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SGI Layoffs Hit XFS For Linux Project
Andrew Klaassen writes "Layoffs at SGI yesterday hit, among other things, the XFS for Linux project. Project lead Steve Lord writes, "We do intend to keep working on XFS linux, and I do intend to work really hard to get it into the distributions and Alan and Linus's kernels, [but] it will take us a little while to regroup our efforts and to work out our priorities on the project...." He also mentions that LinuxCare will no longer be helping out with funding for the port."
damn it to hell. I've been using XFS since feb. 20th and its great. I've been waiting for kernel 2.4.5 to come out and for SGI to then come out with a patch so I could update my live cds I've been making. xfs 1.0 rocks. so now when the stupid nvidia drivers lock my computer I don't lose any data :) I've tried reiserFS and it sucks compared to XFS. for all those wanting to know how good XFS is word of mouth does it no justice. its just like when you first hear about linux your unsure till you try it then its the greatest thing in the world. you won't regret it.
in order to get XFS running on Debian you can (use WOODY but I'd suggest UNSTABLE because they update the xfsprogs like crazy.)download the xfs 1.0 patch from SGI web site oss.sgi.com patch 2.4.3 compile XFS support in.
don't forget to compile the mkfs tools. have about 4 or 5 floppys with you of them make a rescue disk and a root disk using the old potato disk images. copy you 1 meg kernel (that's how big XFS make it no matter what) to the rescue overwriting the default named Linux on the floppy it'll fit along with scsi and raid if needed also. it'll fit don't I've done it. so now you should have two disks a rescue disk and a root disk and now on the third disk copy the mkfs.xfs file to it. make sure you have the base2_2.tgz from debian web site along with the drivers.tgz on a zip driver or cd would but fine or on a windows partition just not on your linux since it'll be erased also you'll need to get ppp 2.4.1 to be able to dial out to do an update download it off debians ftp site. the rescue disk allows you to be able to use the other terms via alt+F2 mount the third disk you can run linux file on fat formated floppys so don't worry your use mkfs.xfs to make the XFS check the SGI web site FAQ for details at oss.sgi.com. but you should back you linux partition because in order to have XFS you must overwrite your EXT2 partition. after you've made the partition mount it by hand using mount -t xfs /dev/YOURHARDDRIVE /target use /target and not /root. then go back to the first term alt+F1 and continue installion. lilo does work with XFS as a root linux partition, but I haven't tried it on a partition that is the root partition on on the hard drive I have a windows partition before it I don't see why it wouldn't work though. after you've installed
the base system update everything using dial out or lan and before doing anything first read the xfs FAQ at oss.sgi.com. I know I'm rambling but anyone that knows how to use Linux should not have any problems, if you are new to linux sgi has a red hat 7.1 installer you can use but you have to download the 650 meg iso they have.
I hope I've given somebody an idea howto install XFS on debian. or you could wait for the guy at
http://debianboot.digitaltux.com/ to finish making his debian install disks.
have fun
LBJM
What makes you think so? Go to freshmeat and pick 20 random pieces of software out of the appindex. How many will be commercially funded? How many will be written by people whose day job is software development? How many would die if the project lead lost his current day job? My guess is not many. Nor will this project die. The special circumstance here is that the code originated as closed code inside sgi. That won't matter, of course, now that it's been released. These guys got fired, not killed.
Why the zx10?
If going with SGI, look at the 330 series.
or if you need more gusto, the 550 series.
They both run linux and are fast.
Its faster than an Octane in tests that I have run.
The HP systems are also pretty sharp. I haven't benched them against the 330 or 550 but I know that they seem to keep up.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
No it doesn't, at least not in the UK, and I'm pretty confident US bandwidth is cheaper than here. How much bandwidth do you expect to need? For a couple of thousand pounds a month, you'll get a 100Mb/s pipe direct to a LINX backbone provider in Telehouse. For a few thousand more, you get gigabit (yes, true gigabit internet access). I couldn't believe how cheap bandwidth had become when we were looking at it over the past few months.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Quick note (yes and off topic) -
Last I heard - Linus won't accept kdb or any kernel debuger into the source.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
Hel-loooooo! SGI laid off one of their fulltime developers, it didn't pull the plug on the whole thing... but what am I thinking, this is /., the piece basically says "XFS is dead, it won't be developed anymore", no matter what's actually written.
You have to wonder what the editors are smoking here. Yes, Russell Cattelan is no longer being paid by SGI to work on XFS. Yes, SGI is having financial trouble, but that's hardly news. Yes, SGI is no longer paying LinuxCare to work on this either. Yes, the guys that SGI is still paying to work on XFS will have a harder time, this is not the kind of project where someone comes and says "hmm... this is wrong, let's fix it here and there". Does this mean that XFS is dead? No. Precisely because SGI is having financial trouble is why they are doing this. Big Iron is not sexy anymore, at least not for the reasons it used to be. And SGI is a Big Iron company. Six Origin 3000 systems represent 40% of their volume sales in the last quarter. See the problem here? SGI needs a fast source of money. And small systems is such a source. Since SGI is not going to compete with Gateway and the like, they need to focus on another market. According to the current SGI vision that market is comprised of Itanium based boxes running Linux. But that alone isn't enough (VA, Penguin and whoever else do the same). They have to have an edge. That edge is XFS. Not the XFS you can check out of CVS, but the Cluster version. The version that exists on their MIPS based boxes now. See the big picture already? SGI needs XFS, so stop crying wolf.
On a side note, it's interesting that other sites picked up on this post here. (That thought is terrifying, since it means other sites give /. credit as a "news" source). I wonder how this will impact SGI's share prices. I mean, the very well researched piece says "SGI ... layoffs ... Linux" (who the fsck cares what XFS is?), and it's being repeated like that elsewhere. Boy, I don't want to be in Steve Lord's shoes now... but that leads to another thought: will Steve think it twice before posting anything else like this to the mailing list? I mean, he's been quoted here two times already. Will he think "no, I better not send this, it might end up in /." That can't be good. Just as hollywood stars think it twice before saying something lest it show up in the Enquirer...
Figure a coder makes US$40,000 a year minimum. That's a LOT of Paypal donations - I've never heard of anything like this happening. This doesn't include the other expenses folks have that are usually supplied by an employer like machines, bandwidth, conferences with hotel & travel, books, etc.
Hosting a popular site costs thousands of dollars a month in bandwidth alone. Great you'll offer up your server - howzabout when it's a few meg for the installable and a few thousand folks dl it, gonna keep offering it up? Whattabout when the script-kiddy vermin start trying to take you down?
Finally what's this about lost code? It's all Open Source - none of the projects you've listed have lost any code. What they've lost is momentum and what was in folks heads, the reasons why decisions were made and the intimate knowledge of the code being worked on day in & out.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Earlier this year, Nautilus 1.0 was released. On the same day Eazel laid off some developers; later it went out of business.
SGI's XFS for Linux reached 1.0 a few weeks ago and now some of its developers have to leave.
Guess what will happen when they finally make the 1.0 release of Mozilla?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
How 'bout you give us a chance to have a holiday weekend, then merge & test the code, and then offer your 2.4.5 patch, ok? :)
I'll preface this by saying that I cannot actually speak for SGI, but I can tell you my impressions as an employee and an XFS for Linux developer.
I sat in on a teleconference yesterday, and from everything I know, XFS for Linux is not going away. Yes, there were staff reductions, but SGI is still funding XFS for Linux, it is still very much an alive project. I hope so, I was hired to work on it, and I'm moving across the country for this job in 1 week.
Since linux-xfs seems to be slashdotted, here's the post from Steve Lord:
Here's a followup post from our marketing person, Yi Li:
So, to the person who offered to take over the project, thanks, but that's really not what we need right now.
So, it can happen.
look people XFS is not going anywhere soon
personaly its very much better design wise than reiserfs for mission critical apps and although reiserfs has some nice points it lacks in some areas being a new FS I mean the screw up over NFS servering and such
now XFS has proved its scaleable in real envs e.g. video server tends to have ALOT of data and SGI systems power most cable operators somewhere along the line
redhat should in MHO use XFS in 8.0 with the release of GCC 3.0
I used it but it was a pain that it was not in the kernel so went back to ext2
regards
john jones
p.s. oh please sort out rawIO linus please pretty please sugar on top
Kinda off topic here, but I want to suggest to you that you go back to nVidia release 0.9-6, instead of using the latest 0.9-769 release. I ran with the former for 2 months, with lockups being extremely rare. After 3 weeks of running with 0.9-796 and locking up reguarly, I de-installed it and went back to 0.9-6. I'm so glad I did.
Just a recommendation. I find 0.9-6 to much more rock solid than 0.9-769 under any kernel, 2.2, Ext3-patched 2.2, 2.4 or XFS-patched 2.4 releases.
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
My appologies for the typos including the use of "XFS" when I meant "NFS" in a few places. This post has been moderated upto to 5, and I have received numerous direct mailings -- all positive, unbelievable! This has restored my faith in /., who I was privately boycotting until I saw the XFS /. discussion mention on NewsForge.
What I am really "arguing for" here is not a "what is better" or a "why is ReiserFS in kernel 2.4.1+ and not XFS?" 'jealousy' attitude (as Hans Reiser recently called it ;-), but a simple "call on RedHat and VA Linux to start looking at XFS." I do not think it is my business to question Linus non-inclusion of XFS in the kernel, as he has a better understanding that I. All I'm asking for is the industry to start supporting something that obviously works for a good portion of us.
Especially now in light of layoffs at SGI, which can only mean a reduction in direct support of XFS by them.
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
In addition to the "ReiserFS absolutists" who know little about XFS, it seems we also have so "SCSI RAID absolutists" here who know little about 3Ware microcontroller-driven RAID controllers. So a little education is in order.
First off, most of the "dumb, BIOS-only" IDE RAID solutions do "suck." Since they are still just a "dumb" IDE controller, they still off-load computational and other details off to the CPU, which is still, ultimately, driving the drives. So they still inherit all the limitations of IDE, including the 128GB max addressing limitation. Worse yet, nearly all of these solutions allow more than one drive per channel with just kills performance (especially in the 4 drive, RAID-0/1 implementations).
Fortunately, 3Ware and a few select others have built real host adapter solutions, except they use IDE drives. With that small exception, they are almost exactly like more expensive, SCSI-based RAID controller solutions. They have an on-board microcontroller that not only off-loads all the computational details, but drives the IDE disks directly. As such, the 3Ware card, for all intents and purposes, is a SCSI controller from the OS' perspectively, including support for upto 2TB device sizes. The OS never sees the underlying hardware itself, which also allows these devices to emulate advanced SCSI features like command queuing, threading and even sector remapping.
The 3Ware Escalade 6000 series comes in 2, 4 and 8 channel versions, with one device per channel, at a cost of about $60/channel. 3Ware support is included in all the latest 2.2 and 2.4 kernels from most distros (and in most stock Linux kernel releases as well). Although Adaptec now has a similar, 4-channel product (that does RAID-5 as well?), I have not seen Linux support for it. In the near future, 3Ware plans on introducing a new product series with RAID-5 support (current Escalades can only do RAID-0, 1 or 0/1).
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
Whether you agree with it or not, RedHat and VALinux alike have spurned adopting ReiserFS despite its inclusion in the stock Linux kernel as of 2.4.1. Both vendors have courted the more "evolutionary" Ext3 kernel for 2.2 releases, but Ext3 is not the future of JFS' on Linux. As such, I offer this article in a plea for RedHat and/or VA Linux to begin consideration and formal testing of XFS as a viable JFS for their future, kernel 2.4-based product releases.
I have been integrating and maintaining production NFS/SMB UNIX servers and networks for years. As such, I ask that some of the "ReiserFS absolutists" (i.e. believe only ReiserFS should exist as every other JFS for Linux is "not as good" in their opinions) out there, who don't use Linux's kNFSd services in a heavy production environment (especially with non-Linux NFS clients) like myself, please not blindly comment on this post. Remember, every OSS project "itches a scratch," and there is a reason why Tweedie's Ext3 and SGI's XFS exist in addition to Namesys' ReiserFS (disclaimer: I know little about IBM's JFS).
Because I have UNIX NFS clients, ReiserFS was quickly identified as a "non-viable solution" for my needs (not that it is not applicable in many other areas, no sir, so don't flame me!) when I first looked at JFS' in early 2000. Although ReiserFS is very innovative in design, which includes a recent DARPA grant to extend these capabilities, its lack of a traditionally keeping meta-data in the inode itself results in a host of traditional UNIX service and VFS incompatibilites. So I ended up testing the early, full data journaling (aka Ext3 "v1 mode") Ext3 releases (e.g., 0.0.2f) for 3 months on non-critical systems with great success. I eventually adopted it on my main fileservers in summer of 2000 and it has worked flawlessly since. I even had a physical disk error, which my RAID controller did not catch for 24 seconds (long story, the firmware and driver versiuons was out of sync, my fault) and I was able to drop down to the full Ext2 fsck to fix things.
For people like me, Ext3 is a nice, "evolutionary" approach to journaling that significantly reduces the variables involved -- important to some of us that don't embrace "change" so quickly (for obvious reasons ;-). Ext3 is also a quick upgrade for existing Ext2 filesystems (get Ext3 kernel, e2fsprogs aware version, create the journal file, and mount as Ext3) plus complete reversable back to Ext2 (just delete the journal file and reset some superblock variables), which meant I could "switch back at a moments notice." I find the VA Linux kernels with Ext3 added (along with NFS v3, unified IDE and other 2.4 backports to 2.2) most excellent, and longtime Linux kernel NFS guru H.J. Lu (now formerly of VA) takes the time to make the appropriate RedHat RPM kernels for us RedHat users (shortly after HJL's departure from VA, I began hosting his kernels). VA Linux uses Ext3 in their enterprise NAS device products (actually based on not a RedHat kernel, but SuSE!), although RedHat's adoption of Ext3 has been limited to a public beta, and installer/BOOT kernels that are simply "Ext3 aware."
Today, Ext3 is still a kernel 2.2-only solution. And it still "inherits" all the "limitations" of Ext2 -- so it is not ideal where features are more important that minimizing variables. Now it's not that I've adopted kernel 2.4 on my most critical services, as it is still maturing IMHO (not bashing 2.4 at all, but as more systems run it, more "issues" are identified that were not before), but it would still be nice to have on some of my more "bleeding edge" workstations. I would be satified if Tweedie would only port the full data journaling (v1 mode) capability to 2.4, although I heard he purposes held off on the kernel 2.4 port and Ext3 1.0's release until 2.4 itself "stabilized" in his view (of which, I've heard many good reasons for doing so). If anyone has any insight to all this, I'm all ears (as I can only "assume" things here from what I've heard).
As such, that left me with re-evaluating ReiserFS for 2.4 systems, now in the stock 2.4.1 kernel, or possibly SGI's XFS or IBM's JFS. I looked at ReiserFS only to discover that the stock kernel does not include the kNFSd workaround patches. Furthermore, many ReiserFS users were still plauged with NFS and even quote issues, even after patching. This tends to make me believe that it will still be awhile before specific Linux subsystems "better accomodate" ReiserFS completely for certain users (like myself), although it is a viable solution for most standalone workstations or Windows-centric file servers. Even I am using ReiserFS on a kernel 2.4 Netfilter firewall and Squid Proxy cache/filter, where it excels (but does no direct network file serving duties).
This led me to SGI's XFS. Mid February saw the release of kernel 2.4.2 and, by the weekend of the 24th, SGI had already adopted 2.4.2 as the base of their XFS development CVS repository. I was impressed with this attention to keeping XFS' development as close to the stock kernel as possible. I decided to check out the kernel, compile and test it on a few older and newer systems, and ended up writing an RPM spec file and releasing some RPMs for RedHat 7.0 at the time (since it has been a couple months, using 2.4.0pre kernels, since SGI had done so). Thus I began my standard "three month evaluation" of XFS in early 2001, like I did with ReiserFS and Ext3 in early 2000.
It did not take me long before I was impressed with SGI's XFS implementation. Most specifically:
Shortly after my RPM releases for RedHat 7.0, SGI began a series of test releases for the RedHat 7.1 beta (first Fisher, 7.0.90, and then Wolverine, 7.0.91) in March and April, and eventually RedHat 7.1 itself. Like the 2.4.0pre kernel releases before them, RedHat releases XFS in a three fold scheme:
As of May 1st, XFS Release 1.0 was released. In following their three fold release venue, it includes a ~300MB additional ISO CD for installing with RedHat 7.1. But instead of patching XFS against just the stock Linux kernel, SGI took the time to take the RedHat 7.1 2.4.2-2 RPM kernel release and patch it against that (they actually did this with 1.0-Test3 as well) -- inheriting and benefiting all the patches and other kernel decisions that RedHat makes. This is very important to system administrators like myself which only trust RedHat releases and kernels for heavy file server duties (please, no flames on this -- I'll list reasons off-list, and I *DO* recommend Mandrake and, increasingly, Debian for many other purposes).
As such, I am surprised that RedHat and, especially, VA Linux have not taken a closer look at evaluating and, gulp, even supporting XFS's development on kernel 2.4. XFS is the natural upgrade for these two firms, being that both have spurned supporting ReiserFS for its non-traditional and troublesome design with traditional UNIX services and capabilities like XFS. In addition to design attitude, features and other considerations SGI has made in porting XFS to Linux as I made above, I would like also point out the following, additional considerations:
As much of a XFS advocate as I am, I am also quick to honestly and complete disclose each and every "disadvantage" or "issue" with XFS. Note that they are few and usually non-issues in most situations, although XFS is no more of an "universal JFS for applications" than ReiserFS is (and I would and should be considered a "XFS Absolutist" if I didn't). Specifically, I find the following disadvantages to and issues with XFS:
SGI's XFS is a powerful, stable and feature-packed JFS that is mission-critically proven on Irix and now available for Linux. It brings a wealth of features and traditional UNIX fs compatibility to Linux, while only sporting a few, less than optimal attributes in some limited areas. Being that SGI has gone to great lengths to synchronize its codebase with the common codebase of the projects it integrates with, and some of these projects (notably Quota and Samba) have adopted native support for it, many XFS users are starting to question why XFS has not become an option in our favorite distributions.
As such, I urge RedHat and VALinux, two companies who currently favor Ext3 and spurn ReiserFS for specific issues that XFS does not have, to consider beta testing and offering XFS as an option for their distributions and systems. As the 2.4 kernel matures and gains widespread acceptance, those of use who cannot adopt ReiserFS will need a solid replacement for Ext3 coming from kernel 2.2. And the additional enterprise-driven features of XFS make its consideration that more inviting.
I thank you for your open consideration of this article.
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
Volunteers will work on the things that they want to work on, to the degree that they want to work on them. They aren't necessarily going to work on the things that you or anyone else would like to see done.
A volunteer is someone who doesn't have to be there. They are donating their time and energy. They can and will pack up if they don't think their efforts are worth it. Most people will judge whether their efforts are worth it by how much the project helps THEM, not how much it helps others. This is why things like GCC get worked on so much, it directly benefits anyone who helps to create it. An open-source floral shop POS system on the other hand isn't going to get worked on by anyone for long. The people who would benefit from it don't know how to develop it, and the people who know how to develop it would not benefit from it. Very few people are going to slave and toil for others just because its the nice thing to do. If that was how people worked then the Soviet Union would not only still be around, but it would be a prosperous nation. They found out really quick that it doesn't work and ened up resorting to trying to force people to play the "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs" game. Forcing someone to play this way is the definition of slavery. It didn't work for them and it obviously would not fly here on any level.
Relying on the generosity and good will of others for your own survival without contributing back is exactly what people living on the street are doing. If an open-source project doesn't contribute to those who develop it, it will not survive any better than people living on the street do now.
I do hope that this is something that ESR understands. I'm assuming he does since the alternative is just too disturbing.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Tell me how FreeBSD is supposed to be significantly better than Linux in any way and I just might take you off my Bozo list. The momentum that Linux has along with its massive developer base means that as time goes by any truly significant benefits of FreeBSD have been and will continue to be rendered moot. Using and advocting something like FreeBSD just because its the obscure platform doesn't impress anyone any more than it did when Linux was the obscure platform being advocated.
I use FreeBSD myself as well as OpenBSD and NetBSD on a Quadra 700. I've also got an HP9000 712/100 running HP-UX. Of them all I like HP-UX the best because its performance under heavy load is truly amazing. But I know that as time goes by Linux's performance in this area will overtake and suprass that of HP-UX.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Linux can't be killed by the lousy business decisions of any one company, unlike the Amiga. The Amiga was proprietary, whereas Linux is anything but.
The success of the PC is due to the fact that it was and is an open platform. Microsoft literally rode the wave created by this open standard to where it is now. Linux is a similar wave in and of itself.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I can tell from your language alone that I've been around a lot longer than you have. I remember when Microsoft was still making Apple II products and the PC was hardly the clear winner of the desktop race that it has been for the past decade.
You've completely missed my point to boot. Do you know what an open platform is? Microsofts products represent proprietary solutions that became defacto standards because they were tied to a hardware platform that was not proprietary.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Doing the "right thing" costs money. In an ideal world, you use a hot-swappable SCSI hardware RAID device with redundant power supplies and separate UPSes running off of different power lines leaving your facility at opposite ends of the building and heading to separate substations. That's neither affordable nor reasonable for all applications. IDE software RAID is a bargain-basement solution, but sometimes that's all you really need.
You forgot the more vital question:
How many would still live if the project lead lost interest, decided to work on something else, or had no time for the project any more.
My guess is not many.
This is exactly the question people face with XFS (though to a lesser extent because it has probably reached a critical mass) - if SGI doesn't support development any more, who will? Will it just stagnate now, remain at v1.0 forever and never make the kernel proper?
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
I'm somewhat baffled by some of these developers lack of funding. Surely many know how good the open source OS' are, yet within the past two months we're seeing that not even free is a good enough price for many to pay. Ok so we all know how expensive it can be for hosting, development work, etc., but what amazes me is that none of these developers seem to look to the community who uses their products in order to get some financial help.
Frankly it's simple, regardless of what anyone thinks, create a pay pal account and have donations come in for the ongoing development of software. Sure many are going to argue that removes the purpose of free open source, but the fact is, it still is free although a donation is helpful. This would not fall along the lines of shareware since it isn't coded with time based mechanisms to render obsolete after X amount of days.
As for hosting or something similar, we know that becomes expensive as well, but there are many alternatives to going out and renting co-lo space for some of these project. Ask around, there are many people who would assist, personally if a developer asked me, I'd gladly host their site without thinking twice as a way of giving back for the software I use.
Are things all coming down to someone not being able to afford to do something? If that's the case it's the poorest excuse in the book in my eyes. Eazel, Slackware, Mandrake (although its denied), and the list seems to get one shop longer it seems every other week. Understandably people move on from their projects, which is something that puzzles me as well. If you're no longer going to develop a certain product many use, why not put out the source for someone to continue on?
Sourcforge is a nice repository for the code, and I'm sure the ethical developer to take over would keep copyrights in tact. It's disturbing to see something free, and kick ass become such a burden. In theory it should be the other way around... What a puzzling Internet we surf in isn't it?
Want Root?
(just noticed my subjects make little sense most times... oh well)
Figure a coder makes US$40,000 a year minimum. That's a LOT of Paypal donations - I've never
heard of anything like this happening.
Lets guesstimate there are about 20,000 concerned Unix users who decide "Oh what the hell it's only a $2 pay pal donation" it could happen. The fact remains has anyone tried it, people likely have also said... "Linux sounds like a funny OS it couldn't happen, I've never heard of anything like this." get the picture?
This doesn't include the other expenses folks have that are usually supplied by an employer like machines, bandwidth, conferences with hotel & travel, books, etc.
Someone point me in the right place to look here. Theo Deraadt travels a'la donations sent in from people purchasing OpenBSD, and he loves what he does. Many people may not see eye to eye with him as a person for one reason or another, but he's accomplished a heck of a lot.
Hosting a popular site costs thousands of dollars a month in bandwidth alone. Great you'll offer up your server - howzabout when it's a few meg for the installable and a few thousand folks dl it, gonna keep offering it up?
What are you talking about SourceForge, and a handful of others offer space, and if I had to do it I would. I'm not concerned with what's coming in and out of my network since it's free. ALL FREE, an nice pipe without any concerns, and if someone were offered it without any strings, yet they still made an excuse, then they should comment on the entire scope of the problem as opposed to making it a financial thing.
Whattabout when the script-kiddy vermin start trying to take you down?
Been there, done that, its definitely nothing new to my site, that's the last of my concerns.
Finally what's this about lost code? It's all Open Source - none of the projects you've listed have lost any code. What they've lost is momentum and what was in folks heads, the reasons why decisions were made and the intimate knowledge of the code being worked on day in & out.
Maybe I should have phrased it better (little sleep does that) When projects go under, one seldom sees anything return from that project. There were plenty of minor OS' that were developed that have nothing to show for themselves, and the code may still be around, but developmental code often gets lost in the sauce. Personally I think the remains of it all should be posted should someone else have an insight to continue on with some of the work someone else never got a chance to finish
Want Root?
I just finished converting my server to XFS and LVM. This is a great combination: no fscks if the UPS dies, big file systems, access control lists for fine-grained control of permissions, the ability to add grow the file system without having to recopy everything, file system snapshots for easy and consistant backups.
I am just waiting for XFS to make it into the kernel proper (and kdb, as well. As a developer I'm drooling over getting that in place), and for the major distros to support installing to an LVM group from the start. Now that the SGI team is in scramble mode that means I'll probably have to wait longer. Damn.
In the future, I see the average home having a data server in the basement, right next to the hot water server, the hot/cold air server, and the electricity server (breaker panel). I see this server as a faceless box, much like a breaker panel, with slots that take hot-plug disk drives. Need more storage for video on demand/music/cache (no, I'm not going to use the p-word here. Grow up.), just plug a new drive in. The system sees the drive, formats it, adds it to the arrays, and away you go. Linux is getting to where it could do that. XFS/LVM/RAID are damn important....
www.eFax.com are spammers
(A thousand pardons for this possible offtopic troll, but, I could not resist the venue. It seemed relevent given some of the talk about the strength of SGI's sputtering revenue stream.)
Any word on if/when SGI's ZX10 could run Linux?
We're looking to replace some aging RISC workstations with x86 hardware and Linux, but the last bullet is holding us back from the decision.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I would also like to second this proposition. I attended an SGI Linux univesity road tour about a year 1/2 ago. I watched a detailed presentation about XFS and the potential benefits that such a filesystem would have on Linux. I walked away completely blown away and totally impressed by the capabilities of XFS.
It is also important to note, XFS and CXFS (clustered XFS) will push Linux right into SAN territory. Add to that ACL's + Samba 2.2 and you have a drop in replacement for a win2k PDC. It is high time to push these capabilities in tech articles and in the press. We all hear how great of a web server/firewall/embedded OS Linux is, but I have yet to see a company try to heavily market their distro as a PDC replacement. However, XFS gives us these capabilities and more.
The presentation which I attended was given by Laura Shepard. This same presentation was recorded and put on the web in realplayer format for all who are interested. The presentation is here and a powerpoint presentation about XFS is here. XFS has tremendous potential and I for one am grateful to SGI for releasing such a high quality product for Linux.
I guess there's no big suprise here... In fact it's kind of sad it had to affect such a publicly visible project in order for there to be a discussion on the issue. OSS developers need to eat too. Linus and Larry Wall have good deals because people are signing paychecks for them to do OSS work. Most of us are not so lucky. We need paying jobs in order to allow us the freedom (financial and time-wise) to contribute to OSS. As much as we hate to admit it, Microsoft might be right on one issue, OSS and commercial software development are joined at the hip. Where one goes, the other will follow.
--CTH
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--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
I really hope someone will pick up maintaining XFS as a full-time project. Currently I work far to many hours for far too little pay to do It myself. I've managed to patch linux-2.4.4 > linux-2.4.5-pre5-xfs. I'm not too familiar with the linux source tree but I'll continue my work. I've found XFS to be 100% rock solid with filesystems up to 1TB under extremely high I/O loads. I don't know about fs sizes higher, however I've also done extensive tests for files sizes greater than 200GB without any problems. I'm extremely impressed with XFS's performance in handling directories containing more than 32768 files. Also I hate to do this but I must give a plug to 3ware for their DE RAID cards, they are by far the most mature RAID solution for linux and they kick ass! So basically all I've got to say is, (from my perspective) IDE RAID+XFS kicks ass! -zim Christopher Zimmerman AltaVista Company Head Software Engineer Linux Migration Project
This is a disturbing development.