Microsoft warns on Home Server bug

Samba?

Thank heavens Microsoft have agreed to disclose technical information to the Samba team so that they can produce a reliable alternative.

Even microsoft admits...

That you shouldn't be using microsoft apps.

Client and Server

As it only happens with just 7 bits of client software, then it would indicate that the server is not handling something special with the clients rather than a server only issue - if that makes sense! :-)

E.G. This only happens with these 7 bits of software, not anything else. Can't think why, but then again I'm not a Win32 developer.

Obviously word documents, MP3's, spreadsheets, save game files etc, are all fine. Shame on MS for not noticing this in the first place though. Unfortunate as Home Server seems to be pretty good actually!

And any Linux heads can go do one.

How any OSS fanatic can have a go at MS for some of their client apps not working correctly with server apps is probably the most hypocritical thing ever. Compared to the mess that is the majority of open source interoperability, the MS family of software is rather superior when it comes to integration. (Exchange, SharePoint, Vista, Office, ISA, AD, XBox, ForeFront etc.)

Oh and @Andy = "If you value your backups and data - switch to a linux server now."

My reply: If you value ease of use, the ability for end/home users to operate a server and don't want you box to shit itself to a command shell when the resolution is set wrong then use Windows. Plus it does things that mass market Linux can only dream of when it comes to the home entertainment arena.

MS Workstation group should NEVER be let loose on server code

Windows Home Server is what you get when the Workstation group think they can build a server. They have made a complete f*** up of it. Quite how someone can take a system as rock solid as Windows Server 2003 R2 and turn it in to something as reliable as Tony Blair's sincerity takes truly remarkable incompetence.

Somebody had the bright idea of extending the file system and gave the job to a bunch of George bush clones. You can bring this file system crashing to its knees just by copying files back and forth and as a special treat it will randomly lose files until it gives up the ghost and loses lots of them ... 325,000 at the last count on my own WHS test setup.

This "innovative" file system needs about 2 years more work by real developers before its ready to be trusted. Of course, the really good bit is that the new file system is incompatible with VSS. To the uninitiated, this means that no backup program will work on WHS, so you can't backup and save any of the data that it's going to eventually lose.

There are some interesting ideas behind WHS, but letting the Workstation group do them was guaranteed to f*** it up. WHS needs to be withdrawn and given to the Server group to fix it before it sees daylight again.

My own data is now safely hosted on Windows Server 2008, WHS is now out of the loop after testing it.

@Steven Hewittt

> the MS family of software is rather superior when it comes to integration.

Well of course it is - the whole Microsoft rat's nest of software is highly proprietary and the details which would allow full interoperability or integration with anything resembling competition are deliberately kept secret. That way, shills like you can trumpet about how "superior" Windows' integration is without having to trouble yourself with reality.

> If you value ease of use, the ability for end/home users to operate a server and don't want you box to shit itself to a command shell

<yawn> Move along please; nothing to see here except the usual boring old chestnuts about Linux being 'difficult'.

@Steven Hewitt

"My reply: If you value ease of use, the ability for end/home users to operate a server and don't want you box to shit itself to a command shell when the resolution is set wrong then use Windows."

Your server has a GUI? What do you need that for? ;-)

@Steven Hewitt

I'm not sure what distro you're using, but when I somehow managed to set the resolution on my Ubuntu desktop to 2000 something on my poor little CRT screen (which maxed out at 1024x768), it black screened for a bit, waited about 15 seconds and then returned to its original resolution.

It similarly had no issues with me removing, replacing and adding new hardware to it and unlike Windows, it simply worked with my HP printer (Windows starts nagging about needing drivers which, surprise suprise, you can't install through the Windows wizard but have to use an annoying HP installer for) and unlike Windows Vista, which I tried to install on this machine (3 days wasted trying to get the bloody thing to work properly) it installed in about 15 minutes flat (On a pre-formatted drive that is)

Eh...

Strangely enough, I was able to install Ubuntu on my newly received laptop, and dual-booted it with the XP that was already on there, two major no-nos I have come across when it comes to running your first Linux box... No dual-boot, no laptop.

Yet it all worked. Whereas my desktop, with it's XP, has BSOD'd on me 3 times since I installed Ubuntu on the laptop. I think it's looking for attention.

Re: Steven Hewittt

I'm not a Linux 'fanboy' at all. All I want from my equipment is stability, reasonable performance and extreme ease of use. I'm not stupid, just incredibly lazy; if an OS takes more than 10 minutes of my time (not including time the machine is busy working away without any user interaction) to install, I can't be arsed with it. If a system needs more than 30 minutes of maintenance a month, it's flaky and I won't use it. If I can't intuitively figure out how to do something within about an hour a system is inadequately documented and I'll use something else.

I'm unnecessarily cruel, I know. There are probably tons of great pieces of software that I won't give a chance to shine. It's a shame. But I don't have the luxury of a lot of free time and need my machines to just do their jobs and get on with it without much intervention from me.

Which is why I run Ubuntu Server on most of my servers, Ubuntu Desktop on my workstations, and OpenBSD on my world-facing machines.

A lot of people will tell you one particular system is great, or one particular system is awful. All I'll say is that the above recipe works for me, as an incredibly lazy person who wants everything to run itself. I don't care about politics, I just want machines to work for me, not the other way around.

It's been a great many moons since I paid much attention to MS.

What's the problem with Windows?

I can categorically say our Windows 2003 SBS gave us no problems whatsoever over the Christmas period. In fact I've never seen it so reliable and when I came in this morning after a fortnight. It was humming away, smooth as the proverbial baby's...

Fantastic - now if I can persuade the rest of the company to take the remainder of 2008 off, I can relax and carry on singing the praises of Microsoft. In the meantime. I'd better get my arse into gear and sort out the various logging in problems the helpdesk appears to be innundated with - oh well, the Ubuntu servers seem OK so I guess it must be...

in defenence of the Hewittt...

To be honest, and in defence of the hewittt, as an OS Linux does many things well - but it probably isnt the best thing for mass market media centric users. You know, the type of user that MS is targetting with this OS.

I have seen feature rich media centric Linux distros, but MS do have a good track record for ease of use and installation for everyday users. I am also perfectly sure that, should the Linux community at large wish to contribute in such a fashion, a distro like this could be created that does exactly the same thing as Home Server and would be as easy to install, maintain and configure.

Microsoft is, always was and always will be crap

I've been a Microsoft user since the days of DOS 1.0, and no one (especially not a certain Hewitt) will ever convince me that MS does not make crap products.

The only reason I continue to use the crap that comes out of Ballmer's domain is because I have to.

Why do I have to ? Because my work is centered around it, my hobby is centered around it, and finally, I am wayyyy to lazy to be my own personal Sysadmin at home.

To those who continually chip in their inevitable "Linux is better !" comments, I say call me when Linux can run the 250+ games I have bought without any hassle for me (I'll start listening when Linux gets a DirectX version).

So there you have it. I'm a developer by day, and a gamer on my free time. I have done all desktop OSes MS has ever made, and none of them has been the perfect, stable and discreet OS that I expected. Of all the versions MS has made, I must say that XP Pro SP1 is by far the best of the lot - even with all its shortcomings.

So when MS talks about Home Server, or Vista whatever, I just laugh and forget about it. MS handling my data ? One look at the history of its backup programs and you forget that idea. I do my backups myself, thank you, with Nero and a blank DVD. Works fine and MS can't screw it up, not today, not tomorrow either.

You want a data hub ? Get a NAS unit (working under a Linux kernel). You want a server ? Either Linux, Sun or IBM are your only choices, anything else will only bring pain in the long run. MS is only still around because of the immense software library that was made for it - and with Vista, MS is actively trying to kill that off.

The day any game I buy can run on a Linux box, Windows will be sailing out my window for good. Meanwhile, I'll stick with it, but don't ever ask me to trust it.

Lack of appreciation!

My bet is WHS overloads easily because the kernel is busy surreptitiously updating an inverted index of every file on your server, so that it can report suspicious data back to the National Security Agency.

That being its highest priority, managing your data just has to take a back seat.

The Microsoft OS must feel terribly under-appreciated, think of all the work it is doing without a word of thanks.

lol

They call this a server?

RE: Microsoft is, always was and always will be crap

I was with yo9u all the say up to "(I'll start listening when Linux gets a DirectX version)." Why the hell would you want that? What should happen is the lazy, MS supporters who make the decisions in games companies should start making games more cross-platform -- this is happening, and Apple's use of a unix-like base to their OS and Intel hardware mean that this could be a better option nowadays.

The problem now isn't what Linux doesn't support -- it's who doesn't support Linux.

Reply

My post wasn't to say how great MS software is, I'm simply pointing out that generally speaking a home user (this is Windows HOME Server we are talking about) will have a much better experience in setup and intergration with WHS or SBS than Linux - as WHS is designed for it whilst Linux is still (regardless what some say) a steep technical challenge when it comes to setting up a real server solution for more than just a file share.

Not saying that Windows is better, just that it's easier. The article points out a bug when 7 client apps are used to modify files on WHS when it's under load, and straightaway there's posts shouting that *BSD/*nix is better for servers.

I'm just trying to counterbalance those posts by stating that whilst *nix had more pedigree for servers, it's also a LOT harder to setup a similar *nix based environment compared to a Windows environment when trying to get more complicated things like media streaming, centralised updates and remote access.

When it's for a home user, setting up a Linux box is trickier than WHS.

However I agree with Mark that MS have screwed up a superb idea by allowing the workgroup team to build it. Windows Server is rock solid, reliable and powerful - a lot of that has gone with WHS which is a shame.

@ BitTwister

Windows Server System Integration is, quite franky, superior to OSS alternatives. Why? I couldn't care less to be honest, got enough politics at work without worrying what's happening with industry politics too. However your argument about it's down to MS keeping their API's too secret it nul and void. Simply because OSS could do exactly the same in terms of functionality with other OSS products.

MS have great integration between their own products. OSS whilst technically has the same functionality (some may argue more), the intergration isn't as good. With all these open standards, I have to ask why this is.

The ease and intergration of Windows 2008, Exchange 2007 and SharePoint 2007 with a Vista+Office desktkop is unmatched elsewhere. The closest I've seen is Novell's offering, which is actually rather good, although they have let GroupWise go downhill dramatically whilst Exchange has just got better.

@ Greg:

The majority of the Windows 2008 servers that I am testing out right now are using Core, e.g. no GUI. Same with the Linux servers I manage too.

@ Remy Redert:

2006 year was the last desktop Linux attempt I made with Fedora. Old hardware (some old HP NetServer e800 I think) and after chaning the resolution the system shat itself, I rebooted and it gave me a lovely bash prompt. Thankfully I know how to modify my X11.conf from bash - I doubt most buyers of WHS would, which was my point.

However I do know that things are much better now. I have a Ubuntu VM desktop which is great. Don't know if Fedora is still like this or not, but I'm aware that Linux has made lots of progress.

RE: Right tool for the job

Having installed Windows 3.11, 95, 98se, 2000 and XP I don't know where you get the "easy to install" bit from -- on all versions I've had to install device drivers after install to get things working correctly. On the other hand, I've managed to install Fedora, Mandriver, Suse and Ubuntu on a laptop and desktop and it's just worked.

My point about DirectX is that it's an M$ marketing tool, pure and simple, and is not actually needed -- decent games companies would write games that are cross-platform (the Unreal Tournament series are an example). Gaming is starting to take off on Linux, I know of a few hardcore gamers starting to take the plunge.

In fact, the only people I know who aren't considering Linux, and say it's too hard to use, are Windows "power users" -- most of whom (not all) are proud of their non-transferable "IT skills" they picked up on Windows.

Nobody is trying to force you to use Linux though -- I'm not sure the same can be said of Windows. ;~)

Re: DirectX on Linux

That would be the key to me movng off the Windows upgrade treadmill - too many games that don't have Linux versions, and don't work under Wine / Cedegra.

@Cameron:

Lets see, do I develop with the easy to use tools that the graphics card drivers are optimised for, or do I build in OpenGL so the 4 Linux-only gamers (as opposed to dual-booters) in the world can play too?

@Edward:

Linux hardware support still isn't anything like the level of Windows. Try setting up anything spiffy and 3D (Beryl etc) with dual screens on an ATi card (things may have changed since the new driver came out - I plan to try it again this month, but I couldn't find any way to do it by googling). Try doing video out so you can use your PC as a media player with your TV - ouch.

If the ZFS team get Raid-Z expansion working, I'll be moving to Solaris faster than you can say boo for my server, and sticking with Windows XP for games.

Re: Windows Home Server could be Great

@TW Burger

"Windows Home Server could be great all they had to do was take Windows Server 2003 which is a good product (although not quite great) and cripple it to only handle five users, remove some large commercial components, and add a the audio/video layer and cheesy consumer interface wrapper."

Ah ... isn't that called "Windows Server 2003 Small Business Edition" or something??? Anyway, it seems like Home Server is basically doing the same stuff that some Small Biz do over here: setting up a w2k or XP Pro box with some shared folders and set up some perms.

I usually recomend an actual W2K or 2003 Server, or Linux+SMB for those who are savvy enough to properly configure one. Even as an anti-M$ user, I do give credit on 2003 server's stability, even if it never shuts down cleanly after installing Exchange or some other stuff...

Home Office

So home many people read the title as "Microsoft warns on Home Office bug"?

@Remy Redert

> when I somehow managed to set the resolution on my Ubuntu desktop to 2000 something (...) it black screened for a bit, waited about 15 seconds and then returned to its original resolution.

Exactly - just like Windows does, IIRC. You have to wonder if Mr. Hewittt [sic] is really just an automatic gainsayer application.

Re: Reply

"However your argument about it's down to MS keeping their API's too secret it nul and void. Simply because OSS could do exactly the same in terms of functionality with other OSS products."

I was with ya til you got to this point, then you lost me. Open Source Software, just by the nature of the name (not to mention the GPL) is... well... Open. :)

Cheers,

John

@Right tool for the job

> Apparently the religion that is linux doesnt want to listen to what it needs to do to get the mainstream users across.

Not really. I expect there's just a natural resistance to it becoming so "easy to use" (which over the past few years has become the same thing as "don't want to think or learn") that there's no discernible difference between it and that other OS - especially in terms of security. And FYI, since there's no company or shareholders to impress, people are and always will be free to choose to use it if they want to. No marketing hype, EULA handcuffs or system lock-in is required to "get the mainstream users across".

> Never mind building an os that is easy enough for regular people to install and use

Astonishing - you've managed to miss the previous posts where users described how easy it was to install and use. Go on, treat yourself to a free download of the KUbuntu DVD - you can boot from it without anything being touched on your existing disks.

> AND provides features and applications that people actual use in their day to day lives.

What, you mean everyday stuff like GUI file system browsers, application installers, web, mail, word processing, spreadsheets, database activity, multimedia, digital music, video editing, etc? Did all that *years* ago - do try and keep up.

@Steven Hewittt

> your argument about it's down to MS keeping their API's too secret it nul and void.

You reckon? Surely you read about the recent agreement dragged from Microsoft's clammy grip which would allow better integration with Samba. The Samba team has fought for this information for *years*, and you can't have missed the continual legal shenanigans Microsoft is involved with - mostly about opening up the API & protocols documentation to help create a level playing field WRT interoperability, or their heavy-handed domineering approach to competition in certain areas.

> Simply because OSS could do exactly the same in terms of functionality with other OSS products.

It can and does, by adhering to published and openly discussed specifications - but I don't really expect you to appreciate that.

@Anonymous Coward

OK, let me rephrase that for clarity:

The problem Linux developers have is that many hardware companies will not cooperate in any way with them -- and it may actually be illegal in some cases to install hardware under Linux because manufacturers own the firmware that is required to use devices.

RE: DirectX -- if you really want Linux to have DirectX, for ease of programming, then there's this company in Redmond you need to speak to about making it open source. ;~)

Does that explain it better?

FWIW, I tend not to recommend Linux all that often because of this type of problem. Far from being a fanboi, I just like to see some balance.

@Another reason to stick with "Standard"

Um, you wouldn't actually run any of the programs on a Windows server would you, but you could, so has anyone actually tried, just to make sure it won't happen on real windows server editions.

And I agree that Windows 2003 isn't that bad, and a detuned version that would support say 10 users as secure domestic server would be great. I'd love to be able to use my Windows XP Pro workstation as a domain server as well for all the other PCs I have.

Still I prefer Unix for real severs, better still VMS.

@ Nick Ryan

What the hell are you talking about...? Antispam is included with Exchange. Take a peek:

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/features/default.mspx

And please enlighten me with how the intergration with IIS and AD is 'botched'. Seems to work pretty well so far. In fact the entire configuration of Exchange is stored in AD. Worth pointing out that autoconfiguration, busy/free data, offline address books, Outlook Anywhere (HTTPS over RPC), ActiveSync and Outlook Web Access are ALL done through IIS. All web services running under IIS. Regarding AD, open up adsiedit.msc and take a peek at the configuration partiion of your domain. It will be under services I think. Every configuration change, including individual mailboxes are stored in AD - updated in realtime. Even email routing across sites in your organisation is done using AD's sites topology rather than a seperate configuration list.

SharePoint doesn't integrate with IIS?! You mean like the web-based SharePoint Services 3.0 which is a complete web application written in ASP.Net that SharePoint Server is built on? Not forgetting the various authentication types supported ranging from anonymous through to forms and Windows Auth. Has little to do with AD? It's entire user profiles are pulled from AD!! That's profiles such as phone numbers, email addresses, organisation structure, job title; as well as the securtiy model itself that uses just AD users and groups. Couldn't care less if they write their own version of HTTP so that Office integrates with SharePoint. Why should I care? It works, my browsing experience hasn't changed since using it so why even state that they had to 'break' HTTP to get it to work. (a source would be good too) If it's only going to work with Office and SharePoint, who cares? If not, then I believe MS legally have to document it - so where's the issue? Windows Explorer isn't an issue here. If you like I'll do a little video on how to use WebDAV which works rather well thanks. Check your setup, something is obviously poorly configured cause without have to tweak it the explorer view works fine.

Please enlighten me with a source regarding your statement of MS planning to do away with local file access and moving to SharePoint instead, as with Windows Storage Server, plus the new toys in Windows Server 2008 for file management I would have thought the opposite is true.

Um, what's a bug in the Explorer Shell in Vista got to do with integration...?

Office integrates amazingly well with not only other Office products, but with SharePoint, Project Server and Vista. Seamless, just seamless. And of course it also integrates with MSN Messenger / Office Communicator (the client to Office Communications Server 2007). And SAP. And SQL Server. And MS CRM. Not forgetting that 3rd parties can create plug-ins for Office as well. http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2006/11/21/220039/microsoft-puts-integration-at-the-heart-of-office-2007.htm

I don't personally use ISA Server, but the integration with Exchange and SharePoint is superb from my own research with Exchange and SP. Obviously it also integrates with AD as well.

XBox integrates with Zune, and lets not forget the Xbox Gamercard. You see the intergration with what you do on the console and with what is avalaible on the xbox.com site and bungie's site. The VERY detailed stats, messaging, screenshots, even in-game video's of your last match and listed. Not to forget friends lists, MSN messenger integration and of course having the gamercard on your webpage etc. In fact there's even PHP based Facebook applications that hooks into it. See www.360voice.com/tag/stevehoot for another good example.

Forefront works with AD/GPO's and uses SQL 2005 Reporting Services. It's updated using WSUS. Yep, i'd put that down as integrated into the Windows Ecosystem.

I'm not for 1 minute saying that everying MS produces is good software, or even that everything integrates. Team Foundation Server is awful when it comes to integration. It's crap. (although the software isn't bad, just the integration and management tools that suck)

The zune still doesn't integrate with WM. (It sort of is WM with a funky skin on top, but I want to use WM!)

However my original point is that the integration between MS products is superb in comparision to the majority of OSS. Like I said, this is just integration, not quality of product.