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HOW AND WHY FLOGAS IRELAND LTD USE LINUX

What are we using Linux and open-source software for?

Flogas Ireland Ltd has a history, like most companies: it runs a mix of operating systems for historical reasons (see "How did we get to where we are?" below for why). Linux has become an upgrade path for us, when we want to upgrade, and a vehicle for new systems.

We run Linux on a EUR 4,000 Dell server that came pre-installed with RedHat, having hardware Raid and a hot-spare drive plus redundant PSUs and network cards, so I don't have to worry excessively about hardware failure. I suppose the initial attraction for me was no licensing costs, allowing me to experiment with introducing services on a no-cost trial basis. It now supplies our DNS service, via bind; our internal web site, via Apache, which gradually has become the centre of our staff communication (it hosts all our ISO 9000 system, staff and customer safety information, and good gossip via our Social Club's section); finally, all our newer databases use Firebird running on Linux.

We are switching our email system to run on it (using a Cyrus IMAP server). We could use standard email clients like Netscape, but because there is open-source code available, we are going to run an in-house IMAP client that uses the open-source Indy IMAP client for Borland's Delphi - this allows us set out own security and policies within the client, as well as allowing us to give them the same "look and feel" as their existing client, minimising training issues.

Some time ago, we tried OpenOffice with a number of users on a pilot basis, which worked very successfully, and are now switching most PCs to OpenOffice 1.0.3.1, giving us a mix of significant savings and a wider spread of applications. Our email client will also be using OpenOffice as a "viewer" for all Microsoft attachments.

We are adding a Linux box at a remote site, to give us an off-site backup of critical files. Actually, "backup" is not quite correct - it will be using rsync nightly to update its copies of files with the infrequent changes to the central ones, which will not take up much bandwidth yet ensure we always have an off-site copy of our critical files, giving ourselves and our auditors more comfort from a disaster-recovery point of view - while it may appear to be a waste of a decent server, it is "small beer" in the context of auditing costs and risks, and both cheaper and more convenient for us than keeping off-site tape backups. Anyway, since most of our files are on Novell Netware servers, we will be using Novell's file serving and account integration software to integrate the box fully into our Netware system (standard on Netware 6, relatively cheap for Netware 5). A point to note is that just because we are adding Linux boxes to our system, it does not mean that they cannot be integrated into our existing system: anyone who uses Novell's NDS system would be very reluctant to give it up, because of its ease of user and printing services administration, but in this way they can integrate Linux boxes into their system and get the best of both worlds.

And who knows what we will install tomorrow...

How did we get to where we are?

To realise why Flogas eventually added Linux, it is necessary to describe the history of our system.

Possibly somewhat similar to a lot of other companies, the initial Flogas computer system consisted of dumb terminals running on an IBM System 34 mid-frame (a simpler world, way back then).

A few stand-alone PCs were bought by Flogas for word-processing, running a DOS-based word processor called Samna. Subsequently, a small, 4-user, network was added, to deal with the complexities of our service calls (I am really talking about a long time ago!) – it ran on a Netware 2.1 fileserver using Borland’s Paradox as the shared database. More stand-alone PCs were added, generally just doing word processing, and PCs gradually changed to a Windows word-processor called Ami Pro (now, after many transmutations, IBM’s Lotus Word Pro).

The need for file sharing, printer sharing (particularly printing to remote printers), a reliable backup strategy for the PCs, plus adding an email system (ccMail), resulted in more PCs, all being added to a network, and becoming a network of nearly 100 PCs using Netware servers across three sites. At this stage, the network was running Novell’s IPX only. The IBM System 34 became a System 36 and then an IBM AS/400, gradually getting integrated into the network, particularly when the AS/400 was fitted with a TCP/IP interface.

Around this time, Linux started making an appearance, and it seemed interesting, particularly because its history was rooted in TCP/IP, and so conceptually appeared to be better suited for running TCP/IP services. However, RedHat was at version 5.X, and installation of Linux for me was problematic at that stage – there always seemed to be some component that would not work properly (maybe a network card, a video card, or a mouse). It was experimentation territory for a novice like me at that time, and somewhat frustrating.

To me, it all changed with the release of Corel Linux 1.0 (regretfully now dead). It installed perfectly, but more significantly, it was able to set up a web server with a few mouse clicks – the world had changed, and Corel's input put it up to the other Linux vendors as well as the application writers - straightforward installation programs rather than source-code compiling had arrived. My favourite example of this currently is installing the Firebird database server - download it and run it, it asks no questions, but it installs itself, gets itself running, and makes sure it starts up when you reboot (though typically for Linux, you don't need to reboot often, and rarely after installation) - the ease of getting a rock-solid SQL database server set up is quite eerie, compared to the prior convolutions needed when Interbase was closed-source.

Anyway, suddenly for me, Linux was no longer a curiosity, but a solution. Still somewhat experimentally, I added a desktop-specification PC running Linux as an internal web server (as well as the DNS server Bind, so that I could administer the network more easily), and we began a process of consolidating all our information needs onto that web server – guidance notes for staff, safety statements, and gossip. The fact that we were running a mixed TCP/IP and IPX system was not (and still is not) an issue – the systems and the possibilities complimented one another.

The next surprise to me was that Linux databases matured rapidly – IBM was releasing DB2 for Linux (at this stage, our financials were running on an IBM AS/400, which ran DB2) and Borland changed their database, Interbase, to open-source, and this open-source version was (and is) developed by the Firebird group. In addition, Kylix was released by Borland, and my initial tinkering with it showed me that, irrespective of whether it achieved perfectly portable code, I had a Linux development environment that was familiar to me as a Windows developer.

What became obvious to me at this stage was that Linux had become a serious server platform: Kylix, rugged databases, a web server that worked effortlessly, a respectability by the availability of OEM installations by vendors such as Dell and IBM, and a realisation that the original lowly desktop PC running Linux for our internal web site had never been rebooted since it had been set up.

All the staff had become dependant on the internal web server, albeit unconciously unknown to them, so it was time to take Linux more seriously: I bought a Dell PowerEdge server, with disk and power-supply redundancy, which came pre-installed with RedHat 7.3, which was a relatively dirt cheap but rock solid tool ...and there was no licensing costs...

That is the history of how Linux started to meet our needs. There are many applications that we could switch to Linux, but you don't have to - a mixed-mode environment is not a problem, "horses for courses" is fine. We still run our core financials on an IBM box (now an eSeries) running legacy System 34/36 code - we don't want to port it because of the associated risks, and we don't have to (because it integrates fine), but that does not mean we cannot develop new solutions on Linux that co-exist happily with the rest of our system.

Ciaran Costelloe

Technical Services Director

Flogas Ireland Ltd

30th August 2003