OpenBSD CVS RAID Array Failing, Needs Replacement

Sam writes "The OpenBSD cvs server has a failing RAID array. Users of the projects on that array: OpenBSD, OpenSSH, OpenBGPD, OpenNTPD, and the upcoming OpenCVS are all invited to contribute towards the $12,500 cost of a suitably high-spec replacement. OpenBSD Journal article, and original request (thread)."

Comments

Gee..

[brilinux]

I guess that it is a good thing that I decided to spend all day today compiling NetBSD instead of OpenBSD ... but, those projects are somewhat important, especially OpenSSH; if I were not a poor college student, I would contribute. Good luck.

Re:Gee..

[Noksagt]

if I were not a poor college student, I would contribute.

Philanthropy does not require you to be personally wealthy. For one, a small donation from you of $5 will almost certainly help them & not overly burden you. But, as a student, you are in a good position to actually fundraise for them as well. Not only can you encourage your peers to also donate $5, but you can solicit faculty, alumni, and departments to donate much more than $5.

OpenBSD also accepts hardware donations. You can send any spare equipment you have, encourage others to do the same, and/or even dumpster dive for perfectly working components that could use a new home.

Re:Gee..

[QuantumG]

funny you mention new homes, didn't Theo buy one last year with that DARPA money?

Re:Gee..

[Anonymous Coward]

You can send any spare equipment you have, encourage others to do the same, and/or even dumpster dive for perfectly working components that could use a new home.

Is that what got them into trouble in the first place?

What will they do with any old equipment you find laying around? More than likely its crap and can't be used in any sort of production environment. Course I could be wrong and would like to hear of any success stories.

Re:Gee..

[Anonymous Coward]

Universities do throw out very good equipment that is in working order. When I was a student a few years ago, peers would ebay this equipment for beer money. I wouldn't expect them to put this in production, but many developers request hardware for themselves or too add compatibility. I have personally seen SMP machines, SCSI drives, PCMCIA devices, and various documentation that is on their want list in dumpsters.

Re:Gee..

[RevDobbs]

Dear Troll,

Are you refering to the money that DARPA un-donated to OpenBSD? If so, kindly provide some information to back your claims.

Re:Gee..

[QuantumG]

De Raadt is one open source developer who owns his own home. The DARPA grant gave him the finance to pay up the mortgage. I didn't start the rumour, I was merely repeating it.

Re:Gee..

[Anonymous Coward]

Brian says that he can't spend $5 on openBSD because it sucks ass. Thanks.

Okay,

[A beautiful mind]

The "BSD is dieing" jokes, riiiight after me!

its a joke, laugh.

Re:Okay,

[Anonymous Coward]

if I had $12,500 I'd have to offer it as a bounty for an original *BSD is dieing troll. The variation on a theme are just not as funny as they once were.

Re:Okay,

[Homology]

if I had $12,500 I'd have to offer it as a bounty for an original *BSD is dieing troll. The variation on a theme are just not as funny as they once were.

It's well know that the troll community is suffering greatly from excessive inbreeding. It's really noticable that this inbreeding is seriously impairing their already scant intellectual skills. They are not even capable to do a simple copy/paste/replace/post. They'll quite simply breed themselves to extinction, so you can donate that bounty to OpenBSD instead.

Re:Okay,

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found it!
http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=33311&cid= 3598117

Judging by his other posts, this fellow clearly suffers from multiple personalities, and may be trying to steal my identity.

Failing?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean ... dying?

OpenBSD's RAID is Dying

[NitsujTPU]

It is official; Netcraft confirms: OpenBSD's RAID is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered OpenBSD community when IDC confirmed that the OpenBSD RAID has failed again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent properly operating. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that OpenBSD's raid has lost more sectors, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. OpenBSD's RAID is collapsing into complete Redundant Disarray of Inexpensive Disks, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict OpenBSD's RAID's future. The hand writing is on the wall: OpenBSD's RAID faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for OpenBSD's RAID because OpenBSD's RAID is dying. Things are looking very bad for OpenBSD's RAID. As many of us are already aware, OpenBSD's RAID continues to data. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Fact: OpenBSD's RAID is dying

$12,500... what is this, MAC hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can set up an AMD-64 with RAID under LINUX for $500 or less.

Re:$12,500... what is this, MAC hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's because they want quality equipment with a service contract. Your RAID enclosure built of duct tape and popsicle sticks fails to amuse.

Re:$12,500... what is this, MAC hardware?

[Noksagt]

From TFA:

The price of a fully populated PowerVault 220S with 4 hour on-site warranty is
about $12500 USD including tax and shipping. Let me kick this off by donating
$250 to this cause. A person that shall not be named donated a PERC4/DC RAID
controller.

Re:$12,500... what is this, MAC hardware?

[frost22]

Nope. Its because they insist in mostly oudated super expensive techology.

They could get the same or more with an IDE raid (a real one) at a fraction of those costs.

Re:$12,500... what is this, MAC hardware?

[IntenseTech]

I completely agree. "oudated super expensive techology" is pointless.
DATA is DATA. IDE or SCSI.
You could have a very fast and nice RAID 5 (600Gig (5x200Gig HD) estimate) mini cluster (3 systems, each with RAID 5 - lets talk redundancy) for the same price. WTF are they thinking. Is "resistance to change(growup)" a problem? or maybe driver availability issues? What's their current COMPLETE detailed config. I want the specs for sure. seriously. What type NIC, what M/B, processor, RAM, are they using.. Everything!

Re:$12,500... what is this, MAC hardware?

[Triumph The Insult C]

hmm, let's look at the facts

the person organizing the replacement (marco@) works with at lowest level of disks as a day job. he is very involved in all of the obsd scsi stuff

you agree that scsi is "outdated super expensive technology", but offer no facts, nor have you bothered to check the configuration they currently have

who should i consider more knowledgable in this subject matter?

for the kind of work that cvs.openbsd.org does, ide simply will not cut it

for storing big pr0n movies, ide works fine. for lots of cvs commits and checkouts and heavy i/o from nfs, ide sucks

Re:$12,500... what is this, MAC hardware?

[meme_police]

I'd mod you up if I had the opportunity. marco@ is brilliant when it comes storage.

Re:$12,500... what is this, MAC hardware?

[frost22]

Marco may be as brilliant as God the Almighty ... but that doesn't change facts. SCSI drives and SCSI based arrays are currently in the process of becoming a high end niche product.

Especially against good caching SATA arrays you will have a hard time to even state a convincing performance case, not to mention one based on costs.

Im not arguing those are better. I argue he doesn't need those extra 10 or what percent faster seek times. Over all system design is more than knowing disk to the last atoms. If Marco is responsible fr this design, he confused his desire to have superior Hard drives with his project's desire to maximise a price-performance ratio under a given minimum performance requirement.

Re:$12,500... what is this, MAC hardware?

[nbritton]

So what you are saying is that he's already "close minded" to anything other then SCSI? and that what he thinks is good for project may not be in the best interest, cost wise, for the project?

Re:$12,500... what is this, MAC hardware?

[ostiguy]

How do you explain away the access time difference between 15k and 10k rpm drives? They probably want one big array with lots of 15k rpm drives to get a lot of fast spindles to achieve fast random IO.

ostiguy

Re:$12,500... what is this, MAC hardware?

[MarkTina]

IDE ? I take it you don't work in the data storage field otherwise you wouldn't suggest putting live filesystems for critical data on consumer grade devices. The reason data centres use SCSI and FC is not because they are faster ...

Link to make a donation

[abradsn]

How do we actually make a donation?

Re:Link to make a donation

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to keep high-quality contributions to OpenBSD, donate to paypal@NetBSD.org. :*)

Re:Link to make a donation

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, without NetBSD we wouldn't have the pf packe... wait a second, didn't that one come from FreeBSD?

Re:Link to make a donation

[Anonymous Coward]

no it didn't

Re:Link to make a donation

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like that was the point of the post now don't it? That not everything in OpenBSD came from somewhere else like the previous poster implied.

Expensive

[BoomerSooner]

It would seem to me they could build one for significantly less. Dell's 4 hour service isn't as fast as having spare parts on-hand and swapping them yourself (someone has to be there to let Dell in so why can't they pull a harddrive sled and slide in a new one?). Plus the savings by building it themselves would more than cover the price of spare harddrives/controllers, etc...

That is just my experience. Dell's service/support is pretty good but I've had a significantly higher rate of failure on their hardware compared to purchasing components individually.

Re:Expensive

[SunFan]

Yes, but would you want something as important as these projects running on a home-built unit? They need something that's actually known to work beforehand.

Re:Expensive

[Kalak]

The cost of a spare backplane for the enclosure on this level of equipment is more than a few dollars. We're not just talking having a spare power supply and drives here. 4 hour service is a deal breaker when dealing with highly critical equipment of this level. No amount of spare parts, short of complete redundancy in equipment (another $12k) would be enough to cover every contingency. It's one reason our shop is not going to get an XRAID form Apple - good price point, but our critical infrastructure needs more than next business day response and some "common" spare parts. We're planning on even buying the redundant RAID array as well. Good Sysadmins are supposed to be paranoid and ready to face major disaster with excitement, and to plan for that disaster that should never occurr.

Re:Expensive

[0xdeaddead]

Wow I need to frame that quote some where Dell's support is TERRIBLE. Bottom line here is the scoop. If you want to buy servers on the cheap buy EXTRA ones. the 4 hour support thing is a sham. Every time Ive had to call them on it, they have had to fly people & equipment, or just make up the damedest lies on why they cannot deliver equipment in 48 hours (on the 4 hour support contract none the less).

The last time they got me (6 days ago) we lost 1 terrabyte of their 'nas' storage... The joke was the 1st 24 hour delay on the 4 hour response was the lack of 250Gig IDE DISKS.....

Then they send out the Unisys guy to get the box to boot, because it just crashes, and lo-and behold, he cant get it to work either.

Now its going to be 12 DAYS to fix the box, and they have no spares. Nice 4 hour response guys!

After 48 hours of this outage I managed to beat them into shipping a 6600 with 1.2Tb of space so I can restore peoples home directories & profiles so they can login again.. wow thanks.

Bottom line is that they suck, and you get what you pay for. Its probably better to buy Compaq/HP on ebay & re-warentee it.

Re:Expensive

[OrangeSpyderMan]

I agree. At one point Dell sold the company I work for some servers that would be clustered and hooked up to SAN's the world over. They sold us "gold" maintenance, knowing fine well where each and every cluster would be located, because we told them, and they even factored that in to the overall quote. This isn't some little deal for a couple of tens of thousands of dollars, this is a 80,000+ users worldwide, who would all be moving from HP desktops and servers to Dell, for the Wintel stuff. Now guess what nearly blew the deal? One of the locations that was destined to receive a Dell cluster was not supported for 2-3 days a week because their support engineer organised deep-dea fishing trips!!! He was the Dell engineer, and they came within a hair's breadth of blowing this as they furiously scrambled for engineer cover in $LOCATION. I wouldn't give Dell ANY money for service over their default baseline, as they may know how to ship boxes, they don't know jack shit about service.

Re:Expensive

[self assembled struc]

And you haven't sued them why?

Re:Expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

"I will banish your server problems to the land of wind and ghosts! I face major disaster with excitement! Can you not see that I am serious!"

Re:Expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit if the CVS for OpenBSD cannot be out of line for 24 hours. Of course it can!

I understand they wanting to go with the most expensive equipment they can manage to pay, but that's ludicrous; They could even afford a week outage for the CVS server without major pains (I don't say that would be desirable, but I say it wouldn't disastrous).

Now for the *real* needs you can go with a 3000-5000US$ server with a "next-day" service agreement, mates!

Re:Expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell's 4 hour service isn't as fast as having spare parts on-hand

Oh sure Dell will sell you 4 hour response... they'll just never deliver on it and last time I spoke with Dell they couldn't even understand fucking English and the best I could get was questions like, "Is the power switched ON?", "Do you currently have power in your area?" and other shit like that.

"Hey fucktard! We're on the 47th floor in a building with a bunch of other Fortune 100's, we have a massive diesel Caterpillar generator with enough fuel capacity to keep going continuously while fuel trucks constantly do laps between us and fuel depots. It keeps a battery bank which is probably larger than your whole office.... topped up with FUCKING POWER! We are first World, not third. The last time this area suffered a blackout... I was not even born yet. Can you put someone on the phone who a) Speeks da fuckin' In-glish and b) understands that we have a RAID array that is FUCKING GOING except for one drive!? Someone who realises the importance of the fact that your FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT ARRAY did not bring the hotspare online? Ass-hole!"

Re:Expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

They sold us "gold" maintenance

If you do a careful cost analysis of that "gold" maintenance, you will find that it is "gold" for Dell, not you.

Re:Expensive

[OrangeSpyderMan]

If you do a careful cost analysis of that "gold" maintenance, you will find that it is "gold" for Dell, not you.

The cost analysis doesn't even have to be that careful :-)

Re:Expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

We are first World, not third.

Someone who realises the importance of the fact that your FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT ARRAY did not bring the hotspare online?

Who is the bigger fool, Dell for selling you something or you for believing it? First world , hah! More like "first world fool"

Re:Expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, you must have gotten the low end dell support. Once you get to the mid level support everyone knows that the solution (to everything and then some) is to "reformat the hard drive". Doesn't matter if you're clusters are bad, or the drive is on fire - reformat the drive.

Thanks Dell!

Re:Expensive

[wirelessbuzzers]

We're planning on even buying the redundant RAID array as well.

Acronym expansion fun!

"We're planning on even buying the redundant redundant array of [inexpensive/independent] disks array as well."

To be fair, you did say that it was redundant...

Re:Expensive

[Kalak]

There are 2 RAID arrays, so it is a doubly redundant array of [in]expensive disks.

This message brought to you by the -1 Redundant mod. ;)

Re:Expensive

[markz]

The truth is, there is not enough information to answer the question. How much data? Acceptable down time? etc. How many suckers will donate?

Based on what they have now, which is under 350GB, they could just buy a bunch of single disks (300GB for under $250) and mirror/rsync/whatever them. Say they want more space. They can buy 2TB in RAID5 for ~$4400, so getting complete redundancy in equipment is only another ~$4400, not $12k. Not only that, it's 75% of the cost with 6x the original capacity.

I need more information on why they think the Dell is necessary to justfiy giving up money for what looks like a poor plan.

Donation Method from TFA

[Noksagt]

"If you want to help, paypal some money to slash at peereboom dot us, or you can use the OpenBSD ordering system. Be sure to mention its for the cvs machine."

question for you guys.

[Anonymous Coward]

What does the 'i' stand for in RAID?

Thanks.

Re:question for you guys.

[lpmusic]

inexpensive or independent

Re:question for you guys.

[SunFan]

RAID is cheap compared to some sort of custom solution. In fact, isn't that why RAID came about?

Besides, my first reaction to the $12K price tag was, "That's really not so bad." It is easy to get into $30K+ with some RAID arrays (mil-spec, fully redundant, etc.).

Re:question for you guys.

[JeffTL]

Inexpensive, as compared to a truly massive disk.

Re:question for you guys.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Besides, my first reaction to the $12K price tag was, "That's really not so bad." It is easy to get into $30K+ with some RAID arrays (mil-spec, fully redundant, etc.)."

Which is really sad... considering that it's often cheaper and just as effective to use other solutions.

Re:question for you guys.

[Triumph The Insult C]

what other solutions? sata-raid? get real

i know it's too hard for you to bother yourself to see what all cvs.openbsd.org does, and how important it is to the infrastructure of openbsd. sata-raid isn't going to cut it!

$12500 is *NOTHING* when it comes to perhaps the single most important piece of hardware on *.openbsd.org

Re:question for you guys.

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that I have been an OpenBSD user/advocate/contributor for years, I know what cvs.openbsd.org does.

$12500 is alot of money when you have don't have it. There are cars that cost less than that. Importance isn't the issue, expense is. If OpenBSD was rolling in money, people would still question such an ungodly expense if made aware of it.

But since you consider $12500 nothing, why don't you go ahead and give it to them.

Re:question for you guys.

[Triumph The Insult C]

$12500 is nothing when compared to what can be lost to a shitty and cheaply designed ide raid subsystem

$12500 is a lot to me, personally, but if that's what the experts (marco@ in this case) recommend, and they know exactly how it's being used, then that's that

oh, and i've donated plenty to openbsd. if i had more $$, i'd give even more

Re:question for you guys.

[anathematizer]

Inexpensive

A person that shall not be named

[NitsujTPU]

A person that shall not be named donated a PERC4/DC RAID controller.

Lets go with "an anonymous benefactor" next time this comes up. I know, not anonymous to you.

It just sounds less like it "feel off a truck," you know?

Re:A person that shall not be named

[NitsujTPU]

It was really only intended to be funny.

Re:A person that shall not be named

[Nimrangul]

Don't worry about it, the moderation system is insane. I've had first posts moderated redundant.

Re:A person that shall not be named

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps not as insane as you think. I think it is legit to moderate a first post "redundant" if it is a worn out and tired (and almost always wrong) point that gets rehashed every time the article topic comes up. In other words, I think the concept of redundancy can carry over from article to article on a particular subject. Something like how every time there is an article about SELinux, someone has to post "I would never put it in my machine because those NSA guys probably have a backdoor put in." If that came up as a first post, I'd be tempted to moderate it "redundant."

Independent

[Noksagt]

While this is probably a dig at the cost of the project, many now say the 'i' stands for 'independent' rather than the original 'inexpensive.' There are good reasons to buy very large, high quality SCSI disks for a project like this.

Re:Independent

[SA Stevens]

Yes, although in the acronym RAID, the R stands for Redundant. And part of the rationale for a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives is that the redundancy reduces the need for expensive drives.

Re:Independent

[Anonymous Coward]

How appropriate, then,, that RAID 0 isn't redundant.

Re:Independent

[Anonymous Coward]

It is Redundant .. as you don't use them unless you're a masochist ;-)

Current Configuration & Need to Upgrade

[Noksagt]

From this post:

The current raid array is using 14 U160 drives in a dual raid5
configuration with a couple of hot spares. It is time to build up.
See, the actual cvs machine is just a p3/gig machine. While there are
lots of much faster build machines on the network, there has been no
reason to crank the processor on cvs. It is not cpu bound but
*strictly* IO bound. And the raid configuration has been working very
well to keep that IO load under control, well it has been kind of
working.

We support more architectures, which means more NFS load is being
generated. There are more developers, and that does affect things
because developers working fast do checkouts directly off cvs instead
of via mirrors. As well, the array is full (it is half 18GB drives
and half 36GB drives now due to failures after replacement). All of
them are U160 drives.

Now there appears that the raid backplane is developing some issues,
and at the same time, it is time for the "every three to four years"
replace some parts plan. It's what most IT shops do as well. The
drives are also getting a bit up there in age now. Perhaps that is
why I am starting to lose them more often.

But if we want more oomph, then it is time to go to U320. It is also
time to move towards another raid controller (already have it) which
we hope will have supported raid management soon.

Re:Current Configuration & Need to Upgrade

[dtfinch]

Looking on the Dell site, a PowerVault 220S with 14 146gb 10k U320 scsi hard drives costs about $10k. I'm guessing that's close to what they're getting. That or one with 14 73gb hard drives for about $8k plus enough spares to last until the next big replacement.

shut the damned thing down now...

[advocate_one]

while you've still got good data... take a backup first though... but shut it down...

Re:shut the damned thing down now...

[Anonymous Coward]

while you've still got good data... take a backup first though... but shut it down...

Ever shut down spindles that have been running non-stop for years, only to find... that some don't spin back up?

I think making a backup and then just letting it run till the replacement comes, would be the best. Otherwise they will be DoS'ing themselves.

Well, okay, then...

[jawtheshark]

I already donate yearly... Every november I buy the latest CD and substract the price from 100Euro. That part is simply donated. It's not much, I know, but I'm just an individual. Yes, and ever for such small amounts you make it to the donation page. Cool, eh? (This also means your name is printed on the sleeve of the CD)

I'll make an exceptional donation... I use OpenBSD on so many systems (now even on a SMP systen... yay!) that I owe Theo and Co.

Re:Well, okay, then...

[SA Stevens]

I was going to make a comment about 'They charge for the CD, don't they? And they don't allow free distribution of the Official ISO.' and end with something about how they've decided not to be a 'donation cup' operation. But your approach makes sense.

(I've 'paid' too, in that I bought the Official CD for version 2.5 direct from openbsd.org. Don't use OpenBSD anymore, tho.)

Re:Well, okay, then...

[ArbitraryConstant]

You can download some images for bootable media and then do a netinstall, or download the necessary files and make your own bootable install CD. Given that 99.95% of OpenBSD installations are for firewalls, or at least something that involves sitting on a big connection (hence the paranoia that makes OpenBSD necessary), these are popular options.

Maybe they should charge for netinstalls?

Re:Well, okay, then...

[SA Stevens]

Given that 99.95% of OpenBSD installations are for firewalls. . .

Which points out a fairly serious issue. People should know the platform they are using for a firewall. Not just 'trust' the people who produce it. For that reason, it's safer to know and properly install a BSD that you're using in other ways, i.e. since I use Desktop NetBSD, I would be more secure running a locked down (the default now) NetBSD firewall, rather than something I'm not actively using in any other fashion on my network.

Using OpenBSD 'because it is so secure' is a fad-like thing to do. And if 99.95% of the installs are people who only use it that way, it speaks to future problems. And 'clueful' Windoze users who slap an OpenBSD on the front (without knowing much at all about it) are playing it rather dangerously.

Re:Well, okay, then...

[ArbitraryConstant]

No more so than with Linux. Windows users have the same feelings of invulnerability experimenting with Linux.

Also, while I use Linux and MacOS X, anything of importance lives on my OpenBSD machine and I SSH there for anything important that I need to do. I know it inside out while my other machines are basically just desktop/client machines. I don't know them very well, and I'd be in trouble if I had to lock down my Linux box.

Re:Well, okay, then...

[Bert64]

But if your other machines get owned then the attacker can capture your login session to the openbsd box and therefore compromise that machine too, you gain no security from using a secure server and an insecure client.

Re:Well, okay, then...

[ArbitraryConstant]

"that machine too, you gain no security from using a secure server and an insecure client."

That's not true. It's good protection against anyone attempting to break in from the outside without a connection initiated by me. By taking reasonable steps (such as keeping client software patched), the risk to my other machines is greatly reduced without me having to learn a whole new firewall etc.

It's not about being invulnerable, it's about having reasonable security without having to spend unreasonable amounts of time on it.

token flame

[rnd()]

I'll donate if you switch the license to the GPL...

Re:token flame

[Anonymous Coward]

What would they do with the GNU Gonad Pilfering License? I certainly don't want my gonads in the hands of the FSF!

Re:token flame

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, by using the GPL you put your stuff under the wing of the FSF so that they can help to protect you. This way noone can pilfer said gonads without first going through the GPL and FSF; afterall, everyone has the fundamental right to access all gonads and it is best to protect said rights.

Re:token flame

[bsd_usr]

You nimrod, why would you want to make it non-free? OpenBSD is as free as it gets. I love that they're replacing GNU tools with BSD tools. They're doing the world a great service.

They are producing great software which commercial and non-commercial entities can use in their products (wouldn't you rather them use secure software than building their own possibly insecure software?). The BSD license encourages this. BSD projects encourage this. Didn't your momma teach your to share?

Re:token flame

[Nimrangul]

Chill man, slow your role. This guy was just doing a troll, everyone with a brain in their head that has been reading Slashdot should be aware of the anti-GPL stance of the OpenBSD team; so it is obviously just a person trying to get a rise out of pissing people off.

Leave the trolls to their starving, feeding them never helps.

Re:token flame

[BobNET]

I'll donate if you switch the license to the GPL...

Perfect, then someone will come along and offer $50 000 for a BSD-licensed version, and then the project will be back under the same license as before. Except now it will have a new RAID, $37 500 in extra cash, plus whatever money and/or hardware you planned to donate. You're a genius!

Re:token flame

[ulib]

> [...] You're a genius!
If the 50.000 offer were anything near serious, he definitely would be!

Re:token flame

[Anonymous Coward]

Grow your own pair and go out into the real world! ;)

Re:token flame

[Anonymous Coward]

"Protection"?.. What's that, The Godfather part IV?..
Noone's pilfering the gonads that are under one of the old, well-known, short, legalese-free and libertarian Academic Licenses (BSD, MIT).

Re:token flame

[moro_666]

bsd licence is even more FREE as the beer in gpl ...

so why would u like them to switch down on the freedom level ? so everyone who writes 2-liner patch to the app would have the responsibility to release the "patch" to the public just to apply to the gpl licence ? :p

just go and read both licences (bsd and gpl) , compare them 1:1 ... and try to figure out why do we need gpl in the first place ?

[zillion projects start out in gpl, and then turn into some kind of commercial crap anyway, change the gpl licence to some form of incorporate free-but-not-free licence etc. , so why bother pushing everything into a gpl that doesnt werk ?]

Re:token flame

[epine]

After the project switches to the GPL, I suspect you'll choose to donate in Stallman dollars. But don't forget to also publish your printing plates and make them available for anyone who asks, that's required under the Stallman-dollar GPL.

Come on, even flames need to uphold a minimum standard of common sense. Why should OpenBSD change their license first? Why not the U.S Treasury instead, the other half of the exchange you propose?

I must say

[drrobin_]

that you have an excellent sig. Ocaml rocks. :)

Re:I must say

[brilinux]

Thanks. I love O'Caml, and I thought that since /. is an operator, I should use that as my sig. No one had commented on it, though.

Re:I must say

[wirelessbuzzers]

Thanks. I love O'Caml, and I thought that since /. is an operator, I should use that as my sig. No one had commented on it, though.

Hm, nor on mine...

Re:I must say

[brilinux]

Nice.

*BSD vs. *Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I have set up many many Linux and BSD machines in the last god-knows-how-many years. I think I started using netBSD back before it was even a 1.0 release, but cannot remember right now exactly when. My latest project at work has been Linux on a PIII machine with a very standard video card, etc. So far I can't get X working for the life of me. I am pissed off about it. Time to go back to *BSD where I know I can get it to work in a short amount of time.

New OSS business model!

[borgdows]

1. pretend key hardware is failing (when it actually runs ok but have just been plugged off)
2. ask for donations for new hardware
3. buy new hardware
4. ???
5. resell original hardware
6. PROFIT!!!

OpenBSD project managers are EVIL!

Not just users of those projects

[Bastian]

If you use any OSS unix-like, or many OSS tools other than something with an Open* name, you are likely using at least a few things that have benefitted directly from the OpenBSD project. In an effort to keep OpenBSD secure, they contribute security patches to all sorts of software that runs on OpenBSD.

In particular, I'd encourage everyone who uses Linux to contribute.

Re:Not just users of those projects

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, OpenSSL, OpenGPS, OpenGFS, OpenOffice, OpenVB, OpenTTD, OpenVPN and OpenWFE just to name a few aren't actually associated with OpenBSD or even BSD licensed. In truth, most Open* things are under the GPL and done by other people. The good OpenBSD stuff is pf, OpenSSH, OpenBGP, OpenNTP, OpenCVS and OpenBSD itself.

More donations needed?

[itedo]

After the $20k donation request for the Hackathon 2005, I think this one is a little bit more important ;)

Re:More donations needed?

[frost22]

Don't think so. At this price this is a joke. They could get very nice U320 SCSI-IDE RAID system with
a terabyte or so for ~3 or 4k.

This is just a case of some braindead "SCSI is superior, blabla" moron having its stupid way with his project's funds. Disgusting.

Re:More donations needed?

[Nimrangul]

So you're a network administrator who has to deal these kinds of issues all the time, with the same kinds of loads for your servers? You make your living making these choices?

Don't talk about it if you don't.

If you trust in the OpenBSD team enough to use their software then you should trust them enough to know what they need to get.

You need not call someone that knows what they're doing a moron just because you don't agree with them.

Re:More donations needed?

[nbritton]

Being an excellent software developer does not automatically make them an excellent systems administrator, integrator, or engineer. They are two completely separate fields in the computer industry.

Re:More donations needed?

[frost22]

So you're a network administrator who has to deal these kinds of issues all the time, with the same kinds of loads for your servers? You make your living making these choices?

Basically, yes.

And I live in the morass of my predecessor's sins, with huge FC and NAS/SCSI arrays on ridiculously small hard drives all over the place, eating mainetancy budget like crazy and doing seldom any good.

There are a few good cases for high end SCSI and FC drives to be made, especially in the database area, but somehow I doubt CVS is one of them.

Re:More donations needed?

[Nimrangul]

And you have a CVS server in your NOC that hosts the developement of an open source operating system, yes?

Maybe I am simply blind trusting when it comes to administrators, when they say there is a problem with their system I trust them. I dunno, something about them being able to log into the system itself and run the diagnostics required to troubleshoot issues, I just assume they do it and not smoke a dubey and randomly pick something.

The OpenBSD guys seem to think that the I/O of the system was the biggest slow down and that SATA and IDE are out of the question because they're too shitty, I guess I'm crazy.

Shit or Shine-0la: You tell me!

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Do you seriously think this is what's going on? Do you have any evidence to share that points to this? I admit, I would want to know that it's not just a vanity upgrade, but these people do not have a history of dishonesty...

Also, wouldn't this be a great project for a hardware manufacturer to donate (and get a tax write-off at the same time...)?

Put your money where your mouth is

[stox]

If you really believe in open source, this is a fine opportunity to show it.

"Open" CVS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try "less open" CVS.

CVS is GPLed.

Re:"Open" CVS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is the BSD license "less open?" The FSF notes it is GPL-compatible & the OSI endorses it.

Re:"Open" CVS?

[Nimrangul]

FSF views anything they don't make as less free, regardless of anything you may say or think.

Also, the FSF believes everyone has the right to all code, thus anything that allows for a closed source version of anything denies the "right" to said code and is therefore bad.

Another note: The OSI are irrelevant, the only thing that matters for making something open source is there being access to the source; a little slip of words mean nothing, nor does the "thumbs up" from an organisation that does not contribute anything to the community, it is the access to the code that makes something open source by definition.

Re:"Open" CVS?

[Anonymous Coward]

FSF views anything they don't make as less free, regardless of anything you may say or think.

Oh--it is less free because "RMS says so." Here I thought you had a reason. You're wrong, by the way: Theo was awarded the FSF award the other year!

Also, the FSF believes everyone has the right to all code, thus anything that allows for a closed source version of anything denies the "right" to said code and is therefore bad.

The LGPL proves they are somewhat leas idealistic and more practical than you describe.

Another note: The OSI are irrelevant, the only thing that matters for making something open source is there being access to the source;

Nope--they use the Debian free software guidelines. Hence software like Pine, which does have source available, is not OSI-certified.

Re:"Open" CVS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't feed the damn troll, man.

Re:"Open" CVS?

[drinkypoo]

Try "less open" CVS. CVS is GPLed.

Arguably, GPL software is more Free (with a capital F) while BSD software is more Open. I say arguably because people have been arguing about this shit on slashdot for ages (myself included.)

Perhaps...

[Anonymous Coward]

If Theo had kept his damn mouth shut and not driven away the NSF funding this would not be an issue. But why are they buying from DELL? Shouldn't they support corps that support them?

Re:Perhaps...

[Nimrangul]

You mean the DARPA money via POSSE? Which was set to expire mear months prior to it's cancellation?

As no corperation I've hear of specifically goes out of their way to support Open Source software beyond AMD, I find it unlikely that everyone is going to be able to completely stop buying from other companies.

Re:Perhaps...

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW, Compaq is listed on the OpenBSD donors page...

Re:Perhaps...

[Nimrangul]

You may not have heard about this, so I'll let you in on a secret, Compaq is dead. HP had a merger with them and now controls all that was Compaq.

This would make it slightly difficult to buy from them.

Re:Perhaps...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll list some of the companies that employ staff to specifically contribute to the Linux Kernel and its open source base:

IBM, Intel, HP, SGI, Sony, NEC, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Dell, Bull, Dell, Novell, AMD (who actually contract out most development work to SUSE/Novell), RedHat, Sun, MontaVista, TimeSys.

That's just off the top of my head. Many companies on the list employ numerous staff to work on the kernel full time. Many others I haven't mentioned fund Linux Kernel development in other ways (eg. via OSDL).

Re:Perhaps...

[Nimrangul]

You confuse supporting open source with supporting their best interests; it is cheaper for the Unix related companies to drop the Unixes and move to Linux as the kernel they use. For dropping much of the developers they must pay for further improvement of their operating systems is an easy cost-cutter.

Dell does not support open source, they refuse requests for documentation to properly have open source systems work on their hardware.

You are right for pointing your little blip out, for I was not specific enough in the wording chosen for in my posting; I referred to hardware manufacturers and sellers more than information based corperations. Also, you list Dell twice.

Re:Perhaps...

[Anonymous Coward]

It was just a counterexample to your claim that only AMD supports open source. Other direct donors to OpenBSD include ASA Computers, HAWK Technologies, Reputable Systems, AMI, BMK Industries, Cyclades, LokTek (all of whom still make servers!), Intel, Adaptec, Highpoint, Infineon, 3ware, LSI, Tekram, and many others have contributed money or hardware to OpenBSD.

BTW: HP STILL hasn't actually killed off the Compaq brand. Nor would any of this prevent them from soliciting a gift from a different vendor--even H.P.

Re:Perhaps...

[Anonymous Coward]

You confuse supporting open source with supporting their best interests

So its up to the great Nimrangul to peer into men's hearts to see if their motives are pure?

Re:Perhaps...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who knows? The Shadow knows.

But seriously folks, how can you not fucking see that? People are all horny over companies like IBM and Sun when they're the bad guys, you people are just too ignorant and blind to see the evil infront of you.

Re:Perhaps...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry buddy, if you think *any* company will support open source as opposed to supporting its best interests, you are seriously naive.

Dell does not support open source, they refuse requests for documentation to properly have open source systems work on their hardware.

They have staff who contribute to Linux on Dell time.

You are right for pointing your little blip out, for I was not specific enough in the wording chosen for in my posting; I referred to hardware manufacturers and sellers more than information based corperations.

Huh? What do IBM, Intel, HP, Sony, NEC, Fujitsu, AMD, Sun do? Yep they all make chips. Most of them make systems too.

And you also implied that AMD did contribute to open source (as opposed to their own interests). You seem to be seriously misguided in your attempt to save face.

Also, you list Dell twice.

Also, shut the hell up.

Re:Perhaps...

[Nimrangul]

There is no face to save my friend, I am what I am and your opinion of what I am means nothing. This is a discussion and not some cosmic testing of my moral nor testicular fortitude.

You confuse Linux with open source; paying people to do something is not the same as giving people information if they request it so that they can properly get an open source tool or operating system to work with your hardware.

Sun doesn't support open source, they support themselves, they too (like Dell and Apple) refuse to give documentation to open source programmers.

AMD gives documentation to open source developers when they ask for it and they give hardware to developers in order to get the systems working quickly on the new hardware. That is properly supporting open source, because it isn't keeping the people working on the code in the dark.

Also, you seem to confuse support with contribute; I view the two as different things. To support open source you need not give code to the developers, you just need not make their work harder.

Re:Perhaps...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun doesn't support open source, they support themselves, they too (like Dell and Apple) refuse to give documentation to open source programmers.

How about the rest of the companies on my list, eh?

AMD gives documentation to open source developers when they ask for it and they give hardware to developers in order to get the systems working quickly on the new hardware. That is properly supporting open source, because it isn't keeping the people working on the code in the dark.

Also, you seem to confuse support with contribute; I view the two as different things. To support open source you need not give code to the developers, you just need not make their work harder.

I am an open source developer. Intel gave me a dual P4 Xeon with a handful of SCSI disks and 4 (or is it 8)GB of memory. IBM gave me a dual G5. HP gave me a quad ia64 box. All come with documentation (although the G5 is a Mac, and yes, quite a few specs aren't released by Apple).

You confuse open source with OpenBSD. Plenty of companies support open source, that doesn't mean they have to support OpenBSD to do so.

Re:Perhaps...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, another thing.

Also, you seem to confuse support with contribute; I view the two as different things. To support open source you need not give code to the developers, you just need not make their work harder.

Since when did you become the judge of open source supportness? And why are you redefining "support"? (oh yeah, it is to suit your argument). If a company contributes to open source then they are supporting it in some way. If they also don't release some of their documentation, that doesn't somehow nullify that support either.

Re:Perhaps...

[Nimrangul]

I must apologise for replying to the both of your posts here but I would rather not take the time to expand this discussion into more branches.

Yes, I am very particular about what I call support, if you give people that want to port something to your hardware on their own time for free a hard time then you sure don't support them.

I have seen no recorded anti- nor pro-HP arguements so I did not lean into the matter of how HP deals with people, however Intel I have often seen people complain about the difficulties in getting anything out of them, especially for making drivers for their networking and wireless equipement.

Perhaps in a land of cholocate clouds and gumdrop rainbows this kind of arguement does not occur; yet here at least I will say that the companies are bad and you they are good and it would seem each arguement holds no sway on the other side.

Mine is a simple view: if you release what is needed to code for the hardware without conditions then you support the people coding, yet if you refuse to give such documentation then you do not.

I find this view to be as streamlined as I can make my arguement on what I view support to be when it involves a hardware manufacturer; you need not give the people the hardware, you need not give them money, just give them what they need to code. Of course, in cases like IBM giving you your Mac, I would agree that that is supporting your developing for that platform because IBM cannot give Apple's documentation (or at least not all of it). With the others though I dunno how much of the proper stuff was given to you, so assuming all of it was given you could write a driver for the video card on those systems if it tickled your fancy, yes? While getting a bunch of hardware to work with is very useful, having full documentation allows for a better job; I am sure your Linux kernel work is better though for having these platforms to test on.

If ATI were to release an open source driver I would say it is a step forward, but not supporting open source. I would call them releasing the documentation for their video cards support. I suppose that's just me.

Mayhaps the best way to place it is this: Giving money is nice, giving code is nice, giving hardware is nice, but giving what allows programmers to make the code is alot nicer.

Until the day Intel gives enough to allow for proper support of their hardware I will not view Intel as a supporter of open source...

I view anything they do as the carrot on a string, it leads you along, podding down the path where they want you, but you never get the damned carrot, you're always walking a little further where they want you and a little further from where you want to be.

Re:Perhaps...

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenBSD is a hobby project without any major industry funding. It is meant to be fun, not profitable.

Re:Perhaps...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I am very particular about what I call support, if you give people that want to port something to your hardware on their own time for free a hard time then you sure don't support them.

Often the companies are unsure about legal issues regarding IP of devices. It is not just a matter of stepping out of the way, and letting everyone "at it".

For your specific definition of "support", then I guess you may be right (although I would say more than just AMD "support" open source).

The Intel systems are actually quite well documented. As you probably know, Intel have always released extremely comprehensive documentation for their processors.

Probably things like their wireless networking hardware, and perhaps their 3d graphics hardware are not well documented. Unfortunate, I agree, but IMO it doesn't entirely nullify their contribution in other areas, even if said contribution is only due to Intel's perception that it is in their own interest (and you wouldn't really expect anything else from a commercial company :( ).

Re:Perhaps...

[Bert64]

Dell used to support linux, but their linux development unit was shitcanned at the request of microsoft.. They have never supported any other opensource os's.

Re:Perhaps...

[evilviper]

Compaq is dead. HP had a merger with them and now controls all that was Compaq.

That's too bad... I guess they'll have to go with DEC then...

Trollfeed:

[dadragon]

You can set up an AMD-64 with RAID under LINUX for $500 or less.

We're talking quality here. None of this SATA shit, which is great for the desktop, but not for much else.

And this is the OpenBSD project, it'll be running OpenBSD, not Linux.

Re:Trollfeed:

[frost22]

We're talking quality here. None of this SATA shit, which is great for the desktop, but not for much else.

Nope. We are talking stupid oldtimers clinging to a technology long after its time.

You can buy excellent IDE or SATA based RAID systems with an excternal interface to your liking (both U320 and Fiber Channel). And they cost substantially less $$. Something like 1/3rd or so.

Re:Trollfeed:

[Anonymous Coward]

And you get substantially less throughput too.

Re:Trollfeed:

[frost22]

And you get substantially less throughput too.

Dream on. Throughput isn't even a topic there any more, hasn't been for years, actually. IDE drives have been beating SCSI hands down on this for years now.

The real stated advantage of SCSI drives is seek time. Seek time is the holy grail when it comes to database applications. The key is not to shovel so and so many gigs around - the key is running around super fast and picking a few bytes here and there - thats essentially what a database does.

But (and thats a Big Butt) Theo and his merry men don't need that sort of performance here. They just have some CVS server (which, database wise, is probably rather small, just a few gigs). Most of this will be eventually be cached in RAM anyway.

Re:Trollfeed:

[Anonymous Coward]

> Most of this will be eventually be cached in RAM anyway.

Yes, on every UNIX variants including Solaris, Linux,
FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc, except OpenBSD.
OpenBSD still doesn't implement UBC -- unified buffer
cache -- yet, so OpenBSD cannot cache that much contents.
One could think that tuning the kernel by increasing
buffer cache can solve this, but that doesn't work,
because kernel virtual memory space is smaller than few gigs.

Perhaps it is better to switch the cvs server to Solaris,
just like ftp.openbsd.org and www.openbsd.org.

Apple???

[fdawg]

I thought Apple based OSX on BSD. Why aren't they flying to BSD's aid? Im actually quite surprised more big businesses aren't riddling the BSD community with money. I realize the whole OSS movement is built on the philosophy of "share and share alike", but blindly ripping the work of others without giving back is gross.

Re:Apple???

[SpinJaunt]

Did you finally wakeup from a long sleep and smell the roses.
Although, really..

but blindly ripping the work of others without giving back is gross

has always been happening! we are talking about

3. PROFIT!!!

How many companies are guilty of this and worse; those that do give back are actually saying STFU and make the company look good from there perspective

In another perspective: how many people will walk passed someone who got stabbed before they actually get the attention of someone -- yeah, my sentiments exactly.

Re:Apple???

[Zemplar]

http://www.openbsd.org/images/newrack.gif/ Gee, it appears that Apple HAS been contributing. Or someone else contributed Apple hardware at least, I don't honestly know for sure.

Re:Apple???

[Triumph The Insult C]

that Apple equipment was bought by Theo using OpenBSD funds. Apple didn't donate anything, nor have they ever

here's what theo has to say about that exact Apple equipment

Re:Apple???

[Zemplar]

Thanks for that link. I've been considering getting an Apple for desktop work, but it's good to know who's giving back to the various [BSD] communities.

As was stated earlier, almost anyone using a FOSS OS should send a donation, no matter how small, to OpenBSD. OpenSSH has been widely adopted to benefit us all.

And YES, this means you too Apple!

Re:Apple???

[menace3society]

The original environment was built from NetBSD/ppc, and currently builds off of FreeBSD (apparently they're helping out with the FreeBSD/ppc port too, but that's just hearsay). Anyway, Apple doesn't really derive any code beyond OpenSSH from OpenBSD. The "BSD Community" is not nearly as tightly knit as you seem to think, despite sharing code.

That said, Apple ought to at least offer a heavily discounted XServe RAID to them. It might foster a stronger relationship between Apple and OpenBSD, and who knows--it could lead to a "Hardened" OS X based on OpenBSD.

But probably not.

Re:Apple???

[clesters]

FTP.exe from Windows 2000 image# strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright @(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California. hmmm....

Re:Apple???

[Anonymous Coward]

Any thinking person who'd bought Apple //'s after the 'apple // forever' would not buy Apple ever again.

Same goes for Newton owners after 'The Steving'. Or the people who invested in Rhapsody - X86.

Wonder what took Theo so long to come to the same point others reached years ago?

Re:Apple???

[Triumph The Insult C]

he's not been a fan of apple for some time. that was a post i knew of because i remember reading it recently on misc@

Re:Apple???

[BobNET]

UH OH!

(on my Slackware Linux system)

$ strings `which ftp` | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1985, 1989 Regents of the University of California.

Re:Apple???

[Anonymous Coward]

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

So before you go complaining about Apple not donating back to the fold, let's get one question out of the way:

You were *just* about to reach for that checkbook and write up a little donation, weren't you?

Hrm, and interestingingly enough, from the link provided further up this thread, Theo says that he'll never buy Apple equipment again - his justification seems to be entirely "because they haven't given me anything for free!".

With an attitude like that, I wonder when the last time he used soap, or ate, or bought a pair of jeans ...? If his criteria for purchasing a product is that he first must receive it as a donation ... he's got to have one ratty looking wardrobe.

Re:Apple???

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! Linux people too and yes, that should include RedHat, SuSe, and the 10,000 other Linux distro's...

Amazing

[dtfinch]

There have been no OpenBSD vs posts yet.

Re:Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because everyone now knows that OpenBSD is superior.

Why not Soft RAID...

[Aquila Deus]

_ ??

Re:Why not Soft RAID...

[Grey_14]

As in... Software? You make me sad dear boy.

They are currently running a 14 disk u160 RAID array, and want to go up to u320, (Can't remember how many disks), I've run a soft raid with 3 UWSCSI-2 drives, and my processor choked everytime disk load went up, They are already under fairly heavy load right now, soft raid would just reduce the performance to nothing.

You dream on

[Donny Smith]

> IDE drives have been beating SCSI hands down on this for years now.

You are right - four IDE drives can beat one SCSI drive hands on.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/disp lay/i de-scsi.html
(there's no space between "i" and "de-scsi.html; it's the stupid /. code)

> The real stated advantage of SCSI drives is seek time.

And what about MTBF?

> They just have some CVS server

I'd guess CVS server has workload similar to database (many small reads, a bit less small writes) which isn't suitable at all for IDE disks.

Re:You dream on

[Anonymous Coward]

> And what about MTBF?

> I'd guess CVS server has workload similar to database (many small
> reads, a bit less small writes) which isn't suitable at all for IDE
> disks.

If you compare one IDE/SATA disk and one SCSI disk,
you are right.
But one can buy far more SATA disks than SCSI with
same money. And using more spindles can improve
both MTBF (by adding more redundancy) and small block
access performance (by access distribution).

Re:You dream on

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe so, but when my 72GB Seagate Cheetah SCSI drive died, after about 2 years, it still had 3 years left on its 5-year warranty, and I got a new one for free (and if I had wanted, they would have express shipped - next day - the replacement if I needed it). Sure, it cost twice as much at the time as an IDE, but it came w/ 5x the warranty.

As opposed to the 120GB WesternDigital I bought 13 months ago that died, 1 month out of warranty, $120 down the tubes (although I replaced my dual-120GB raid with two 200's this time, for the cost of the original two 120's, and now have this spare 120GB to do something with).

Network Appliance should donate a filer

[Okijames]

Network Appliance a.k.a NetApp is noticeably absent from the OpenBSD donations page (www.openbsd.org/donations.html). Anyone who uses a NetApp knows immediately that the OnTap OS is BSD, always has been BSD.

Considering the Billions (yes, Billions) of dollars in revenue NetApp has derived from the BSDs, I am appalled at the company's lack of contribution back to the BSD community!

Considering that a good number of their founders, engineers, and developers were educated at Berkeley (yes the B in BSD), I am doubly appalled at the company's lack of contribution!

Now OpenBSD is looking for some storage and NetApp sits by while a POS Dell array is considered? You know, Dell, as in EMC's (NetApp's biggest competitor) biggest partner!

HELLO? NetApp? HELLO? You should make sure that all the BSDs host their CVS repositories on NetApp, a nice BSD based platform.

FWIW... Yes, I contribute. I have standing subscriptions and kick in a few extra bucks when needed.

Re:Network Appliance should donate a filer

[Anonymous Coward]

The theory that "OnTap OS is BSD, has always been BSD" is not grounded in fact. While it is true that there is free UCB s/w included in OnTap, and NetApp has benefited from it, I can assure you that the "OS kernel" is NOT BSD. Or Mach. Or (insert favorite OS here). Since it has no "command set" per se, the commands also aren't from BSD.

You'd have to ask some current NetApp person about the current list of components that are derived from free software, but when I was there (in the OnTap 6.0->6.4 timeframe), I can assure you that amount of BSD-derived code was quite small.

Which isn't to say that NetApp shouldn't consider making a donation. But don't walk in telling NetApp that they "owe you" because they're using your OS to make money. Because they're not.

Re:Network Appliance should donate a filer

[Anonymous Coward]

Please define "when I was in there" more specifically! I am pretty sure that you never worked on any code, because otherwise you'd know that large parts of the kernel in fact _are_ NetBSD derived, just like much of the softraid code. vinum.

Re:Network Appliance should donate a filer

[Anonymous Coward]

> kernel in fact _are_ NetBSD

Hmm, in that case, shouldn't NetApp donate their money to the NetBSD project instead of OpenBSD?
Since NetBSD's anonymous cvs server recently had some troubles in its hardware

Re:Network Appliance should donate a filer

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, but according to this post, NetApp isn't really derived from NetBSD, although it seems to use certain amount of code from 4.4BSD, FreeBSD and NetBSD.

Re:Network Appliance should donate a filer

[Okijames]

The percentage of BSD "DNA" in OnTap, far exceeds the percentage of NetApp revenue donated to the BSDs.

1/100,000th of NetApp's 2004 revenue would just about cover the dollar amount requested by OpenBSD.

Does anyone at NetApp care to claim that that OnTap is less than 1/100,000th BSD?

I'm not saying NetApp "owes" anyone, they are fully within their rights per the BSD license. I am saying they would be smart to donate filers to all the BSDs. Think of the R&D ROI they could achieve. The good PR "points-per-dollar" would be higher than any marketing/advertising campaign.

The business case for such donations is clear. It's just sad that NetApp hasn't already donated for more honorable reasons.

Re:Network Appliance should donate a filer

[Anonymous Coward]

Very interesting posts, yours and the parent post. Now if only people would contact NetApp or find the right contacts and hint or suggest this to them too, I think it would be great!

It is done.

[Nimrangul]

The money has been raised, the purchase shall soon be made. The link is here and you will note that the only companies that put in any money are smaller ones and the rest of the money has come from individuals.

Please learn about data storage before preaching .

[MarkTina]

I think in your whole mini-rant you managed to get one fact right : seek time being important for apps.

The rest was garbage :-)

Have a think about this ... why do clued up sys admins use SCSI/FC disks for server applications when you can buy bigger/faster/cheaper IDE disks instead ? (ignoring seektimes and command queuing etc)

It's really a simple answer you know ... reliability. A server class disk is designed to run for years on end and be thrashed constantly, hence they are built to be more reliable than their desktop cousins. The interface used to connect them to the host is also more reliable, has more error checking and correction, is usually even made of better materials .. in all you get what you pay for!

IDE/ATA/S-ATA is great for desktop use and for nearline storage devices (low activity archives) ... for on-line storage of sev-1 applications it's not so great.

Just a few tidbits of knowledge I've picked up in 10 years of data storage management :-)

Money's in

[andkaha]

Aparantly, the money has now been collected: message here

Also, it was hard to get money from companies, and almost everything seems to have come from caring individuals: message here

Re:Money's in

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a rant of mine, but who the hell marked this as informative? The post just above it, which was already marked informative, already said all that.

Does noone understand what redundant means?

Re:Money's in

[Anonymous Coward]

You're new here?

Why dell?

[Bert64]

dell hardware is incredibly poor quality compared to other vendors, their support is also very poor.
In terms of quality dell is comparable to the cheapest of asian vendors, but somehow people believe them to be superior just because they're american. This is just not the case, i have had no end of trouble from dell machines. I also don't like dell's closeness to microsoft and their willingness to drop linux so quickly, also the fact they take steps to render some of their systems incompatible with non windows os's (real example: update the bios on an inspiron 2600 laptop to the latest version and then try running X11 under any opensource os)
I am dismayed to see openbsd giving money to dell when dell do nothing to help openbsd. They should be supporting vendors who support their os.

Don't be too hard on companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by bureacratic friction.

It's a lot easier for individuals to "cut a check" quickly than for any but the smallest company.