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KernelTrap Interview With Rusty Russell
Jeremy Andrews writes "KernelTrap has interviewed Rusty Russell, a humorous and productive contributer to Linux Kernel development. Author of ipchains, netfilter/iptables, futexes, per-cpu counters, hot pluggable CPU support, and the new in-kernel module loading code, Rusty's efforts have had a significant impact on the upcoming 2.6 kernel. For a humorous sample of Rusty's wit, one only needs to look at his email signature which reads, 'Anyone who quotes me in their sig is an idiot. -- Rusty Russell.'" Rusty is a great guy, and this is a worthwhile read.
Author of ipchains, netfilter/iptables, futexes, per-cpu counters, hot pluggable CPU support, and the new in-kernel module loading code
We all know SCO/Caldera did that!
Leader of the Kstrdup Core Team!
0x2b or not 0x2b, the answer is -1
JA: Digging through old lkml archives, I see that your first name is Paul. Is Rusty a nickname?
no I was left out in the rain as a child
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
he IBM Linux Technology Center is the misnomer which refers to the worldwide group within IBM whose mission is to "Accelerate the maturation of standard, architecture-independent Linux into the enterprise", or as we say "Make Linux Better". It's our job to contribute stuff where needed: from one point of view it's a way of collecting a paycheck while working full-time on what I love doing.
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Free your mind.
"Begging the question" is when you make a point, but have to accept the point before the logic that you use makes sense.
Yuk yuk yuk..
We work with these things all the time. You can yank CPUs while its running and it won't even hiccup. You can open the side of the case and take a whiz in it, and the machine will keep chugging. Cool stuff.
They apparently have permission to modify Windows source to make that stuff work, but linux support would be nice.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
JA: Is there a story behind your email signature?
Rusty Russell: The joys of working in an office: Chris Yeoh told me someone quoted me in their sig, on slashdot. Well obviously, I went and checked it out, and the guy had misspelled my name.
From this sample size of one, I determined that everyone who quotes me in their sig is mentally deficient.
Okay, who was the idiot?:-)
JA: When I interviewed Andrew Morton I definitely got the feeling that you've impressed at least him. :)
Rusty Russell: That's such an amazing compliment, because I aspire be more like Andrew.
That's what makes a good community, people who inspire, impress and encourage each-other. I've noticed that the 'big name' hackers tend to be ones who want to inspire people, not shoot them down.
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
Hot pluggable CPU support ...
Now, that is what I call a technological advance! You can execute code in the kernel and THEN, afterward, plug in the cpu. Does somebody knows how they do this?!?
I think the quote: "Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced." applies well in this case
I'd rather be sailing...
http://www.arenafan.com/players/?player=1393
I'm willing to bet Rusty is the first person to both a pro football player and kernel developer
You can open the side of the case and take a whiz in it, and the machine will keep chugging.
I'm guessing where you grew up you didn't come across very many electric horse fences, did you?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
"For a humorous sample of Rusty's wit, one only needs to look at his email signature"
No pun intented towards Rusty, I do concider him to be a great chap, but to offer a signature as a proof of that?
I've seen tons of humorous sigs here after completely witless posts. And now that I think about it, this post is yet another proof of that concept.
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
I worked at Stratus a few months ago on a menial little project, but one of the things they did was show me around the engineering labs, and there is a section of the lab devoted to making Linux work on the ftServer line of servers.
-Aaron
This has been the least interesting thread on the front page for some time....I mean, I'm browsing at +1, and most of the posts are jokes about SCO, Russell's sig, and the name "Rusty."
Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent. --Ludwig Wittgenstein
I wrote lots of little things here and there: an example is the compressed loopback module I wrote as a throwaway project in 1999. I found out recently that it's the basis of Knoppix, which is an incredibly impressive project. I could never have done that: is that cool or what?
...Right in the spirit in which he closed the interview:
Impressive little "throwaway project"!!
JA: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Rusty Russell: I love that noone needs my permission to take my code and do something cool with it, and someone else can do the same with that code. I love that an "end user" is usually only a few hours work away from being an active documenter, bugreporter, web-mistress or coder in most projects.
As a result, I despise anything which artificially raises barriers to entry for programmers and users. Everything from stupid software patents, to bad user interfaces, cabalesque knowledge and crummy code. These quotes highlighted the interview for me but the whole thing was great.
> Too bad he's such a dick about supporting the libiptc API.
I haven't touched that API in ages, but it's pretty horrible. This came up at the last netfilter summit, and it's becoming a big problem. Harald did some excellent work on his rework, but it's fundamentally trying to do two different things: support extensions which are in the kernel, and support the command language extensions required for iptables itself. This shows up clearly when you want to use it for something other than iptables.
> It's pretty confusing to use, and his asshole wit shows up in what little documentation there is.
*shrug* There's only so much you can do with documentation. What's needed is a rewrite: fortunately, Harald's plkttables looks promising, unfortunately, it's a long way off 8(. The documentation which is there is about writing extensions, not using the library directly.
As for the wit, I agree: it's not for everyone, and can make bad documentation worse.
Cheers,
Rusty.