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OpenBSD Clashes with Adaptec In Quest for Docs
TrumpetPower! writes "OpenBSD developers have been asking for documentation from Adaptec for over four months. Adaptec's response has been to deliberately misunderstand what is being asked of them. A former Adaptec employee admits that the hardware is buggy and tricky to get right. So, as a result, OpenBSD 3.7 will ship without Adaptec RAID support. Personally, I'm glad that Theo isn't resting on his laurels."
It would be nice if more of the Linux big names would jump on the bangwagon and lobby with companies to get open source drivers for hardware.
There's an old saying, which I think fits well here.
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." - Napolean
When the hardware vendors will release all the specifications of their hardware to the OpenSource teams? It's so difficult to do so?
"I'll not release my documentation because others business can get all of my secrets and my bugged harware."
http://www.michel.eti.br
I know that when I'm buying hardware, I first make sure that there's at least a reasonable chance that it will work in my operating system (Linux, by choice). So, in this case, if I was choosing a RAID card, and my system was BSD-based, then Adaptec would be down a few quid.
Absolutely. Open source drivers would be a beautiful gift, in this case it's actually more than what is being asked for. Adaptec is asked to release specs on their raid controllers, they chose not to.
They are under an obligation to provide usefulness on legit architectures, but they aren't doing that. Adaptec should get over their shame of bugs, and allow the driver people at OpenBSD a chance at making things work.
There is no general fix for this problem, often specs are released way too late. On the other hand, releasing open source drivers will open specs for the same device. These specs aren't just trade secrets, they're actually necessary for building drivers.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
There's a very simple solution for this: Don't buy anything from Adaptec, ever. They'll be out of business; problem solved.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Just a note; the "former Adaptec employee" is Scott Long of the FreeBSD project.
I have not been using OpenBSD sice 1999, but hardware support was never its strong point... though what it supported was,like all the BSD's, supported extremely well.
It's a good call, in spirit of BSD. Scott's drivers are exellent and they just need to port those.
That's not the point - if it was easy to get specs for hardware, then /all/ operating systems would benefit - not just the well-used ones.
OpenBSD confirms it... Adaptec is dying!
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Your opinion is both wrong, stupid, and has no real world bearing. OpenBSD isn't a depreciated version of FreeBSD; both projects have a completely different focus, and depending on your needs one may be more suitable than the other.
-If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
Which make you think: "Why is OpenBSD doing this and not FreeBSD". I think it's sad that the FreeBSD developers don't seem to care that much about having free drivers (the AAC is free I believe, but the management interface is not).
Of cause what really annoys me is that the Linux developers seem to care even less. Why is it that the developers of free software can't stand togther and demand documentation? And why is it that it's the smallest team that must make these demands?
It did not start with BSD4.4-lite, go to 386BSD, move to NetBSD, then OpenBSD, then DragonFlyBSD and then FreeBSD. Each are their own system which split at one time or another from the same tree.
All four of those systems are maintained today and therefore it is not like Windows 9x complaining about hardware support. Windows does not maintain new versions of Windows 95.
OpenBSD is the extremely secure and extremely open of the BSDs and Unix-likes. OpenBSD refuses to have anything that isn't as Free and Open as their goals describe into their system. Linux and FreeBSD are more into the functionality over ideals idea. NetBSD I cannot speak for though as I don't really follow them.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
FreeBSD is more common as a desktop OS and webserver, but OpenBSD is more common as a firewall. And it often goes unnoticed by people because it just sits there firewalling things. Remember that companies rarely announce the details of their security arrangements. Needless to say, these firewalls are mission critical and need RAID.
Theo is a belligerent prick so he gets noticed more than the others, but every open source OS has identical problems with driver support. Why do you think Theo got that award when he and Stallman don't exactly see eye-to-eye?
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
It allows so many companies to sell you a leash and handcuffs. Yes go ahead and wear them, the great advantage is that you'll never go where you shouldn't and that you'll never hurt anyone.
The amazing thing about this whole afair is that Adaptec itself is also a leashed and cuffed company. But after some thinking I realized Nvidia is just such a company. Even if they wanted to release the _specifications_ of their hardware they couldn't.
All in all this forces people to stick to one OS. That's why it is so important people step up for free specifications of their hardware. Because without them you are bound to be tied to a monopolist.
Theo didn't get that FSF award for nothing.
It's all about making sure the big shareholders know that the company's policies are costing them sales.
People say that Theo should stop being so annoying, but the only way shareholders find out is when it gets massively publicised like this.
It worked for the 802.11 drivers. It's worth a shot here.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Like their old AAA ide raid controllers which was nothing more than IDE paddle boards with software raid logic..marketed as true hardware raid.. Documentation exposes the magic behind the illusion..(sometimes)
Reminds me of Promise's definition of "Linux support" for a card I bought.
In the case of the SX-150 SATA raid card (which has a hardware XOR engine and whatnot), that meant "we have binary drivers for distributions which are several years old".
There is some source. Well, it's a 'wrapped' binary driver, and it's only available from "some guy" in Germany who begged Promise support long enough they gave it to him. You a)cannot compile it into the kernel b)cannot compile it for 2.6 because it simply isn't compatible. I sent numerous emails to Promise asking when a 2.6 driver would be available or if there was any updated source code. None were ever answered.
Same story with the tools- unless you're running Redhat 9.0 or some ancient version of Suse, forget ANY on-line monitoring.
Not that the customers are much better- one page I found about the card suggested that "software raid is faster anyway", which is an absurd proposition by itself. Regardless, why would you spend $100-200 more on a hardware-raid card complete with cache memory, and then just use the 2.6 SATA driver which only drives the SATA interfaces?
From what I understand, 3ware has better support for Linux, but that means I have to migrate a large amount of data off the old array..
Please help metamoderate.
Just use IBM serveRAID controllers...
Linux fought the battle for obscure cards in the 1990s. They lead the fight regarding video cards (there is even less video oriented stuff on the BSDs). They also conduct the fight for things like video chat software which doesn't interest the BSD community as much.
All free OSes combined don't really add up to that much market share for many of these hardware devices. The fact is we don't have enough pull to demand most of the time (RAID controllers might be an exception).
Well, you see, they had been trying to switch over to BSD, they they had this driver problem...
The ______ Agenda
Theo says: "We are not asking for support. We are asking for documentation."
Substitute "They" for "We" in that sentence and it could have been me speaking, when I was working at Adaptec and trying to release an in-house version of the starfire (a.k.a. "Duralan" ethernet MAC) driver. I hit that same brick wall over and over again while tying to get some chip specs and a linux driver released. Somehow, in their minds, "support" is translated into not releasing specs and drivers. Releasing such information, in contrast, is a failure to support customers. This wierd Orwellian doublethink seems to pervade the thinking of everyone connected with supporting Linux and other free OS's at Adaptec.
It's so amazing to see that nothing has changed at Adaptec in the last 7 years. My own driver episode was "resolved" (unsatisfactorily, for me) by Donald Becker agreeing to sign an NDA for the chip specs. Not to second guess Donald, but my thinking at the time was, "this just postpones the problem. Maybe it would be better just to boycott these imbeciles."
Not to close on a sour note, I should say that Adaptec was a great place to work in many ways, and I always viewed their attitude toward free software as an aberration. I still tend to do so, and perhaps that's wishful thinking on my part.
Have an old Ultra 1 doing firewall and light server duty for a DSL line. So far its had zero hardware issues and everything has worked. Wish I could have said the same for NetBSD. It locked up randomly on the same box.
I haven't used OpenBSD in a few years and was really impressed with their rewrite of packet filter. You linux folks should check it out.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
But he's belligerent in the right direction. He does more than Stalmman does on the Open Source front, he calls a spade a spade, and is one hell of a coder.
This guy is way out there
Why adaptec isnt releasing detailed specs is obvious. If people had them they could better evaluate the product. Apparently the marketing dept. at adaptec fears transparency and complacency.
Look at the small and medium end raid market now. Theres not many players, Adaptec,promise,3ware and a bunch that adaptec bought up. Adaptec gains nothing by opening up itself to a point by point comparison with lesser competitors. Their name recognition is carrying them much the way IBM's used to. Further if the hardware is bugged and tricky and adaptec knew about it then they open themselves up to liability.
Their reasons are obvious keep the barriers high and keept those that can't climb them out.
Unfortunately I cannot purchase Adaptec controllers anymore. No, it's not because they aren't supported in OpenBSD, nor is it a new decision. It is because a couple years ago I purchased several Adaptec raid controllers for some webservers and the drivers included didn't work. I managed to obtain, after much pain, a better driver. To make a long story short, they had to come out of service because the driver updates took so long that I had to run really old kernels just to support the raid driver. Sounds like they haven't changed. Too bad, I used to buy a fair number of raid controllers from them.
You know, the LSI SCSI cards are rather nice, they work with Linux; I don't know what their deal is with docs, but they seem to have contributed code.
(OK, so not directly related to Adaptec - but it seems to be a reasonable place to give their competitor a pat on the back!).
You're not wrong. Is it just me, or does this de Raadt character get 'snippy' each and every time the world doesn't roll over and play the game how he wants them to?
An important point in a geek's career is the time when s/he recognises that if s/he's gonna get any further in said career, they're gonna have to maintain a business-benefiting attitude and act in business-benefiting ways else businesses won't employ you any more. Sheer guru-like skill only carries you so far, and then you've gotta play nice with others or others won't play with you anymore.
Some geeks come to that realisation early in their careers. I try to tell my geek.students that before they graduate. Some geeks never ever wake up, and they grow old on low incomes angry at the world.
de Raadt does some wonderful things, sure, but there's always this persistent undertone of a bad attitude waiting to sneak out and throw his weight around. Public nastygrams and "screw you, we'll ship with even less support for your product than we did before" dummy spits constitute "does not play nice with others" in my book.
Trouble is, geeks carry no weight in business, and the businessfolks have all the money. It's up to us to decide if we want some of that money or not.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Interestingly, Theo of OpenBSD is more insistant that the entire base system be open source than the most popular Linuxes. GPL software is tolerable if there is no alternative, but commercial software is not tolerated.
The only exception is firmware binary blobs (which all OSes need, as it is not practical to create open source replacements), they are tolerated if they are released under a license that allows OpenBSD to distribute them.
That's similar to what Linuxes like Debian demand, and that's a lot more than Linuxes like Red Hat and Suse demand.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
I wish the Linux people would have enough balls to make a stand with us. No such luck there.
Oh well
oh, right. support Apple. champions of open source ...
vodka, straight up, thank you!
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
* To: Charles Swiger
...deliberately breaking OpenBSD's support for Adaptec hardware as some
* Subject: Re: Adaptec AAC raid support
* From: Bob Beck
* Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 13:56:41 -0700
* Cc: Theo de Raadt , Sean Hafeez , misc@openbsd.org, Scott Long , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
* In-reply-to:
* Mail-followup-to: Charles Swiger , Theo de Raadt , Sean Hafeez , misc@openbsd.org, Scott Long , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
* References:
* User-agent: Mutt/1.5.6i
>
> sort of ultimatum is a childish and self-destructive action. I hope
> the other OpenBSD committers veto any such action as being
> counterproductive and harmful to your users.
Horsecookies. What was done was remove AAC support from GENERIC,
because users know what is in GENERIC is supposed to be stable and a
good candidate for use. I've got AAC's. They aren't at the moment.
they die, and you can't do anything with the raid management without
rebooting, and Adaptec has shown no signs of releasing documentation
so that situation can be corrected.
Sure, there's a "free" driver, and a non-free management interface,
so it's only half a driver. Pretending to have a production system
using a raid card that with no supportable management interface so you
have to reboot to fix anything is like buying birth control pills in
packs of 20. Pretty soon you're going to take a good fucking on a day
you really can't afford it. Period.
As such AAC isnt' any more broken than it ever was. OpenBSD
just chooses not to encourage users to purchase a non-supportable
card by including support for it in the GENERIC kernel. Are you
saying it's more honest to leave unstable and incomplete support in
there? People who wish to use it anyway can always compile it in.
> Otherwise, you're likely to discover that most people choose to run an
> OS which works with the hardware they have, rather than sticking with
> OpenBSD.
Or choose to replace the hardware that isn't supportable by the
OS they want to run. Thank you LSI and Dell. LSI cards seem to work
fine.
-Bob
emphasis added by poster
An important point in a geek's career is the time when s/he recognises that if s/he's gonna get any further in said career, they're gonna have to maintain a business-benefiting attitude and act in business-benefiting ways else businesses won't employ you any more.
Theo works full-time on the OpenBSD project. He needs to pay the rent / mortgage sure, but he isn't in this for the money.
While he may be 'grating' at times he does stick to his principles (much like RMS).
What the Adaptec guy actually said was:Using the word "buggy" like it was used in the Slashdot front page article implies that the cards are flaky and that non-Adaptec cards aren't (as) buggy. This isn't outright stated, but similarly saying something like "I don't use Microsoft Office because it is buggy" tends to leave the listener with the impression that other office suites are less buggy, even though that isn't stated outright.
The Adaptec employee stated only what we already know--that different revisions of firmware have different bugs (in ALL products that use firmware, not just Adaptec RAID adapters), and that they must be worked around. If different revisions of firmware didn't have bugs, then different revisions of firmware wouldn't exist--the first one would have worked fine (aside from occasional feature additions and tweaks).
However, to the original poster's credit, Adaptec RAID cards really do suck, and they really are buggy (not to mention slow, especially in RAID 5, compared to almost every other brand--and Adaptec's entire SCSI line is pretty consistant in that regard), but that is beside the point. Slashdot shouldn't participate in the same FUD that we so often criticize--just let the facts speak for themselves, and leave the interpretation up to the reader.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
Trouble is, geeks carry no weight in business, and the businessfolks have all the money. It's up to us to decide if we want some of that money or not.
Jeez, he just wants documentation. Why is this such a problem for people to understand? It's not about how much money he could be making if he had a better set of kneepads, or if he let Adaptec shine him on because that's the way "the game" is played. It's about being able to do what he wants with the hardware he (or the other users of OpenBSD) use. It costs nothing or next-to-nothing for Adaptec to provide the same documentation that their own developers use, yet apparently Adaptec doesn't wants to keep this secret because it might be embarrassing.
Perhaps you think it's a good idea to keep this information secret because the embarrassing aspects of the docs might get in the way of some of Adaptec's employees' desire to play the game and exercise their ability to go for "some of that money". Or perhaps not; maybe there's another reason not to allow serious and qualified developers access to existing documentation. Theo just wants to write software that people will use and will use as a reason to purchase more Adaptec products. I'm shocked that you would actually teach students that this is a bad idea.
Then again, having a problem with the way someone conducts themselves is no reason to disregard their innocuous requests. The money is not always right.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Some idiot mailbombed his account. It's only natural that Adaptec removed the squeaky wheel, rather than oiling it.
I suspect that one of these choices is incorrect. Correct.
I think it is quite common for vendors to put out hardware that isn't quite engineered up to spec, where, if you looked at its design and interface, you'd see that it really can't work quite right, or get the performance they claim. Another reason is that the documentation may simply not exist, a clear indication of poor engineering practices at the hardware vendor. I suspect that's actually the main reason so many hardware vendors are so secretive about their interfaces: they don't want to air their dirty laundry in public.
As a rule of thumb, if you are buying a piece of hardware, buy one for which known, good, independently-developed open source drivers exist. The existence of such drivers is a good indication that the hardware is well-documented, probably decently designed, and that it probably does what it is advertised as doing. And that's a good rule of thumb even if you are buying the hardware that you only intend to use with closed-source operating systems.
Of course they do, unlike most other open source projects which just check in whole lumps of code without caring about what it does... Sorry which bit of this makes your comment relevant to the discussion?
Binary drivers.
You can't review the source code to binary only drivers. Other open source OS projects don't pay the kind of attention to detail that OpenBSD does.I'm not accusing them of not caring at all, but they don't spend as much energy on it as the OpenBSD team.
Is that clearer?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
My experience with graphics chips also led me to the conclusion that many chip vendors that refuse to release documentation don't themselves understand how their parts work fully enough to tell the world. Intel is one notable exception.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
> William Gates Jr has built
> a very successful busines
Not to be a pedantic, but I think the Gates you're looking for is William Gates III. Wm Gates Jr is his lawyer father, who probably is as responsible for the success of MSFT as his son...
By the way, yes Theo can be a bit of a prick, but he's going after putting out simply the best version of BSD Unix around. It's why I've bought every release since the mid-2.x...
-> I dislike sigs...
Well, I have a number of Adaptec's ATA Raid Cards (ATA RAID 2400A), for the longest time they only supported RedHat 7.0. Now that Fedora is somewhat the premiere platform for me (three releases later), they are finally supporting Redhat 9.0.
With the the latest Fedora, there is no way to see if the raid array has a failed drive. So I instead use the card as a quad ATA controller, using software RAID. Guess if I'd buy another Adaptec piece of hardware???
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
You're not wrong. Is it just me, or does this de Raadt character get 'snippy' each and every time the world doesn't roll over and play the game how he wants them to?
There's quite some distance between demanding immediate obedience and 4 months of delays and excuses. Most businessmen don't stand for that either (or they go out of business).
An important point in a geek's career is the time when s/he recognises that if s/he's gonna get any further in said career, they're gonna have to maintain a business-benefiting attitude and act in business-benefiting ways else businesses won't employ you any more.
'Business benefiting attitude' does not mean sycophant or pushover. It means acting in the best interests of a company, sometimes whether they like it or not. Fact is, a lot of assholes succeed in business, mostly because they know how, to whom, and when to be assholes. A trained asshole is a powerful weapon.
Trouble is, geeks carry no weight in business, and the businessfolks have all the money. It's up to us to decide if we want some of that money or not.
Bullshit. How many CEOs of the Fortune 500 are MBAs and how many are technical people that learned business? You're confusing 'engineer' with 'asocial dweeb who lives in his parents' basement'.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I've been reading the posts on the misc mail list for OpenBSD, and I think a few things need to be said.
First, Theo and the other developers, although making good points, are being quite rude to employees. I think that its important for them to push this issue, but I think they are handling it immaturaly. Flaming Adaptec (ex-)employees is not a good move, even if Scott did make a post on OSNews -- attack the companies economic base through a boycott instead.
Secondly, I think that if Theo and the gang started an organized boycott of Adaptec raid controllers in a professional manner, then got those people to sign a petition, write to Adaptec, and such along with getting a pretty accurate count of how many of Adaptec's raid controllers have been purchased by those boycotting Adaptec, they might be able to show themselves to be consisting of a large enough market to cause a dent in Adaptec's profits. Not only OpenBSD, but also FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Linux users who feel that its important to use open source drivers. This may require a bit of work, but its the most effective way to get Adaptec's attention. I mean, how many open-source Unix servers are using their raid cards? How many of those users, admins, etc. realize the importance of an open source driver so it can be maintained by the community, since most companies have been slow (to say the least) to update their binary drivers? Not to mention, the flexibility involved with porting it to different Open-source Unix OS's and using it with different software configurations and versions?
Thirdly, some people are arguing that that Adaptec will release an SDK in 4 months, but given the history of the Adaptec drivers and drivers by other companies, that would probably involve using a binary driver... which wouldn't help.
I think that if the open source OS's are going be taken seriously by vendors, then they need to act in a professional manner and show their economic strength through well-crafted reports and well-organized efforts.
I support the work of Theo and the other OpenBSD developers -- I believe they are right, but I think the open source community has to join together for a common cause and be professional about such things.
If we, as a community, can make this happen in a professional manner, and win, then maybe, just maybe, we can extend this to other vendors. If we can't pull together, then we're fighting a losing battle against closed source OS's such as Windows and venders such as Adaptec, and we might as well give up now.
We can do this, I know we can. But, we have to do it correctly. So, come on folks, act professional, realize what's at stake, and organize. Think of the visibility the grass roots democratic groups got when they organized and acted like a unified front -- they didn't win the election, but that was surely noticed.
Sure, it's annoying that we have to wait four months, but at least they've promised something. - Seems they were saying much the same four months ago.
Frankly, I think Theo is being impatient and hotheaded. - He is indeed.
Stick a carrot infront of you, just out of reach, and slap your ass. You can follow that carrot forever, but it will get no closer. Sooner or later you will have to give up on the carrot.
If you don't give up on the carrot, you're being foolish. Sit down in the sand and demand better.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
Yes, but that doesnt mean he's always wrong. Its probably best to judge him on what he's saying *at the moment*. Being argumentative is not nesseserily a bad thing, although he does put his foot in it more than is really a good idea
Thats not really true. I'm a geek and i have quite a lot of say in technical decisions. Our CTO is a geek also. I do not work for a technical company. I work for a publishing company.
If any company hires a technically minded person and then wont listen to his or her advice, they they they are wasting that person.
Would you hire an accountant and then ignore their advice about financial matters? if so, please tell me the company you are involved with so I can avoid accidentally getting hired there.
Any company that ignores the advice of its geeks is wasting a valuable resource. The companies I have worked for realise this.
That doesnt mean they are always right, however moderating conflicting advice is part of being a manager.
God forbid a developer and a major contributor to our freedoms should be upset that a corporation has held off releasing documentation after months of 'negotiation'. He may chew people out on mailing lists, but that does not make an asshole. His way of dealing with people personally might just be a little intolerant, but he has done much more for the open source community than any other single leader - and he does NOT need to sit on a huge platform of sponsorship and hype to make a difference. What did Linus do? Write a kernel with a license that corporations decided was good in fighting the Microsoft monopoly. Bam, it's done. Theo actually swam upstream with little help and brought a good project with good ideals which DO help others - OpenSSH being everyone's favorite example. Where would you be without it? Up sh!t creek.
If you don't use OpenBSD because of its project leader, you may as well never use or communicate with any OpenSSH clients or servers and you can forget about PF. Just to be a real self righteous prick you may as well not use the internet at all just in case your packets pass through a server which an 'asshole' contributed to. Or a hardware design. In fact, how do you know assholes didn't grow the trees that maintain your oxygen supply? May as well stop breathing.
Sam ty sig.