Slashdot Mirror

Possibly refers to some of the issues covered here: https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/articles/15145?amp

In particular, to this issue, which apparently first materialized with the recent leap second, and probably not to this issue, which might be the one fixed by this patch.

yes, an old one that was patched before this became an issue.

And a new one that is either in the process of being patched today (July 1, 2012) or that was patched today, as per the lkml thread that starts here.

the issue if for un-updated/unpatched versions of Linux

"Unpatched" with a patch that didn't exist before the problem showed up...

and shoddily written apps and java

Where "shoddily written" means "using futexes or using something that uses futexes"? I'm not sure I'd be so harsh about using futexes; something that lets you do locking mostly in userland doesn't seem like a bad idea offhand....

The hard system lock bug due to a leap second was patched in 2.6.29, so either you've got some weird related bug, or something is very wrong.

Well, the weird related bug would arguably count as something being wrong. Apparently there is a bug in the handling of the insertion of positive leap seconds that could cause weird behavior with futexes, and that bug appears not to have been fixed until at least July 1, 2012 (I'm guessing John Stultz has worked up a patch).

Our problem was with a third party monitoring solution - its daemon process brought every single one of our servers to a near halt by consuming all available cpu cycles at the stroke of gmt midnight.

The OS itself was fine.

Well, if you're talking a Linux kernel, the part of the OS that dealt with leap seconds was not OK, and was "not OK" in a fashion that could cause processes using futexes to spin and consume all available CPU cycles when a leap second is introduced.

This monitoring software is common enough that it likely was behind a lot of the issues seen around the 'net.

...perhaps by virtue of either using futexes (in what I'm presuming is a legitimate fashion) or using something that uses futexes.

As far as I can tell, all current operating systems handled it fine. It's applications that have problems, mainly server-type apps that actually use the clock for important things.

Linux being heavily affected is just a side-effect of most servers running Linux (although apparently some older versions don't handle leap seconds so cleanly - maybe that has something to do with it?).

Yes, at least one of the problems appears to be a Linux kernel problem. However, as that thread indicates, the consequence of this isn't a kernel crash; it causes futexes to repeatedly time out (or, at least, causing futexes with timeouts to repeatedly time out). I'm guessing, perhaps incorrectly, that this might mean that code waiting for a futex gets a kernel wakeup due to a timeout, checks whether the condition being waited for has happened, discovers that it hasn't, sleeps in the futex again, gets a kernel wakeup due to a timeout, checks whether the condition being waited for has happened, discovers that it hasn't, sleeps in the futex again, lathers, rinses, repeats, so it makes no progress and chews up tons of CPU.

If so, then:

• this particular problem is specific to systems running Linux kernels with the problem (and hence specific to Linux);
• applications that don't themselves have issues with leap seconds might be affected by this;

so Linux being heavily affected might also be a side-effect of, well, some versions of the Linux kernel having a bug that's triggered by leap seconds.

However, unless an application happens to use futexes in a fashion that trips over the bug, they won't be affected. It might be server applications that are most likely to do so, meaning that you might not see it on, say, a desktop or handheld Linux machine, or even on some servers.

My guess ist that Windows simply ignored it, so there never was a 61st second in a minute.

Well, if Microsoft's documentation of the SYSTEMTIME structure reflects the implementation, GetSystemTime() , the claim in that man page^W^WMSDN page that "The system time is expressed in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)" nonwithstanding, cannot acknowledge the existence of a 61st second in a minute ("The second. The valid values for this member are 0 through 59.", as the SYSTEMTIME page says).

But, just as on UN*X, you have "counter" and "human-style label" times (time_t, struct timeval, struct timespec are examples of the former, and a struct tm as returned by, for example, gmtime() is an example of the latter, on UN*X), with the Windows versions of those being SYSTEMTIME and FILETIME respectively. That page on FILETIME says nothing about leap seconds - does it just keep counting over a positive leap second or does it stop or what? And, if it doesn't just keep counting over a positive leap second, does it just freeze for a while second, or does it slow down over some period of time so that it eventually syncs up, or what?

As for NTP, Microsoft has a page on "How the Windows Time service treats a leap second", which says

When the Windows Time service is working as a Network Time Protocol (NTP) client

The Windows Time service does not indicate the value of the Leap Indicator when the Windows Time service receives a packet that includes a leap second. (The Leap Indicator indicates whether an impending leap second is to be inserted or deleted in the last minute of the current day.) Therefore, after the leap second occurs, the NTP client that is running Windows Time service is one second faster than the actual time. This time difference is resolved at the next time synchronization.

(the author of which needs to be told what "inserted or deleted" implies - do they mean that, regardless of whether a leap second is inserted or deleted, the NTP client that is running Windows Time service is one second faster than the actual time?)

And then there's one more question: if there's anything in the NT kernel that deals with leap seconds, does any version have a glitch, as some versions of the Linux kernel do?

If not, then many of the other problems might not exist on Windows. This email from John Stultz, the author of the fix linked to in the previous paragraph, seems to indicate that at least some of the problems, if not all of them, stem from a kernel bug, so it might be that Java and company might be Just Fine on systems that don't have a kernel glitch of that sort (so they might work fine on at least some non-Linux systems, as well as on Linux systems with the bug fixed).

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.

I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.

Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.

That's when it happened: I found Linux! I installed Linux right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. Linux accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!

Linux is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install Linux right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! Linux came through with flying colours where no one else could!

My client's response? "Linux totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using Linux to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to Linux! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!

Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use Linux. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!

Linux: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.

I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.

Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.

That's when it happened: I found Linux! I installed Linux right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. Linux accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!

Linux is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install Linux right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! Linux came through with flying colours where no one else could!

My client's response? "Linux totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using Linux to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to Linux! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!

Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use Linux. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!

Linux: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.

I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.

Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.

That's when it happened: I found Linux! I installed Linux right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. Linux accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!

Linux is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install Linux right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! Linux came through with flying colours where no one else could!

My client's response? "Linux totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using Linux to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to Linux! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!

Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use Linux. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!

Linux: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.

I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.

Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.

That's when it happened: I found Linux! I installed Linux right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. Linux accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!

Linux is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install Linux right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! Linux came through with flying colours where no one else could!

My client's response? "Linux totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using Linux to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to Linux! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!

Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use Linux. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!

Linux: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.

I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.

Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.

That's when it happened: I found Linux! I installed Linux right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. Linux accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!

Linux is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install Linux right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! Linux came through with flying colours where no one else could!

My client's response? "Linux totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using Linux to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to Linux! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!

Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use Linux. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!

Linux: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.

I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.

Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.

That's when it happened: I found Linux! I installed Linux right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. Linux accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!

Linux is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install Linux right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! Linux came through with flying colours where no one else could!

My client's response? "Linux totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using Linux to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to Linux! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!

Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use Linux. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!

Linux: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.

I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.

Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.

That's when it happened: I found Linux! I installed Linux right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. Linux accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!

Linux is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install Linux right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! Linux came through with flying colours where no one else could!

My client's response? "Linux totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using Linux to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to Linux! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!

Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use Linux. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!

Linux: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.

I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.

Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.

That's when it happened: I found Linux! I installed Linux right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. Linux accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!

Linux is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install Linux right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! Linux came through with flying colours where no one else could!

My client's response? "Linux totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using Linux to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to Linux! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!

Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use Linux. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!

Linux: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.

I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.

Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.

That's when it happened: I found Linux! I installed Linux right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. Linux accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!

Linux is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install Linux right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! Linux came through with flying colours where no one else could!

My client's response? "Linux totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using Linux to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to Linux! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!

Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use Linux. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!

Linux: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.

I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.

Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.

That's when it happened: I found Linux! I installed Linux right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. Linux accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!

Linux is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install Linux right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! Linux came through with flying colours where no one else could!

My client's response? "Linux totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using Linux to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to Linux! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!

Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use Linux. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!

Linux: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.

About six months ago, I was overexerting myself trying to get rid of a terrible virus on a client's PC (I own a PC repair shop and have been fixing computers for over 10 years). Given my level of expertise, I thought I'd be able to get rid of it fairly quickly and without hassle, but as was made evident by my colossal failure, I was horribly, horribly wrong.

I couldn't remove the virus no matter what method I used. I tried all the latest anti-virus software and all the usual tricks, but it was all in vain. Failure after failure, my life was slowly being sucked away as I spent more and more of my time trying to get rid of this otherworldly virus.

Frustrated and stressed by my own failure, I began distancing myself from my wife and children. After a few days, I began verbally abusing them, and it eventually escalated into physical abuse. I was slowly losing what remaining sanity I had left. If this had continued for much longer, it is highly probable that I would have committed suicide. A mere shell of what I once was, I barricaded myself in my bedroom and cried myself to sleep for days on end.

That's when it happened: I found Linux! I installed Linux right on the client's PC, ran a scan, and it immediately got rid of all the viruses without a single problem. Linux accomplished in record time what I was unable to accomplish after a full week. Wow! Such a thing!

Linux is outstanding! My client's computer is running faster than ever! I highly recommend you install Linux right this minuteness, run a scan, and then boost your PC speed in record time! Linux came through with flying colours where no one else could!

My client's response? "Linux totally cleaned up my system, and increased my speed!" All the PC repair professionals are using Linux to solve all of their problems. This should be reason enough for you to switch to Linux! It'll speed up your computer, rid it of all viruses, and you'll be able to work productively again! Wow!

Even if you're not having any obvious computer problems, you could still be in danger. That's why I very highly recommend that you still use Linux. After all, it will boost your PC & internet speed to levels you never would think are possible!

Linux: For a Cleaner, Safer PC.

Or they did that in 2002, to launch a website in 2003, and have no idea how to transition a hashed password database from one system to another, which is a more difficult problem.

If you design things properly, not hard at all.

Basically, all hashes in the database should be stored in the format of:

$id$salt$encrypted

"id" is a code that tells you which hash was used. You can use the standard "crypt" identifiers, or make up your own if those aren't good enough.

"salt" is the unique salt for each user. Crypt allows for up to 16-character salts, drawn from the [a-zA-Z0-9./] set (64 possibles per position, total of 96 bits possible.

"encrypted" is the resulting hash.

That means that if you decide to upgrade your security by using a newer, fancier hash, you can do so in a transparent manner. The old hashes continue to work unless you specifically decide to break them and force users to enter a new password. But any new password updates can automatically update to the new hash system.

Oh look, that means the following phrase is appropriate:

Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.

(Learn from those who have gone before.)

An alarm sounded in the dark, and Linus Torvalds groaned and shuffled under his covers. His wife lay lazily snoring next to him, and the alarm clock bathed their forms in red light as it pulsed.

Before long Linus slapped the snooze button on the alarm, grunted, stretched, and ambled out of bed.

Linus's alarm was was no ordinary one. For starters, it was a 386-based mini-ATX custom rig with 32 MiB that ran Linux 2.6.36.2 in a one-off distro Linus called Alarmix. He used emacs to edit his alarm configuration file every night, and in the morning when alarmd woke up it played a rather loud klaxon. But today it was far earlier than he had set his alarm, and this was a source of worry for Linus.

This klaxon was a special one, run when alarmd was remotely activated by the Git server, meant to alert the core Linux developers that someone was attempting to hack into the Linux kernel code repository. There would likely be a logfile of attempted intrusions displaying on Linus's workstation right now.

Stretching his back and cracking his neck as he wandered slowly to his study, Linus fell lazily into his chair.

I wonder who it is this time, Linus thought to himself as he jiggled his mouse, temporality blinding himself as his 50" LCD TV came on.

But before Linus's eyes could adjust, he saw stars. Something hard and cold hit him dead-center in the forehead, flipping him backward in his chair onto the floor.

Hello, Linus, a voice standing over Linus said. Long time no see, isn't it? the voice chided.

What the fuck? was all Linus could muster as he recovered from the blow.

In case you're wondering, Linus, that was the butt of my Colt M1991A officer's model, the voice, high and whiny as Linus's ear tuned back in, said. It's the small-frame six-shot 3-5/8"-barrel version of the classic .45 ACP design.

Linus's heart beat like a jackrabbit fucking on a hot tin roof. A gun? This was a first. His high Finnish forehead was still numb, but he could feel it swelling.

This baby's small enough to conceal but has excellent stopping power, wouldn't you agree?

The interloper laughed at his own joke and Linus's ears perked: the narcissistic sense of humor the whiny, nasal voice it finally came together in Linus's addled brain: his assailant was none other than Eric S. Raymond, the ruddy Open Source advocate and Jger-guzzling, gun-toting gas-bag.

Fuck you, Eric! Linus shouted. After almost twenty years of tolerating the megalomaniacal bullshit that Raymond served on a regular basis, Linus was more angry than scared. You can go fuck yourself!

I'm glad you brought that up! Eric said, cheerfully. That's exactly why I dropped in for a little visit tonight! But I won't be fucking myself

Linus's moan was muted by the thin, pale, crooked penis covered in a dark brown syrup plunging rudely into his open maw. He gasped through his nose as the skinny, misshapen prick started pumping in and out of his slick mouth.

Oh yeah Eric said between breaths. Ohhh yeah.

The room was silent except for muffled moaning and a wet, fleshy rhythmic pumping sound which reverberated off the dingy, tiled walls.

"Fuck your mouth, Linus!" Eric said. "I want to see cum and Jgermeister all over your pretty little Finnish face!"

Linus was crying, the eye-liner Eric forced him to apply at gunpoint running down his cheeks from his glassy, bloodshot eyes. He gagged and drool poured from his lips.

I'll need a little lube first, though, Eric said, reaching for his Jger bottle. Your mouth isn't quite wet enough for old uncle Eric

Eric uncapped the bottle in one quick motion, not letting his Colt stray from Linus's forehead. Then, something dark and brown started raining on the festivities, covering Linus's face and Eric's bushy

This is known as featuritis, and is anathema to the Unix way, where each part should do just one thing, and do it extremely well.

All btrfs does is manage a B-tree filesystem. All grep does is apply a regular expression to a string.

However, the UNIX way is not always even a good thing.

It is also the UNIX way to duplicate a single thing a hundred times for each little feature variation (grep, egrep, fgrep, most of Perl.) That can also be unpleasant for the end user (xterm, gnome-terminal, kterm, gterm, LXterm, terminator, editing Perl.) Great for a system administrator who is expert at their particular tool and only that tool but horrible for everyone else.

That's without getting into the UNIX Way for (lack of) documentation. Or how that one thing is so often the wrong thing so it doesn't matter how well that one tool does it.

btrfs is famously called a rampant layering violation. The roll-up of filesystem-management features in one place actually lets the developers avoid duplicating code (which may actually be about as non-UNIXy as you can get in some ways.) Code that now knows about certain information normally hidden from it can do things differently. This is sometimes better (rapid mkfs) or worse (fsck tool was apparently hard to write.)

In my opinion, it's not interesting for enterprise because you get mediocre features, like RAID support that doesn't cover RAID5, no online file system check

In my opinion, if your enterprise system depends on fsck and not good backups then you don't have an enterprise system. Yes, xfs_repair can do amazing things to mostly trashed disks. But one day your data will take a good fscking where only surviving copy will be the backup copy.

RAID5 implementation from Intel is in the tree, but waiting until after the fsck is done. And btrfsck has been around since, oh, February? And the btrfs-progs you should be using with the 3.4 kernel have btrfsctl included?

I was hoping the RAID5 code was going to land in 3.4, actually. Reading the pull request says that RAID5/6 should be in 3.5. Oh, well.

Of course, if you have enough money to buy an "enterprise" solution, your SAN/NAS should do the thing doing RAID for you anyway.

My major criticism of btrfs is the horrid sync performance. Hosting virtual machines tends to require lots of small writes to disk that make btrfs incredibly non-performant.

btrfs has many sexy, sexy features for a world of enterprise SAN storage and virtual machine hosting. It has thin disks, balanced meta-data, flexible storage, SSD optimized modes, multiple snapshot layers, checksummed data on disk. All of this just because it does one thing and does it well: manage a B-Tree database.

Today it's is just not there in the I/O department, sadly. Probably good for inside the virtual machine guests, though. Only testing will tell.

My money is on NILFS, if nothing else because Oracle gives people a bad taste in their mouths, but ICBW.

Wow, speaking of niche file systems. Log file systems have quite a long history. Of horrible performance and fragmentation. But if we all end up on SSDs, that won't matter. Underlying any file system you put on it, an SSD implements storage as a circular log and performance is fast enough to not depend on huge uncommitted disk caches.

well comparing it to lvm ignores a significant amount of what btrfs is
you would compare it with the entire stack
mdadm + lvm +ext 3/4

btrfs gets you:
Checksums on data
mirrored metadata on a single disk
lots of flexibility (online resizing and reshaping(single disk to raid 1 to 0 to single disk (or some variant of it) ( additionally raid5/6 like systems are coming)
easy striping and mirroring across different sized disks
snapshots
and probably more go check https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/

If you care about more than i386, ARM, MIPS, PowerPC then you're a massive minority. If by platform you're talking about OS... clang supports OS X, windows, linux, FreeBSD (actually, any BSD I can think of), and I've made it compile on solaris, so there's really no problem here.

Check the Linux Source Tarball, they support far more than i386, ARM, MIPS, and PowerPC - I count 27 architectures in Linus's current tree.

They do,you don't understand that a period is sometimes not a decimal point, but a simple mark designating a seperation between two numbers.

Hint: In Europe, they don't localize version numbers to use commas. ie gimp 2.8 is not localized as 2,8.

You must not have ever seen multiple seperators either. Ever look at the linux kernel?

http://www.kernel.org/

Multiple decimal points don't make sense. Multiple seperations of a group of numbers do.

How many registers do state variables , forcing more useful variables to be spilled to the stack? Run a profiler on the state variables version of a function and the version with goto used as described in chapter 7. If the goto version is at least 50 percent faster with no cost in readability, then why not use the goto version?

That's why the use of the GOTO statement is accepted by the Linux kernel coding style (Chapter 7: Centralized exiting of functions).

Considering that the BSD network stack is pretty much THE reference, whatever you code has to stay compatible with it.

"Compatible" at the API level or "compatible" at the network level? ("Compatible" at the API level is irrelevant, as it's not going to happen; PE is not a.out or ELF.)

So you're going to need to copy ALL the BSD constants,

No, you're not. Nobody's going to give a damn about AF_DATAKIT/PF_DATAKIT, for example. You're only going to have to copy the names of the ones that matter, namely AF_INET and AF_INET6.

and ALL the BSD typedefs,

Again, you'll only have to copy the ones used in socket calls.

So, tell us, how are you going to write something that complies with the standard without those constants, typedefs, and api? Magic? Time machine? Million Monkeys?

So, tell us, how are you going to write something that complies with various UN*X standards without using the code of an existing implementation?

As indicated, you don't have to copy the exact definitions of the constants; even the existing *BSDs don't all have the same numerical value for AF_INET6 (28 in FreeBSD and DragonFly BSD and 24 in NetBSD and OpenBSD; it's 30 in Mac OS X and presumably iOS).

In any case, even if they copied and pasted some typedef calls, that, in and of itself, doesn't mean that it's derived from the BSD code in any interesting way.

As for the "api", an API isn't code, it's documentation. There are a number of cases where multiple implementations of an API exist without sharing code. (You may have heard of some software called "the Linux kernel" and "the GNU C library" - and those APIs include more than the socket calls, so arguing that the Linux networking code may have been in part based on the BSD socket code is insufficient to dismiss those examples.)

http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2604450&cid=38607200

Question: How's "bugzilla" doing?

Answer: It's DOWN FOR THE COUNT (on Linux)

Nope. For one https://bugzilla.kernel.org is up and running. For two, the bugzilla PROJECT is hosted at http://www.bugzilla.org and is totally independent of kernel.org (kernel.org uses it, just like you use Windows, that doesn't make Windows a stupid troll like you). So your posts are pointless and obviously trollish. That or you're too dense to understand it.

  APK EPIC FAIL... period!

There's no fsck.. So unless you're 100% sure your Linux machine never crashes and your power supply is never interrupted - don't.

There's also no fsck for ZFS, and yet that has been running in production for many years now.

I strongly agree. They promised they would publish an account but so far have failed to do so. On kernel.org they wrote "We will be writing up a report on the incident in the future." but I suppose "the future" in this case translates to "never" or even "mind your own business because it's embarrassing".

They are also still using a signing key which has been publicly stated to be compromised. From http://kernel.org/signature.html

"The current Linux Kernel Archives OpenPGP key is always posted here, including any revocation certificates which may be outstanding on older keys.

This signature does not guarantee that the Linux Kernel Archives master site itself has not been compromised. However, if we suffer an intrusion we will revoke the key and post information here as quickly as possible."

I find it amazing that after over 4 months this simple act of revoking the bad key has still not been carried out. Even though a signed tarball doesn't guarantee much in the end, the fact that an important organisation can publicly make such a statement and then fail to honour it is actually disgraceful. It's a demonstration of bad faith in itself, and in combination with their failure to be frank about how root was gained on multiple sites and servers, is an indication of untrustworthiness of the most uncomplicated type.

Claiming to be open and honest is in no way a satisfactory substitute for being open and honest.

There's no fsck.. So unless you're 100% sure your Linux machine never crashes and your power supply is never interrupted - don't.

If this is the case, whats the fucking point really? BTRFS was heralded are the replacement for ZFS, but you are seriously telling me that after all this time, you can still lose a large amount of data and end up with a corrupt filesystem after such a trivial thing as a powerloss? Really? It seems like I am still stuck with FreeBSD and Solaris11/OpenIndiana if I want to use a decent filesystem, because even Windows hasn't had such issues in over a goddamn decade.

There's no fsck.. So unless you're 100% sure your Linux machine never crashes and your power supply is never interrupted - don't.

Incorrect. Please refer to lines 314 and 315.

Like this?
http://adult.engrish.com/2005/09/20/think-really-different/
ftp://mirrors.kernel.org/debian-cd/

Hmm. Seems ALL browsers and OSs can be configured via to allow arbitrary:// protocols to be opened with a specific program, indeed the latter can do so with plugins... Even when echoed to my xterm, that FTP line creates a link that opens my FTP program.

Who cares when the patent was granted. It's iterative and obvious, and it has been such since the late 80s wherein I played MUDs that had this sort of behavior... Certain words in certain contexts while in the hub-world would become highlighted by the software when written and when activated (by typing a command or "tabbing" to them), would launch another BBS "door" program.

eg: Hey, don't forget to use up your LoRD forest fights today!

Take a Linux CD ISO and extract it to a FAT32 USB drive (7-zip can do that). Delete isolinux.bin and rename isolinux.cfg to syslinux.cfg. Then grab syslinux.exe and run "syslinux.exe -mifa [drive]:"

You can still use the drive for storage.

There are also many tutorials out there for installing Windows 7 from a thumbdrive.

The I have just the thing for you! http://kernel.org/

I think it is in place to post the following information about files systems and the risk of data corruption:

(the information within this post is derived from a forum discussion with a user named "Kebabbert" so credits should go to him(/her never met him irl) for the excellent information on this post)

Regarding shortcomings in hardware RAID, here is a whole PhD dissertation showing that normal file systems are unreliable:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/ [...] t-risk/169

Dr. Prabhakaran found that ALL the file systems shared

...ad hoc failure handling and a great deal of illogical inconsistency in failure policy...such inconsistency leads to substantially different detection and recovery strategies under similar fault scenarios, resulting in unpredictable and often undesirable fault-handling strategies.

We observe little tolerance to transient failures;...none of the file systems can recover from partial disk failures, due to a lack of in-disk redundancy.

Regarding shortcomings in hardware RAID:

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/adsl/Public [...] fast08.pdf

"Detecting and recovering from data corruption requires protection techniques beyond those provided by the disk drive. In fact, basic protection schemes such as RAID [13] may also be unable to detect these problems.
..
As we discuss later, checksums do not protect against all forms of corruption"

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/adsl/Public [...] icde10.pdf

"Recent work has shown that even with sophisticated RAID protection strategies, the "right" combination of a single fault and certain repair activities (e.g., a parity scrub) can still lead to data loss [19]."

CERN discusses how their data was corrupted in spite of hardware RAID:

http://storagemojo.com/2007/09/19/ [...] -research/

Here is a whole site that only talks about the lacks and shortcomings in RAID-5:

http://www.baarf.com

Lacks and shortcomings in RAID-6:

http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel [...] /raid6.pdf

"The paper explains that the best RAID-6 can do is use probabilistic methods to distinguish between single and dual-disk corruption, eg. "there are 95% chances it is single-disk corruption so I am going to fix it assuming that, but there are 5% chances I am going to actually corrupt more data, I just can't tell". I wouldn't want to rely on a RAID controller that takes gambles :-)"

In other words, RAID-5 and RAID-6 are not safe at all and if you care about your data you should migrate to other solutions. In the past the disks were small and you were much less likely to run into problems. Today when the hard drives are big and RAID clusters are even bigger you are much more likely to run inte problems. Assume that there is a 0.00001% chance that you run into problems, if the hard drives are large and fast enough you will run into problems quite frequently.

I would say avoid Acer like the plague. I've got an Acer TravelMate 6413 and the whole experience of owning it has been repeated kicks in the teeth.

It shipped with Windows (for which I have no use) and they refused to honour the refund clause in the Windows EULA.

It has a BIOS bug that they refuse to acknowledge or fix, even though I engineered and sent them a fix for the broken DSDT.

It also eats through Li-Ion batteries like nobody's business - I have to replace the battery about every 12-18 months. The battery calibration is also completely broken - I have to recalibrate every few weeks.

The TPM also appears to be broken and I have to pass workaround parameters on the kernel command line to even get a modern kernel to boot, otherwise it hangs up trying to initialise the busted TPM (even when the TPM is turned off in the BIOS).

SPI and GPIO support exist (i2c too), it's just very hardware dependent and needs to be configured with board-specific bits at compile time.

GPIO
SPI

Not exactly easy at first. There are userland extensions to all of the above too, which is fine for blinking LEDs and such, but has some limitations... spidev only has certain modes and data lengths, /SS lines are defined in board config (so kernel compile to change), things like that.

SPI and GPIO support exist (i2c too), it's just very hardware dependent and needs to be configured with board-specific bits at compile time.

GPIO
SPI

Not exactly easy at first. There are userland extensions to all of the above too, which is fine for blinking LEDs and such, but has some limitations... spidev only has certain modes and data lengths, /SS lines are defined in board config (so kernel compile to change), things like that.

This is how the Linux kernel development process works. If someone writes a Linux driver for a piece of hardware they can usually get that driver into the main kernel tree if they follow the proper process. The Linux Kernel Mailing List FAQ covers this here: http://vger.kernel.org/lkml/#s2 It says that the driver must be tested successfully by other people. The code has be written against the latest kernel. Coding standards and best practices have to be followed. This driver has just as much right to be there as the SpaceTec SpaceBall 6dof driver or the Xbox gamepad driver.

In your opinion, under what circumstances should Linus incorporate a hardware driver into his kernel?

Generally when you compile the Linux kernel you have to choose which drivers you want to compile support for either as a module or inside the kernel. The addition of this wiimote driver just means an additional choice you don't have to choose. There are many joystick and gamepad drivers in the Linux kernel.

A bloat conscious person probably wouldn't compile support for any hardware he or she doesn't have.

As for security audits, I'm having trouble imagining who would do security audits of hardware they don't use or have. A corporation or individual hobbiest wouldn't. More than likely only the users of that hardware or the developers of that driver are going to be interested in auditing it. Possibly the distribution makers might but I doubt it. Can you describe who you had in mind that would be inconvenienced by the existence of yet another driver? Please remember this is a development kernel we're talking about. Between now and the time when distribution makers include this kernel could be considerably long. RedHat and Novell probably won't include this kernel for more than a year from now. In that time most of the serious bugs will work their way out.

Try this link

Linus Torvalds did indeed release Linux 3.1, but where are the git repos for all the kernels that are on the front page of http://www.kernel.org/ ? Linus's development tree is there, but none of the release trees are, so all of the "gitweb" links are broken links. Specifically, I'm really looking for the git "stable" trees, and I have not been able to find where they've gone.

Also, as far as I can tell, this new kernel driver doesn't do anything.

You're looking at the commit of the stub, there's been more code added since.

Also, as far as I can tell, this new kernel driver doesn't do anything.

You're looking at the commit of the stub, there's been more code added since.

WHY did they put this in the kernel? It's just a custom Bluetooth device. Afaik, the driver worked perfectly well in userspace. Also, as far as I can tell, this new kernel driver doesn't do anything.

I can point you to a lot of things, of equal value for people as the artists you mention. The problem is that different people value different things, I for one know only the Beatles, and don't really like their music (it's good music, but it's old and kind of boring).

My list would be:
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=HDstarcraft#g/u
146,463,134 views, 384,895 subscribers.
http://www.collegehumor.com/
http://sitasingstheblues.com/
http://www.kernel.org/ (and of course all the Linux distributions and all the free open source tools)
and many more of course, I don't like to post now all of my bookmarks.

You should finally realizing that the people you list all are a tiny minority and that almost all works are created still either by professionals or by amateurs. The professionals are paid anyway for their work and the amateurs are creating for the fun of it.

Take for example a film. There are many people working to create a film, all are professionals. When the film is finished, it is released to the theatres and the people get paid. Then the DVD is released and the people get paid once more.

Now take out the copyright, what will happen? The film would be still be made, it would still be released to theatres and there would be still a DVD of it. The people who worked would get paid. But they would not be paid indefinitely, because after a while there would be cheaper DVDs from other who just copy the film, and you could download it everywhere for free. But that would not be the problem, because almost all people involved in the production of the film are paid once anyway.

So the outcome would be that the movie studios is pressured hard to create new movies, which they can sell to theatres and make new DVDs. The market would be very dynamic and the outcome would be that more films are made more efficient and there would be much more competition.

If you think I'm crazy, think again, history is on my side. That is exactly what happened in the 19th century in Germany, which did not had any copyright laws. In fact, that period of time is now known as the Golden Age where Germany transformed itself from an agriculture country to an industrial nation. It happened in the USA, too. Long ignored the USA the copyright of books that came from Europe, with the result that it transformed itself in a very short period of time to the powerful nation we know now.

sh-3.1$ wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/ChangeLog-3.0.4
--2011-10-06 12:41:23-- http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/ChangeLog-3.0.4
Resolving www.kernel.org... 149.20.4.69
Connecting to www.kernel.org|149.20.4.69|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
2011-10-06 12:41:23 ERROR 404: Not Found.

sh-3.1$ wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/ChangeLog-3.0.4
--2011-10-06 12:41:23-- http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/ChangeLog-3.0.4
Resolving www.kernel.org... 149.20.4.69
Connecting to www.kernel.org|149.20.4.69|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
2011-10-06 12:41:23 ERROR 404: Not Found.

Not Found
The requested URL /pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/linux-3.0.4.tar.bz2 was not found on this server.

In the process of getting up?

For some reason the links on the homepage appear to be broken.

You can still browse to the repos by going to http://git.kernel.org/

Unless of course your using a kernel.org mirror to download your distribution's packages ala http://mirrors.kernel.org/archlinux/core/os/x86_64/