Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Plexion, Kernelism, Salaryness
Plex those muscles, yeah, and one and two and three ... dhunley expressed himself thusly: "A handful of days after getting Dos, Win95, and Linux to boot, Plex86 does it again! Initial support for booting QNX now works! Screenshot is here!" And shortly thereafter, the very same dhunley wrote: "Plex86 boots NT 4.0! Well, at least to the login dialog box. This is an old bochs disk image file. The mods will be uploaded to CVS soon."
Thanks, d. Watch out soon for an interview with bochs and plex86 lead Kevin Lawton, who promises to take time out from his busy schedule to tell you what's up in the worlds of emulation and virtualization.
While you're here, why not take a tour of the whinery? Apropros the wacky things that people have decided to put in the kernel lately (like GNOME ORBit), Booker writes: "Every time there's a major new kernel release, there's whining on Slashdot about killing uptime, and how much it sucks to have to reboot to get a new kernel. Well, whine no more.
Erik Hendriks at scyld.com brings us Two Kernel Monte, a 'kernel module which allows Linux to load another kernel image into RAM and restart the machine from that kernel.' The only major limitation appears to be that it will not work with SMP machines. Apparently Erik got the idea from the Linux Bios Project."
Now if some smart distribution maker (anyone, anyone) were to integrate that into their updates system, would that be so wrong?
We join this survey already in progress: Marketing Manager writes: "Anyone who's been in the job market knows how tough it is to find information about salaries and compensation. For system administrators, the search is compounded by the varieties of tasks, talents and responsibilities required to get the job done. Now there's something you can do to fix this.
SAGE invites you to participate in the 2000 System Administrator Salary Survey starting December 1, 2000. This annual survey is part of SAGE's ongoing effort to advance Systems Administration as a profession through information and advocacy. By participating in this survey, you join thousands of system administrators in examining the market and defining compensation according to your talents, your location, and your technical prowess."
So now you can find out where you stand in comparison to others with similar positions, perhaps a valuable bargaining chip come contract renewal (or incentive to check out a new city). The results will be available early next year -- automatically sent to SAGE members, available by request to everyone else.
Number One, can't you do anything about that rabble? bluets writes: "Some leading scientists and open-source advocates are attempting to raise awareness that the Celera/Science Magazine deal is a 'Big Mistake.' More details [here]."
And if you didn't know about this, it's only because you're not opening the barrel-of-monkeys Slashdot Science Section often enough. We're considering an experiment where everyone who opens it gets a food pellet, and everyone who doesn't ... well, do we have to bring out the Punishment Stick?
Hi! This is the Sig, blatantly attached to the end of this comment.
Just installed it for 2.4.0-test8 /lib/modules/2.4.0...
You are right, it copied itself as "misc" under
I just renamed it monte.o, created the directory misc, mv it there, did a depmod and loaded it with a modprobe without any problem.
--
delete free(system.gc);
Salary.com
:)
I am not sure how accurate they are:
JobSmart's Salary Surveys
Pencom Systems Incorporated: Interactive Salary Guide
SalaryZone
http://www.realrates.com
Are there any others and how accurate are they? Thanks.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Exactly. Why pay $300 for software that emulates another machine when for $400 I could buy a Windows machine, put it under my desk and VNC to the thing? Two machines are almost always better than one.
Of course, with the added competition of Win4Lin and now Plex86 there are going to be a whole lot of geeks that re-think their future VMWare purchases. So VMWare will do poorly, and they will probably go bankrupt, and then they will blame the Free Software community for making it impossible to make a living selling Linux software. There will be a whole new round of articles entitled "Linux Software Companies Deemed Severely Unprofitable."
Grumble, Grumble.
I, and I'm sure many others, submitted this letter to /. as soon as it plunked into my inbox from the bioxml mailing list. I wasn't concerned about the karma aspects of getting a story posted to slashdot--just that the story GET POSTED in a public way. I thought to myself:
/. doesn't want to post secondhand messages (though they've done so many times in the past). But if the *author* of the letter submits, surely /. will post the story, because of it's *obvious* importance."
"Slashdot *has* to accept this story from someone. It represents the *informed* opinions of a *prominent* bioinformatics researcher, as well as that of a large portion of the bioinformatics research community."
Of course, it was rejected.
I emailed Ewan, and told him to submit the letter as a story. He did. I figured:
"Maybe
Again, no story.
Instead, what do we get? A blurb at the bottom of a slashback article, hidden amongst various pieces of random Linux cruft.
This is getting ridiculous.
Rob Malda et al., you guys have been hiding behind the "this is our website, and we'll put up things that we find interesting" line for too long now. Especially when slashdot *routinely* posts factually incorrect and uninformative stories based on heresay and speculation.
Yet the opinions of a Howard Hughes Invesitgator in bioinformatics get ignored. Dare I ask why?? Perhaps it's too informative?? Maybe just a little too factual??
Slashdot, when you sold the site, and became a commercial enterprise, you ceased to be Rob's homepage. Your public perception as journalism leaped. Unfortunately, your journalistic standards have not.
The saddest thing about all this is that posting the letter on the front page of slashdot could have made a real social impact on the editors of Science. A lot of biological researchers read slashdot. Posting this letter as a story could have provided a nice focal point for community organization. As a second-line posting to slashback, I doubt that will happen.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
Actually it does do some emulation and more is on the way from what I've heard. As of now it emulates the BIOS calls, which could be called virtualization. However, they are going to have the ability to "emulate" hardware eventually. So you can tell you OS you have hardware devices that you don't have.
:-). Hell no. You'll be able to run three or for plex86 session at FULL speed. I can't wait.
Can you imagine how great it would be for testing device drivers if you could just do it inside a plex86 instance of your OS, cause then you could change your hardware config to whatever you wanted and see how it performs.
Cool stuff.
Also, as for the performance issue and how useless it makes the product. That is a very nearsighted point of view. What do you think that 10ghz machine is gonna use all it's power for? Abiword and Gnumeric?
Justin Dubs
Outside of specific groups like Slashdot and a few scientific journals, I have heard ZERO conversation on this in meat-space or meat-media.
Come on people -- real life makes The 6th Day look like a fucking walk through Disneyland.
---
seumas.com
Somebody finally explained the word warez to me! I always thought they were some kind of tupperware!
VMware will be discontinuing hobbyist pricing on December 16th, meaning that if you want a copy, but don't qualify for the academic price, you're going to pay $299 instead of $99. I like VMware, but if I had to pay full price for it I wouldn't have done it.
Plex86 will start to be a more attractive option after that day. If it also means more development activity behind it, that's all for the better.
> If it is just a way to avoid bois restart, that is less cool, but definately beats running lilo to remotely restart with a new kernel.
Even if it doesn't doe Everything You Could Possibly Hope For (tm), it might be a starting point for evolution in that direction.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
yeah, but does it reset the uptime in top? ;-)
The cynic in me says the 'whiners' care more about the stat than any actual interruption in the machine's service.
Personally, a reboot isn't that big of a deal for something like a kernel upgrade. Beats the hell out of having to reboot for an IP change or the like in versions of NT prior to 5/2000.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Add RAS : Reboot
change route in RAS through NAT : Reboot
CHANGE AN IP ADDRESS (like the gateway) WHEN YOU HAVE 2 NICS : Reboot
I enjoy win2k, don't get me wrong, for a lot of situations it is an acceptable and worthy solution. BUT PLEASE Stop spreading FUD. It still requires a LOT of reboots. IT IS however very much improved over NT/98.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
You have a problem with being a member of usenix/sage? Perhaps you might consider that salary survey results and such are a benefit of membership in usenix/sage.
It *does* cost money. Their surveys can be taken seriously; they aren't half-cocked surveys by some website. They want real results.
And if you don't like the arrangement, by all means, don't submit any data.
Just a note, you can contribute, but you must be a paying member to view the salary surveys.
Frankly, I think the idea of a UNIX sysadmin salary survey is great (being one myself), but I don't feel paying for the data that I submitted is fair.
Perhaps if you submit data, you can get access to the results free. You listening USENIX?
> Not to mention of course that if you are not using an obsolete version of Windows, changing IP addresses and adding protocols do not require a reboot
What is your definition of obsolete ?
Got a HP PIII 600 delivered here 1 month ago (to configure for a bank). The beast came with 2 preinstalled OS (that you could choose between at first boot).
The choices were:
1/ Windows 95 (First edition)
2/ Windows 3.11 for worksgroup
Talk about obsolescence. I am still rotfl. About no-one is using your latest w2k OS in the real world.
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
How is shutting your machine down to a minimal state and bringing it back up NOT downtime? What exactly is the point of uptime if it's not that?
That's kind of like cheating, if you ask me. Why not just create a kernel module that will log your uptime when you shutdown and start it at that point when you boot up?
Additionally, this project is a perfect example of why businesses don't trust Linux. Not only does this tweak the statistics to make Linux look more reliable than it is, but it does something much worse in the eyes of business.
This modification shows the business community that Redhat is only developing more toys for their toy operating system, instead of making important advancements that are necessary to let the operating system finally break through on the desktop. These kernel developers need to get in line if they want users.
-lb
from the survey:
62.Does your organization provide any special benefits or working conditions that you particularly like? (please specify)
Sure; for our company Christmas gift we got a bag of microwave popcorn and a hockey puck with our company logo on it, since apparently our big marketing coup this year was to sponsor a "play of the game" segment for Washington Capitals games. Bonus? What's that?
Looking for a buzzword-heavy sinking ship? come work with me!
Assholes. I can't wait until my Oracle DBA class is finished and I can get the fuck out of technical support.
--
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
Damn!
The open letter from Ewan Birney and Sean Eddy that the genomeweb article talks about can be read in full at:b er/001826.html
http://bioperl.org/pipermail/bioperl-l/2000-Decem
If you plan to write to Donald Kennedy check the listserv email thread to read about a correction to his email address.
-chris
Of course since you have to unmount the filesystems to use this Linux kernel swapper it really is effectively a reboot. The system will still be up for the upgrade, but anything anyone is trying to do on it will be restarted, so you can still strike fear into the hearts of users. Not to mention of course that if you are not using an obsolete version of Windows, changing IP addresses and adding protocols do not require a reboot - stop spreading FUD.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I have said it before, and I'll say it again; the only way to put a stop to all these stupid uptime dick-size contests is to put in a writable /proc/uptime.
If anybody can make their damn uptime say whatever they want, it'll stop.
-
It's nice in a lot of situations where you want to easily be able to pop into an OS and test something without constantly rebooting and shutting down your email, etc.
I haven't played with it yet, but I heard that the newest Solaris revision supports live patching of the kernel. That's very cool. Imagine never having to reboot for a software related thing again? Hell, on some of the E class Sun boxen, you can hot swap memory, CPUs, and other I/O devices. About time someone started working on technology like that for the PC (granted it's a different market and less demand).
Speaking of which, it would also be nice to have an x86 hardware bootloader instead of the outdated BIOS. Being able to load an OS or boot from a differnt device via a commandline would be a great feature for the home PC.
eeek. i would choose 3.11... get the larfs out.
:)
anyways, in rgards to w2k - yes, it is being used. it is rare, but ramping up. i just installed a 2k server as part of our nt network emulating a pdc we took down, and it works beautifully. it is one of the 2 dns servers we have, and in the 4 months since i installed it, we have had 100% uptime on that system.
my school just upgraded all (read: ALL) of their servers to 2000. this could maybe be because they teach 2000 cert, but hey.
2000 is gaining acceptance as ppl realize it isn't 95, 98, or nt. it's better than all of them. it's gonna be around a while, linux fans... i know, it must suck to admit, but ms actually put together a good os for a change.
now if only we could get a beowulf clu- oh, sorry.
--endcycle--
Two Kernel Monte stops you from a having to do a warm reboot of your system, but it is 100% equivalent to it, from the user perspective. The entire system, including the previously running kernel, is killed off and the new kernel is booted up. All you save is the 10 (or more) seconds waiting for your system to do a reboot. So, the whining will continue :-).
Get us all a raise.
Post inflated numbers to SAGE and then direct the boss to the site during your next salary negotiation.
C'mon, everyone. Chip in!
Linux : built to your spec, optimize to your hearts content. Preserve uptime(ugh)
Windows : Change IP address reboot. Add protocol : reboot. Install program : reboot. Upgrade : reboot
MS has has won an important aspect in the ever lucrative server market. That is the "reboot" aspect. Reboots are becoming more and more popular. Reboots are now considered fun, they give sysadmins a good excuse for a traditional "coffee break". Reboots are familliar. What will sysadmins do without them? How will a sysadmin be able to wield his usual power. The phrase "We will be down for an upgrade!" no longer holds water! ACK what is Linux doing?? What are they thinking?? Are they putting us SYSADMINS out of business? Reducing our free time? I no longer strike fear into the hearts of lusers by saying "we have to upgrade the software on the server"
Do you realize just how difficult it is to write with my tongue so firmly stuck in my cheek?
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
I'm currently using VMWare and I actually think it's very worth having. I'm developing cross-platform (Linux/Windows/Mac) software, and while I do 90% of the coding in Linux, I need to recompile the Windows version all the time. It's much faster to resume my VMWare session and do the Windows compile there than it is to reboot into Windows. Plus, I can continue using Linux while it compiles, and the system is totally responsive. When I'm done using Windows for a while, I can just suspend my VMWare session and free up all of its memory.
The other reason I use it is that there are still a fair number of fun web sites out there that only really work in IE. I do 90% of my browsing using Konqueror or Netscape in Linux, but if my AOL-using friend sends me a link to a cool game that requires a Windows plug-in, I like being able to check it out without having to reboot.
So I'm all in favor of Plex86. As soon as it can run VC++ and IE, I'll be switching.
Every time there's a major new kernel release, there's whining on Slashdot about killing uptime, and how much it sucks to have to reboot to get a new kernel. Well, whine no more.
Erik Hendriks at scyld.com brings us Two Kernel Monte, a 'kernel module which allows Linux to load another kernel image into RAM and restart the machine from that kernel.' The only major limitation appears to be that it will not work with SMP machines. Apparently Erik got the idea from the Linux Bios Project.
This is not an in-place kernel upgrade tool. (That's very difficult, especially without stable data structures and APIs. It's possible, but don't hold your breath.) You are avoiding the BIOS initialization sequence (thus saving some time), but you're still rebooting. The new kernel doesn't know that it was loaded by a Linux system rather than LILO. The old kernel is clobbered (including all its data structures, device drivers, running processes, etc.) and is no longer running. This still kills your uptime and requires a reboot to get a new kernel. (Feel free to keep whining.)
This project is the Linux equivalent to the DOS program LOADLIN, which loads a Linux kernel (like LILO does) and executes it. The kernel then takes over the machine and starts booting. "Two Kernel Monte" does exactly the same thing, complicated by the need to disable paging, relocate the newly-loaded kernel into a contiguous memory block (in protected mode), return to real mode, and ask the video BIOS to reset the video mode to 80x25 text, all before executing the new kernel. As with LOADLIN, the new kernel will take over the machine and begin booting. Whether started by LILO, LOADLIN or Two Kernel Monte, the end result is much the same -- the new kernel ends up with complete control over the machine (without knowing or caring how it got there), and the old OS (if any) is moot.
This may seem useless at first glance, but it's a perfect tool to test a new kernel before installing it. Also, the full power of a running Linux system would be available to obtain (or create!) the kernel image to be booted, which could enable some interesting tricks that would be difficult (or impossible) to implement in LILO. It should also be fairly easy to boot a kernel from a complex filesystem. (e.g. NFS, Coda, AFS, etc.) It might also allow for more complex boot-time decisions, such as dynamically selecting the best kernel based on complex criteria. In principle, it should be as easy to execute alternative operating systems in place of Linux, but I don't know if this works. Any form of compression or encryption (no matter how complex) could potentially be used, even if virtual memory is required to decrypt or uncompress the kernel because of limited RAM! (Try that in LILO!)
In short, this is a cool project, and potentially more useful than it may first appear.
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
I just tried installing kmonte with linux 2.4 test7 (which I am still running) and it installed itself like this:
//lib/modules/$kver/misc
/lib/modules/*/misc/ directory, the module itself becomes "/lib/modules/$kver/misc", and doesn't load anyway because of unresolved symbols. I suppose we will see it for 2.4 some day, but not today!
install -m 644 kmonte.o
since 2.4 has no
God Fucking Damnit
Whoops, I need to take that back.
You aren't able to view the results, but if you fill out the survey, you can submit information and the results will be sent to you.
I was under the impression that one could not view the results due to the surveys being password protected on the web site.
My most sincere apologies.