flushing dns cache

[Sam Trenholme]

> been reluctant to try linux flavours.

To minimize your commitment, you can try Linux in a VMware virtual
machine or in a "Virtual Box" from Sun microsystems.  Both are free
(beer) downloads:

http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

> but only limited admin in the sun domains

Sun's arrogance is what killed them.  They thought the dot-com party
would never end; when it did and people quickly looked at Linux or
*BSD for more inexpensive solutions, Sun did not catch up (I think
they were the last *NIX vendor to embrace Linux) and never recovered.
Now they've been bought by Oracle and very little is left of them.

In terms of MaraDNS support for Solaris, there was a recent thread
about compiling MaraDNS on Solaris:

http://woodlane.webconquest.com/pipermail/list/2009-June/000323.html

I am perfectly willing to integrate whatever patches users contribute
to make MaraDNS compile on Solaris, *BSD, QNX, whatever. But, I won't
fix MaraDNS on any of these platforms myself unless money exchanges
hands.  Support for these platforms is on a "pay up or submit your
patch" basis.

My favorite version of Linux is actually RedHat Linux 4.2 (their 1997
release).  This was a very solid, stable server and client OS.  RedHat
releases postdating RedHat Linux had a lot of stability issues that
didn't settle down until 2000 and their release of RedHat 6.2;
thankfully RedHat backported critical security patches for years until
newer versions were stable enough for people to transition to.  It was
the first version of Linux where the distribution maker fully
supported the product, allowing people to easily make security fixes
without needed to upgrade the entire OS.

I actually have somewhere in storage CD-ROMs of RH 4.2 along with all
of the powertools compiled for this version of Linux; it can also be
looked at here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Linux

CentOS 5 (or Scientific Linux 5 if you don't like the organizational
issues CentOS has had) is the latest version of a rock-solid stable
Linux release from RedHat that can be freely downloaded and used.

Anyway, enough of the topic drift.  I'm working on learning C++ so my
skills are relevant when the job market thaws again.