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New Linux Kernel Configuration System
An anonymous reader writes "When Eric S. Raymond tried to replace the Linux kernel's configuration system with "something better", he got booed off the stage. Now Roman Zippel is bravely having his own go at it. Here's an interview with Roman and a look at his new configuration system, aimed for inclusion into the 2.5 development kernel. Also, find some screenshots of his new graphical configuration frontend."
No comments yet and it's already been /.ed? What is the world coming to?
Don't fix it, dangit!!!!
I apparently forgot that sig != uptime...
Interesting story, but it's already been slashdotted... perhaps his new Linux Kernel couldn't handle the load of eager slashdotters? Anybody got a Google Cache?
-=Errors always defy logic.=-
slashdotted already
that the kerneltrap topic id is 404...
When Eric S. Raymond tried to replace the Linux kernel's configuration system with "something better", he got booed off the stage.
Yet another thing to add to my list of "and people wounder why linux is not being readily accepted by everyone" items. I mean, come on, the guy just wanted to help make things better! Getting booed off the stage hurts!
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Warning: Too many connections in /prod/www/virtual/kerneltrap.com/www/htdocs/includ es/database.mysql.inc on line 7
Too many connections
We already know that this is a apache server with mysql, and the path do the server root. Now let's hope this server is not powered by linux 2.5".
Well the site is /.ed so what i want to know is.
Does it scan your hardware and create a default kernel configuration with all ther drivers for your hardware pre-selected.
It could even ask if you running a desktop or server machine and turn on/off low latency, pre-emtion and supermount for the desktop.
I usually have to enable evrything to get X piece of hardware working corrctly and then disable stuff to find out what the correct drivers/modules were.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Hrmph..Is this really a limitation of mySQL or the hardware?
The Welkin: Online Music Reviews
Right now, when you install pretty much anybody's distro, you start up with an interface that has tons and tons of menus, icons, widgets, and whatnot, already up and running. It's an overload, and instead of trying to learn it, newbies are balking at it.
So why not have an easy-to-use kernel configuration system? Why not have an independent object model, where any distribution or window manager can use each other's dialog pages?
The only answer we seem to get is: "because it's for wussies!"
-- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.
14 total comments on a sunday morning and the site with the pictures is /.'d already.. that can't be a good sign of things to come..
At least its a good endeavor.
It's a shame that Linus doesn't want to change, becuase Roman's system is realy great: faster, easier, and at the moment it still leaves the old system as default...
http://kerneltrap.org/includes/database.inc: //kerneltrap.org/includes/database.mysql.inc
http
There are probably more...
For gods sake put stuff like that outside the web root if you can't set apache up properly.
Warning: Too many connections in /prod/www/virtual/kerneltrap.com/www/htdocs/includ es/database.mysql.inc on line 7
Too many connections
http://kerneltrap.org/includes/database.mysql.inc
.htaccess file so .inc files can not be viewed online..
.inc files
Lovely php code... Anyone care to look for possible flaws so someone can hack there server..
If your going to use includes in such a format, AT LEAST setup a
I mean come on...
1. Scan include directory for other
2. View them and look for some coding mistake
3. Root Server
Personal Website
Slashdotted
The requested URL could not be accessed by any more hot grits.
Additionally, a 416 Slashdotted error was encountered while trying to use a Beowulf cluster to cache the request.
Apache/1.3.26 Server at www.cowboyneal.net Port 80
...but the site has already been hacked!
Moreover, it's not like complete newbies are going to be doing kernel compiles. For anyone with enough experience to recompile the kernel, an ncurses-based system is adequate IMHO.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
dont serve up your web pages from a database.
Hey, anyway, compiling kernels is rarely needed. Your distro's kernel should come with *everything* that can be compiled as a module, and sane defaults for everything else.
I don't really recall that many things that require a kernel compile (although I do compile my own, of course :).
Ironic yes, but I think it's more funny than sad. I mean, there's more anti ms info here than pro... I don't think MS will win any developers away from Linux here, so I consider it a bad business move for MS, glad they can help support the site...
just my 5 rappen.
Torch the site via a POST to the variable $query using a delete.
Who cares? You can still make whatever you want, it's all open-source. Anyone could make an easy-to-use distribution -right now- if they wanted to, some companies are even doing it to a certain extent. I understand what you're saying, and it is a problem, but it's not one that isn't easily worked around.
I believe ESR got booe doff for two reasons. One, the new config required Python. Two, he wanted to change everything at once in ne huge patch, rather than bits and pieces which are easier to understand, back out and correct, and so on.
Infuriate left and right
Its not like they are saying "Lets ditch menuconfig and replace it with this!". For you and whoever else there is still make menuconfig. But I for one would welcome a better GUI than make xconfig, which I find pretty honkey. Since when are more options bad? It's not like they are forcing you into switching.
- It required Python to build the kernel.
- It was complicated. It included an entire theorem prover. This was sort of cool in that it would not allow you to generate a non-working configuration, but really more than was required for the job.
- Its language was arcane. The main language idiom is the suppress-unless statement, which is sort of the logical negation of if-then statements.
- And some folks questioned his motivation for getting this grandiose project into the kernel - was it just to help out, or was it primarily to establish additional hacker reputation for Eric? I'd be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this - he did the work.
I think he had a chance of getting it in, but he would have had to refactor the entire thing, write it over in C, make the language cleaner, and I guess that didn't come about. But to his credit, he didn't just talk about it. He generated a working software product with functionality that did not previously exist in Open Source as far as I could tell. His project is worth studying, and I'd encourage works derived from his ideas. I'm sure there's a paper about it online.Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I said the exact same thing couple of days ago in another topic.
It's hillarious. I'm gonna have to go with a "smart choice" option on behalf of MS.
Think about it. They are giving away a FREE DVD. Lots of people probably grabbed it for shits and giggles. Out of those 3,000 people, if MS locks just 1%, then the mission is accomplished.
Erm......Slashdot doesn't get slashdotted..... and it runs MySQL... hmm... You don't think it might be the fact that they need to turn up the Maximum Concurrent Connections option? Maybe? David
After looking at these two pages I see nothing that could be classified as a security compromise. No passwords, no ports, no UID's, nothing. They are just files with some functions in them. Sure it maybe neater if they had named them .php so visitors couldn't view them, but its not a security issue.
Yet another thing to add to my list of "and people wounder why linux is not being readily accepted by everyone" items. I mean, come on, the guy just wanted to help make things better! Getting booed off the stage hurts!
... I can only ascribe that to politics and personal pull, which every group, no matter how altruistic and well meaning, falls prey to now and then.
:-)), but rather to point out their humanity and fallability, a trait they share with everyone reading this comment, the guy posting it, and probably with every sapient being, everywhere.
First, GNU/Linux will never be accepted "by everyone." Nor will FreeBSD, nor will BeOS, nor will Apple's OS X.
Nor will Microsoft Windows, unless Palladium and DRM is legislated into law by the likes of "Disney" Hollings, and even then Apple is likely to be kept around as a token "competitor," paying hefty patent fees to Microsoft for the privelege of being allowed to manufacture "legal" hardware in the US. Unless, of course, you get off your butt and do something about it, but I digress.
The problem is a simple and obvious one, and the solution as elusive today as it was the first time humans came to live together (and likely predates our ability to speak): Politics is ugly and banal, and people are fallible. This includes the Linux kernel developers and Linus Torvalds himself.
Example: The ggi project wanted to provide a kernel abstraction layer for video hardware in the same manner such abstractions are presented for everything else, from your ethernet adapter to your system's RAM and hard drive. Linus thought the idea sucked, then ended up doing a "poor man's" version of frame buffer support instead. How much better things would have been if the original vision of the GGI folks had been realized and supported we'll never know.
Example: PCMCIA. It is still a mess. The more capable userspace version got sidelined in favor of a broken and less capable rewrite
There are other examples, and perhaps Eric S. Raymond's effort is one (though I hesitate to make that assumption), but the purpose of this post is not to catalogue the mistakes Linus and others have made, or to air my own disagreements with them (but what the hell: when will we get XFS into the main kernel tree damn it!
Mistakes happen, everywhere, by everyone. The measure of a group or project's success isn't their perfection (as is so often implied in political discussions), it is by how much their mistaken decisions are outweighed by their correct decisions.
And using that metric, the Kernel developers, including Linus Torvalds, have done very well indeed.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Well I don't know all the chipsets i have and exactly what i need to get my IDE up, etc...
Do i want framebuffer? do i need it...
Oh and I forgot scsi-cdrom support for my CD-RW.
I do know more-or-less what hardware I have, hardware detection can be a lot better under Linux than windows, a lot of USB devices auto load the drivers based on vendor ID/product ID.
A lot of the Linux drivers are generic for XYZ chipset, under windows you need the exact driver. I should imagine that Linux also detects what hardware you have when binding devices.
I takes a short while to select all the default hardware for your system, and sometimes you might miss something. Why not automate this process.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
this is probally a stupid question, but how would a programmer protect against someone doing that?
,
faeryman
There just might be a reason why Apple has it much easier in the "easy-to-use kernel configuration system" department...
All things considered, even the current Linux method works amazingly well. Not everything gets included in the official kernel releases, for various reasons, but users (incl. distro builders) are free (as in speech&beer) to add any features they feel will add value to their case.
Sometimes it's in the best long-term interests not include the first available stab at a new feature.
Personally, I have no reason not to trust Linus & Co's judgement in these matters.
Or was your rant targeted more at the object model and UI issues instead of the ability to configure kernels?
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
Very bad.
http://kerneltrap.org/includes/database.mysql. inc
Get a real Dbase like Oracle or Sql 2000(if you can afford it)
Wow, you must have a MCSE or somethin...
>and hard drive. Linus thought the idea sucked, then ended up doing a
>"poor man's" version of frame buffer support instead. How much better
>things would have been if the original vision of the GGI folks had
>been realized and supported we'll never know.
>
Bullshit. The ggi project was a overly-complicated pile of crap that Linus was right in rejecting. Pretty much the same bunch of X-hating losers who back things like Berlin was pushing ggi. Why? I suspect they thought they could use ggi as a back door to getting Berlin and other Amiga/PC Gamerish things intergrated into the linux kernel where they didn't belong.
This will happen more and more. I really do expect that at some point someone will just say fuck it and branch their own version of Linux. I see this as possibly a good thing. If this branched version gets all the cool patches that Linus and co are turning down, and they work, it may prove to be a catalyst for change. Either that or the branched version will become better than the original. It happened with XEmacs (which IMHO is much better than Emacs), I see no logical reason it couldn't happen here aswell.
You want too see the beauty of Linux Auto detection possibilities boot into knoppix.
I booted of the CD, got fully configured X, working sound, Working Xawtv, Working network with DHCP enabled, and therefore working broadband, and a working CD burner. It took a whole of like one minute to boot and it was everything I neaded. I Actually use it instead of Debian now for my main distro, mounting my old hard drive as scrap space.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
sanity checking in your input values
basic rule of thumb, don't let people past your nic see anything but html; don't accept anything but stuff that you can *prove* is safe.
I live in a giant bucket.
Did it re-compile a nice tight quick Kernel to match you configuration?
I have working everything using a Mandrake distro, I had to take apart my Adsl modem and search for a driver for the chipset and get the latest version of the USB drivers to stop gphoto2 crashing.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The default is to allow a maximum number of 100 connections. You can set it higher if needed:
h tml
http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Too_many_connections.
(Fix the html link that Slashdot breaks)
Those screenshot shows me a system that it's even harder to use than the current one.
Why do you have re-invent whell always?
Current configuration system is under change on 2.5.x series, anyway and already.
GGI tried to do too much and it abstracted too far.
Userspace PCMCIA drivers? That's a new one. I can only imagine that you were refering to the external set of drivers that used to be the standard and where characterised as being so hard to install that Linus himself had trouble with it. I completly understand his reasons for wanting that mess replaced.
ESR's configureator was massive overkill and it made life harder for developers. On top of that what killed it in the end wsa not Linus but ESR's refusal to update the patches to handle changes Linus made to the core code.
Not everything gets to be black and white.
After finally being able to get the page, I think that it is a great start and a tremendous improvement over Xconfig.
That said, I think he still needs to go further. Most users don't have a clue what all the options are or mean. Even with the descriptions and recommendations they will quickly become overwelmed.
I feel that users should be presented with a very basic and lean initial configuration screen. One that lists generic features for them to enable and disable. For example a single check box for IDE and SCSI HD support or a single checkbox to enable HAM radio support with generic or "standard" options preselected for those devices. Then there should be an advanced button that brings them to the complete configuration options, such as Roman's example.
This, combined with some form of modprobe hardware detection, would make kernel configuration a breeze, even for MCSEs. Also, the fact that this configurator reads the existing config, rather than starting with a blank slate everytime, is great!!
Woo hoo! Betcha Roman's system requires 500 megs of Gnome libraries, 500 more of xml libraries, 700 megs of "skins", animations, and icons.
It tells me what each option does in a little help screen below.
It runs on the desktop.
It tells me what each option does in a little help screen below!!!!!
It tells me what each option does!!!
It tells me what each option does.
I want this so bad. I can't wait until there's a Gentoo ebuild!!!!!
Yea!!! Hooray!!!!!! Yea!!!!
Yes I am stupid and don't know what every option does. I don't care, I want it I want it I want it. Because: IT TELLS ME WHAT EACH OPTION DOES!!!!!!!!!
What part of "It tells me what each option does!!!" do you not understand?
I would be best if installing a kernel was as simple
as installing most Linux software.
I would like to see some type of system that detected
all the hardware in my system, and built the matching
drivers and standard kernel modules for a desktop
or server system.
The user should need to change as few options as
possible.
Further, people are working on the configuartion language but there are bigger problems to be solved, everyone knows it and still the efforts don't fully address them. Like how do you know the configuation options used on the kernel you are running? There is no reason to change just for the sake of change and compilation speed isn't a huge issue, my dual amd compiles kernels so fast I don't care if I cut the speed in half. Plus, when you're hacking you usually work on a module or two and don't rebuild the whole thing.
The process is good, they don't take crap. The VM system and the IDE system are other prime examples. Al Viro is kind of mean to people but everyone else makes it pretty clear what needs to be done, why things aren't accpeted, even Al has expectations that he makes clear. There are expectations for robustness, it's more important than performance. Hans Reiser has had issues with that, he can't explain the robustness or answers concerns but he can point to benchmarks; clue: they don't give a shit if it's not robust.
There have been a handful of people who just don't cut it. Believe me, they can be replaced. It sucks, it'll be a dark day when Alan Cox or Dave Miller quit, if they ever do but they also know the rules, they play by them and they have their own forks if they don't agree. If Linus or someone else don't like your code, it doesn't get in, fork and show that they are wrong or make it better. This isn't bullying or anything like that, it's not that they are elitests, they have real expectations that aren't meet some times. Are some people and some parts of the kernel more equal than others? Of course, we're all human.
I take exception to the suggestion that the kernel team is throwing out great stuff for non technical reasons. They aren't they throw it out because it doesn't do what it is supposed to, people are trying to get it in for non-technical reasons with non-technical means or because it's not robust. It's not easy to write a VM or IDE system, there are a ton of expectations, it's a hard job, there are working solutions already that you have to do better than.
Many people are suggesting that a primary reason why ESR's work was rejected is because it required Python to build the kernel. Well, I would like to interject that a new build system is still desperately needed. I built a kernel the other day and had to install all sorts of extra crap to do so. Can we please have a configuration system that doesn't depend on outside tools? I do not want to have to install gcc, gmake, libc, etc... just to build a new kernel!
burris
there is a big difference between the kernel and the desktop application of the kernel underneath it. i think that change in the kernel should come slowly, after every element has been thought and rethought of. if the kernel breaks, so will the systems built on it. if there is any doubt, PLEASE don't change the underlying structure. it is the same with murder cases.
i do agree that sometimes, the resistance to change in the kernel transfers over to the other elements of the system, but you should bring up that point NOT to kernel developers but the others. the average user should not be compiling kernels every day. those who do it should know what is going on. abstraction is good, but autodetection on the kernel level is NOT good, for example, because this should happen when u install the distribution, NOT the underlying system.
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
Kernel changes that modularize everything that can be (pretty much that way now) and everything loaded on need (it's done that way now too mostly). So why compile your kernel (besides the because you can thing). One thing I would like is to see a standard way for non GPL'd drivers to be added to the kernel without a recompile, or having to half way compile (proprietary core) with a kernel interface needing compiled. It's kind of that way with some, but only if your binary is developed against the same kernel (the LTMODEM drivers used to be and may be still this way). Microsoft does not write all of their drivers. We should not have to either. Seems to me this would sure make alot more hardware work under Linux! I know the GNU bigots won't like it much, but I just want to be able to have more stuff supported out of the box then I do now.
Gorkman
It show the community drives the evolution of Linux and not one person. If only some brave souls were around to do the same when the sap at Microsoft layed out the idea for Microsoft Bob and (later neutered implementation) Clippy it may have saved them some embaressment.
This is a good argument for some kind of QA process in open-source development. Most professional software shops have good compartimentalization between development and testing/QA.
It's very important to get user feedback also...not developer feedback...but actual user feedback.
I've always thought one of the biggest drawbacks to open source was the lack of user feedback/input. But unfortunately that shows little sign of changing...the developer community is very closed and tight-knit.
I really doubt that the OSS movement will produce software that the other 99.99% of the population wants or can use.
Linux is a good example...the only people who really have any business using linux are programmers, UNIX people, and server admins. That excludes just about everyone in your zip code except you and that guy you met at the user group last month.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
"Shit... don't inflate my stock more than it's worth." - Jeff Garzik
Now if only more [people] were at least this humble...
You're compiling the damned kernel!! What fucking candy-assed wuss needs or even wants a GUI for that?
The next step would be to connect to an online database of linux drivers/patches and see if there any updates to drivers for your hardware.
This would make a great addition to gentoo
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
It says that Linux users should expect about 500-1000 connections at any one time to be the max amount. This doesn't seem like a lot when thinking of websites that get a LOT of traffic and store all their website material in databases. Are the commercial DB's more capable?
The Welkin: Online Music Reviews
are the marketing and PR departments to cover up or put spin on anything that could be even remotely considered a mistake.
To parent poster: Do you honestly believe that worse things don't happens behind corporate walls!? Have you been living in a bubble!? The great thing about open source is, whatever happens, you will always have enough information to form your own opinion. As a corporate drone, I can safely assure you that you will NEVER get that level of detail from a corporation (even though the Internet has helped expose a lot). Personally, I think your shock is due to a lack of exposure to a REAL community (people argue all the time . . . that's how things get worked out), rather than anything having to due witht the Kernel developers. Goes to show how corporate our society has become . . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
What is needed in this case is some more
serialization of the database access.
If you have 1000 clients requesting the same page data from DB it would be a good idea to not to fetch the data from the DB for each of them.
A well designed system could reuse the data fetched once to server several clients.
My question is why custom kernels are needed anyways? Except for embedded applications, such as Tivo, why should the common user have to build a custom kernel to get certain hardware support? Is the Linux device driver model really flawed as many claim?
Certainly its nice for development, or experimental patches such as low-latency patches. However it often seems necessary to build a kernel to get certain modules or hardware functionality.
Any comments on the Linux device driver model?
"something" learn to spell stupid and no slashdump runs on DB2.
GGI tried to do too much and it abstracted too far.
AFAIK, they had a lot of problem using the hardware acceleration in the video card.
ESR's configureator was massive overkill and it made life harder for developers.
Why would anyone object to a text based adventure game in the configuration system? Surely not the MS excel users. ;-)
We shouldn't have to decide for hundreds of packages whether we want them or what options they should be pre-configured with in the first place. Almost everything should always be dynamically loadable and should always be dynamically loaded. Modules should be independent between minor kernel versions. There should be very few options, and those that are there should be configurable at runtime. The few remaining compile-time options shouldn't require some complicated interface. If we want single-file kernel distribution, we should be able to create a single file archive of the kernel and the required modules in a way that the bootstrap loader understands.
While parts of the Linux kernel are great--the variety of kernels and file systems, for example--I think overall kernel architecture and configuration is by far the weakest part of the Linux operating system. It's not the GUI that inhibits Linux adoption by the masses--Linux GUIs are up to par with other platforms--it's the fact that a large number of people end up having to recompile the kernel to get things like audio, FireWire, power management, cameras, and USB working, even with the modularized kernels in some distributions.
I know what hardware I have in my computer. But Linux often either labels it strangely, or labels it completely wrongly because of its bizarre way of operating. For example, I have not a single piece of SCSI hardware in my system. Yet for my IDE CD burner to work, I have to load the ide-scsi module, because apparently CD burning in Linux has only been implemented for SCSI burners, so the only way to get IDE burners to work is to emulate them as SCSI burners. Not intuitive.
Not to mention the millions of chipset names. In Windows, you choose the name of your card, and it figures out the chipset (that's in the worst case; usually it just auto-detects it in the first place). In Linux, you have to figure out who made the chipset on your card, which often isn't labeled on the box or in the manual, so requires some guessing or googling. An easy-to-find example is the emu10k1 for Soundblaster Live cards (this is actually documented by Creative); a harder-to-find example is the tulip driver for LinkSys network cards (most of the $10 LinkSys cards don't come with a manual, and the box doesn't mention what chipset they use). And so on for ever.
The Debian way of solving this is by default to build almost everything in the kernel as a module. That way if you discover you need some functionality, you don't have to recompile the kernel; just load the required module. It makes kernel compiling take a bit longer (~20 mins on my Athlon 1.33 GHz), but it's worth it IMHO for never having to recompile it again (until the next kernel upgrade anyway).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
KDE 3 does this via it's configurator with the current kernel/module system.
Here's a screenshot.
Really, I see no problem with the current system. It works well, and is totally modular. You never really even have to recompile your standard, vanilla kernel.
But hey. This new system should be given a chance, I suppose, though I see no use for it personally. I would prefer that it wasn't forced upon me in 2.5.
See this comment [slashdot.org].
Even your comments that merely tell people to read your other comments are modded up...
Y'all can shut up now. I have been duly advised that I had the wrong TLA person writing Emacs, and that Emacs is the One True Editor. I was trying to make a point, but I missed horribly. At the time, a lisp interpreter in a text editor was a horrendously big thing to do. I use and love Emacs, I just think that, at first look, it's a ridiculous concept.
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
--Winston Churchill
I can't agree with your second point more.
"Literally" is a word that you use when you want to cut through layers upon layers of misued metaphors, ambiguous sarcasm, and other kinds misdirection,
It's like a reserved word. Or, better yet, it's like an escape character. Whatever follows it should not be interpreted by some high rhetorical parser; instead, it means what it says it means.
Somewhere along the line, though, people misinterpreted "literally" as just another word for emphasis, so now everyone is talking about how they are "literally dying of thirst" and so on.
Go ahead and redefine the rest of the language to mean new, exciting things, but take your hands off of "literally" -- it's sacred.
This will probably get modded down as Offtopic, but whenever someone says they'll probably get modded down as Offtopic, they end up with 5.
I would have thought making everything modular would have saved time, testing, debugging and waiting for the time when linux is modular enough that hardware vendors will actually write drivers.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
The primary problem I have with "graphical" anything, is that this is a Windows era issue of "every program written has to use a mouse and a window or it isn't user friendly."
Simply not true. When all I had was a VT100 command set, I wrote terminal interfaces that a 4 year old could use for fairly complicated pieces of software, no mouse required.
Although it did use windows....of a sort.
As for configuring and building a kernel, beyond:
1) Interfaces to remove and pull out components on demand....
2) The interface should provide optional documentation and guidelines as well as best practices for most kernel configs given the applications the machine is going to be running.
(i.e. Will it be a router, firewall, an app server or database server?)
3) The configuration system should be easily scriptable with a minimal set of gcc utils.
(sh, make, config..etc.) This is so that it requires less software to build the kernel.
This implies inherent reduced security risks, smaller kernel distribution and less dependancies for linux systems integrators.
Eric S Raymonds vision fails on all three accounts as far as I can tell, on how a kernel should be built and what the logical assumptions are for building a kernel in the first place.
Primarily, users, shouldn't be building kernels anyway. Which is what I think the root problem is here. No, I don't think either, that there is something wrong with Linux if a user can't do EVERYTHING with a mouse and windows.
Lets be realistic here: Users do not have the background to properly build a kernel, and building a nice graphical front end too build a kernel for a sophisticated developer gets in the way. It also, doesn't detract from Linux one iota simply because this fact exists.
That is what the argument here is, and that is why many people who write kernel programs don't use graphical tools ANYWAY. Which I think breaks another assumption made by Mr. Raymond about a new config system.
Dependancy graphics are nice, rules seperation parsers built to create such graphics with a language are nice.
But this is really OLD SCHOOL stuff. Any computer science/computer professional can buy a book on such theory and compeently learn everything there is to know about REINVENTING the wheel.
(ISBN: 0-13-1555045-4 Start reading at 7.3.2)
And you too can write a configuration system similair to Eric's...
But WHY WASTE YOUR TIME?
The existing kernel configuration system is very scriptable, has supporting documentation available with each modules or options, and works with a very minimal set of build tools on the command line.
Very nice, simple and it works very well very nicely without Python, X, windows, Mice a supported video driver and a whole new set of tools that basically give us the same thing we have now, just a whole lot more complicated.
I would like to see Eric address points 1-3 and tell use exactly why we need all this stuff as kernel developers. He hasn't done so.
His website just shows pretty pictures of a kernel configuration system.
Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Check out the second screenshot. 2 scrollbars of 2 different applications. One has a normal, ugly X scrollbar, the other has a nice look, probably inheriting the selected theme.
That, my friend, is a result of the true error in the whole picture: there is no consistency. People are doing what they think is right, but there is no big, guideline which will bring the whole system to a certain level because it's all worked out.
That is true for the gui, it's also true for kernel configuration. You are right about the fact that people shouldn't be hassling over which package should be installed and which option should be compiled into the kernel. On windows I just run setup and the system configs itself. I never have to recompile any kernel, because 1) I don't have the sourcecode (;)) but 2) I don't have to: WinXP will config itself and will work no matter what hw card I jam into the pci slots: install the driver (or better: xp has the driver already) and off you go. There is no need for compilation of a certain subsystem into the 'kernel'.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
I've never needed more than vi to configure, make and install my kernel on BSD:
/usr/src
vi MYKERNEL
cd
make buildkernel && make installkernel
phew! I'm done.
Custom kernels are necessary because Linux is a monolithic kernel. That means that in order to use certain hardware or other features, the drivers have to reside in the kernel itself.
Now, lets suppose that you just got the latest gee wiz device and you want to use it on your Linux box. You hook your "flux capacitor" up to the firewire port and nothing happens. Why, because either a firewire or a flux capacitor driver (or both) is required and the kernel doesn't have it installed. This means that you must rebuild the kernel with the appropriate driver in order for your new flux capacitor to work.
Now, some may argue that the kernels should be pre-built with all the drivers and everything. Indeed, many distros do something like this for their stock kernels. But that still doesn't account for hardware that is yet to be invented. It also causes the kernel to grow into a giant that gives the term monolithic a whole new meaning. This large size means slow boot times and slower overall performance, in some cases. Surely, you don't want that?
Indeed, many people want to trim the size of their kernel to an absolute minimum to improve the performance of their system, not to mention the security enhancement of removing unneccessary services. Do you really need HAM radio support? Most people don't, so why would most people want the HAM drivers loaded in their kernel? Do you need NTFS file system support, as I do? Probably not, especially with write access, so why include it? But at the same time, why prevent me from using it, as I need to?
Even without the above reasons requiring the custom kernel, there is one more reason in favor of it. Part of the whole idea behind Linux is the ability to modify and customize it to your heart's content. That means if you want to modify your kernel you can. And this project will make such modifications easier than in the past. If you don't want to bother with customizing your kernel, then use the latest stock kernel from a major distribution, which will have mostly everything included. But, if it is slow or your flux capacitor isn't supported, you'll just have to wait and hope that the distro includes the support in its next release.
Linus is now irrelevent. So is Alan Cox, Rik Van Riel, and most other key Linux kernel developers. All the real progress being made on the Linux front is being done on vendor maintained trees and side projects. Linus' tree has been stagnant for a while now and isn't going anywhere any time soon.
I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is. Linux has become a much bigger system than one person (even a brilliant person) can micromanage. The members of the kernel "leadership" (for lack of a better word) all have become too egotistical and territorial to be team players. The ad hoc development processes that they cling to like gospel don't scale to development tasks of any significant size and now the process has pretty much broken down entirely. Few people even want to contribute to the main tree anymore. It's dead. Get over it.
And some folks questioned his motivation for getting this grandiose project into the kernel - was it just to help out, or was it primarily to establish additional hacker reputation for Eric? I'd be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this - he did the work.
... was it just to help out, ...
What's wrong with being motivated by hacker reputaion points? Isn't that what was supposed to replace money in the open source motivational system?
So an open source developer is evil unless he's motivated solely by altruism?
(That humming sound you hear is the beat between the spin rates of Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek.)
C'mon, Bruce. You know better than that.
Regardless of how much we want to help out humanity and all that, SOME of us aren't the leisure class - with old money, idle time, and an indoctrination in the obligations of nobility to give us internal satisfaction when we do something "just to help out" the benighted masses of the common man. Some of us ARE those commoners, with a family, a mortgage, and (if we haven't been laid off in the latest recession) a paycheck that is all that stands between using a shopping cart for groceries and using it for a mobile home.
If we're to contribute time and effort to the open-source codebase we need a way to keep that paycheck coming. Like "reputation points" to put on a resume, to find work the next time the current project is over or the current company goes belly-up.
Maybe Eric doesn't need any more points. But let's not have a big name flaming him for maybe wanting some - and thus convince thousands of onlookers that working open source is a good way to get a BAD rep, so they'd be better off getting that MCSE instead.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Works the same in Linux.
You have moved into a dark place
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a penguin.
Don't forget that a lot of Linux programmers are professionals who "donate" their spare time to linux programming. Also a lot of them are doing the coding in their free time at school. And yet others get paid by big companies to do the work.
It seems like the only non-linux-professionals are those who whould make such a remark about linux.
On the other hand, people use the word "like" to indicate that a simile or metaphor is coming up, sort of like a substitution marker.
So, for 5pts, trace the output of the following sentence:
"I'm, like, literally dying of thirst."
In addition, requiring the Qt or GTK libraries is ridiculous. I don't want to link to anything that large. If you can't get it done with Xaw (or something similarly small) I'm not interested in your stupid config tool. I'd rather use something fast and ncurses-based.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Eric was playing games and his solution was technically superior. Done deal.
...Eric's Solitaire? (bu dum-pssssh)
Lemme guess...
Thank you, I'll be here all week. Remember to tip your waittress.
get a life.
Just run FreeBSD and you won't have any of these linux problems.
It looks surprisingly similar to the KDE Kernel Configurator.
Control Center->System->Linux Kernel Configurator
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Exactly!
How is it that Knoppix can get it so right and the major distros are a hash?
Of my 7 personal computers:
Knoppix boots them all, with all their devises functioning.
Mandrake 8.2 fails to initialize USB on 3 of them.
Redhat 7.3 fails to initialize the video on 2 of them (and therefore fails to start X)
Debian 3.0r0 fails to intialize a standard PS/2 mouse on one and ethernet cards on 4.
SUSE 8.0 does not recognize the second CPU in a dual processor machine!?
I just don't understand.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Just remember that ESR was the one who wrote about the reputation and the like to begin with, in addition to the rules of social interaction in the OSS world. He didn't write them, he wrote about them. Whether he's correct on all these points is another matter. It may be that hackers write for reputation but it seems that the appearance of writing for reputation is bad.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
If it ain't broke, there is no reason not to try to improve it, IMHO.
However, the changes usually should be incrimental rather than all-at-once. This forces better code, and better systems, and all-round better products.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The screenshots look more complicated to me - just a horrible GUI interface with a single giant tree list. How horrible.
The sad thing is that you should need to recompile the kernel to add support for various bits of hardware. What is wrong with using drivers that are not compiled into the kernel, and being able to add them at runtime?
I can understand recompiling the kernel for certain reasons:
1) Want to compile for your architecture to get the best performance
2) Want to make use of a kernel patch, or non-standard kernel feature
The monolithism of the Linux kernel is primitive. It should be fully modular - a small kernel core with additional services for various aspects of the kernel, and with full runtime driver addition and removal, etc. This will become even more necessary with systems that need 99.99% uptime using hot-swap PCI and the like.
The kernel configuration should basically be an automated process - check how many processors you have, optimise for that processor type, etc. Compile all hardware support as drivers/modules. Install.
A personal kernel will give you a 'faster' machine, especially when you take into account SMP, low latency, pre-emptive kernel, the extra few MB that doesn't have to be paged to your slowwwww HDDD, page faults that occure when you have to goto a module.
You don't have to touch the configs, it's automated, that's the point!
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Well even if all the drivers are modular (a good thing!) your still left with am I a server or am I a workstation options. Descktop kernels require a quick response(10 milliseconds tops) but this may reduce the performance under server type coditions were a few hunderd millisecond responce is good enough.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Because even the most notable contributors seem to be anal retentive bastards who bicker and squabble like little children. Where the hell is the motivation to work on projects, when your fellow coders think its more fun to make personal attacks on you rather than working to constructively develop systems and programs? I remeber seeing such attitudes and opinions when Hans Reiser wanted to get this journaling file system included in the kernel..
Maybe thats where the majority of the nerdy end users get this impression that they are somehow superior to users of 'inferior operating systems' such as Windows.. so much so that they adopt this eliteist attitude.
It pisses me off - I encounter it all the time, and it is in my opinion one of the biggest weaknesses of the community.
Mandrake does the same. Redhat probably does too.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
I've spent 4 years, and mine still doesn't work!
I think I may have found the answer in the following excerpt from his World Domination guest editorial on Linux Journal:
I can't help wondering whether, in this case, Linus and Jeff are "the bosses"; indeed, stuff like pretty pictures and theorem provers and various other kitchen sinks associated with CML2 qualify (amply) as those "snazzy special effects" of which he is so fond.
Now, love him or hate him, Eric is not going anywhere, even after getting booed off a very important stage. And in light of his, um, staying power and in consideration of the CML2 affair, it should be of some comfort to his detractors that at least Eric the Rich Guy hasn't lost his hackitude and keeps producing worthwhile stuff. When Eric first threatened to quit politics, I looked forward to the return of Eric the Hacker and the retirement of Eric the Politician ; alas, half an Eric must, ipso facto, half not be, and I'll take a whole Eric over half an Eric any day, thank you very much.
So more then just knoppix can autodetect beautifully and seamlessly, great.
Why can't I do make autoconfig for my kernel then?
That would be the totaqlly kick as thing to have happen IMHO. The fact that more then just knoppix got this down tells me it should be a trivial task.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Ummmm......the linux kernel _IS_ modular if you compile everything as modules. What do you think many distributions like redhat or mandrake are doing? You can quite successfully use their percompiled kernels on almost any system.
The whole point of kernel configuration is that you can actually not compile what you don't need and you can make a kernel perfectly suited to your system. Without modules if you don't have a reason for them. If you never change anything, why would you need to have module supporting sitting around in your kernel?
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
At least with Debian, the precompiled kernel doesn't automatically have CD burning properly set up. You have to load the required modules and pass them the proper arguments, as I described in my previous post (and yes, I got the requisite steps from the CD-Writing-HOWTO). In Windows, it detects the hardware and sets it up for you.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
kratos:
I think that it also is a specific kind of power. Supported credibly if not completely enough by it's use as shown in in this document which I found when googling for a little support for my hypothesis. What kind of power it is colors it's relationship with the other word part. I believe it's an oppressive sort of power, essentially the military power required to win and the spoils that are the reward (power over the people, to tax and control their economy. Taken this way Democracy has a different meaning, probably justifiable but incomplete. The people should have power over the government but should they take the position with regard to it that historically military governments do? Similarly if people have power of the "government", this is "govern" the correct root for that word? If the intent is to free the people to govern themselves, and free the economy, "democracy" is possibly the wrong approach.
Philosophy is stored in these terms. Breaking these terms open, or comparatively considering the distinctions between irony and coincidence, ironic coincidence or literal metaphors. I post this to you because of your clear like for making closer study of terms (I paused to grok your distinction between irony and coincidence), and because you also have a pragmatists view of language, a relatively rare combination. It allows one to look for the meaning of words as a philosophist rather than as a grammarian, trying to impose as RULES what are merely interesting philological patterns.
-pyrrho
I don't agree with your interpretation for why the GGI failed.
The way I saw it, the GGI developers had very grand ideas but insufficient time/resources. In the end, the GGI lost out because FB and the DRI offered something tangible with a reduced complexity. Maybe you could argue that GGI offered more but that's just confirmation of the classic 80/20 rule.
The reason behind XFS's non-acceptance: the XFS source code is an ugly non-Linux beast that refuses to talk the 'Linux VM/VFS speak', for the sake of keeping a common XFS core between Irix and Linux.
If SGI really wanted XFS to be accepted into the kernel then they should clean it up and make it a Linux filesystem - instead of hacking an additional layer into Linux to have Irix APIs internally....
Qt. Otherwise it's just a waste of time.
I've finally got to the site, and seen something like what I was talking about, and it's not scripted so it could be quite fast, don't you think? WOW
:-)
Sorry
No warranty of any kind is offered as to the quality of this post.
I run two machines at home, one which I compile everything for and test new kernels on, and one that I do dev and personal work one.
The dev/personal machine runs redhat 7.2 and uses up2date (i.e. redhat rpm's) to update all software on the system. Its the easiest way for me to have up to date, stable apps with which to run my system and get my work done. The down side is, I cant compile any extras if I want to change the kernel.
That is a limitation I accept as a consequence of my wanting an easily updatable stable system. And if I need to run anything from compile I use my other machine. Here is the problem though....
Both linux machines dual boot into win2k (I use for games). How do I mount the ntfs partition with my redhat box? I need to re-compile kernel with the ntfs read-only driver to beable to mount it, but that would mean I don't get to use the redhat up2date to update my kernel.
An answer to that one would really make me happy in "userland" on my red hat machine.
Yeah, it wouldn't even be up:-)
Ive never had as much trouble with a kernel build as i have had since 2.5.31.
the IRDA stuff just wont compile, the orinoco driver wont compiler either. ive never seen the kernel not compile like this. Im having to take out module after module to get something that builds.
Don
Actually all you might have to do is boot up the default kernel which in most systems is full of just about every single modules and run a script that takes an lsmod and generates a config file out of it. I really can't see why this is so damn difficult, you'd think someone would of done this by now. I'm sure this isn't the right way to go about it but... hey... what do you want from a slashdot comment ;).
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
Or look in /proc and look-up the device ID's in a database.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
How do I use that over a serial terminal server in my server farm? Duh!
Oddly, even though misuse of "literally" irritates the living f### out of me, I think it should have the meaning people end up giving it when they (mis)use it to add emphasis. For example:
"That was so funny I literally shit myself."
"How disgusting. You will go home and change your underwear. Right?"
"No I won't you cyborg. There isn't any poop in my pants. It was just an expression. I meant that in a literary way!"
:-) Darn lameness filter!
Stick Men
ls | grep patch
...
...
patch-2.4.19.bz2
patch-2.4.19.bz2.sign
patch-2.4.19.gz
patch-2.4.19.gz.sign
Whether I have the ide-scsi module installed or just the ide-cd module, my CDs are accessible at /dev/cdroms/cdrom0 /dev/cdroms/cdrom1
and
Which drive is which does indeed switch depending on the order in which I choose to load the modules, but anyone who's installed a removable disk driver on windows will tell you that all the disks there jump around too. (e.g.: my wife installed the driver for a compactflash reader on her windows 98 machine, and the CD rom was moved from D: to E: to make room for the compactflash device. Later, we had to re-install it and D: and E: swapped places again)
Anyone saying that linux requires you to use the scsi names hasn't tried devfs lately.
From: Rik van Riel
...
Subject: Re: Disgusted with kbuild developers
Date: Fri Feb 15 2002 - 12:02:21 EST
This makes me wonder whether Eric works in a cathedral or in an ivory tower
Rik
> GGI tried to do too much and it abstracted too far.
KGI (the code to go into the kernel) was just a bit more sophisticated than DRI. Under KGI, the mode switching would be provided by the kernel so that you never lost all use of your console because of X crashing, text blitting routines would be included in the kernel to support Linux's in kernel terminal, for hardware with an accel engine an interface is provided for the driver to tell userspace what accel methods are available. It is as simple as that. KGI was never "acceleration in the kernel" as was shouted about a lot, it was "operations that can render your console or system bus unusable are allowed with care taken to ensure that nothing bad can happen while maintaining DRI level performance".
For matrox (a good, stable accel interface), userspace could query what interface is available and the driver might respond "matrox mmap interface" since it is safe to mmap the accel registers from userspace. If there were any code to operate the accel registers they would be in a badly designed driver (or a driver for badly designed hardware), and nothing to do with KGI *at* *all*.
KGI is the minimum necessary to safely support high performance graphics from userspace and that's not a lot.
ESR's refusal to update the patches to handle changes Linus made to the core code.
Sorry, you don't have permission to rewrite history. Eric updated his patches, and updated and updated, all the while waiting for Linus to suck in CML2 *like Linus promised*. Finally, he got burned out, and started to publicly wonder WTF was going on. All this time he was being roundly, soundly, and viciously abused by various people on the LKML.
All of which goes to show that Linus's promises are worth nothing. But we all knew that, didn't we?
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Whether you compile code as a module or into the kernel, what difference does it make? You still have to compile the code, so it still takes the same amount of time t ocompile.
What's this Submit thingy do?
Like how do you know the configuation options used on the kernel you are running?
/proc/config, and it spits out all the CONFIG_* options that were defined when the kernel was compiled. I sent that patch to Linus years ago.
You just cat
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
He instisted in keeping in synch with both the stable and unstable versions and the killer was here followed by Linus making the changes and ESR never updating to match.
cowabunga - shazzzam..
What do you do during that vi session?
Linux kernel configuration tools make easier to make those same changes.
And if you are a masochist you can also use vi.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
if I had a magic hammer,
that couldn't smash my thumb.
I'd hammer down everything,
till my arm was numb.
But even magic hammers
when held by a stupid dumbass
will be pushed beyond it's limits
and one's thumb it will soon blast
So when playing with the kernel
and you're pulling out your hair
it's time to hire a carpenter
and pay him what is fair
Yeah I've installed windows systems before and its really not up to scratch. Cheers, I'll check out devfs.
however the issues with the kernel config and cd burners still seems to apply
No warranty of any kind is offered as to the quality of this post.
I hope you read this as the topic is a few days old. You managed to pick up on something that I am very interested in, language & how it got the way it is. If only I had more time (and intellgence).
.sig :-)
"Philosophy is stored in these terms."
I couldn't agree more, there seem to be "clues" or code regarding something scatered about in language, especially root words and they seem to link in to old myths & legends.
I am not nearly bright enough to express this very eloquently nor to figure it out but language seems to hold a lot more value than just basic communication and something we take for granted.
If only the birds could talk.
Also, time for a new
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
all the battles in philosophy, by which I mean not the academic ones but the real battles that go on within cultures and when they collide, are all stored, I believe, in the terms and phrases of language.
I think it's fair to say that philosophers mostly mine language for knowledge, as special kinds of philologists. As for the additional part, the creativity, it's mostly aimed in the direction of creating new words and new understandings for them, and is therefore just another part of the same process.
I hope to talk with you about this more in the future at some point.
Cheers.
-pyrrho
Several days ago, I read an old news article about the Shuttle Programming Group's high quality and ultra-high reliability.
Linux has to begin to emulate this model to survive! How many super-programmers are out there versus newbie programmers that have brilliant ideas. Linux has to build a structure that can capture each of those nugggets and expand on them or teach the newbies to implement them.
There needs to be an easier system to programming so that anyone can help out in the smallest way. These are very different tools than the Pros are using, but only the pros can build them.
Also, Knowladge about process, setup, and troubleshooting needs to be captured and put in a form for anyone to contribute and everyone to benifit. I envision a system where I can experiment with an install and the next guy can benifit immeditely from my findings. Gentoo to the next level!
all done