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Mandates

All the reports mandated, including this one have been conducted for the Navy’s Directorate of Maritime Ship Support (DMSS 8), under the auspice of the Halifax Modernized Command Control System (HMCCS). These reports have been useful for providing technical information to the Navy aiding it to determine which new operating system, if any, would replace the current C2 operating system aboard the Canadian Halifax-class frigate. These frigates, including both the computer operating system and hardware are currently undergoing modernization.

The original mandate of DRDC Valcartier was to examine and address the various long-term support strategies available to the Navy should they decide to pursue the deployment of a Linux- based operating system aboard the frigates. Furthermore, the Navy wished to understand through which means long-term operating system maintenance could be achieved and supported. This work was carried out in Report [2].

Report [3] was a direct response to a question posed by the HMCCS project that was to conduct a comparison between the corporate licenses of two popular North American Linux vendors. The conclusion that was reached may have an important impact on determining the outcome of which vendor’s distribution could potentially be used as the new C2 operating system.

However, as work was underway for reports [2, 3] the HMCCS project requested that DRDC Valcartier examine whether the Linux operating system could adapt to periodic changes in hardware and determine how this would affect overall long-term support. This was studied in Report [1] and consisted of a series of short-lived experiments and observations that was the first of its kind as none could be found in the public literature. Since the new C2 operating system could be in use for 15 to 25 years, the Navy needed to ascertain the maintainability of the operating system and its ability to adapt to periodic hardware changes that are bound to occur.

This Technical Note, although not specifically mandated, was a result of the previous reports that examined the Navy’s potential use and implementation of Linux. Specifically, this Technical Note uses results obtained in Report [1] and goes one step further by examining how the Linux operating system can be maintained over the long-term using a vendor-neutral technical methodology. The outcome is a report that provides a global overview of Linux system maintenance that can be understood by system administrators and others with some experience in Linux or UNIX.

3.