a very different market," Paul Cormier, Red Hat's executive vice president of engineering, told eWEEK in an interview.
Click here to read about how Red Hat Linux branched into Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora Core.
"This will be a more comprehensive offering that will target markets like the small and medium-sized business [SMB] sector and emerging markets. Part of this strategy is to get the desktop more to the masses than our existing client is getting today. So there will be a different packaged solution for the masses coming down the pike," he said.
Asked if part of the strategy is the mass consumer market, Cornier responded that Red Had has "no plans to go and sell this offering at Best Buy, if that's what you mean by the mass consumer market. Customers will be able to download it and get a Red Hat Network subscription on the Web for it, which is what we feel is the distribution wave of the future anyway," he said.
The news that Red Hat intends to re-enter the broader desktop market is not a surprise given the fact that Novell has for some time been offering a broad solution for customers from the desktop to the data center with its SUSE Linux 10 offering.
The new focus by Red Hat on the desktop also comes as Novell prepares to announce the first release candidate for the first service pack of its SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 10 at its annual Brainshare conference here.
SLED 10 is a distribution Windows users can love. Click here to read more.
But while Novell executives argue that its end-to-end customer offering is far superior to anything that Red Hat currently has to offer, Cormier disagrees, saying that, from an enterprise perspective, Red Hat already has its own solution that spans the desktop to the server and data center with its current client, which is targeted at enterprise desktops.
However, Justin Steinman, director of product marketing for Linux and open source at Novell, argues that most IT managers want a complete operating system platform, with solutions from the desktop to the data center, so they can leverage management tools and people skills.
"Red Hat is basically ignoring the desktop, while SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop continues to sign new customers, like our 20,000-desktop deployment at Peugeot Citroen," Steinman told eWEEK ahead of the Red Hat desktop news.
But Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata, disagrees, telling eWEEK that the simple fact is that Linux hasn't really taken off on the desktop in a big way.
"I don't see the lack of a desktop offering as a particular negative for Red Hat. Yes, companies that really want both desktop and server Linux will be more likely to go to Novell. That's true. It's also a business decision that Red Hat has made until now," he said.
Raven Zachary, senior analyst and open-source practice head at the 451 Group, agreed, telling eWEEK that most organizations have highly heterogeneous data center deployments and that he does not see a single operating system vendor having much success in persuading enterprise customers to standardize on a single operating system platform any time soon.
For his part, Cormier believes that Novell is simply misinformed on that front, saying that Red Hat has had a client solution for some time and that part of the recent release of RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) 5 is a client solution.
RHEL 5 is now available. Click here to read more.
"The client is not so much what sits on your desktop, it's the interoperability of the client. Samba is key to that interoperability, and we have brought a big part of the Samba team into Red Hat to help us move that forward," he said.
"From a commercial desktop perspective, we've included things like stateless and previewed it in RHEL 5, which will be matured and made available under the RHEL 5 subscription. That's a big part of the desktop, which is mostly about interoperability and management in the commercial world," Cormier said.
Novell executives and analysts, however, dismissed that assertion, saying that Red Hat's client offering is not comparable to its SLED 10 and that this is not comparing apples with apples.
But a company spokesman said that Novell will not be surprised if Red Hat decides it needs to refocus on the desktop to try to compete with its current offering.
