Posted by
Hemos
on from the interesting-read dept.
Clyde writes "Hans Reiser speaks in this interview with BeOpen.com about the challenges/advantages of transcontinental software development, the Dodge City business environment of turn of the century Moscow, and the prospect of ReiserFS making it into [Linux kernel version] 2.4 just in time.
"
My point is that this is a business model that requires that there be "suckers", because no-one with a clue would be willing to pay for the service, since they could just wait for some other sucker to come along, and then freeload.
So?
With the traditional sucker birthrate of 1 per minute, this business model will never wear out.
Don't worry--even the "Information Age" has done little to harm the sucker ecosystem, and with the "New Economy", suckers are thriving, with a new sucker born every second!
Wow... with odds this good, I ought to run for Congress!
-- Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
What is taking so long.
by
DragonHawk
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· Score: 2
Reiser FS looks seriously cool. [However] it isn't well integrated.
That's mainly because ReiserFS is still considered to be very experimental (well, by everyone but Hans Reiser), and will not be part of the 2.4 production kernel. The earliest it can hope for adoption is the 2.5/2.6 series. This isn't because of flaws in ReiserFS; it is because of timing. ReiserFS started reaching usable stability too late for it to be integrated into the 2.4 kernel.
I have to wonder, though, what the hold-up is. I'm not trying to troll here, but what's taking them so damn long? They've been working on it since.99 and its still not done?
First, they haven't been working on it since 0.99. That's just plain false.
Second, you have to understand something about the history of Linux. It is only relatively recently that the need for a journaling filesystem has arisen in the Linux world. Up until a year or two ago, Linux was still mostly the domain of hackers and geeks. There were some businesses using it, but largely "on the quiet" and for smaller tasks. Given that user community, the desired features in the filesystem were low complexity and fast general performance. ext2 fits the bill. In the event of a system crash, fsck can put the filesystem back together quickly enough.
Now that Linux is getting attention and being deployed on larger systems, though, fsck times have become an issue. For a really large array (say, 500 GB), without special tuning, fsck times in the eight to ten hour range are not unheard of. We can no longer wait for fsck, and so Linux needs a better solution.
Which leads to the next problem: Filesystems are important. Real important. Filesystem corruption is probably one of the worst possible software failures you can have. Even kernel crashes can be dealt with (just look at NT), but if your filesystem is trashed, then your system is dead. For good. You have to recreate the system (i.e., restore from backup) to continue.
Thus, when it comes to filesystems for general production use, the Linux Kernel Team(TM) makes damn sure they do it right. A filesystem has to be extraordinarily stable before it can be considered ready for the production kernel.
(Oh, and as an aside: "I'm not trying to troll here" should go right up there with "The check is in the mail" and "It's only a cold sore".)
--
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
People will have to calculate how much a feature is worth to them. If feature X would be really useful to you, you could either 1) hope someone else will pay for feature X, and live without it while you wait and hope, or 2) pay for it *now*, and get use out of it *now*. It's like deciding to buy a new computer; sure, the same amount of money will buy a faster system in 6 months, but if you buy it now, you get 6 months usage of a faster machine; you have to figure out at what point the expenditure is worth it.
Don't read too well, do you?
by
tilly
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· Score: 2
I said directly that moving to a 64-bit processor does not solve the 2038 problem because the C standard defines time as a long and a long as 32 bits. Breaking either breaks working programs. Here is an idea of what needs to happen.
As for large amounts of data, yes I have had to worry about the 2 GB limit on production systems. I have in the past gone to contortions to break up files so that they would avoid that limit. I am perfectly aware of the issues, and your glib claim that you would just fix the issue with any code you used is utter idiocy from someone who clearly doesn't understand the issues.
For instance large file support in Perl (and hence any program written in Perl) is a new feature that you can choose to compile perl 5.6.0 with. (If you choose to install on a production system, install the latest patches as well. I am serious about this.) Giving Perl that support took a fair amount of work. (Hint, you need to make sure it never tries to seek when it can't...) If you have any older version of Perl, I really recommend that you open a pipe to or from from a program (eg cat) that understood 64-bit files. Guess why I know this?
As for development vs production kernels, it depends what you are doing. For most production purposes, most people should not be using development kernels. If you have any brains you don't use.0 releases either, you let the distributers hit the main bugs first.
As for ReiserFS, it supports files larger than 2 GB. Whoop-te-do. So does Ext 2. Has for years. That doesn't mean that on a 32-bit system you can actually address the bit on the end...
Regards, Ben
-- My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
On a 32-bit system you cannot have pointers into an arbitrary location in, say, 8 GB of data.
Depending on your needs this may not be an issue. Certainly the people hitting the RAM barrier today are mainly database people who find the support for 64 GB quite nice. But that won't work for many other types of applications, and this is why Intel is biting the bullet and preparing for the end of the x86 world.
Regards, Ben
-- My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Re:Immigrations laws unfair?
by
sethg
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· Score: 2
Economists have some standard arguments for why free trade in goods is a Good Thing (see, for example, Paul Krugman's essay "In Praise of Cheap Labor". Basically, the idea is that if companies can locate their factories wherever they want and export their products to wherever they want, then it creates an efficient market which benefits everyone.
For example, if the US dropped its tariffs protecting cane sugar, and Europe dropped its policies restricting broadcast of American movies, then some American cane-sugar growers would lose their jobs -- but [NOTE WEASEL WORDS HERE] in the long run, (a) they could go work in Hollywood instead; (b) the price of cane sugar would go down, which would benefit everyone who likes sugar; (c) the demand for American movies and TV shows would go up, which would benefit Americans working in Hollywood.
I don't think free trade is an unmitigated good thing, but after reading enough work by level-headed people like Krugman, I'm convinced by the arguments that it's a generally good thing.
However... what's sauce for the factory-owner is sauce for the labor-owner, too. If a corporation can have the right to move a factory from the US to Mexico, and take advantage of cheaper labor, then a worker should have the right to move from Mexico to the US, and take advantage of the higher wages. (And if Mexican workers had this freedom, Mexican factories -- particularly the maquiladora factories just over the border -- would have better wages and working conditions.) --
ReiserFS was proposed to go into 2.3.x a while ago; it was held off then because it didn't "play well enough" with VFS. VFS then went into flux, as Alexander Viro was making fairly extensive changes.
The understanding then was that if the code audit (against VFS) went well, ReiserFS might be ready to go in.
Dust from the VFS work, from both the Viro and ReiserFS perspectives, seems to have settled, which would now permit Linus to evaluate whether or not this is the time for ReiserFS to go in.
Unfortunately, Linus is "out" for three weeks. (Vacation, I think? See last week's LWN...)
And as Alan Cox has observed, "breaking the usual rule" is Linus' prerogative, not Alan's.
Hans Reiser has observed, and perhaps too-loudly-commented, that there seems to be a correlation between:
People being associated with RHAT (like Alan Cox and Stephen Tweedie) and seeming to oppose ReiserFS inclusion, and
People being associated with SuSE, and supporting ReiserFS inclusion.
Unfortunately, if he saysSmells like Red Hat Conspiracy! enough times, it could irritate people enough to make them stand steadfastly against having a "conspiracy theorist" in their midst, and create, if nothing else, a conspiracy against him. Which would be pretty counterproductive on all parts...
-- If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I've seen a few comments that link this interview with BeOS. As far as I can tell from a cursory look at the homepage BeOpen has nothing to do with BeOS. They just have similar names. Recall from an earlier slashdot article that BeOpen is the place that the python folks moved to. Hope this clears up the confusion I had when I first saw the story and thought "What's Hans Reiser have to do with BeOS?"
No, you misunderstand. Namesys is not (to my knowledge) providing any proprietary features.
Client A contacts Namesys and says "I will pay you X dollars to implement feature Y". Namesys accepts. Namesys then takes their X dollars and implements feature Y, which is then *freely available*. This is very similar to the business model Cygnus had going for a while wrt gcc.
Re:Working where labor is cheap
by
fishbowl
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· Score: 2
"I'm really quite suprised that more US companies are not establishing development shops in economically disadvantaged places. "
How in the hell is that going to happen, when the management of these companies won't even let you telecommute from Santa Cruz to San Jose???
Fortunately or unfortunately, a remote team is not generally regarded as manageable.
-- -fb
Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I won't use it until it is 2.4.6 or so. I have no need to.
There will be production Linux systems for years with a 2 GB file-size limit.
And it will probably take longer than that for all of the utilities that can only seek within a 2 GB file to figure out how to properly handle a large file...
Oh, don't forget. On 32-bit architectures you cannot have a process that can address more than 2 GB of data. (Yes, you can have more data than that - but AFAIK it has to be mmapped files kept as anonymous pages. Your *process* runs into addressing limitations because of the length of a pointer.)
This will take some time to sort out. Longer than you think - longs are remaining 32 bit on most systems for backwards compatibility reasons. Time is defined to be a long. That won't work forever...(No. Just using a 64 bit machine does not solve the problem.)
Cheers, Ben
-- My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
That standard of living will get bumped up one way or another. No one in my previous company was particularly complaining, and I had a job there for as long as I wanted it, coordinating development projects and coming up with new directions for development. Anyone can do shit programming. I'd rather direct a lot of cool stuff. And I did try to keep the work as interesting as possible for the Romanian teams I was responsible for, too. I like those guys and am hopeful that they'll keep in touch with me.
We were already starting to see a talent crunch in the city our progammer's shop was based in, as we were competing with two other companies for the best programmers. If a programmer's coming out of college with 2 or 3 offers, he's already in an incredible position. He can ask more. And with a 60% income tax over there (not to mention value added taxes etc) he's going to need it.
--
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Fair doesn't really enter into it... but it is one hell of a better business model than the one where everyone has to pay the entire development cost, do something in house, and end up with a lower quality product.
My guess is that most of the cases where someone is going to pay for a "feature" that then gets integrated into the main branch, it will be something that nobody else needs at the time.
Namesys also (IIRC) will sell you a commercial license to eg. use ResierFS in a custom device w/ a proprietary OS. It has a potential market in embeded devices that need more space than NVRAM or flash can handle, but need to be able to handle power cycles gracefully. In this case, someone might contract for features that wouldn't be appropriate for mainline release, as well.
A tip for anyone who wants to try it
by
tilly
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· Score: 2
If you want to try it on a boot partition, don't try to use LILO, use GRUB. If you have a complicated booting situation, you probably should be using GRUB anyways...
Cheers, Ben
-- My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Wow, that was a stretch to stay on-topic.
by
extrasolar
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· Score: 3
Subject: What would Hans Reiser think about cheese?
My whole point was that the BFS does much of what Reiser is hoping to do, a well-established on-disk data structure has been designed for it and is already in widespread use (and this datastructure was designed for multithreaded access from the kernel), and there's even some GPL'ed Linux code to use it.
So why not integrate the BFS into Linux?
Just because "It's Not Invented Here" doesn't mean it's not a good technology. Remember, Linux didn't even invent Unix.
And I specifically meant to point out the similarities between BFS and ReiserFS in being journaled high-performance filesystems with integrated database properties.
Reiser: It's an enormous advantage for us. We need a large user base. Our business model is based upon us giving the software away for free then users want more features. So they pay for us to add more features. Then we give those features away for free. That makes more users want to use our software which means the whole thing snowballs. Getting into 2.4 gives us a chance to snowball for 18 months or so.
The more features he puts in now, the more chance ReiserFS has of being accepted as a standard. But this business model is fucked because the pressure is on to not incorporate features his team can charge for further down the road.
All I can say is, I hope Reiser succeeds and sets a precedent for this business.
When reiser, xfs, ext3 and all are finished and stable, which of them do you feel will become the de facto standard for Linux systems? I can see the prospect of three or four different filesystems as creating fragmentation in the Linux distributions. What are the advantages of each of the filesystems? I know ext3 can upgrade an existing ext2 system with the addition of the journal file, xfs has the backing of a major company (SGI) and reiserfs is supposed to be the fastest (no?), but which will be successful in the end?
* xfs is very nice all around and thoroughly tested on SGIs, but since it's a port that isn't very integrated into the kernel, the patch is *ugly* and scary. I haven't used it on linux yet.
* reiserfs is fast and sweet, but I lost some data (recoverable, but still annoying) to a couple of development versions in reiserfs 3.6.* and linux 2.3.99pre*.
* ext3 does journalling of everything right now, not just metadata, so it's slow.
There's also IBM's JFS, about which I know nothing.
ReiserFS is by far the most mature of the three (well, four if you count JFS, which you missed). XFS probably won't see the light of day (or the light of night when dealing with kernel hackers, I suppose) until 2.5; someone might kinda sorta get ready to start considering how to start thinking about looking at ext3 by 2.7 or so; and I haven't a clue how JFS is doing.
So that leaves ReiserFS. It's not extraordinarily stable yet (and from what I hear, it's not even ordinarily stable, relatively speaking), but it does the job for a lot of people. Somewhere along 2.4, it'll get stable enough that it becomes the Cool Thing To Do (kind of like Linux itself), and everyone and their dog will be running ReiserFS.
Since ReiserFS offers no glaring technical deficiencies when compared to the other three, it will probably be the most popular until the end of time (or at least until something new comes along). Not to say that ext3, JFS and XFS won't be popular, but I would guess that they'll never be as popular as ReiserFS with Linux users.
Actually, a fully journaled filesystem need not be slow. Take a look at BFS. It is freaking fast, and fully journaled. (Hell, I've given up shutting down. Be should just remove the shutdown menu.)
-- A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
While ReiserFS support *is* optional and totally indepenent from other filesystems, I can't see Linus adding something so big to the kernel after the 2.4.0-test series has already started. Wasn't there supposed to be a feature freeze? Correct me if I'm wrong...
Do not jump to conclusions. Alan Cox did say we are in a code freeze, but it is quite clear that Linus made the possibility of exceptions for reiserfs, nfs and VFS.
I can't find the original post, but Linus once said that perhaps reiserfs will be included during 2.4, but maybe not 2.4.0.
From this post by Alan Cox, he does not appear to rule it out. > The generic journal layer might not be a bad idea. Stephen and I have > really duplicated efforts, and that is a waste. I'm more than willing to > make a go at integrating a generic logging system into the reiserfs code > base.
Don't blindly follow Stephen's code either. Im sure the best of happens not to be entirely in one code base.
> But, reiserfs 3.6 has come a long way. I feel it is worth putting into > the kernel soon (I would love to see reports of *heavy* testing), and I
I get requests for reiserfs to be included every so often, and some of them are coupled to things like 'runs fine on our 200Gb build array'. Its certainly getting some good testing
According to Alan Cox on the resier mailing list today, there's no way in hell the FS is going into 2.4. I like Hans, but he's fulla hooey on that particular count.
Not suprising, though, as he's said 'we're in' for pretty much the entire 2.3 lifespan - with or without Linus' support.
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2000 13:55:56 +0100 (BST) From: Alan Cox To: Sasi Peter Cc: Richard Torkar , Lars Marowsky-Bree , Rik van Riel , linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu, "reiserfs@devlinux.com" Subject: (reiserfs) Re: New Linux 2.5 - 2.6 TODO (Alan Cox suggests
> a good job; why would not you finally adopt their FS into the kernel???
Because we are in a code freeze. The same reasoning with NWFS, JFFS, XFS, EXT3
And as far as -ac patches go I've send them same to all parties - No. For a change that big so close to a final 2.4.0 release its for Linus to break the stated rules if anyone does.
-- blue
-- i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
Working where labor is cheap
by
SnatMandu
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· Score: 2
I'm really quite suprised that more US companies are not establishing development shops in economically disadvantaged places. Russia is a great example of place where you can get away with paying great people peanuts, all the while looking like a saint. If you've got some good management types (who have a clue), there is no reason not to start development offices in such places. Send one or two people overseas to recruit a team, toss them a project, and see what they get done. With US$, it is pretty easy to attract top people in places like Russia, India, or Indonesia. I'm suprised that we don't see more of this, or do we?
Re:Working where labor is cheap
by
extrasolar
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· Score: 2
"So what? Isn't that what your beloved Capitalism is all about?! Free competetion means that you also must remain competetive with regard to salary or else be crushed under the hordes of people who're willing to work for less pay."
That's why competition should never be completely free. That's why I am not a libretarian.
There is nothing new in computing ...
by
Howl
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· Score: 2
A filesystem with text search eh? I seem to recall ICL in the UK did one of those (CAFS Content Addressable File System) in 1984 or 5.
Cut to monty python...
1st Hacker: File system with text search? - luxury - the kids of today don't know how good they have it! 2nd Hacker: When I were a lad we had 8 users on a 5mhz 8085. 1st Hacker: Luxury! 8085, we'd have given our souls for an 8085. We had 6502... etc... etc
--
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck load of tapes
Well, I've been using ReiserFS on my linux workstation, and on my server now for the past 4-6 months now without serious problems. I've had no complaints about it - it manages small files exceptionally well - and won't bork if you power the server off suddenly during a kernel compile... assuming of course you enable journalling. File I/O performance is right on par with ext2 in my experience, both with slower 5400 RPM drives (my server has 4 IDE drives on it) and the Quantum Atlas IV 9.1 gigger I got now - 7200 RPMs of Ultra160 lovin'. I have had no problems with either of them
I think the filesystem got off to a bad start with some political / personal issues, and there was apparently alittle snafu on the main kernel list, but I'm glad to see it is all working out - the "beta" reiserfs was more than stable enough for the worst I could deal up with it - I stuck qmail on it and pumped in about 500,000 e-mails over the course of an hour... they all came back out, minus three which blackholed and one which was a dup. Not bad, considering it did all that/very/ quickly.. and the system was even kinda-sorta responsive while I was doing that.:)
It's also being funded by mp3.com so I rather expect it to reach industrial strength reliability.. but I took the plunge and didn't regret it. Then again, I don't do massive data warehousing.. so YMMV.
What would Reiser think of the BeOS BFS?
by
goingware
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· Score: 5
Hans Reiser specifically discusses how his aim is a journaling filesystem with keyword searching integrated into the fileystem. He gives address books as an example.
This is done in the BFS filesystem which is part of the BeOS, which you can download here. The "People" address book database in the BeOS is entirely implemented in the filesystem.
I use the BFS in my applications I write for the BeOS - not just to store files, but I specifically use its indexed attributes for fast keyword searching in Word Services for the BeOS and I think it's the best thing since sliced bread.
While Be's implementation of the BFS is proprietary, there is a GPL'ed read-only Linux implementation of it available here
I don't think the attributes are available from Linux in the Linux version of the BFS, but they could be and to do so I think would be a significant addition to the OS.
Re:What would Reiser think of the BeOS BFS?
by
goingware
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· Score: 2
By the way, the current BFS was written by just one guy, Dominic Giampolo, in a few months. I think the originally BFS took a while to make, in part because the BeOS kernel was then under development, but adding stuff like journaling and indexed attributes (and taking out the old integrated database) was a matter of a few months work for Dominic.
Re:Immigrations laws unfair?
by
JamesKPolk
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· Score: 2
If we accept this assertion combined with your assumption that the foreign programmer is working at lower wages than his american counterparts this means his labour is subsidizing US citizens.
The cheap labor directly help corporations, not people. And the majority of the money from these corporations go to banks and venture capitalists.
Without the cheap labor, the corporations would still be able to profit (after all, lots of corporations profit paying union wages for jobs that require far less skill). The only difference would be that the profit would be distributed differently.
This is why I oppose H1-B visas. Those visas are tickets that allow corporations to import labor, under conditions that reduce competition, and therefore lower wages even further (the employee basically can't leave the company, see other Slashdot articles on the subject). They're tactics used by one group (corporate interests) to get away with paying less for labor than the market would otherwise dictate.
Have you ever noticed that enforcement of immigration laws focuses on getting the illegals themselves, rather than the employers? That skewed enforcement just lines the pockets of the California (and other states) farming industry leaders.
... someone might kinda sorta get ready to start considering how to start thinking about looking at ext3 by 2.7 or so...
When Ted Ts'o came and spoke at the local Linux User Group a couple weeks ago, he seemed much more optimistic about the ext3 filesystem making it into Linux for 2.5/2.6. He did indicate that there is little to no chance of it making it into 2.4. He also expressed concerns about ReiserFS and XFS being pushed in too quickly, though. (The argument basically being: Filesystems are damn important, so you have to make real sure you do 'em right.)
--
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Re:Immigrations laws unfair?
by
JamesKPolk
·
· Score: 2
I don't see who is being sacrificed here. The US is in a period of unparalled prosperity, due in part to forward looking immigration laws.
Oh, yes, and this growth will last forever, too! The economy will never, ever contract again! It's a New(TM) Economy! Let's just let everybody in, so everybody can join in on our fountain of eternal wealth!
I find it interesting that Hans talks about non-US programmers taking their piece of the pie. In my last job, the company I was working for decided to outsource most of the programming work in my department to Romania. The literacy rate in Romania is amazingly high and many people there can't work the jobs they're educated for. So we got a damn good batch of programmers making several times the national average salary for Romania getting to work in what have to be dream jobs for them.
And of course after you factor in benefits etc, we could hire half a dozen or more of them for the cost of one programmer in the USA.
Most of our communication was through E-Mail with weekly teleconferences and the occasional trip over there. The first time I went over, I met a guy from another big company while getting breakfast at the Hotel at 6am (Jetlag.) There was at least one other one in the area and we were starting to see a talent crunch.
Bad news for American programmers, I suppose, but perhaps this sort of thing will balance out the world economy in the long run. Hopefully so the standard of living is good for everyone, not so that it sucks for everyone.
--
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
All I have to say is this.
by
Signal+1|
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· Score: 3
BeOS really has no chance in today's highly competitive competition for corporate conglomerate (c)desktop users. You know Linux does, because of its great user interface, uncomplicated it's spiffy non-complicatedness with all the power of Unix and its great Java. Also, it has by far the best internet Explorer, called Netscape. Netscape, the best of the internet Explorers, really lets one Explore the internet better than with other internet Explorers. I have been a web broswer for a long time and let me tell you linux is the best for web browsers like me. I am really glad that soon with this new file system linux users will be able to save file and their kernels to their hard disk drive. i do love linux but having to install it every time i boot the personal computer that it was getting sickening and too installing all of the various peripherals and various things such as the software, etc. Also, Linux has a great shot at being today's number one software because it has a fun game built right into the monitor that is called degauss. it makes the monitor do funny stuff.
In my opinion ReiserFS 3.5.18 is an excellent filesystem. Several Linux machines here run 3.5.18 with the 2.2.14 kernel and easily trounce equivalent ext2 machines running 2.2.14. Several of the machines are undergrad sandboxes where intro data structure programming is done, so they're hit pretty hard when approximately eighty simultaneous g++ commands are issued.:) Another is used for Postfix queueing. None of them have experienced extended downtime beyond the ten to fifteen seconds required to verify the integrity of the journalising fs.
My person machine runs 3.5.18 on kernel 2.2.14 and performs remarkably well under the abuse that I continually heap upon it. The most cutting-edge releases of SuSE and Linux-Mandrake have integrated an option to create ReiserFS partitions as opposed to ext2, and I choose that option whenever presented.:)
Reiser FS looks seriously cool. I tried it out a little on Suse 6.4 and it flies. However, there are a few things about it that piss the hell out of me. First, it isn't well integrated. I don't know why, but for some odd reason, LILO can't boot a reiser filesystem, so you have to make another partition for/boot. Its a pain, especially if you've got 3 OSs like me, and hit the 4 partition limit way way to often. I have to wonder, though, what the hold-up is. I'm not trying to troll here, but what's taking them so damn long? They've been working on it since.99 and its still not done? BeOS already has a from scratch fast, fully journaled FS that's been in there since at least R3. Also, it already has the database capabilities that won't make it into Resier for a while now. Why's the project taking so long? It's not like they're perfecting it, ResierFS still is less stable and loses data more often than BFS. Still, for Linux speed-mongers ( he he, oxymoron) Reiser is a must have.
-- A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
What about Oracle's iFS? Filesystem integrated into the database - yum. I haven't had the opportunity to play with it yet (waiting for it to go stable on Linux) but the absolute gem in my opinion is the few hundred import filters which automagically strip out proprietary data formats and store the files as XML in the 8i database. MS Word files anyone? No problemo... james
"My whole point was that the BFS does much of what Reiser is hoping to do, a well-established on-disk data structure has been designed for it and is already in widespread use (and this datastructure was designed for multithreaded access from the kernel), and there's even some GPL'ed Linux code to use it.
So why not integrate the BFS into Linux?"
Well, that would depend on which is superior.
"Just because "It's Not Invented Here" doesn't mean it's not a good technology. Remember, Linux didn't even invent Unix."
I don't care where it was invented. I just think that the ReiserFS has had more development than the BFS port. But what do I know.
"And I specifically meant to point out the similarities between BFS and ReiserFS in being journaled high-performance filesystems with integrated database properties."
Yeah. I saw that. But you had my BeOS Advocacy sirens blaring when I read that. But I didn't see much of a comparison.
I noticed he talks about his business models. Many people, usually the Free Software guys, are a little put out by this by confusing Open Source with Free Software. There are three known ways to make money with an Open Source software project. This information is gathered from "The Open Source Revolution" by Tim O'Reilly.
1) Branding and Distribution Selling the package, documentation and support with an Open Source product. Also called "Support Selling" or "Redhatting".
2) Addition of Proprietary Value
Providing an Open Source project/product to the community and selling additional features to make the product better. Sendmail is a good example of this.
3) Make your Money on the Side
The Open Source project/product is used as a value addition or as a promotion for the company owning the project. In hopes of the project being more popular through Open Source, the creaters would gain credability and popularity. Netscape controlling Mozilla is an example of this.
Looks like model number 2 is being used by our friends at ReiserFS. Nice to see some people adopting another model besides Redhatting.
--
-Effendi
Immigrations laws unfair?
by
JamesKPolk
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· Score: 2
...[Hans] Reiser sees a moment in the not too distant future when programmers outside the United States claim their rightful piece of the pie."The Internet is overthrowing the oppressive forces that have vested interests in crippling peoples lives, the forces that seek to make the location where people are born enough to exclude them from the careers they could otherwise have," Reiser writes. "Congress has made the Statue of Liberty a mockery, but the Internet is overthrowing Congress and its Immigration Laws."
This complaint of unfairness in US immigration laws can be questioned from two perspectives: US citizens, and non-US citizens.
First, the US point of view: Why in the world should the US government make it easier for US corporations to import workers? When corporations import workers from 3rd world countries (who happen to be satisfied at a lower standard of living than your typical American, thanks to being accustomed to the home country), the standard of living for *all* workers in the field. Price competition in the labor market has the same effects as price competition in other markets, after all. Ever read "The Grapes of Wrath"?
Second, the non-US view: How would it benefit anyone outside the US, in a long term developmental perspective, if the US made it easier for people to immigrate and work? US higher education creates enough of a "brain drain" already; the world outside of the US and Western Europe needs more bright minds to stay, and build industry at home.
While I think Hans Reiser's doing a great thing for Russia by working to set an example of success in that climate, that comment at the start of the article just struck me enough to comment in length.
Slashdot Mirror
So?
With the traditional sucker birthrate of 1 per minute, this business model will never wear out.
Don't worry--even the "Information Age" has done little to harm the sucker ecosystem, and with the "New Economy", suckers are thriving, with a new sucker born every second!
Wow... with odds this good, I ought to run for Congress!
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
Reiser FS looks seriously cool. [However] it isn't well integrated.
.99 and its still not done?
That's mainly because ReiserFS is still considered to be very experimental (well, by everyone but Hans Reiser), and will not be part of the 2.4 production kernel. The earliest it can hope for adoption is the 2.5/2.6 series. This isn't because of flaws in ReiserFS; it is because of timing. ReiserFS started reaching usable stability too late for it to be integrated into the 2.4 kernel.
I have to wonder, though, what the hold-up is. I'm not trying to troll here, but what's taking them so damn long? They've been working on it since
First, they haven't been working on it since 0.99. That's just plain false.
Second, you have to understand something about the history of Linux. It is only relatively recently that the need for a journaling filesystem has arisen in the Linux world. Up until a year or two ago, Linux was still mostly the domain of hackers and geeks. There were some businesses using it, but largely "on the quiet" and for smaller tasks. Given that user community, the desired features in the filesystem were low complexity and fast general performance. ext2 fits the bill. In the event of a system crash, fsck can put the filesystem back together quickly enough.
Now that Linux is getting attention and being deployed on larger systems, though, fsck times have become an issue. For a really large array (say, 500 GB), without special tuning, fsck times in the eight to ten hour range are not unheard of. We can no longer wait for fsck, and so Linux needs a better solution.
Which leads to the next problem: Filesystems are important. Real important. Filesystem corruption is probably one of the worst possible software failures you can have. Even kernel crashes can be dealt with (just look at NT), but if your filesystem is trashed, then your system is dead. For good. You have to recreate the system (i.e., restore from backup) to continue.
Thus, when it comes to filesystems for general production use, the Linux Kernel Team(TM) makes damn sure they do it right. A filesystem has to be extraordinarily stable before it can be considered ready for the production kernel.
(Oh, and as an aside: "I'm not trying to troll here" should go right up there with "The check is in the mail" and "It's only a cold sore".)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
People will have to calculate how much a feature is worth to them. If feature X would be really useful to you, you could either 1) hope someone else will pay for feature X, and live without it while you wait and hope, or 2) pay for it *now*, and get use out of it *now*. It's like deciding to buy a new computer; sure, the same amount of money will buy a faster system in 6 months, but if you buy it now, you get 6 months usage of a faster machine; you have to figure out at what point the expenditure is worth it.
I said directly that moving to a 64-bit processor does not solve the 2038 problem because the C standard defines time as a long and a long as 32 bits. Breaking either breaks working programs. Here is an idea of what needs to happen.
.0 releases either, you let the distributers hit the main bugs first.
As for large amounts of data, yes I have had to worry about the 2 GB limit on production systems. I have in the past gone to contortions to break up files so that they would avoid that limit. I am perfectly aware of the issues, and your glib claim that you would just fix the issue with any code you used is utter idiocy from someone who clearly doesn't understand the issues.
For instance large file support in Perl (and hence any program written in Perl) is a new feature that you can choose to compile perl 5.6.0 with. (If you choose to install on a production system, install the latest patches as well. I am serious about this.) Giving Perl that support took a fair amount of work. (Hint, you need to make sure it never tries to seek when it can't...) If you have any older version of Perl, I really recommend that you open a pipe to or from from a program (eg cat) that understood 64-bit files. Guess why I know this?
As for development vs production kernels, it depends what you are doing. For most production purposes, most people should not be using development kernels. If you have any brains you don't use
As for ReiserFS, it supports files larger than 2 GB. Whoop-te-do. So does Ext 2. Has for years. That doesn't mean that on a 32-bit system you can actually address the bit on the end...
Regards,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
On a 32-bit system you cannot have pointers into an arbitrary location in, say, 8 GB of data.
Depending on your needs this may not be an issue. Certainly the people hitting the RAM barrier today are mainly database people who find the support for 64 GB quite nice. But that won't work for many other types of applications, and this is why Intel is biting the bullet and preparing for the end of the x86 world.
Regards,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
For example, if the US dropped its tariffs protecting cane sugar, and Europe dropped its policies restricting broadcast of American movies, then some American cane-sugar growers would lose their jobs -- but [NOTE WEASEL WORDS HERE] in the long run, (a) they could go work in Hollywood instead; (b) the price of cane sugar would go down, which would benefit everyone who likes sugar; (c) the demand for American movies and TV shows would go up, which would benefit Americans working in Hollywood.
I don't think free trade is an unmitigated good thing, but after reading enough work by level-headed people like Krugman, I'm convinced by the arguments that it's a generally good thing.
However ... what's sauce for the factory-owner is sauce for the labor-owner, too. If a corporation can have the right to move a factory from the US to Mexico, and take advantage of cheaper labor, then a worker should have the right to move from Mexico to the US, and take advantage of the higher wages. (And if Mexican workers had this freedom, Mexican factories -- particularly the maquiladora factories just over the border -- would have better wages and working conditions.)
--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
The understanding then was that if the code audit (against VFS) went well, ReiserFS might be ready to go in.
Dust from the VFS work, from both the Viro and ReiserFS perspectives, seems to have settled, which would now permit Linus to evaluate whether or not this is the time for ReiserFS to go in.
Unfortunately, Linus is "out" for three weeks. (Vacation, I think? See last week's LWN...)
And as Alan Cox has observed, "breaking the usual rule" is Linus' prerogative, not Alan's.
Hans Reiser has observed, and perhaps too-loudly-commented, that there seems to be a correlation between:
- People being associated with RHAT (like Alan Cox and Stephen Tweedie) and seeming to oppose ReiserFS inclusion, and
- People being associated with SuSE, and supporting ReiserFS inclusion.
Unfortunately, if he says Smells like Red Hat Conspiracy! enough times, it could irritate people enough to make them stand steadfastly against having a "conspiracy theorist" in their midst, and create, if nothing else, a conspiracy against him. Which would be pretty counterproductive on all parts...If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I've seen a few comments that link this interview with BeOS. As far as I can tell from a cursory look at the homepage BeOpen has nothing to do with BeOS. They just have similar names.
Recall from an earlier slashdot article that BeOpen is the place that the python folks moved to.
Hope this clears up the confusion I had when I first saw the story and thought "What's Hans Reiser have to do with BeOS?"
-Denor
No, you misunderstand. Namesys is not (to my knowledge) providing any proprietary features.
Client A contacts Namesys and says "I will pay you X dollars to implement feature Y". Namesys accepts. Namesys then takes their X dollars and implements feature Y, which is then *freely available*. This is very similar to the business model Cygnus had going for a while wrt gcc.
"I'm really quite suprised that more US companies are not establishing development shops in economically disadvantaged places. "
How in the hell is that going to happen,
when the management of these companies won't
even let you telecommute from Santa Cruz to
San Jose???
Fortunately or unfortunately, a remote team is
not generally regarded as manageable.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Me neither.
I won't use it until it is 2.4.6 or so. I have no need to.
There will be production Linux systems for years with a 2 GB file-size limit.
And it will probably take longer than that for all of the utilities that can only seek within a 2 GB file to figure out how to properly handle a large file...
Oh, don't forget. On 32-bit architectures you cannot have a process that can address more than 2 GB of data. (Yes, you can have more data than that - but AFAIK it has to be mmapped files kept as anonymous pages. Your *process* runs into addressing limitations because of the length of a pointer.)
This will take some time to sort out. Longer than you think - longs are remaining 32 bit on most systems for backwards compatibility reasons. Time is defined to be a long. That won't work forever...(No. Just using a 64 bit machine does not solve the problem.)
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
We were already starting to see a talent crunch in the city our progammer's shop was based in, as we were competing with two other companies for the best programmers. If a programmer's coming out of college with 2 or 3 offers, he's already in an incredible position. He can ask more. And with a 60% income tax over there (not to mention value added taxes etc) he's going to need it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Fair doesn't really enter into it... but it is one hell of a better business model than the one where everyone has to pay the entire development cost, do something in house, and end up with a lower quality product.
My guess is that most of the cases where someone is going to pay for a "feature" that then gets integrated into the main branch, it will be something that nobody else needs at the time.
Namesys also (IIRC) will sell you a commercial license to eg. use ResierFS in a custom device w/ a proprietary OS. It has a potential market in embeded devices that need more space than NVRAM or flash can handle, but need to be able to handle power cycles gracefully. In this case, someone might contract for features that wouldn't be appropriate for mainline release, as well.
If you want to try it on a boot partition, don't try to use LILO, use GRUB. If you have a complicated booting situation, you probably should be using GRUB anyways...
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Subject: What would Hans Reiser think about cheese?
(Long advocacy comment about cheese here.)
So why not integrate the BFS into Linux?
Just because "It's Not Invented Here" doesn't mean it's not a good technology. Remember, Linux didn't even invent Unix.
And I specifically meant to point out the similarities between BFS and ReiserFS in being journaled high-performance filesystems with integrated database properties.
Mike
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
"Russia is a great example of place where you can get away with paying great people peanuts, all the while looking like a saint."
That is a very evil thing to say.
Many Americans are loosing jobs to factories relocating to Mexico and China.
I thinking people need to starting thinking about employees as people. And the Golden Rule.
The more features he puts in now, the more chance ReiserFS has of being accepted as a standard. But this business model is fucked because the pressure is on to not incorporate features his team can charge for further down the road.
All I can say is, I hope Reiser succeeds and sets a precedent for this business.
Hands in my pocket
When reiser, xfs, ext3 and all are finished and stable, which of them do you feel will become the de facto standard for Linux systems? I can see the prospect of three or four different filesystems as creating fragmentation in the Linux distributions. What are the advantages of each of the filesystems? I know ext3 can upgrade an existing ext2 system with the addition of the journal file, xfs has the backing of a major company (SGI) and reiserfs is supposed to be the fastest (no?), but which will be successful in the end?
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
While ReiserFS support *is* optional and totally indepenent from other filesystems, I can't see Linus adding something so big to the kernel after the 2.4.0-test series has already started. Wasn't there supposed to be a feature freeze? Correct me if I'm wrong...
I'm really quite suprised that more US companies are not establishing development shops in economically disadvantaged places. Russia is a great example of place where you can get away with paying great people peanuts, all the while looking like a saint. If you've got some good management types (who have a clue), there is no reason not to start development offices in such places. Send one or two people overseas to recruit a team, toss them a project, and see what they get done. With US$, it is pretty easy to attract top people in places like Russia, India, or Indonesia. I'm suprised that we don't see more of this, or do we?
Cut to monty python ...
1st Hacker: File system with text search? - luxury - the kids of today don't know how good they have it! ... etc ... etc
2nd Hacker: When I were a lad we had 8 users on a 5mhz 8085.
1st Hacker: Luxury! 8085, we'd have given our souls for an 8085. We had 6502
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck load of tapes
I think the filesystem got off to a bad start with some political / personal issues, and there was apparently alittle snafu on the main kernel list, but I'm glad to see it is all working out - the "beta" reiserfs was more than stable enough for the worst I could deal up with it - I stuck qmail on it and pumped in about 500,000 e-mails over the course of an hour... they all came back out, minus three which blackholed and one which was a dup. Not bad, considering it did all that /very/ quickly.. and the system was even kinda-sorta responsive while I was doing that. :)
It's also being funded by mp3.com so I rather expect it to reach industrial strength reliability.. but I took the plunge and didn't regret it. Then again, I don't do massive data warehousing.. so YMMV.
This is done in the BFS filesystem which is part of the BeOS, which you can download here. The "People" address book database in the BeOS is entirely implemented in the filesystem.
The structure and implementation of the filesystem are described in detail by Dominic Giampolo in Practical File System Design with the Be File System, ISBN 1558604979.
I use the BFS in my applications I write for the BeOS - not just to store files, but I specifically use its indexed attributes for fast keyword searching in Word Services for the BeOS and I think it's the best thing since sliced bread.
While Be's implementation of the BFS is proprietary, there is a GPL'ed read-only Linux implementation of it available here
Daniel Berlin, a BeOS developer who also programs on Linux, has provided an update that works with the 2.4 kernel
I don't think the attributes are available from Linux in the Linux version of the BFS, but they could be and to do so I think would be a significant addition to the OS.
Mike
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
If we accept this assertion combined with your assumption that the foreign programmer is working at lower wages than his american counterparts this means his labour is subsidizing US citizens.
The cheap labor directly help corporations, not people. And the majority of the money from these corporations go to banks and venture capitalists.
Without the cheap labor, the corporations would still be able to profit (after all, lots of corporations profit paying union wages for jobs that require far less skill). The only difference would be that the profit would be distributed differently.
This is why I oppose H1-B visas. Those visas are tickets that allow corporations to import labor, under conditions that reduce competition, and therefore lower wages even further (the employee basically can't leave the company, see other Slashdot articles on the subject). They're tactics used by one group (corporate interests) to get away with paying less for labor than the market would otherwise dictate.
Have you ever noticed that enforcement of immigration laws focuses on getting the illegals themselves, rather than the employers? That skewed enforcement just lines the pockets of the California (and other states) farming industry leaders.
... someone might kinda sorta get ready to start considering how to start thinking about looking at ext3 by 2.7 or so ...
When Ted Ts'o came and spoke at the local Linux User Group a couple weeks ago, he seemed much more optimistic about the ext3 filesystem making it into Linux for 2.5/2.6. He did indicate that there is little to no chance of it making it into 2.4. He also expressed concerns about ReiserFS and XFS being pushed in too quickly, though. (The argument basically being: Filesystems are damn important, so you have to make real sure you do 'em right.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I don't see who is being sacrificed here. The US is in a period of unparalled prosperity, due in part to forward looking immigration laws.
Oh, yes, and this growth will last forever, too! The economy will never, ever contract again! It's a New(TM) Economy! Let's just let everybody in, so everybody can join in on our fountain of eternal wealth!
And of course after you factor in benefits etc, we could hire half a dozen or more of them for the cost of one programmer in the USA.
Most of our communication was through E-Mail with weekly teleconferences and the occasional trip over there. The first time I went over, I met a guy from another big company while getting breakfast at the Hotel at 6am (Jetlag.) There was at least one other one in the area and we were starting to see a talent crunch.
Bad news for American programmers, I suppose, but perhaps this sort of thing will balance out the world economy in the long run. Hopefully so the standard of living is good for everyone, not so that it sucks for everyone.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
BeOS really has no chance in today's highly competitive competition for corporate conglomerate (c)desktop users. You know Linux does, because of its great user interface, uncomplicated it's spiffy non-complicatedness with all the power of Unix and its great Java. Also, it has by far the best internet Explorer, called Netscape. Netscape, the best of the internet Explorers, really lets one Explore the internet better than with other internet Explorers. I have been a web broswer for a long time and let me tell you linux is the best for web browsers like me. I am really glad that soon with this new file system linux users will be able to save file and their kernels to their hard disk drive. i do love linux but having to install it every time i boot the personal computer that it was getting sickening and too installing all of the various peripherals and various things such as the software, etc. Also, Linux has a great shot at being today's number one software because it has a fun game built right into the monitor that is called degauss. it makes the monitor do funny stuff.
In my opinion ReiserFS 3.5.18 is an excellent filesystem. Several Linux machines here run 3.5.18 with the 2.2.14 kernel and easily trounce equivalent ext2 machines running 2.2.14. Several of the machines are undergrad sandboxes where intro data structure programming is done, so they're hit pretty hard when approximately eighty simultaneous g++ commands are issued. :) Another is used for Postfix queueing. None of them have experienced extended downtime beyond the ten to fifteen seconds required to verify the integrity of the journalising fs.
:)
My person machine runs 3.5.18 on kernel 2.2.14 and performs remarkably well under the abuse that I continually heap upon it. The most cutting-edge releases of SuSE and Linux-Mandrake have integrated an option to create ReiserFS partitions as opposed to ext2, and I choose that option whenever presented.
Reiser FS looks seriously cool. I tried it out a little on Suse 6.4 and it flies. However, there are a few things about it that piss the hell out of me. First, it isn't well integrated. I don't know why, but for some odd reason, LILO can't boot a reiser filesystem, so you have to make another partition for /boot. Its a pain, especially if you've got 3 OSs like me, and hit the 4 partition limit way way to often. I have to wonder, though, what the hold-up is. I'm not trying to troll here, but what's taking them so damn long? They've been working on it since .99 and its still not done? BeOS already has a from scratch fast, fully journaled FS that's been in there since at least R3. Also, it already has the database capabilities that won't make it into Resier for a while now. Why's the project taking so long? It's not like they're perfecting it, ResierFS still is less stable and loses data more often than BFS. Still, for Linux speed-mongers ( he he, oxymoron) Reiser is a must have.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
What about Oracle's iFS? Filesystem integrated into the database - yum. I haven't had the opportunity to play with it yet (waiting for it to go stable on Linux) but the absolute gem in my opinion is the few hundred import filters which automagically strip out proprietary data formats and store the files as XML in the 8i database. MS Word files anyone? No problemo... james
Absit Invidia
"My whole point was that the BFS does much of what Reiser is hoping to do, a well-established on-disk data structure has been designed for it and is already in widespread use (and this datastructure was designed for multithreaded access from the kernel), and there's even some GPL'ed Linux code to use it.
So why not integrate the BFS into Linux?"
Well, that would depend on which is superior.
"Just because "It's Not Invented Here" doesn't mean it's not a good technology. Remember, Linux didn't even invent Unix."
I don't care where it was invented. I just think that the ReiserFS has had more development than the BFS port. But what do I know.
"And I specifically meant to point out the similarities between BFS and ReiserFS in being journaled high-performance filesystems with integrated database properties."
Yeah. I saw that. But you had my BeOS Advocacy sirens blaring when I read that. But I didn't see much of a comparison.
I noticed he talks about his business models. Many people, usually the Free Software guys, are a little put out by this by confusing Open Source with Free Software. There are three known ways to make money with an Open Source software project. This information is gathered from "The Open Source Revolution" by Tim O'Reilly.
1) Branding and Distribution Selling the package, documentation and support with an Open Source product. Also called "Support Selling" or "Redhatting".
2) Addition of Proprietary Value
Providing an Open Source project/product to the community and selling additional features to make the product better. Sendmail is a good example of this.
3) Make your Money on the Side
The Open Source project/product is used as a value addition or as a promotion for the company owning the project. In hopes of the project being more popular through Open Source, the creaters would gain credability and popularity. Netscape controlling Mozilla is an example of this.
Looks like model number 2 is being used by our friends at ReiserFS. Nice to see some people adopting another model besides Redhatting.
-Effendi
This complaint of unfairness in US immigration laws can be questioned from two perspectives: US citizens, and non-US citizens.
First, the US point of view: Why in the world should the US government make it easier for US corporations to import workers? When corporations import workers from 3rd world countries (who happen to be satisfied at a lower standard of living than your typical American, thanks to being accustomed to the home country), the standard of living for *all* workers in the field. Price competition in the labor market has the same effects as price competition in other markets, after all. Ever read "The Grapes of Wrath"?
Second, the non-US view: How would it benefit anyone outside the US, in a long term developmental perspective, if the US made it easier for people to immigrate and work? US higher education creates enough of a "brain drain" already; the world outside of the US and Western Europe needs more bright minds to stay, and build industry at home.
While I think Hans Reiser's doing a great thing for Russia by working to set an example of success in that climate, that comment at the start of the article just struck me enough to comment in length.