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The File-System Fallout of the Reiser Verdict
perlow writes "Yesterday, the Open Source community took an emotional hit when veteran Linux programmer Hans Reiser was convicted of first degree murder in the suspicious disappearing of his wife, Nina. While I won't go into the details of the case, as this has been covered extensively in the press, I would like to talk a little bit about how this verdict will impact the technology in play for file system dominance in our favorite Open Source operating system, Linux."
Please stop using NTFS.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Will Hans suddenly develop an interest in cake-based file systems?
The code may make its way into other projects, but the name and team are gone.
that maybe control of ReiserFS will now be in the hands of someone who is not a total cock... sorry, a wife-murdering total cock. Hans Reiser's ability ot play nice with others made you long for Theo de Raadt's sunny demeanor. Given that the code is Free, having it under the control of someone who is not a complete sociopath can't help but the increase uptake of the novel parts of the ReiserFS structure.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
It wont. Correct me if I missed something.
It has been covered extensively in the press, yet no links to this for me? Ugh, life is so hard.
...I guess it's back to the drawing board with OJFS then.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
It will affect ReiserFS the same as it affected the company that wrote the NTFS file system was convicted of their crimes. (being a monopoly).
Or when the creator of Unix (and the C language) was convicted of their crimes (being a monopoly)
Or the same as it affected Union Carbide when they poisoned a whole town killing everyone. (the former president will be jailed for life if he ever sets foot in India).
The thing is.. Things are decided on their merits, and price, etc. Not on their creators. Otherwise, Walmart would be bankrupt!
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
...his former wife.
SuSE dropping it from their distro was the end.
Nobody wants to be associated in any way, form, shape or fashion with Hans Reiser anymore... well maybe except his new boyfriend in prison.
In ghetto slang cake == bitch, so maybe ;). At the very least he'll be interested in more closed up and defensive file systems.
ReiserFS murdered my data long before he was found guilty of his wife's murder.
I like JFS now...
Isn't it true that much of Reiser4 is already coded? Since Reiser is GPL 2, there is nothing to stop the remaining developers -- or anyone else -- from picking up the ball and running with it. Namesys hired at least 1 or 2 full-time developers other than Reiser, although my guess is that since their Web site is currently down, there is probably nothing left of Namesys since Namesys is/was mostly Reiser, his (still missing, possibly deceased) wife Nina, and Reiser's father.
So, probably with no money, my guess is the hired hands won't continue work, but I am unable to speak for them.
Still, ReiserFS could continue without Hans, right?
My blog
Anybody who's worked with it will agree.
It's really great when it comes to irretrievably losing entire volumes of data. Not so great at anything else.
Hans Reiser: blowhard, murderer, and half-assed coder.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
All that's happened is that the primary developer has a lot more spare time on his hand to hack. I presume he'll be spending the rest of his life in prison; assuming he's allowed access to a computer, he can continue development on ReiserFS. And if the implementation is open source, any risk of Reiser sneaking in logic bombs as revenge will be mitigated by the many other eyes that will have access to the source. If he never writes another line of code to continue development of ReiserFS, then anyone else who wants to will be able to pick up the project and work on it. True, they won't have his original vision or technical brilliance, but that's not to say that the project must die with its creator. We wouldn't be able to advance very far at all technologically speaking if a project could not survive its originator.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
please use the passive voice in your discussions about this article
if you need more space, feel free to rip the desk or chair out of your cube and hose the thing down until there's an inch or two of standing water for you to lie down in
remember, if the police are suspicious of you, your best bet is to use counterintelligence, and use it badly
when under suspicion of murder, buy some books on how to get away with murder
hire a criminal defense attorney prior to even calling your wife's cellphone to see if she's alive
25 years of coding in prison might yield some significant product. You can put him away physically, but I think we should still let his brilliant mind to continue to benefit the society.
One thing is for sure, the fallout is gonna be murder! \rimshot \\ducks head and runs for cover
from the quirks of the inventor.
If this file system is superiour, then it should stand.
However naming the delete function 'Wife' would be lacking in class....
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
File systems are like programming languages and operating systems: inventing one is not only fun, but a common assignment during one's computer science education at a lot of universities. Therefore, there will always be more types of file systems around, than anybody would reasonably need. Reiser was a putz, and the benefit of his filesystem over the competition was always marginal. So, he's gone, and either somebody else will grab the torch and maintain his software, or it'll die and nobody will care.
Doesn't even mention XFS.
Its stable, its been widely used, has great performance, and can handle most 'large' filesystems. Its not a 'newcomer' to the kernel, either.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
For when you need to partition your wife.
Morons with mod points; either that or Microsoft knee-jerk astroturfers.
For the learning-impaired at "news for nerds", the parent's point was that the only thing that should matter to you or me about Hans Reiser is the file system he designed and the programs he wrote, and then only if you use the damned things.
Did you throw away your Naked Gun movies because OJ Simpeon killed those people?
The tabloid mentality that seems to have overtaken the entire world makes me sick. The file system's designer's personal life is none of my (or your) business.
On a lighter note, the parent was wrong. Bill Gates doesn't strangle puppies, he shoots them! And he doesn't stomp kittens' heads, he huffs them.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Seems like he's going to have a lot of time to write a lot of code now.
I can understand if people are not comfortable with using ReiserFS in light of what has happened. I never used it, so I cannot offer any opinions on whether it was any good
If people are looking for something different, why not ZFS?
Sure, I know that Sun's commitment to Open Source is inconsistent and potentially suspect, but ZFS looks to be an impressive piece of technology.
So, why not ZFS?
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Every time I read about this case, it sounded like the sort of thing that couldn't possibly end in a conviction.
They found no weapon, no body, no witnesses. In fact, last time I read about this case, there was no real solid evidence whatsoever. How could they possibly reach a conviction? Was new evidence introduced that I haven't heard of? Did his lawyers just suck?
I hope he appeals this, from all the news articles I read, it sounds like his case was the *definition* of "reasonable doubt."
It should be possible to negotiate with the court system for him to continue his work from prison - should he wish to do so. Humanity can still benefit from him and he can still give back in a big way, despite his alleged crimes.
_Vishal www.squad9.com
The cake is a lie. And seriously, everyone knows that Hans shot first, why is this article even news?
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
> the Open Source community took an emotional hit
News to me.
> I would like to talk a little bit about how this
> verdict will impact the technology in play for file
> system dominance
It won't.
Nobody in their right minds uses resiserfs for anything important. My impression from reading the namesys site after losing a working dataset to reiserfs back in 2002-2003 was this: a filesystem written for kooks by a kook.
I used ReiserFS for years but it's already dead. I left it shortly after the trial began because it was already having stability problems. After some time it would deteriorate and eventually corrupt itself. Today's doesn't change the fact that ReiserFS hasn't seen much development in the last ~2 years.
I was sad when I found out he was on trial. I had one of his quotes on my cubicle wall from him about development when I found out about the arrest. Hans Reiser is a good developer. Apparently he's not a very good person.
Recent versions of ReiserFS have had stability and performance problems for some time and will die a normal open source death on merits.
Maybe it should be renamed NinaFS, that'd show him...
I didn't feel it.
Maybe not, but his acts in the software industry have probably caused many incremental deaths...
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
ReiserFS isn't even a has-been file system, it's an almost-was, and was never a real contender for a top filesystem, no matter how much some users loved it. It was, in reality, half dead by the time Reiser got arrested.
Why wasn't it taken seriously by everyone?
- When it encountered problems, it crashed spectacularly. You didn't just lose a file or a block of a file, you lost entire trees and could get metadata instead of file data and vice versa.
- It lacked basic tools, like "dump"/"restore" or "freeze".
- The fsck rebuild process was a security nightmare. A user could craft a file with data that would appear to the fsck process to be metadata, and take over the system after a reboot. In typical arrogance, the solution was "don't reboot, then".
- It didn't support streams or compatible metadata, thus no Mac sharing or SELinux. SELinux in particular is a requirement for many big corporations right now, and not supporting it means no buy.
And, yes, the arrogance of the maintainer played a part too. But even with a much nicer guy running the show, it would not have been a serious contender for the throne.
It's time we forget ReiserFS and move on.
This story has shed a new light on the dangers of Linux. How many more people will die because some crazy open source developer decides to take out his frustration on someone nearby?
For the sake of your fellow man, anyone who uses Linux should dump it and switch to Apple computers running OS X. It has the added advantage of not sucking.
Free Hans!
For when your wife is bigger than 4G's.
... his wife's blood was found in large quantities in his car, he was known to have destroyed evidence relating to the case (the car seat, various computer files, scrubbing of various items in the car and house), he evaded police attempting to question him, and he was in possession of thousands in cash and his passport when finally apprehended. While opinions can differ about what the jury "should" have decided, it's hardly true that there was no evidence of foul play here.
See, you forget one little file system, and someone gets pissed. XFS is nice, but its not exactly in widespread use.
OJ got away with murdering his wife and he was a retired football player. What the heck value did he possibly contribute to society? Paris Hilton's drove drunk, on a suspended license, doing 70 in a 35, and someone and people claimed what a travesty it was she spent a whole 22 days in jail. She's pretty much the most worthless person I know. This isn't right. If people can get away with crimes, in my opinion it should be the people who are able to contribute significantly to the greater good of society. If Michael Jackson can produce another album like Thriller, let him touch a little boy or two. Hans falls in that same catagory. Not being a file system hacker myself I'm not an expert, but from everything I've read (and I have read fairly extensively), Reiser4 is already one of the greatest file systems in existence, and that's including the bugs and without the features which are still planned to be added. If Hans can turn Reiser4 into the greatest file system created, who cares if he offed a mail-order bride? She obviously didn't consider herself worth that much anyway.
if he gets a lifelong sentence and if he is so good at writing programs, and if he shows good behavior for a long time, in other *more* *democratic* countries, he'd be very well entitled to a better environment in prison. Let's see where they take this. It's called prison(er) reform and it actually works in the real world. It makes everyone feel strange about the real cause of evil in society.
Fwiw, Hans can appeal, AFAIK, and therein lies another possibility. The problem is that there's no pudding to show as proof.
Hackers have long memories. It works both ways.
reiserfs was dropped as a default from all major distros when charges were brought against Hans Reiser.
They're using their grammar skills there.
First of all, Reiser4 is not dead at all. The namesys.com website is still down because it is hosted in the US and the developers are on the other side on the globe. Who cares. There is a new location here and here.
;).
Reiser4 development didn't stall at all! the mailing list is not particular noisy but there are bug fixes on a regular basis and new patches generally come out some days after a new kernel release.
It still is in the mm tree and gets updated regularly. Public GIT repositories are also to come very soon. Due to its modular design (*cough* plugins *cough*) reiser4 could be particularly interesting for new coders and specialized tasks. We'll see...
My personal note: Reiser4 is surprisingly stable. I have it on several machines since it was officially released. Of course I run daily backups but I didn't have to use them once. Occasionally I saw corruptions but these were fixed by an excellent fsck (all this might as well be personal luck though
Recently a show stopper bug in the (not yet officially released) compression code has been fixed. This not only gave me lots of extra disk space but actually a performance boost - disk io is the bottleneck here. Better not get me started on comparing performance to the zfs counterpart on fuse or freebs).
He may have killed her. She may be in Russia with her kids. I don't claim to know. I will say that there sure seems to be reasonable doubt. It scares me to think someone can be convicted of first-degree murder with little evidence at all.
It also concerns me that the judge deemed it irrelevant to the case that her boyfriend confessed to 8 other murders. How is that not relevant to the case?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Someone is dead, and you're discussing how this will affect software development? WTF?
"..the Open Source community took an emotional hit when veteran Linux programmer Hans Reiser was convicted of first degree murder.."
That's nothing! A little while ago the entire Western world took an emotional hit when America went off the rails and started murdering other heads of state and their citizens.
What impact will that have...??
The blog even mentions NTFS as potentially a default FS for linux distros? I almost thought that this was april fools again. In fact, perhaps the author of the blog should see comments that Hans has made about NTFS. (I believe they were something to the effect of "WTF was Microsoft smoking?")
/tmp/bah.lst
Reiser4 has been great especially in applications such as maildir storage, where we have thousands of files in each directory. Can NTFS do tail packing? What about treeing instead of bitmapping the filesystem? I think not. Hell, I bet ext3 would choke as well with a dir of 15,000 files. I have no problems with reiser4.
From a PIII-733 w/384MB RAM and a simple IDE 30GB HD:
time ls -l >
real 0m20.071s
user 0m5.873s
sys 0m6.518s
That's on a directory with over 120,000 small files in it (it's from a maildir). I somehow doubt that NTFS or ext3 would be even half this fast at something as trivial as ls on this dir.
I honestly don't care whether or not he killed his wife. I only care about having the filesystem. I don't know how much Edward Shishkin is going to continue maintaining the code base now. I will greatly lament the loss of Reiser4.
Nobody will even notice when it hits end-of-life until he starts covering up that he ever supported it.
(yes, I know I'm going straight to capital-h Hell for that comment)
This will do absolutely nothing to change the popular perception that people who use Teh Lunix are all serial killers.
A sad day for FOSS, and our ability to find new victims. Err... new users... I meant to say new users. Victims? LOL, where did that come from? That would be silly!
Open source allows people to pick up where others left off and improve on existing code -- or is this just a lie?
The team lost its lead programmer, that's the entirety of the fallout, nothing more.
More generally - how does open source deal with losing a lead programmer? If the project dies then it probably wasn't worth the effort in the first place, or outlived its usefulness. If someone else takes over instead, that proves the model works.
What will happen when Linus retires, kicks the bucket, or decides to use Windows?
So that answers my question I guess - the lead leaves and the project dies. Is this really how open source is supposed to work?
Personally I think there's something cool about using a file system written by a deranged genius. It gives a certain level of flare to a linux install.
Maybe someone takes over ReiserFS and that causes him to go completely crack job, then he spends the rest of his live in jail perfecting Bender's operating logic that will be used in a thousand years or so.
"Kill all humans"
*Futurama reference*
The article makes vague implicit claims which are misleading and inaccurate. I have nothing against ReiserFS, however this article is mostly smoke.
It all but claims that ext3 is unreliable and slow. Ext3 is certainly not the fastest in absolute terms, but it is not slow. As for reliability, it is clearly the best tested and most reliable. It should also be noted that Ext3 supports higher levels of journaling than other journaling FS-es like XFS and JFS. So, Ext3 is fast, very reliable, excellently supported and under active development (as ext4) - no need to despair.
The article also implies that ext4 is an immature and incompatible replacement, which is also not true. In fact Ext4 is probably considered more stable than ReiserFS 4 by some. If it wasn't for the decision to change the name from ext3 to ext4, many people probably wouldn't know when they started using "ext4" after an upgrade.
There are more details in this LWN article: http://lwn.net/Articles/187336/
Replacing reiserfs with NTFS would be like replacing a TV show with a sports car. You may argue the merits of either, but what they're good at is completely unrelated.
It doesn't matter how many places reiserfs is default. It's a somewhat specialised file system, and I still recommend it if you have lots and lots of small files. I'm positively puzzled by this discussion... the author seems to think there's some kind of competition for "the new linux FS"? Well, even if there was, reiserfs isn't a contender and hasn't been for a long time, so, really... wtf?
I equate it to the whole if you buy pot you're supporting terrorism bullshit commercials, be careful if you go the rout of OSS, you may be taking your life (or someone else's) in to your own hands!!
I laugh my ass off at the pot commercial where the laughing kid blows his head off with a rifle after a few bong hits.
"Conjugal visits? Mmmm. Not that I know of. Y'know, minimum-security prison is no picnic. I have a client in there right now. He says the trick is: kick someone's ass the first day, or become someone's bitch. Then everything will be all right. W-Why do you ask, anyway?"
Why is Linux "our" favourite operating system ? How does a programmer allegedly, or convictedly murdering his wife impact it, at all ? He's one of many, and probably not the first Linux coder to commit a criminal offense.
Emotional impact. Riiiight.
I've known Hans for at least 3 years back in 91 and 92. The last time I met him was the Digital Be-in in SF hosted by Mike Gosney at one of the MacWorld Events... He was the least likely person to have committed such a henious act.
I lost contact with him in 1998 when he moved to Russia (not sure of the date), but Hans made a very stupid decision to testify on his own behalf, fighting with his attorney, and getting everyone pissed off.
He hired me to build a portable stereo system when I needed work, a real nice guy. Obviously, he was stressed out with the trial.
I hope he wins on appeal...
The blog post makes it sound like Reiser was the supreme overlord of the Linux operating system, and that his prison sentence means that Linux will be destroyed...
Folks, get over it! These things happen! People make mistakes, mess up, or wind up in jail, but everyone adjusts to the change. Just use ext3! Or better yet, if your so worried about it, MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN FILE SYSTEM (but just don't become homicidal in the process)
Linux is worked on by MILLIONS OF PEOPLE worldwide. SO that means one persons departure will NOT destroy Linux, since there are still PLENTY more people to work on it. Remember the Gizmondo? That got ruined because of one of the owners' connections to the mafia. Most of the board of directors and CEOs wound up in prison, so the Gizmondo was canceled. But the difference here is that WE HAVE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE TO PICK UP THE PIECES!
I will only be worried when EVERY Linux programmer in the world winds up in prison...
I know when you are convicted of a computer-related crime, you are strictly forbidden from using computers. But, what about when convicted of murder? I gotta wonder, is there any reason why Hans couldn't just keep coding in prison? If he were allowed to have a small laptop and wireless connection in jail, he could probably be quite productive - after all, when you're in jail, you have all the time in the world. No distractions like a 'life', time with the kids, cleaning the house, etc (although, I suppose they may have inmates do some work around the prison to help maintain it - you always see them doing laundry and stuff like that in the movies).
Still, could he code on the inside? Does it matter if your File System is written by a convicted murder (I'd like to say here that I don't necessarily agree he's guilty, but he is definitely convicted)?
Get it?
Also, why no mention of XFS? I would have thought this was obvious alternative to ReiserFS.
This whole episode points out one of the weaknesses of open source projects. Unless project management is donated by some corporate heavy hitters, there's too much dependency on a few key people. Yes a lot of people contribute, but when the software gatekeeper goes offline, the project is more likely than not to die, despite the free availability of the source code.
Programmer's don't often get sent to prison, but they do die, change careers, achieve the singularity, or whatever. It's not smart of people who want to build their businesses around Open Source to be this dependent on specific individuals.
Now that I think of it, I guess that's why we're not talking about XFS: SGI no longer has a lot of spare resources to support it. And Sun does have the resources to support ZFS, which would seem to outweigh the licensing issues.
NTFS is technically a good option, especially for desktop systems. But the Linux version doesn't have any real corporate backing, just Microsoft's promise to cooperate with its developers. So really, it's not a better choice than XFS or ReiserFS.
With his death will bring a surge of Linux users. This is definitely the year of Linux on the desktop!
His wife you say? Oh crap the wrong person died!
"To be is to do." --Socrates
"To do is to be." -- Aristotle
"Do-Be-Do-Be-Do..." --Sinatra
Maybe the wife was being too open-source with the milk man...
The article seems hellbent on insisting that a file system is "unacceptable" if it's not being continuously worked on. It admits that both ReiserFS 3 and JFS are stable and calls it "unacceptable" that the last major release was 4 years ago and bug fixing is on an as-needed basis.
This seems insane. If technology works, use it. I am not at all interested in beta testing someone's favorite ideas in a new file system.
This is the type of case that bothers me. The man is a cold hearted killer. The fact that he used the "geek" defense insults me. I'm a geek, a professional software developer. I knock around on some mud codebases at night, as well as some rougelike codebases. I run linux.
I also happen to have friends, and coworkers, and everyone else in my life. While I'm mostly introverted, I have extroverted moments.
Now Hans Reiser and his lawyer has tried to convince people that being like him is a condition of being a geek. NOT that it's a condition of a man covering up a murder.
I remember shortly after Nina disappeared, Everyone Loves Eric Raymond posted this:
http://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/so-i-married-a-kernel-programmer
Even THEN people knew or suspected the man was capable of this. His discussions on the LKML were horrendously bile filled.
Yet, now, people are like "Well, he _IS_ a geek.. and geeks do things that normal people don't understand."
Great. Just great. Could be that he's a MURDERER, and that geeks are for the most part average people trying to make a living.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
they just like their porn pixelated?
HAND.
I still to this day am very convinced that his wife set this up and framed him. All the stuff about the kid's citizenship and the hard push to keep them in Russia makes me think. There just seem to be a lot of pieces missing and plenty of reasonable doubt. I'm still trying to figure out what Jury convicted him. Most of the evidence was completely circumstantial and there is plenty of doubt present. It just doesn't shake out to me.
I wonder if this is how sports fans must feel with scandals like Kobe Bryant, OJ Simpson, and Mike Tyson take place.
I guess from the perspective of a computer nerd, it's hard to believe that one of our own could commit murder, and even harder to believe that he failed to get away with it.
At least the aren't testing us programmers for Steroids or other performance enhancing drugs yet.
Or at least most of us anyhow.
John
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
I don't completely understand here, maybe someone can enlighten me.
Firstly, assuming you're OK with using ReiserFS even though the author was convicted then why are we assuming Hans won't be working on this from jail?
Will the government block him? It's not like he's convicted of a computer crime and so can't have access to computers. Will society be better served by having Hans make license plates or having him continue working on ReiserFS, if he so chooses?
It could be that he won't choose to continue the work. But has he stated his intentions in this area?
In general, for a task that can largely be performed anywhere I'm a little confused by the fact that we're assuming he won't be working on it.
Killer filesystem.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think the renaming of the FS is in order. After all, we don't want to be reminded of these events for as long as we use it..
I vote for OJFS since we all know OJ is innocent..
</sarcasm>
Dose this mean its a "Killer" FS?
From the Article
"There is another option which many have not have anticipated, or may have dismissed outright â" native implementation of Microsoftâ(TM)s NTFS journaling file system. Currently, NTFS is implemented in Linux using the NTFS-3G kernel module, which is licensed under GPL and is part of the mainline kernel. However, no Linux distribution uses it as a primary file system, with the exception of latest released Ubuntu 8.04, and only under the WUBI implementation where it virtualizes an ext3 file system within an NTFS âoecontainerâ. NTFS-3G was developed using clean room reverse engineering techniques, and while the driver appears to be quite stable, it is not considered to be enterprise-worthy."
My head is shaking left and right violently. The word "No" is inadequate to express my opinion on the matter.
google for benchmarks. XFS kicks every other filesystem's butt on clusters and RAID arrays. The feature set is not half bad, either. Built-in quotas, ACLs, xattrs, journaling. SGI has used XFS for years, and XFS filesystems are portable between IRIX and Linux, for the few who care.
Who cares about shrinking partitions? Sounds like a bad idea to me. Disk space is too cheap to have to quibble about such things. I want my filesystems to be optimized for the space that they use now, not the space they used to use.
Maybe I missed this, but could somebody fill me in on the really important details? No, not whether he was framed or is an embarrassement to geeks, but:
1) what is the license of the existing ReiserFS4 code?
2) Who owns the copyright?
3) how much of the code and how much of the design is there?
4) What would be necessary for others to pick up and continue the work?
5) Could Reiser and/or his company perform the necessary legal steps to let others continue, e.g. for a certain monetary compensation, if necessary?
A lot of money probably has already gone into this project and I cannot understand why one should abandon it if it is promising (which I cannot really judge).
It would be nice if someone else with Reiser's skill and vision picked up his code and continued its support and development. It's GPL-lisenced, they could even call it something else (they might have to--not sure what the trademark issues are). I've been using ReiserFS v3 for a while now, and I kind of like it.
The fact is, just because it's available for someone to take over doesn't mean they can make enough money doing it to make it worthwhile.
If no one adopts his baby, it's going to atrophy and be left in the developmental dust, and I will have to pick a new filesystem, one that gets security, compatibility, and feature updates.
We are used to thinking that "someone" will develop X-product, after all, "someone" made a kernel, and "someone" made Bittorrent, and they conveniently showed up on the Internet. These things don't just happen, though. "Someone" is a real person, and there are thousands of reasons that, for example, I don't suddenly decide to be full-time Linux developer.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
Hi, this might be an old issue, but stale data has a way of sticking around on the internet, and I've had trouble digging up a definitive answer when looking into this recently. Perhaps there are folks here that are actively using XFS and/or follow the kernel mailing lists more closely than I, so I'll ask - Have all the 4k stack issues with XFS been resolved?
People of unusual intelligence who assist government agencies but whose personal avocations run counter to or diverge from The Man's tend to get railroaded, like Sasha Shulgin, John Ramsey and Alan Turing. Take into account that Reiser was partially funded by DARPA and see if that produces any reasonable doubt...
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
That crazed loners write good code seems largely to be a myth. Check out the Daily WTF - nearly all the stories involve some project that only one person knew the inner workings of.
If one and only one person knows how something like a filesystem works, I don't care what happens to it. Under the terms of its license and the demands of the OSS "bazaar", ReiserFS will continue on, fork, or wither away.
I know you can argue the same is true of significant parts of Linux as well, but there is a considerable amount of weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth devoted to overcoming that.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
There is an equation that will calculate the amount of capable file system developers among the millions of Linux users out there. It is called the ManDrake (ManDriva?) equation:
N = R* x fp x nc x fl x fi x fc x L
Where:
N = the number of Linux users capable of creating a file system.
R* = is the average number of Linux users who know how to code.
fp = is the fraction of those users who understand the technical details of file systems.
nc = is the average number of Linux users who potentially have free time to develop code.
fl = is the fraction of those users who actually go on to develop at some point.
fi = is the fraction of those users who actually go on to develop intelligent code.
fc = is the fraction of those users who actually release detectable signs of intelligent code onto the Internet.
L = is the length of time those users release code on the Internet before they are locked up in jail for various reasons.
Strangely enough, I've actually had decent luck with ext4dev. For sure, I know it was a mistake to use it in the first place. I didn't know any better at the time and my stupid distro defaulted to it as the root FS (it was also improperly named "ext4" and not "ext4dev").
However, with that said, my system has been running great for over a year now. That includes millions of files, big and small, with total recompiles of every package every so often (it's a source-based distro). I have taken absolutely no precautions against power failure, and I have even allowed the entire volume to fill up more than once during a compile (causing a hard freeze of the system). It has never *once* failed to boot for me yet after that kind of failure. On a side note, I tested ext4 on my laptop and installing a new version of e2fsprogs caused failure (which was recovered by a lengthy e2fsck run from the livecd).
The most I can lose now is all of the compiling I have done, which is not that big of a deal since I'm getting tired of it anyway. All of my data is stored relatively safely within two ext3 volumes and one reiserfs volume on separate physical drives.
ReiserFS hasn't been bad in my experience either. I haven't experienced any data loss (that I know of) in any of the above-mentioned power failures. It just needs to do it's thing and run fsck for several minutes on boot in those situations. The only big problem I see with Reiser is that it has crappier support than ext3 or NTFS for data recovery in the bad situations. That in combination with the lack of development will be the reason I stop using ReiserFS. I've totally fucked over entire NTFS volumes and managed to recover every kilobyte of data that I cared about using off-the-shelf consumer software.
I'm looking for a nice binary-packaged distro to try out next, as long as it's more up-to-date than Ubuntu (maybe archlinux). But on my Sabayon system with ext4dev FS, as long as I don't screw with e2fsprogs again for a while, I think I'll be fine.
So there you have it. Please don't ridicule me too much for my crazy filesystem experience. If I had more valuable data than music and pr0nz then I might not be so careless with it.
ReiserFS is already avoided by the major distributions, not because of the verdict, but because it is unsupported.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Of course, that is an issue for those who rely on ReiserFS, and that really was a bad news for them, but for the rest...
FLOSS community is full of very different people, some of them - by the rule of big numbers - must be atypical, some of them even criminal or murderous. There surely is a large number of homosexuals, quite a number of people who never had a chance to mate, some even aren't going to get any... not to mention a wide area of different religious views or daily habits. Like avoiding bathing.
The community is so huge that there should be some people who get killed, some people who kill other people, some will or are dying of cancer or any other horrible disease... the fact that one of those people is well known is just a matter of statistics.
This thing is very tragic for family Reiser, it does have some impact on ReiserFS users, but for the rest of the world, this is just another sad story, but not an emotional hit.
If you were talking about Linus Torvalds or RMS or maybe just a few very influental individuals, we could say that the whole community did feel "emotional hit", but Hans Reiser is not *that* important, IMHO.
Well it IS!!!!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
So let's say--completely hypothetically--that I have some ReiserFS partitions on my desktop, I see that ReiserFS is now about to be orphanware, and would like to convert my partitions to something else such as ext3, JFS, or XFS.
What options do I have aside from copying data somewhere else, formatting, and copying back? Do I have any options?
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
The jury found him guilty. Gone are the days of no body no conviction trials. Do you know how many dumb wishy washy idiots they stack juries with? For him to be found guilty must have meant he was REALLY guilty.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Only on Slashdot, would somebody attempt to bring up Linux after a murder trial. If the guy worked for Pepsi Co, would we be discussing soft drinks?
please stop murdering women.
Comparisons between ReiserFS, JFS, XFS, ext2/3: http://linuxgazette.net/102/piszcz.html
Direct link to benchmark images: http://linuxgazette.net/102/misc/piszcz/lg-102-piszcz-images.tar.gz
It's basically a tie between ReiserFS, JFS, and XFS depending on how your disk is being used most often.
Here's the hilarious part -- TFA claims NTFS now has a native implementation. It doesn't.
TFA mentions ntfs-3g, but this is not implemented in the kernel, as TFA claims -- it's entirely userspace, via FUSE. This severely limits its performance, and NTFS was not particularly fast to begin with.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
For example we had problems recently with human rights associations in Switzerland because we voted a law authorising judge to give such sentences to life without parole to criminals deemed "dangerous".
I suppose the British judges refrain from using such sentence for similar reasons.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Without the BIOS, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any OS that would install and run. Therefore, I submit that the BIOS is the true operating system, with everythign else being an abstraction from that low-level functionality.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I heard she got him an Windows XP laptop for his birthday and thats what pushed him over the edge.
used journaling filesystem, at least i think that this is not likely. Most new installations come with ext3 as default since several years now and i personnaly dind never feel any urge to change the default in this case. The promised performance gain was so small for my applications that there was no justification to prefer some file-system which did not make it into the kernel for a long time (for antisocial behaviour of the main person), which had later a lack of backward-compatibility (and known not-adressed issues in v4 handled with the same antisocial attitude) over ext2/ext3. The toolsa for the latter never lost a single file on the system i was using and you can mount your ext3 disk on any linux kernel.
The only reason Reiserfs was used was because it was the first free Journaling OS, so for some time there was no other option for people which were keen on this feature.
Of course, we are in Russia.
She is very much alive and was ecstatic to learn that Hans is
rotting in a jail cell; it's exactly like she wanted, she couldn't
have planned it better.
She is all the more pleased to see that Reiser's beloved
Reiser4FS filesystem will die now, what an unexpected bonus!
In the past she was concerned some Americans might figure out her
whereabouts and show the authorities she's still alive.
But now that the Guilty verdict has been sealed, his fate is set,
and she can come out of hiding -- there is no risk whatsoever
in letting Linux groupies know that all was in vain.
And you deserved it for letting such a jerk design your filesystem
24/7.
http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-10532-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=47095&messageID=876261&start=0
"Re: NTFS-3G as primary file system
Yes, we're working on this targeted for over a year. For instance full file permission and ownership support has been implemented, we have ported and maintain a POSIX file system test suite (http://ntfs-3g.org/pjd-fstest.html) which we pass 100% using the improved driver.
Apparently there is definitely need for this from a major (multi-million) user segment who are not interested in the technical implementation but just expect things to work out of the box fast, reliably, smoothly interoperating with the already used and common computing environment and without making intrusive, complicated, time consuming changes (partitioning, backup, reinstalling, etc).
The main NTFS-3G driver has been tested as primary file system using an ordinary Gentoo install and it worked surprisingly well. Though this is not yet recommended due to several technical reasons what we are going to address by new public driver releases in the coming months. We have significant amount of unreleased code still in rigid testing.
The open source community is enormous and incredible help in development, improving quality, and defining priorities. Enterprises interested in reliable interoperability on the desktop and in consumer appliances enable us to keep working on the driver and pay our bills.
I think on the long term (10+ years) the main Linux file system could be ZFS or brtfs. File systems mature in many years, especially the very complex ones. For instance the NTFS-3G code base is basically 8 years old already.
Regards, Szabolcs Szakacsits "
Linux open source programmers are statistically more likely to kill their wives. Do not use their crap, and hopefully they will find better things to do with their time, find happiness, and not murder their wives. Pay for your software and humanity will benefit.
I am a Russian Jew, I support Barack Hussein Obama and I approve this message.
I know since day one that the wealthy Jews who are controlling Microsoft are behind the demise of Hans Reiser!
Look, Modern day Jews are Russian in disguise!
http://catholicvoice.co.uk/khazar.htm
HEIL HITLER! SIEG HEIL! SIEG HEIL! SIEG HEIL!
"The Open Source community took an emotional hit when veteran Linux programmer Hans Reiser was convicted of first degree murder in the suspicious disappearing of his wife, Nina." Say what? The Open Source community took a hit? fuck you! how about the hit that his wife took?
The authour of this article (http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=8647) has made a very wrong statement: "Unfortunately, ZFS is currently licensed under Sun's CDDL Open Source license, which is incompatible with GPLv2, the license that the Linux kernel uses".
If you want to use somebody else work, why do you want to dictate it should be in what license. Just thank them and use it. If your license do not permit that, then your product's license has some problem.
What is GPL: (1) If you change this GPL code, you must publish changes (2) If you want to link to me, you should be GPL.
What is CDDL: (1) If you change this CDDL code, you must publish changes. That's all. You are welcome to link this to you open source product as well as to your commercial non-open source product.
Which license is better? If you have a brain inside of your skull, you can see, CDDL is less restrictive and very friendlier than so called bullshit GPL freedom.
Fortunately since ZFS is CDDL, it is now ported to FreeBSD and available to world.
Linus has selected the wrong license to the Linux. You should not dictate what other people's licenses should be.
I think he had some solid ideas hidden in his somewhat sureal articles that he wrote. But finding someone with the talent and passion to bring it back to life would be extraordinarily difficult I think.
Not much of an impact as far as I am concerned. Tried ReiserFS, but have had better luck EXT3 when it comes to recovering from Oh F*&k situations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_life_tariff
> It's time we forget ReiserFS and move on.
Yes. It's time for Butter FS (btrfs).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btrfs
Writable snapshots etc. Is GPL:led, developed at Oracle as an reply to ZFS licensing problems, very fast paced developement cycle. This will be major contender at the end of this year.
What, did you think we were in love with the guy? Had some kind of secret tryst?
I highly doubt anybody took any kind of "emotional hit" from the case, except perhaps for the submitter.
In Nordic countries penal systems are highly developed, sodomization of inmates is not allowed, in countries like Germany people that are released go into farms or open prisions in the late stages of their time in jail.
But the US is a racist system that does precious little for the inmates, no wonder that some people think it is like that elsewhere.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The privation of freedom is supposed to be the punishment for a crime.
Petty humiliation of inmates is not supposed to happen, and as a matter of fact is not part of the law prescribed punishment.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Given recent news reports that UK prisons are so comfortable and pleasant that inmates have stopped trying to escape (or, indeed, stay out), perhaps that's not the best example to cite?
What about countries with even harsher prison regimes? I hear Japan has a particularly severe one, and the crime rate there is low. On the other hand, Russia has a rather harsh one as well and a lot of crime.
The Scandinavian model with little if any imprisonment is probably an anomaly which works only in societies where the Jante Law is deeply ingrained in the culture.