Linux Kernel 2.6.30 Released

diegocgteleline.es writes "Linux kernel 2.6.30 has been released. The list of new features includes NILFS2 (a new, log-structured filesystem), a filesystem for object-based storage devices called exofs, local caching for NFS, the RDS protocol (which delivers high-performance reliable connections between the servers of a cluster), a new distributed networking filesystem (POHMELFS), automatic flushing of files on renames/truncates in ext3, ext4 and btrfs, preliminary support for the 802.11w drafts, support for the Microblaze architecture, the Tomoyo security MAC, DRM support for the Radeon R6xx/R7xx graphic cards, asynchronous scanning of devices and partitions for faster bootup, the preadv/pwritev syscalls, several new drivers and many other small improvements."

Comments

DRM?

[corsec67]

Why would DRM be listed as a "feature"?

Oh, wrong kind of DRM?

Re:DRM?

[sakdoctor]

The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) is a component of the Direct Rendering Infrastructure, a system to provide efficient video acceleration (especially 3D rendering) on Unix-like operating systems, e.g. Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD.
It consists of two in-kernel drivers (realized as kernel modules on Linux), a generic drm driver, and another which has specific support for the video hardware. This pair of drivers allows a userspace client direct access to the video hardware.

I assume it's this. Either that, or linux now has Direct response marketing in the kernel.

Re:DRM?

[Stoian Ivanov]

Direct Rendering Managment - this DRM not the bad one

Re:DRM?

[mcgrew]

The bad one (not in Linux thankfully) is Dumb Restrictions on Media.

Also stands for Dinasaurs Require Money.

Re:DRM?

[denis-The-menace]

They should rename it to ADRM where A=AMD or ATI

When I saw "DRM" in the list of feature I cringed.

In the world of computing, DRM has the same effect as calling a product/service NAZI in the rest of the world.

Re:DRM?

[smittyoneeach]

Dinasaurs Require Money

Doesn't Really Matter:
Democrat/Republican Madness
Devours Remaining Milkshake

Re:DRM?

[ID000001]

I always thought it stands for Dull Remade Movie

Re:DRM?

[MadKeithV]

Derivative Regurgitated Music?

Re:DRM?

[Opportunist]

Nonono, the right kind of DRM!

Re:DRM?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

And as long as people who know what it means keep calling it "DRM", the folks who don't will never learn. Using snarky alternative meanings doesn't help (and this isn't directed at you specifically, it's become quite a common practice) get the message out to the great unwashed masses. When the only people "get it" are those who already know, calling it "Digital Restrictions Management" et al amongst ourselves has all the efficacy of little kids muttering in the corner to each other about how stupid grown-ups are.

Re:DRM?

[Tetsujin]

Why would DRM be listed as a "feature"?

Oh, wrong kind of DRM?

That threw me at first, too. :)

Re:DRM?

[Martin Blank]

I have a hard time envisioning ethical uses for technology to weaponize pathogens

Would you consider it ethical to pursue the technology to gain an understanding of it for purposes of defending against it? Development of vaccines or treatments can come from such research; the US Army still practices and develops techniques for weaponizing biological and chemical agents even as the existing stockpiles are being destroyed. The military has no intentions of using them offensively, and concluded decades ago that the effectiveness over conventional weapons is non-existent when you factor in all of the costs of extra handling precautions and risks that come with actual use. However, since other nations (and more recently non-state entities) were continuing to develop weapons, the need to understand how they could be used and how to react was important.

Re:DRM?

[makomk]

They are actually adding support for DRM of the evil kind, though, in the form of the
Integrity Management Architecture. It's basically a large chunk of what the critics claimed that Trusted Computing was going to become. (The other bits, such as restricting what operating system you can run, and the question of when it will actually be used for DRM, obviously aren't something that Linux can do anything about.)

Re:DRM?

[Fry-kun]

Because everyone is doing it!

Re:DRM?

[hey!]

I don't think that's such a simple question. You are specifically talking about what amounts to something like research into the basic principles of weaponization, and of course I'm all for that. On the other hand, the actual technology developed thus far arguably has claimed more lives (5 in the 2001 attacks) than it has saved.

That shows that intent is not entirely a matter intent that matters. Iran may have no intention of using nuclear weapons; it intends that the threat of their use stabilize their country against outside attack. It's a very similar argument.

On balance I'd say that research is probably a good thing, but developments that would lead to a technological capability to deploy such weapons are the kinds of thing that have to be examined very carefully. Good intentions aren't enough. You also have to be responsible.

Re:DRM?

[Abreu]

Bah, next you'll say that guns are not bad themselves...

Re:DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunate acronym.

Re:DRM?

[pimpimpim]

I was going to post a link to a funny script some guy once made that disactivates your linux after 30 days, but instead I found this

Re:DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do-Re-Mi?

Re:DRM?

[pkmindworks]

Now I would love to see a script that deactivates linux after 30 days

Re:DRM?

[Hognoxious]

Dead Reiser's Mrs?

Re:DRM?

[Tubal-Cain]

Linux Genuine Advantage

Re:DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read that last one as Dinosaurs Rape Monkies

Re:DRM?

[CajunArson]

Why? Despite the fact that some AMD drivers use DRM, it has nothing whatsoever to do with AMD or ATI. Considering most of the developers who actually write the code work for Intel (including the ones who created the modern DRM2), and none of them work for AMD (who does little to contribute to OSS despite the fanboyish praise they get on this site) it would be more accurate to call it IDRM, but that would also be dumb.

Re:DRM?

[GPF(BSOD)]

How about "It's not yours just because you want it"?

Re:Sad, but true:

[Povno]

Balmer... is that you?

2.8.x kernel soon?

[xjlm]

I remember when I was running the 2.4.29 kernel in Mandrake 9.0, when it jumped to the 2.6 kernel. Maybe some big improvements are in the wind...

Re:2.8.x kernel soon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you work in marketing? Who cares what it's called.

Re:2.8.x kernel soon?

[eean]

There are no plans for an unstable branch. Without a 2.7, there will never be a 2.8.

Re:2.8.x kernel soon?

[Hatta]

They should just drop the 2.8. prefix. Linux 30 sounds much cooler than 2.8.30, and man it's got to be light years ahead of Windows 7!

Re:2.8.x kernel soon?

[sumdumass]

didn't they change the numbering versions to where they don't do the specific numbered unstable anymore?

Re:2.8.x kernel soon?

[Keruo]

There's clear roadmap posted here describing features and implications of version numbers.

Re:2.8.x kernel soon?

[Hatta]

Of course I meant 2.6, duh

Re:2.8.x kernel soon?

[SiChemist]

I loved the last item in the roadmap:

- 2.6.<odd>: still a stable kernel, but accept bigger changes leading up
      to it (timeframe: a month or two).
  - 2.<odd>.x: aim for big changes that may destabilize the kernel for
      several releases (timeframe: a year or two)
  - <odd>.x.x: Linus went crazy, broke absolutely _everything_, and rewrote
      the kernel to be a microkernel using a special message-passing version
      of Visual Basic. (timeframe: "we expect that he will be released from
      the mental institution in a decade or two").

Re:2.8.x kernel soon?

[ilikejam]

See Java for further details.

Re:2.8.x kernel soon?

[OrangeTide]

waiting for linux 3.1415

Re:2.8.x kernel soon?

[Simetrical]

There's clear roadmap posted here describing features and implications of version numbers.

Are you sure that's actually still accurate? I've followed LWN and Kernel Newbies coverage of Linux releases for a while now, and have never seen any mention of a difference between even and odd third-level version numbers.

Re:2.8.x kernel soon?

[oldhack]

And 30 is the new 40, so go straight to 5.0.

Re:2.8.x kernel soon?

[Chabo]

If we do that, it must be pronounced "five-oh".

Then I can buy a five-oh Mustang, and get a car computer running five-oh Linux! :)

Re:2.8.x kernel soon?

[shutdown -p now]

... rewrote the kernel to be a microkernel using a special message-passing version of Visual Basic.

Oh, so that is what GNU/Hurd guys are up to these days!

Re:2.8.x kernel soon?

[eean]

Well they changed their whole development methodology that they don't have an unstable branch anymore and do feature releases about every 6 months. So kind of.

Re:2.8.x kernel soon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux 30 sounds much cooler than 2.8.30, and man it's got to be parsecs ahead of Windows 7!

Fixed that for you.

      H.S.

Re:2.8.x kernel soon?

[dudpixel]

and then everyone can have a piece of the linux pi

LINUX IS SHIT

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't even install a usb wifi device without going through a bunch of command line bullshit that doesn't even work

Fuck this shit. Going back to Windows.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[BrokenHalo]

Fuck this shit. Going back to Windows.

No-one will miss you.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[Shadow-isoHunt]

PEBKAC. Enjoy the similiar headaches of Windows land.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[Anonymous Coward]

And the Lunix community wonders why there is such a public relations problem between users and developers... User complains about the experience in Lunix and the difficulty of doing what should be something simple and the response is "RTFM", "PEBKAC", or other various insults.

In Windows, something like this Just Works(tm). Perhaps you should learn something before throwing stones at others. A little humility would go a LONG way.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[morgan_greywolf]

In Windows, something like this Just Works(tm).

Not always. I had a USB WiFi adapter that I attempted to install on a Windows laptop and after several attempts at uninstalling and reinstalling the driver, I took it back to the store and got a different model. Probably that WiFi adapter just sucked, but still, just because something "Just Works(tm)" for one OS and one piece of hardware doesn't mean that is always the case.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[Culture20]

No. In Windows, USB wireless does NOT Just Work(tm). I have to work voodoo _every_time_ I use my USB wireless dongle on my gaming machine (Windows). Linux wireless does Just Work(tm). And it's so easy and GUIfied, it makes me wonder why a company who makes the hardware can't commission better drivers and GUIs for Windows.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Your not alone in having had problems with wifi adapters in windows.
If it happens in Windows it tends to be the peripheral which gets blamed because windows, allegedly, Just Works(tm). If it happens in Linux/Gnu its the OS which is a POS and toys get thrown out of the pram.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[peppepz]

For some reason, Windows XP keeps forgetting my 24-characters-long WPA key every time I change the usb port where I connect my wireless adapter. It just doesn't work for me.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[morgan_greywolf]

Exactly. As (I think) you guessed, I was implying that this also applies to Linux: some WiFi adapters work perfectly well in Linux (The Broadcom adapters coming on most Dell laptops these days come to mind), others need coaxing. The end is the same: don't buy WiFi adapters that suck.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[Anonymous Coward]

PREACH IT DAWG!!!!!!!

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[SiChemist]

I had a friend with a Window XP laptop whose wireless adapter worked fine until she applied service pack 3. After that it would constantly drop the connection.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[loutr]

First, My Belkin wifi USB adapter Just Works under Linux, but not under Windows XP, Vista, or 7. I had to download a driver for it, thank god I could access the web under Linux :)

Second, had the first AC asked a question in an intelligent, humble and polite manner I'm sure he would have got a more informative answer. His post makes him look dumb, fool mouthed and biaised against Linux (in short, a typical /. troll), so I'll have to agree with Shadow-isoHunt's diagnostic ^^

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[dubbreak]

Broadcom is you example of wireless chipsets that work well in linux?!

Broadcom chips working out of the box is pretty recent. I'm quite sure my receding hairline is a result of getting broadcom based cards working (and attempting to get them working reliably). Sure the last 2-3 releases of Ubuntu were fine, but broadcom has been making wireless chipsets a lot longer than that.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you mean that we should answer politely such kind of comments? Ask something politely, and you'll be answered politely. You can see it working in countless forums.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[fishbowl]

>Try win 7 - 20 minutes install and everything works. Seeks out its own drivers and codecs are included.

So we give you a Vista DVD and a new SATA drive, and start a stopwatch for 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes, exactly what "works?"

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[Sancho]

That's because "Linux" supplies drivers for most peripherals which work under Linux, whereas vendors provide drivers for most peripherals which work under Windows.

Not to mention the fact that since Windows is a de facto standard for computing, almost every device is going to have drivers for it.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[Synchis]

Interesting you'd bring up what "Just Works" in windows.

My wifi card in my home PC doesn't work in windows out of the box, and doesn't have a readily available XP driver. I had to hunt for a generic driver and jump through hoops to get it to work.

On the other hand, the same wifi card, in the same machine Just Works in Linux. No fuss, no command line, no configuration. Just enter my wep key when prompted.

In windows, my sound card doesn't work *AT ALL*. Can't find a driver. Not even from the mainboard mfg.

On the other hand, the same sound card, in the same machine Just Works in Linux.

Go figure... apparently my system is confused :P

Or maybe, its you that it confused. Linux now supports more hardware natively than any other operating system in existance. And thanks to projects like the Linux Driver Project, that develops drivers for hardware for companies *FOR FREE*, thats unlikely to change.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure windows has a place in this world, but Windows should no longer be allowed to lead the market on the desktop. It's far too dangerous.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[profplump]

Unfortunately even that isn't true -- almost every device is going to have drivers for the particular version of Windows that was available when the device was new. It's possible there might be support for newer versions of Windows, or that the old ones will continue to work, but unless the device is still on the market it's unlikely the vendor will provide any continuing support.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[Anonymous Coward]

He said Windows 7 not Vista you stupid sack of shit.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[atamido]

To be fair, XP came out in 2001, that's 8 years ago. Installing a Linux distro from then would be pretty useless on most modern hardware too without a lot of internet hunting. Although Microsoft will release XP install CDs that have been updated with the latest service packs, they specifically do not add drivers to the CDs. When OEMs release a new XP CD they will usually include harddrive controller drivers to make installs easier, but that's about it.

Now, Windows 7 RC1 was just released, and has recognized all hardware I've plugged in to it from the get go. Compare this to my roommate's new Ubuntu install on 5 year old hardware and his troubles getting various things to work properly.

I do wish Linux would gain momentum in the desktop space, but it is important to remember that the desktop experience of any OS varies greatly depending on the OS as driver support is never a sure thing.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[Blakey Rat]

Out of curiousity, what voodoo do you have to do? Also, what version of Windows are you using?

I might have just lucked out in my selection of USB wifi, but I've never had any problems in XP or Vista with it.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[hairyfeet]

That is because the way Windows loads USB drivers it pretty much is a new device to Windows. I have had this happen to customers in the past, here is what you do- But a cheapo USB extender, hell even a 1 foot one will work. Leave that plugged into a USB port in the back. Always plug your USB stick into that. Problem solved.

And to the Linux guys- yes you will occasionally come up with problems with Wifi in Windows, but that still doesn't let Linux off the hook. I can sell a new XP box and have a 95% assurance that anything they buy in Walmart/Staples/Best Buy will "just work" dropping my after sale support costs to zero. With Linux I'm looking at a 600% return rate because a good 85%+ of the items in the above stores will NOT work without research, and woe be unto you if you pick the wrong brand, like the Lexmark all in ones which are very very popular here. Expecting Sally home maker or Joe SMB to go trawling forums every time he or she wants to buy a new gadget is frankly ludicrous. That is why mine and every other shop in town is a Windows only shop. It isn't because we hate your OS, it is because the support costs for Linux will bankrupt us.

And PLEASE don't bring up bundling and support contracts. I would be insane to go bundling as the margins on those things like Wifi sticks and USB printers is just awful unless you are buying Walmart quantities, and nobody wants to buy support contracts, see how much hatred Best Buy gets from the public for trying to force those extended warranties down the customers throats. When I sell Linux here is what happens every single time. They look at Kubuntu box and go "Ooohh" and buy. They go to Walmart and buy some gadget on sale, gadget doesn't work so they bring the PC back to be "fixed" and when they find out it can NEVER be fixed, because frankly Linux support for home consumer class gadgets is frankly piss poor at best, then they want their money back and I'm stuck eating the cost between what it sold for new and what I have to sell it for now as a used item.

From a support and return standpoint it is simply cheaper to add in the cost of an $89 XP Home or a $139 XP Pro if they are an SMB customer. They are happy, I'm not looking at all the headaches, the research, and the 600% return rate, so I am happy. Until I can sell a box to my customer and have assurance that at least 80% of the items in the above stores will actually work in Linux the support and return nightmare simply makes Linux a losing proposition. If you are running server Linux is great. If you are willing to trawl forums before every single purchase then it will run fine. But that just cut a good 95% of the market out, including all my customers. Sorry, No Sale.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[Culture20]

I have to use the manufacturer's GUI. Windows XP's GUI apparently doesn't know the magic. Also, I have to do _real_ voodoo: The machine will only get an IP address if

1. It's the first connection after an AP reboot
2. or the first device to have connected to the AP after a reboot is still on (or rejoins)
3. Sometimes needs the passphrases reentered.

The issues don't exist for linux, or other devices, so it's not the AP.
Obviously, it's a vendor-driver quality issue, not a Microsoft issue (just like not having drivers for Linux wouldn't be a Linux issue).

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, XP came out in 2001, that's 8 years ago. Installing a Linux distro from then would be pretty useless on most modern hardware too without a lot of internet hunting.

Everyone prefers modern Linux distributions to these ancient distros. This is not the case for XP vs Vista/7.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[LingNoi]

I don't understand what lunix (little unix) has to do with Linux at all.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, well I'll top your anecdotal-statistically-insignificant tale that supports your opinion with an equally anecdotal-statistically-insignificant tale plus an insinuation that your tale reveals a deep set prejudice against my opinion.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[Elrond, Duke of URL]

Seriously?

First, the poster is an obvious AC troll so that pretty much automatically makes the discussion moot. But, supposing that wasn't the case...

The poster gave absolutely no information as to what sort of problem he was having. All we know is that it involves USB wireless. This is more or less the equivalent of "Our ship is broken. Will you make it go?"

And if the completely vague and generic complaint wasn't enough, the poster made generous use of colorful metaphors. This, more than anything else, is probably why he got the sarcastic response.

If you're going to complain about the user--developer communication challenge, next time please pick a better example than an AC troll.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[peppepz]

That is because the way Windows loads USB drivers it pretty much is a new device to Windows.

Well, I do not know why the Windows wireless stack was designed this way, but I can say that this sucks. It’s an usability problem because an average user does not expect his gadget to behave differently depending on how he connects it to the computer. Even worse, the user could also be not the one who configured the network, and be very puzzled when prompted for a “WPA passkey”.

I have had this happen to customers in the past, here is what you do- But a cheapo USB extender, hell even a 1 foot one will work. Leave that plugged into a USB port in the back. Always plug your USB stick into that. Problem solved.

That’s not a solution. That’s a hassle I have to withstand for the sole reason that the user interface for the Windows wireless networking stack is ill-designed. Which is exactly the kind of things the AC poster said wouldn’t happen in Windows.
The solution would be for Windows XP to remember the network settings independently from the usb port that the network adapter is attached to, like Vista does.

My particular problem was with a laptop with five usb ports, belonging to my father, who barely understands what a wireless network is, let alone how to configure WPA.
I, for one, solved the problem using a priori knowledge of the operating system (with no assistance, in the form of hints or documentation, coming from itself) which led me to configure the WPA password five times, once for every usb port in the laptop, in the hope that in the future Windows wouldn’t decide that the wireless adapter is “new” again.
Which is far from the “just working” philosophy that was advertised earlier in this thread.

And to the Linux guys- yes you will occasionally come up with problems with Wifi in Windows, but that still doesn't let Linux off the hook [...] If you are running server Linux is great. If you are willing to trawl forums before every single purchase then it will run fine. But that just cut a good 95% of the market out, including all my customers. Sorry, No Sale.

Out of curiosity, are you obliged to refund a perfectly working product just because the customer is unhappy with it? Are Apple stores full of people bringing their machines back to the shop because they bought a gadget with no Mac drivers? And in the first place, wouldn’t “the right thing to do” be to explain to the customer the dangers of a Linux-based computer before he buys it?

I don’t think anybody ever thought or said that Linux can replace Windows on all computers sold, starting from tomorrow; Linux distributions do have usability problems (and they are being worked on.)

You say that the real showstopper for large scale Linux adoption is hardware support and I think that’s very true. But I also think it is important to note that for the customer, the support model of Linux is even better than the one of Windows! Because once a device driver is written for Linux, that device is supported nearly forever. On Windows, on the other hand, you only get support for the specific Windows version that device was designed for. Moreover, most gadgets only ever get one release of their drivers (WHQL-signed if you’re lucky), before their manufacturers switch to the next wave of device models, so users often have to live with bugs in harshly-released drivers, with no hope for somebody to fix them sooner or later.

So in the long run, even the average Joe WILL benefit if Linux is successful, because he will enjoy an even wider freedom to buy the devices he likes, without worrying if their drivers are 32- or 64-bits compiled, VXD- or WDM- or WDDM- based, WHQL-certified and so on.
If this is not happening right today, that’s because of “external” factors, unrelated from the good will of Linux developers or the technical design of the Linux kernel.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't seen a windows 7 20 minute all works install yet. I tend to time windows install since the last time I did Windows support I ended up losing about 3-4 hours just installing XP on a Dell that supposedly supported it (lol) but lacked the OEM disk - for a fun test, I had it "just working" with a 20 minutes OpenSUSE install. And yet the magical windows 7 failed me - I guess I should use my anecdotal data to point out that windows 7 is obviously worse than vista then ;)

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[Yfrwlf]

Or you could have a Linux shop, where you only sold stuff compatible with the OS you sell, like Mac shops and Windows shops do. There goes your headache. Oh, but you couldn't do that, because [insert negative emotional brand recognition here]. Fortunately, Linux runs on most Mac and Windows stuff too, so you could even sell some Mac and "Windows hardware" as well.

But, you decided to be a Windows-only shop. Some consumers see value in Linux, it being free, and actually want it and do find uses for it. So do many companies, and more and more OEMs as I'm finding out. You don't apparently see value in it, not enough to have at your store, but that's your choice, and it's a somewhat understandable one don't get me wrong, I guess, with the negative emotional stigmas, and the few issues here and there with Linux (I'm a critic of those issues, don't get me wrong, but I still prefer and use Linux). However, your thinking is a bit old-fashioned due to the changes that are taking place in the market IMO.

I'm happy to see that many challenges are being dealt with, and any nudges to push it in the right direction are appreciated. So, thank you for your posts criticizing driver support, it is an issue and one that great strides have helped resolve with a lot of hardware, but again I think your guesstimates at amount of Linux-compatible hardware are off, but ignoring that... Thanks to constructive criticism and feedback, Linux now has a much more functional wireless networking stack, for example. ^^

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[Synchis]

To be fair? You're making a lot of assumptions about my system.

You seem to assume that my system is an OEM system. It is not. You also seem to assume that my system is some souped up latest and greatest system... again, it is not.

My wifi card is almost 4 years old. I had the same problems getting it to work in Windows 7 as I did in windows XP. Also, the sound drivers provided by my mainboard mfg do not work as advertised.

Now, this is by no means *microsofts* fault, as they do not control 3rd party drivers. But I find it interesting that a system that easily retains over 60% of the market, is no longer fully supported. and the up-and-coming releases of their operating systems have equally frusterating driver issues.

But when I install Linux... It just works. All of it. I didn't even need to install a printer driver. I just plugged it in, and it worked. (Printer sharing on the other hand has been somewhat of a pain.)

The systems all have their +'s and -'s. But when it comes down to it, you have to ask yourself:

On which system are you more likely to get a virus?

On which system are you more likely to have spyware? Malware?

Which system is more likely to get compromised by the next big security threat?

Which system makes up the largest bulk of the massive botnets out there?

When considering it that way... I'd take linux over windows any day.

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[hairyfeet]

Thank you. I appreciate the fact that unlike so many on Slashdot you have given a fair answe instead of labeling me a troll while blasting the "M$FT Monopoly". Here is a simple couple of tests you can do which will show you why I don't carry Linux at my shop. Have you EVER had to "open up bash and type" to fix a problem? I have often found that is the ONLY answer you get for many problems in Linux. Which is understandable, as Linux is a primarily server OS that is admined by people with IT experience that have no trouble with CLI. If your answer is yes, then it is not ready for my home consumers and SMBs. They have grown used to having a GUI and frankly CLI is too dangerous and difficult for them.

Second is the "hairyfeet challenge" which so far the best score is 6 out of 9, which still equals 3 pissed off customers. And as for the other poster whining that " I shouldn't take the PC back" because they got burned by a Windows only device? if I took that attitude I would be out of business in 6 months or less. Word of mouth can make or break a repair shop, and burning my customers doesn't build up good will. Ready for the "hairyfeet challenge? Here goes-

Open up three tabs in your browser. From this moment until the end of the challenge you are a virtual shopper and three of my customers shopping in the stores I'm about to name after buying a Kubuntu box from me. You must NOT do research before purchase! Consumers don't do research before a sale on anything less expensive than a car, and if you want to increase accuracy of the challenge buy the cheapest whenever possible, as consumers buy on features/price most of the time. Here is where you are shopping- In the first tab go to Walmart.com, second Bestbuy.com, third Staples.com. These are the "big three" and where my customers shop for gadgets. Next place on of each of these items in your virtual cart-An all in one printer, a Wifi USB card, and a USB TV Tuner. There are the three most asked about items here. Now go to Ubuntu forums and see if your items are supported. If you wish top increase accuracy you will not avoid brands like Lexmark as a consumer who isn't familiar with Linux would have no idea to avoid them.

How many carts were you able to get out of the store with 100% support? if you are lucky you got out with one cart, and that is if you "cheated" by avoiding Lexmark that the average consumer wouldn't remember to do even if you warned them beforehand. And THAT is why I can't support and sell Linux in my shop. Because those other two carts would be bringing their PC back to "fix" and when I couldn't do so I would have to return their money or risk losing business. Trying to bundle you will simply go bankrupt. I can add value to a PC purchased from me by virtue of the software and tweaks applied before you pick it up. The only difference between an all in one I carry and the one at Walmart is that Walmart will undercut me by 30% or more because they can buy them by the trainload and I can not. The margins on such items are so bad that short of buying them by the trainload I would end up losing money.

So it really isn't being "old fashioned" it is simply the bottom line, nothing more. I have my business to make money, not to be an advocate for one company or another. I can't afford to bundle as I will lose to Walmart, just as I have bought many of the supplies of hardware from fellow shops that were stupid enough to get into the laptop game and were chewed up by the Walmart and Staples ability to sell "loss leaders" which they make up with other items that they simply didn't have to sell. With Windows my after sale support costs are virtually zero. This is because I have a nice Almeza cd that automates the installation of antivirus, antispyware, oxygen office, etc. Time required to use? About 5 minutes of my time, followed by 30 of letting it run auto updates. So when a customer walks out my door with their new PC the only calls I'll be getting from them is "can you build/look at my (insert family me

Re:LINUX IS SHIT

[atamido]

I think you're reading a bit far into what I wrote. I wasn't making any assumptions about your computer, in fact I didn't talk about your computer at all. I said that because XP only ships with drivers that are AT LEAST 8 years old, you will likely have quite a bit of work to do to get drivers installed for any hardware designs newer than that. However any actively maintained Linux distribution is going to have current drivers, and so is more likely to work out of box.

A more fair comparison is Windows 7, which has current drivers on the install media. And as I said, some hardware Just Works with Windows and not with Linux. For other hardware it is the opposite. It just depends.

In related news

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile back at GNOME H.Q. the developers are still undecided whether to move the "Ok" button on the default help screen 10 pixels to the right. Most think it would be a good idea but a hard core few insist that such a momentous change requires further study as it may confuse new users.

A new version of the dialogue is expected in 2037.

Re:In related news

[zevans]

+1 Funny (but true)

Re:In related news

[moosesocks]

Say what you want about the glacial speed with which GNOME progresses. Their developers don't rip out 2/3 of the features of their applications, and call it a " major upgrade."

There's also a key difference between 'minimalism' and 'feature-deprived'. Apple understand this, and the GNOME team seem to be catching on. XFce's flexibility also makes it a surprisingly good environment to work in, despite being billed as a 'bare bones' environment. KDE almost certainly doesn't understand this distinction, and I'd frankly be surprised if they had any sort of UI-design review process in place.

Take a look at the most recent release of Amarok, and tell me how the user interface effectively helps the user complete the task that the program was designed to accomplish. Now consider the percentage of screen real-estate that the application devotes to this task (it's around 30%, although you could argue that it's even less than that).

Now compare it to Winamp's famous classic skin, which only takes up a fraction of a 640x480 monitor, has collapsable UI elements to make it smaller if desired, and offers more options to the user up-front with textually-labeled controls. I can only guess what 1 of the 7 icons on the bottom right corner of the previously-linked screenshot actually do. I'll give credit to the KDE team for moving away from the 'Dozens of identical-looking blue icons' paradigm, although the new standard frankly isn't much better.

Re:In related news

[Trogre]

... and then they screw it all up anyway by insisting that a terminal window must have close buttons on every single tab.

Re:In related news

[kigrwik]

Say what you want about the glacial speed with which GNOME progresses. Their developers don't rip out 2/3 of the features of their applications, and call it a " major upgrade."

You obviously don't remember gnome 2.0

Re:Sad, but true:

[ta bu shi da yu]

Eric Allman might well agree.

Re:DRM support? In the kernel?

[TheGratefulNet]

different DRM. this isn't 'rights mgmt' drm.

sometimes, 3 letters can mean different things.

Re:Features

[BrokenHalo]

Hmm, let me see: Nerd I'd Like to Fuck? Nope, doesn't do it for me.

POHMEL

[dimethylxanthine]

Not sure about the story behind naming POHMELFS what it is, but "pohmel'e" in Russian means "hangover". You can only guess...

Re:POHMEL

[hattig]

I didn't know that elves drank that much! I thought they distanced themselves from the behaviours of dwarves...

And yes, don't these filesystems have catchy user-friendly names, like "Linux Logging Filesystem" and "Linux Object Filesystem" and "Linux Drunken Spew Over Storage Filesystem"?

Re:POHMEL

[Anonymous Coward]

And Evgeniy Polyakov (the POHMELFS dev) sounds like a russian name. I guess he knows.

in soviet russia file systems name hangovers after you

Re:POHMEL

[Anonymous Coward]

The developer is Evegeny Poliakov: www.ioremap.net
I'm pretty sure it's related :)

Re:POHMEL

[Anonymous Coward]

A russian wrote it.

DRM for Trolls

[chill]

The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) is a component of the Direct Rendering Infrastructure, a system to provide efficient video acceleration (especially 3D rendering) on Unix-like operating systems, e.g. Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD.

It consists of two in-kernel drivers (realized as kernel modules on Linux), a generic drm driver, and another which has specific support for the video hardware. This pair of drivers allows a userspace client direct access to the video hardware.

From WikiPedia.

Karma Whoring FTW!

Intel integrated graphics now work properly

[zevans]

If you're using 2.7.x Intel xorg drivers you NEED this kernel. Anyone struggling with weird freezes, font corruption, and various other troubles - turns out most of these problems weren't in the Intel drivers at all, but in the GEM and DRI code in the kernel. Mine's been rock solid since RC5 for stability, and RC8 finally fixed the problem with fonts under UXA.

Re:Intel integrated graphics now work properly

[stinerman]

I could never get XvMC working on anything, but using kernel modesetting/DRI2 crashed X every time I tried to play a video in Mplayer. I hope this will fix both issues.

Re:Intel integrated graphics now work properly

[Hurricane78]

Well, I noticed that it has to fit the driver. And some installations change the association. So you then end up with an XvMC of nVidia, with the main driver from Xorg, or something like that. It gets even worse, when you did not reinstall the external driver after a kernel update, so that the module can't get loaded anyway.

In gentoo you would do
emerge -atv nvidia-drivers
and
eselect xvmc set nvidia
after a kernel update, when using the nvidia binary blob drivers.

Re:Intel integrated graphics now work properly

[Erikderzweite]

Hey, thanks a lot for the info! These damn fonts were driving me nuts! Good to hear it's solved. I'll test it on my lappy now and if it flies -- gotta close that bugreport...

Re:Intel integrated graphics now work properly

[nightfire-unique]

I'm not alone! :)

I struggled for hours playing with mtrr's, video drivers, and KDE (thinking it might be a bad QT build or something, since I updated to KDE4 at the same time this the 2.7 series intel driver went in).

I never would have suspected the kernel until I went through about a dozen bug reports, and decided to give 2.6.30-rc8 a shot. Solved all my issues as well.

Re:DRM support? In the kernel?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Just look at RMS vs. RMS. (One has to wonder if that was intentional...)

Thottle Capability

[kenp2002]

Still no support for SLA\95% throttling of processing power allocated to VMs.

Case in Point:

VM 1 : 80% Of processor utilization
VM 2 : 20% of processor utilization
          : Can borrow up to 20% of VM1's allocation
          : if unused.

The scheduler does great things don't get me wrong but when it comes to provisioning systems for various clients some want a garuntee on the level of processing power that is available at any time. This is true in test systems as well where yout Integration, Acceptance, and Performance virtual environments may share Bare Iron with some production VMs.

Now this is old hat easy with mainframes (MIP allocation\weights between LPARS\SYSPLEX) but with more and more focus on VMs and hosted VMs SLAs on processing power is becoming more of an issue.

Nice values are not enough when writing contracts... Great work Linux team but could we get some more granular control over VM provisioning with SLAs in mind? Yeah we can build user space systems to help manage VMs but kernel level provisioning and auditing is something we need with KVM. Gotta have the reports to show the customer you are meeting the agreeded upon SLAs.

And for my own personal use, I'd love to be able to throttle a dos 6.22 VM to 486 speeds so some of those ancient programs can be ran for historical purposes. (Without bombing the processor with dummy NOP and other MOSLO crap so we keep our power consumption down.)

Just some musings as Linux rolls along...

Re:Thottle Capability

[Anonymous Coward]

The scheduler does great things don't get me wrong but when it comes to provisioning systems for various clients some want a garuntee on the level of processing power that is available at any time.

Google for cpusets...

Re:Thottle Capability

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

This is true in test systems as well where yout Integration, Acceptance, and Performance virtual environments may share Bare Iron with some production VMs.

If your test and prod VMs are sharing iron, some might say you're Doing It Wrong.

Re:Thottle Capability

[kenp2002]

In large enterprises no, your test environments are still "Production" machines, aka they are mission critical with the expected uptimes. The "test" part of it is what you are running in the system, not the maturity of the iron itself. When a test environment is down that is just as important as the side the consumer sees. The hardware, especially with modern VM infrastructure is all production class. The VMs which the whole point of VMs is to isolate an environment.

Bare Iron in virtual infrastructure is just a resource now in most enterprises. It has become a Fabric of sorts now with SAN, ISCSI, etc. Along with clustering and failover the model has changed drastically on how hardware and software are managed.

Virutal Machines have changed the data center and now VMs result in hardware pools and fabrics rather then discrete machines.

This is important for EOM\EOQ\EOY system activity.

By establishing high\med\low power fabrics VMs can be shifted as needed based on expected hardware resources.

During End of Month say at a bank you may transfer all of your test VMs to a low power fabric to allow production to capitalize all the power. As certain development phases come and go you may want to shift which fabric your VM is running on. This is also crucial for testing VM functionality in various LOCATIONs within the network fabric.

Example
Before we promote this code to production lets move the ACPT systems to HPERF Pool (where production always exists) to see if traffic is routed correctly (transforming the ACPT environment VMs effectively into a DRESS rehersal envionrment.)

For performance testing this may be necessary for mid-sized corporation that cannot afford to duplicate their high performance fabric. So we know that given the 3rd week of second quarter the activity on HIPERF1 is at 5% so we can move the ACPT environment to HIPERF1 and run a full load test and reserve the existing HIPERF1 applications 10% (so our load test can pin the system up to 90%).

That kind of provisioning is a pain in user space but soo damn useful. Same for facility relocation or hardware maintenance. Shutting down MEDPERF1 fabric for hardware maintenance? Shove 50% of the VMs onto HIPERF1 and 50% to LOWPERF1 until maintenance is complete.

The idea is that if you have a production ANYTHING in a VM then it is usually part of a cluster or pool. If a test VM, or any VM, is capable of bringing down the whole bare iron system then you wouldn't have VMs at all to being with. So if you do have PROD VMs then the risk of another VM dropping the system has already been defined as an acceptable risk.

This is what is driving the debate with cloud computing and why mainframes still are around. Some things you can virtualize with low risk, some things can live in the cloud, and for everything else there is a mainframe.

Re:Thottle Capability

[ratboy666]

Here we have a disconnect. If the OS you are using DOESN'T support a feature you need, use one that DOES.

If you want to run POSIX/Unix mostly server applications in a way that allows resources to be controlled at this level, don't use Linux. Oracle/SUN has this nice open-source OS called Solaris that supports containers (zones) that will do what you want.

VMware has this nice product called ESX that can do the same thing https://www.vmware.com/support/esx2/doc/esx20admin_res.html except that you still need another OS.

Which leaves you with ESX + Linux, or ESX + Solaris, or Solaris. Of course the ESX solution allows ESX + Windows as a possibility, although Orcle/SUN has another product called VirtualBox.

Now, it can be difficult choosing -- because there are even OTHER solutions that would work. Remember, Linux (though good, and my preferred desktop and small server platform) is not necessarily the end-all and be-all in OS's.

Also, remember that, even if a platform is "free" (as in freedom, and even, sometimes, as in beer), there are people out there who can help you architect a solution (usually, not so "free" as in beer).

Your personal use would not be met by these solutions, though. Sorry about that (the accurate DOS machine including timing). But you did mention LPARs; and that idea can be supported.

Re:Thottle Capability

[Anonymous Coward]

Option 1) Pay somebody to include these for you.
Option 2) Do it yourself.
Option 3) Try and persuade somebody to do it for you.
Option 4) Don't include SLAs with items that don't support your ability to do it.

Re:Thottle Capability

[kenp2002]

The examples you list, even ESX doesn't have facilities for SLA based provisioning.

"It's a would like to have" scenario. Based on your response Linux developers had no business event looking into KVM.

The whole point of progress is to look for new features and new opporunties. I can think of quite a few service providers that would love having SLA based provisioning in the linux kernel so they done have to spend $10,000 per MIP on a mainframe from IBM provisioning Counter Strike servers for example while being able to tuck a Gentoo Portage DistCC host on the same iron.

Re:Thottle Capability

[nightfire-unique]

Funny how things run in cycles, eh?

When I was growing up in the late 80s/early 90s I always dreamed of becoming an S/390 admin. I loved the concept of VMs and physical hardware abstraction. It just seemed so... perfect and elegant.

Throughout my career as a *nix admin (over the last 15 years) I've always pushed more and more VM isolation into my datacenters. It started with chroot() containers, then VMware 1.x instances for small lightweight systems, then user-mode-linux, and now ESX and VirtualBox. My clusters are as you describe - a fabric onto which I set hosts that my users need for whatever purpose. Slowly but surely I am becoming a mainframe admin, even if it isn't quite as I could have imagined 20 years ago.

Re:Thottle Capability

[kenp2002]

What I cannot figure out for my life is why they implement virtual processors in VM technology but don't bother giving the admins the ability to set execution thresholds on those virtual processors. It's a pain because we could do so much more with that fine grain control for writing SLA contracts which gets Linux in more enterprises where SLAs are required.

Re:Thottle Capability

[ratboy666]

"ESX Server uses a proportional share mechanism to allocate CPU, memory, and disk resources when multiple virtual machines are contending for the same resource. Network bandwidth is controlled with network traffic shaping.

CPU and memory resource each offer an additional dimension of control. For CPU management, you can specify a minimum and maximum percentage of a single physical CPU's processing power for each virtual machine. You may also specify CPU shares and restrict a virtual machine to run on a certain set of physical CPUs (CPU scheduling affinity). For more information, see Admission Control Policy."

Which is, of course, NOT "SLA Provisioning". To achieve SLA provisioning, you need a QoS history, SLA policies, an evaluator, allocator, and supervisor. For one, QoS history is Unix classically is "sar" data, but beyond collection of certain kernel data, this is beyond the kernel. SLA policies are similarly NOT in the kernel domain. Basically, the kernel provides information and limits, which can then be utilized to provide SLA provisioning. Linux does not offer this base functionality (and control), whereas it is available in Solaris and ESX.

VMware also offers warm/hot migration which can aid in the implementation of your SLAs. Is supporting an SLA expensive? Sure, it is. But what I was referring to was the availability of the kernel level features needed to base the feature on. *I* didn't mention SLA Provisioning and controlled DOS boxes for games in the same post. Since the GP *did* mention both of these, I assumed that it wasn't REALLY about SLA Provisioning, but about being able to control virtual machines to a finer degree.

Re:Thottle Capability

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_System_Resource_Manager WSRM enables users to manage CPU and memory utilization on a per process basis. An administrator sets targets for the amount of hardware resources that running applications or users are allowed to consume. It can allocate resources among multiple applications on a server according to defined policies.

Re:Thottle Capability

[mandolin]

And for my own personal use, I'd love to be able to throttle a dos 6.22 VM to 486 speeds so some of those ancient programs can be ran for historical purposes. (Without bombing the processor with dummy NOP and other MOSLO crap so we keep our power consumption down.)

I assume you've checked out DosBox and its 'cycles' configuration option/command? It's not precise but it works quite well for me.

Re:Thottle Capability

[Eil]

And for my own personal use, I'd love to be able to throttle a dos 6.22 VM to 486 speeds so some of those ancient programs can be ran for historical purposes. (Without bombing the processor with dummy NOP and other MOSLO crap so we keep our power consumption down.)

I think the "correct" solution to that is a 486 hardware "emulator" that uses a timer to run the virtualized CPU's clock at a certain rate. You're not going to get very far telling Intel and AMD that they need an instruction to slow down their chips.

Re:Thottle Capability

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I would agree with most of this - but for one thing. You absolutely cannot risk that a screw-up in your development environment will impact production. This applies all the way through, such as:

- a dev process running on multiple VMs that takes too much CPU
- a mistake in rolling out new VM images that impacts prod VMs on the same box

TEsting should not be considered the province of software alone. Your test and dev environments also allow for testing of new infrastructure changes as well. Hosting them on the same physical hardware loses that separation, and can increase the risk to the production environment -- though the specific level of risk might vary depending on the env.

This a trade-off. The down-side of it is that your production systems are never truly tested unless this is done explicitly before they're put into service - but this is no different than when each server was it's hardware.

Re:Thottle Capability

[nightfire-unique]

Give it time. It took IBM decades to reach this level of control and stability.

Re:Thottle Capability

[Burpmaster]

What? Linux has had that in an officially released version for more than a year! It's called fair group scheduling. You assign processes to groups and set the cpu share for each group. Then processor time is allotted proportionally between all groups that want to run. Nice levels are only used within a group.

A nice default is grouping by uid. Then users can't hog CPU time from others by creating a ton of processes.

Re:Thottle Capability

[kenp2002]

The point of VM tech is isolation and why mainframes are still popular. My experience so far is most is code migration rather then VM images. I've seen a few DEV VMs try to capitalize PROD CPU but they are automatically live migrated off when they exceed 60% utilization.

The method for handling infrastructure changes from company to company. The leading trend I see currently is the "Fabric" architecture where you have large pools of hardware akin to mainframes. There really isn't new infrastructure in the existing pools. New infrastructure is a whole new fabric.

FAB1
FAB2
FAB3

If they deploy a new FAB4 pool then the test VMs are transfered first then eventually PROD VMS. The older FABS are either decomissioned or turned into LOWPERF, MEDPERF pools.

The trend I see is high mobility in VM technology. Not saying you are incorrect but I am retired from system administration an enginnering (I am now a humble Business Analyst... ah peace..)

I know that security concerns for data protection prevent production and test sharing a SAN system but so far I have not seen any vulnerabilities in one VM leaking data to another such that GLBA\SOX\CISP would prohibit VMs sharing Iron (data is the key, not execution.) But that may change.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the next 5 years.

Re:Thottle Capability

[kenp2002]

Hence why I ask, if no one asked they'd have no reason to progress that way.

Re:Thottle Capability

[kenp2002]

The problem is a bit more complex then CFS\FGS\etc.. It is a weakness in x86 in reality that would take exotic workarounds.

A VM in general is a single process. Process Time allocated isn't neccessarily reflective of performance especially when time sensitive real time transactions are required INSIDE the VM. Halt or suspend a process too long and the task inside the VM might crap out.

Part of the problem is having hard and soft limits on processing load and controlling which other systems can borrow from.

Using your example (a very good one at that) the best an admin can do is have a GROUP called say VM and within use nice values inside. But with SLAs you have to have a hard floor for a VM, used or otherwise as well has a hard ceiling.

Here is an example that you can try to work out:

VM1 must have 25% access to a processor at all times and can use up to 95% of the processor.

VM2 Must have access to 25% of the processor at all times that VM1 is not using. And can use as much as it can use as needed any unused CPU usage.

VM2 Must have access to 10% of the processor at all time that VM1 is not using but can never use more then 15% of the processor regardless of what VM1 or VM2 is using.

VM3 Must have access to 20% of the processor at all times that VM1 is not using but can never use more then 28% of the processor.

At no time can any VM get less then 1% of the CPU time.

Now try setting that up using any existing scheduling mechanics in Linux. (I just threw that together as an example real quick.)

Those are the kind of questions that SLA based provisioning has to deal with.

The tricky part is the hard limits. Once a process is kicked off many times it becomes difficult, if not impossible to throttle it (rather then say, suspend it for a while, a.k.a put a job on hold) as it executes based on an SLA with hard and soft limits.

See nice values are not % weights, they are priority indicators nor can you get a MIPS weighting to allocate either. Run time dynamic systems exist that will re-nice things to try and meet a target but those are not fine grained enough to write contracts against.

e.g.

VM1 Running and tracking it's CPU time is at 25%
VM2 suddenly exceeds it's allocation so the tracker renices it to drop it's priority until it goes back into it's sla.

Awww hell this will take too long: short version: User space tools suck at managing this.

Re:Thottle Capability

[Burpmaster]

It's pretty trivial to guarantee minimums, at least. Just give each VM a group with x points of cpu_share per percent and make sure your total cpu_share for everything on the system does not exceed 100x. Maybe limit it to 95x for some safety margin.

I don't get why you'd need to enforce a high maximum. It's up to your clients to purchase a service level high enough to meet their needs. They shouldn't count on anything above the minimum. I can understand a maximum equal to or only slightly higher than the minimum, though, so they don't get used to a performance level that can go away any instant. But other than that, you might as well allow them to use 100% when it's available.

BTW, I can't implement your example because it is self-contradictory, ambiguous, and vague. I'll assume you meant to specify four VMs instead of giving two conflicting requirements about VM2.

You said in your first paragraph about VM2 that it gets 25% of the processor time not being used by VM1. But by definition any CPU time given to VM2 is not being used by VM1. I think you meant to say the CPU time is assigned to VM1 with priority, and then 25% of the remaining time is given to VM2. But if all other VMs must take CPU time with lower priority than VM1, as you seem to have requested, then VM1 has an effective minimum of 95% of the CPU time. And the remaining VMs split 5% of the CPU time. Is that really what you meant?

If so, these are the minimums:

VM1 = 95%
VM2A = 25% of 5% = 1.25%
VM2B = 10% of 5% = 0.5%, but raised to the global minimum of 1%
VM3 = 20% of 5% = 1%

If we strike out all the "that VM1 is not using" language, then the 1% rule is completely redundant because everything already has a higher minimum.

What's vague is that you seem to indicate that extra CPU time beyond the minimum must be divided up, not proportionally, but according to specific rules. And you never specified those rules. Also, I can't see how any such set of rules could be more useful than proportional division. Heck, they'd probably just simplify to fixed percentages, like what happened with the minimums above.

Re:Thottle Capability

[kenp2002]

They are not conflicting (But misnumbered that should have gone vm1,2,3,4).

Re:Thottle Capability

[Burpmaster]

OK, now what did you mean by "VM2 Must have access to 25% of the processor at all times that VM1 is not using."

Re:Thottle Capability

[kenp2002]

Ok we'll use MIPS.

There are 1000 MIPS on the system.

Production can use UP to 950 MIPS. With 5% reserved for system overhead.

Lets Say out of that 950 production is using only 100 MIPS at the moment. That leaves 850 left.

VM2 must, in contrast to VM3 and VM4 must have access to 213 MIPS roughly. (25% of the 850 remaining.)

VM3 and VM4 cannot steal any of those 213 MIPS as they are earmarked for VM2. But per their own configuration can borrow from the remaning 637 that are now remaining that are not earmarked except when they are capped.

Now for most processors you can run a quick MIPS benchmark and get a rough % to MIP conversion (You'll never get an true measure as some instructions are SIMD and MIMD) so CPU cycle level accounting isn't always an option.

The reason for this scenario varies from industry to industry. But when contracts get written that says "My system environment that I am paying X dollars for will always have X MIPS allocated to it", you have to be able to provide those hard targets to meet the contract requirements.

Hence for instance a hosting company running both web service and say a counter strike server they could set hard targets for the web VM and soft borrow options for the Counter-strike server (or vise versa since the CS server is time sensitive).

This also in larger clustered fabrics allow for controlling\protecting against a slashdot like effect in CPU usage rather then bandwidth.

Going into distributed cloud computing this would come in handy for commoditizing distributed CPU usage as a utility (you give us a VM with X SLA and we pay you 1 cent per MIP hour we get from that VM.)

Why another filesystem?!

[Psiren]

Can anyone explain to me why Linux has so many filesystems? Windows has had NTFS for years (admittedly, several versions, but never any compatibility issues that I've come across), and Linux has, what, 73 or something?! Is it really that hard to get it right?

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[fbjon]

This is something quite different and exciting: a log-structured file system, for storing your files on dead trees.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[harryandthehenderson]

Can anyone explain to me why Linux has so many filesystems?

Because one filesystem isn't optimal for all cases? Because people want to experiment with new things? Why does it matter?

Windows has had NTFS for years (admittedly, several versions, but never any compatibility issues that I've come across), and Linux has, what, 73 or something?! Is it really that hard to get it right?

And Windows has had FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, exFAT, VFAT, FFS2, DFS, EFS. Was it really that hard to get it right?

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because filesystems are not condoms (one size fits all).

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[tick-tock-atona]

Can anyone explain to me why Windows has so many viruses? Linux has had no viruses for years (admittedly, several attempts, but never any in the wild that I've come across), and Windows has, what, 73 billion or something?! Is it really that hard to get it right?

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Nadir]

Most of these are experimenting in new directions. And ext4 is backwards compatibile with ext3 which is backwards compatible with ext2 (the reverse is not true: i.e. you can't mount an ext4 filesystem with ext3).

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Partly because they can, partly because it allows Linux to read and write filesystems used by other operating systems.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Dishevel]

NTFS first off isn't right. Never has been.

Linux has quite a few file systems. File systems that are quick and light. Ones that are built for Moving huge chunks of data. Ones that are adept at handling Massive databases and millions of requests. Linux has a few that are done right. Right for what you need it to do. Not what one person decides you should do. That is the beauty of Linux.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to be the one to tell you, but one size condom definitely does not fit all.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Culture20]

POHMELFS is a filesystem that can do what a lot of people have been wanting to do for a while: Use that extra 100GB (or TB/PB for our future readers) that no one ever uses on their workstations as redundant distributed network storage, or the same for clusters instead of buying dedicated storage machines. Of course, this requires Linux with kernel 2.6.30 running on all those workstations.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the "Is it really that hard to get it right?" part gave parent the answers he/she deserved, but I am honestly curious about why there are so many file systems? Not criticizing - just wondering.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[ta bu shi da yu]

Uh... you just got modded as informative. Genius.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[harryandthehenderson]

Because one filesystem doesn't meet the needs of every user? Secondly, Linux isn't the only OS with multiple file systems. In a previous post I outlined 9 different filesystems just from Microsoft for Windows.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget HPFS. I think they finally took it out, but it was in there for quite a few releases. Best FS windows ever had.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[park3r]

Funny, but you're not comparing similar things.

Though I do find it interesting that by simplifying things to make it easier on the average user (such as which type of filesystem to use) and subsequently gaining popularity, it has made itself a larger payoff for viruses. Just like the infected copies of Photoshop CS4 and iWork on torrent sites that are only really cropping up now that Apple is gaining serious popularity. Though it's less likely to get a virus from a trusted software repository, wild viruses could eventually happen to Linux too.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[wolrahnaes]

It's the combination of a bit of NIH plus the freedom that Linux brings to a programmer. If you know enough C to not break things horribly and can operate Google, you can create a filesystem. There are also hundreds of proprietary filesystems from older hardware running other OSes, and Linux supports a number of those thanks to users of those older systems developing drivers for them.

I'd bet that the vast majority of filesystems supported by Linux are rarely if ever used, and when used they're operated in read-only mode to retrieve data from old disks.

There are still a number, probably in the low teens, of filesystems in active use on modern Linux systems. Those are typically chosen either for compatibility with other platforms (FAT and it's derivatives for example, no one sane would choose to use that when other options are available, but it's just so compatible that often other options don't exist) or for specific job requirements (at one point I ran XFS on my file server because it supported growing the FS while mounted and seemed to be the best choice at the time for a box primarily handling large files). So I guess after all that, yes, it is that hard to get it right because the definition of right varies. Some jobs might want a filesystem to just be incredibly fast with a certain type of data and possibly rely on a nice RAID controller for reliability and caching, others might want the filesystem to handle everything and allow the controller to be dumb. SSDs bring an entirely different set of needs to the table and a filesystem that was laid out to be fast on disk might have serious problems on some SSDs.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[peppepz]

You forgot High Sierra, ISO9660, UDF.

And WinFS. Oh, wait...

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot Vista's famous WinFS. Oh yeah.. that was dropped because they couldn't finish it in time.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[xenolion]

Please tell me these question are a joke right?? Cause if you have to ask them please turn off your computer, get up from the desk cause you have to be very drunk right now and its not safe for drunk and type.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[mcgrew]

Sorry, lady, but no matter what your husband says, one size condom does NOT fit all.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[morgan_greywolf]

Because one filesystem isn't optimal for all cases?

Exactly. You wouldn't use a journaling filesystem (ext3, JFS, XFS) on an SD card. In networked environments, some filesystems are optimized for general use (CIFS, NFS) while others are optimized for a clustered environment (GFS, VMFS), while others are optmized for a distributed environment (Andrew Filesystem, CODA Filesystem). Log-structured filesystems are a new technology that maximizes write throughput, something that is key to optimizing speed in write-heavy environments: this is as opposed to conventional filesystems which are optimized for randomly reading and writing files in-place.

You wouldn't necessarily want a log-structured filesystem in a database environment, for example, because the performance hit from incurring more seeks that are necessarily a part of a log-structured filesystem would be prohibitive for queries.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because one filesystem isn't optimal for all cases?

The thing is, Linux strives so hard for the "optimum" that, while doing so, they end up in mediocrity. That's because its programmers are so concerned with micro-optimizations and top speed that they lack the ability to design properly and make good abstractions.

Would it really be that hard to have ONE good fs that you could tune to different use cases? Probably not. But the average Linux coder sees that something isn't fast in case X and goes ahead redoing the entire wheel. And why? Because the thing he just looked at wasn't designed very well either and can't be adapted easily to different use scenarios. And why? Because it was done by a half-assed coder like himself. And so the circle closes.

Linux needs more people that can properly design software and make good abstractions - instead of narrow-minded code monkeys that can't see beyond their own crap that they are willing to completely rewrite in two revisions anyway because they lost the big picture.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[SpooForBrains]

plus, lets be honest, NTFS is crap. The only reason they're still using it is because there is too much involved in transitioning to a new one. The absense of WinFS from 7 is a testament to this.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[LWATCDR]

Funny but has Windows had many Viruses lately. I know that Virus has become a common term for all sorts of programs but this is Slashdot. I thought that a Virus was a program that would self propagate usually using a boot block method. Not many people boot from floppies any more.
You do have some email viruses but the vast majority of those I would call Trojans and depend on somebody to actually run them.
Then of course your have all sorts of exploits that then try to infect other systems but wouldn't those be worms?
And then you have BonzoBuddy.....

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Ephemeriis]

Can anyone explain to me why Linux has so many filesystems? Windows has had NTFS for years (admittedly, several versions, but never any compatibility issues that I've come across), and Linux has, what, 73 or something?! Is it really that hard to get it right?

First up, you've got some incorrect assumptions/information about Windows.

Windows has not had just NTFS for years. Windows has gone through several different flavors of FAT (FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT, VFAT).

As far as NTFS goes... You dismiss the various versions, but then you're counting revisions to the various filesystems in Linux. NTFS has gone through four or five major revisions. Microsoft doesn't really advertise those revisions... They just keep calling it NTFS. But those revisions have added features and fixed bugs and basically changed the way the filesystem operates. Those revisions are no more or less significant than the changes from EXT3 to EXT4.

Windows also offers a couple special-purpose filesystems... Like EFS and DFS...

Windows can also handle NFS shares.

You can also install support for other filesystems (EXT, HFS) in Windows.

So, ultimately, Windows has at least 15ish filesystems going on... And that's just right off the top of my head, without doing any research at all.

Now, as for why Linux has so many different filesystems available, it's simply because no single filesystem is perfect for everything. One filesystem might be good if you've got tons of tiny files... Another filesystem might be better if you've got tons of huge files... Another filesystem might be better if you need extensive journaling and reliability... Another filesystem might be better if you just need raw speed...

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[mcgrew]

Must... not... feed... Ah, screw it.

There are a lot of reasons why windows has so many viruses. The one touted by Windows fans is that 90% of PCs have Windows, making it a fat target. Of course, this discounts the fact that Apple sells millions of computers every year, which should make it a fat target, too, but I don't see any Apple viruses either.

But the 90% seems to me to be the reason, but a different reason - Microsoft has no incentive to "get it right". As long as they can get their OS preinstalled on all the Dells and HPs and etc, and aren't losing revenue by writing a secure OS, why bother? After all, their only aim, unlike Linux's aim, is to make money, like every other corporation. You don't start a corporation to better the world, you start a corporation to make money. period. Apple makes their PCs secure because they have to - they don't own the market likd MS does.

And the 90% also means that Windows users are, on the whole, less tech-savvy, making not only the OS but its users easy targets. A non-tech savvy user will install a trojan where someone who knows better will think twice. A tech savvy user will have a password like Xc4-99_Zza?R2D2, while most Windows users will use something like 1234.

Windows almost requires its users to run as admin (remember, Microsoft has no incentive to do it differently) while better written OSes don't need this. No other OS has anything as stupidly dangerous as Active-X.

There are many, many more reasons. These are just a few that popped into the top of my head.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wood is very durable but I hope we eventually get a stone-structured file system for long lasting backups. Wood doesn't survive fires.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[LWATCDR]

Well the idea that NTFS got it right is funny to start with. Defrag??? I still have to freaking Defrag?
Take a look at the feature set of ZFS and NTFS and tell me that NTFS got it right.
Also Windows does have few more file systems like Fat32 and VFat. You can also install EXT support in XP as well.
The real answer is that one file system doesn't work for everything. You only think that Windows has a single filesystem because that is the the default option. If you install Ubuntu you will get EXT3 I think by default or maybe EXT4. I have not checked lately. You may never even know what file system you are using with some Linux distros. But.. Linux give you options that Windows just doesn't to use different file system that may fit your needs better. If you are just going to use Linux as a desktop then just use the default and don't worry about it.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[TheRaven64]

Log-structured filesystems are a new technology

Haha! This is the kind of wonderful comment I see a lot from Linux users. The first operating system to ship with a log-structured filesystem was the Sprite kernel in 1990. It was rewritten for 4.4BSD, which was released in 1995. Then, 15 years later, suddenly Linux developers hear about it and it's a brand new technology.

Linux is not the whole world. Most of the 'new' technologies in Linux appeared in other UNIX-like systems first, and many of the implementations in Linux are inferior to the originals (although some are better).

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Jugalator]

Why does it matter?

Complexity, attack vectors, having to spread out resources to commit to maintaining multiple file systems. I'm not saying I'm an advocate for anything specific here, and I'm not saying Windows is better, I'm just trying to answer your question on why it *can* be a bad idea to just keep pushing out file systems. Of course, Linux might need this direly, and then this fs might be a good idea.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Opportunist]

The reason why you have so much Windows malware and so little for Mac (aside of the smaller target) is simply the same why you get more Windows software and fewer Mac software (at least in areas where core system knowledge is required, as is for malware): Fewer programmers who know the inner workings of the OS.

It's actually that simple. How many people do you know that could write a driver for MacOS? And how many for Windows?

Malware doesn't come to life automagically when someone wants it. Like any software, it has to be written.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Opportunist]

Because one virus isn't optimal for all cases? Because people want to experiment with new things? Why does it matter?

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[ifrag]

Windows has had NTFS for years (admittedly, several versions, but never any compatibility issues that I've come across)

XP will kill Shadow Copy data from Vista on NTFS volumes. Granted, all the data should be there and read / writes should work fine so it's not really a serious "compatibility" issue, it's more just like feature incompatibility. Of course after going back to Vista if you needed a prior version it's gone. And there might be some problems with System Restore if it's using Shadow Copy features.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[vadim_t]

Many of the filesystems come from different projects. Say, XFS first existed in Irix, then was ported to Linux.

The ext* family got started long ago and remains backwards compatible. It's not very flashy, but safe and well supported.

Some filesystems like ReiserFS have specific aims like efficiently handling huge directories and large amounts of small files. Those are things that can matter a lot for specific workloads.

Then there are very specialized filesystems like compressed readonly filesystems that are highly compact, and those specific to raw flash devices (not flash drives, but actual flash chips soldered in that are accessed directly).

It's not possible to have a single filesystem that optimizes for every possible use case. Some uses are mutually contradictory. For instance, a journal takes space, which conflicts with filesystems that aim for very efficient space usage, such as those intended for embedded devices with space measured in MB.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh... How about because virus coders create their product for the broadest possible market?... Windows. If Linux were top-dog, don't you think there'd be as many Linux-based viruses?

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Abcd1234]

Complexity, attack vectors, having to spread out resources to commit to maintaining multiple file systems.

Complexity: Huh? The filesystem interface is already built. The only additional complexity is in the new module.

Attack vectors: Then don't load the module. Or if you're really paranoid, compile your own kernel and don't include it.

Resources: If there are people interested in maintaining the filesystem, who're you to decide what they should do with their time? And if they lose interest, the filesystem will get removed. Big deal.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Vu1turEMaN]

You cannot have an NT installation on the same drive as a 2000/XP installation, as the NTFS differs so much between them that your system would become highly unstable.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Cyberax]

File system stack in Windows is slow. No. It's SLOOOOOOWWWW.

It's sometimes _hundreds_ _of_ _times_ slower than in Linux. So it makes less sense to create ultra-fast filesystems if dispatching requests takes longer than time spent in your filesystem.

Also, IFS (Installable FileSystems) layer in Windows is heavily geared towards NTFS, so it's not easy to adapt other filesystems to it.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[itof500]

But the 90% seems to me to be the reason, but a different reason - Microsoft has no incentive to "get it right". As long as they can get their OS preinstalled on all the Dells and HPs and etc, and aren't losing revenue by writing a secure OS, why bother? After all, their only aim, unlike Linux's aim, is to make money, like every other corporation. You don't start a corporation to better the world, you start a corporation to make money. period. Apple makes their PCs secure because they have to - they don't own the market likd MS does.
=========
I don't think that this is correct. Rather, I think the vulnerability of the various operating systems is built into the their presumptive roles. Windows was build around the idea of one guy sitting in front of the computer. The Internet and viruses were never considered. As these modes of connection/vulnerability have developed Microsoft has been trying to secure the inherently insecure operating system. Vista was supposed to be a big step in erasing these presumptions, but still has to deal with legacy apps that assume root privileges.

The Unix based Mach kernel at the core of OSX and Linux inherently make the assumption of the multi-user system. Thus, privilege separation is build into the DNA of the system, and no app assumes you have root privileges.

duke out

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[pjr.cc]

Personally, i always get quite excited when i hear about a new fs in the linux kernel. everyone of them is unique and inventive and does serve a purpose. I always wanted to write a tag based file system (and ended up implementing one in fuse once i realised i didnt care about how the data actually got onto the disk), the idea was to get rid of directory structures as we know them (i personally think they are a crap way of storing data, but oh well). I never got it finished but it was going to work like file x.zip has the tags a, b and c. So its accessible a variety of ways (/a/x.zip, /b/x.zip, /a/b/c/x.zip or /b/c/a/x.zip), and you could just move it to change its tags (i.e. mv /a/b/c/x.zip /d/x.zip to remove the a, b and c tags and replace them with d, or cd /c; mv x.zip ../d would remove the "c" tag and replace it with "d"). Back when i first thought of the notion i personally think it was quite unique, but its not without its drawbacks (think backup or any kind of filesystem scraping tool).

But lets put some things in perspective first. Sure windows has NTFS, but its not the only one (as has been pointed out numerous times) - i didnt see anyone list vxfs (veritas), but there are probably as many for windows fs's that aren't part of windows (xfs for eg is available for windows - commercially). The other thing is that its always been called NTFS but its gotten quite a few variants (much like solaris and UFS), so your layman only ever see's "NTFS" and "FAT".

So does it matter? the reality is that 99.999% of people only know ntfs and fat for windows, the same goes for linux really, 99.999% of people are using ext2/3 (now 4) plus FAT. In the windows world they would all have just been called "Ext" and you wouldn't have known that windows NT used ext2 while XP used ext3 and vista used ext4. Linux hasn't chosen to do it that way and for good reasons.

But you should also define "right". Show me a filesystem like ext3cow (essentially a compliance file system) for windows, they do exist, they're not NTFS, you've just never heard of them cause you dont need them, and you've probably not heard of ext3cow either for that matter. The truth is that 99% of people just need ext2/3/4 for hard disks, will use fat for flash and wont care which one they get so long as it stores files. Which again, is exactly like windows, 99% of people know only NTFS for hard disks, fat for removable storage and dont need (or want) to know about the rest - but they do exist and we haven't even mentioned things like win CE, XP embedded, etc.

You will get the occasional lunatic (i say that in a loving way) that'll do something like reiserfs or xfs, but thats your getting-a-bit-hardcore linux type.

One other thing worth pointing out is that part of the reason there are few FS's you've heard of for windows is cause its a nightmare to code them (or was, may not be true anymore). I tried to do one for around the time XP/2003 were available, and it had about 12 different ways of doing exactly the same thing in the driver that you had to implement (i.e. "get the list of files in this directory" had to be implemented 6 different ways for backward compatibility, that was painful). Probably a good reason why any third-party commercial FS's for windows costs a minor fortune.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[bl8n8r]

The number of Filesystems is related to interoperability. It's not something you find much in proprietary software, so your confusion is understandable/excusable.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[leoc]

Can anyone explain to me why Ford has so many kinds of cars? Tesla has had a 2 seat roadster for years (admittedly, several versions, but never any compatibility issues that I've come across), and Ford has, what, 73 or something?! Is it really that hard to get it right?

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[ArsenneLupin]

NTFS doesn't have any skeletons hidden in nearby parks...

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[compro01]

WinFS wouldn't have replaced NTFS, as despite the name, it is not a filesystem. It was effectively a MSSQL-based system for data and metadata allowing for enhanced searching, like pulling up "the phone numbers of all persons who live in Acapulco and have more than 100 appearances in my photo collection and from whom I have had e-mail within the last month".

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[EvilNTUser]

You just wait. In another ten years, Apple will have invented it!

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[mcgrew]

It seems to me that it would be far easier to write programs for an OS you had the source to than one you didn't.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[pjr.cc]

Something else worth pointing out actually.

It's not a case of "your spoiled for choice", the reality is you rarely get one. If you get a linux distro its going to give you ext2/3/4 (older distro's did allow you do use reiser, xfs, and so forth, but thats mostly gone the way of the dinosaur). The reality is that the linux community has made ext the "most appropriate FS to use" and so they all do use it (that wasnt by popular concensus, it was a case of sheer compatibility and crowd behaviour - i.e. "he's using it, i'll use it too").

Alot of the "extra" fs's in linux are there solely for the benefit of reading other people's file systems (such as UFS, Amiga FS, HPFS, NTFS, and they do take up a huge portion of the list). But thats brilliant right? How many kernels out there have the kind of functionality - none!

Those FS's that dont fall into the "legacy" or "compatability" stack are there for people who need them and know when they need them (i.e. they're for the specialist) and much like if i wanted to use (commercial) xfs on windows, im going to need to know why im doing it and how its going to be done.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux has a lot of filesystem drivers, yes. However, pretty much all of them have a reason to exist, and absolutely no reason for anyone to bother still using them.

The main reason for most filesystem drivers is compatibility with contemporary operating system. At the moment, that includes FAT 12, FAT 16, FAT 32 and NTFS for compatiblity with Windows, and HFS+ for compatibility with Mac OS X. Aside from the native filesystems, these are the most commonly used, but really have nothing to do with Linux itself.

Since Linux has been around for a very long time, and has been ported to a lot of different platforms, there's been a need to share data with all kinds of other operating systems running on the same hardware. Just a few examples - the Amiga's FFS (and OFS), BeOS BFS, Acorn ADFS, HPFS for OS/2, and the old UFS filesystem used by lots of old Unix systems. Most (aside from trivial filesystems like the Amiga FFS) are read-only, because full read-write support was unnecessary, and probably too hard for the sheer number of filesystems out there. This makes up the bulk of the Linux filesystem drivers, and none of these are anything to do with Linux.

Next, we have the filesystems for optical media - ISO9660 and UDF. Pretty much every OS needs to support those, nothing special about Linux support here.

The Linux native filesystems - ext, ext2, ext3 (which is an updated ext2, not a new filesystem), ext4, and (arguably) ReiserFS. These were all developed specifically for use as the primary filesystem on Linux. ext -> ext2/3 -> ext4 form a single series, and it's possible to upgrade from ext2 to ext3 and then to ext4 quite painlessly. They're actually a good set of filesystems, and are at least as good as NTFS in their current iterations.

Ported Linux filesystems - XFS and JFS. Originally written for other operating systems (IRIX and AIX / OS/2), and ported to Linux by their original developers, likely for compatibility with their own operating systems. Although they can be used as primary native Linux filesystems (I use XFS on my MythTV box), they usually aren't, and really have little to do with Linux anyway.

The experimental Linux filesystems. These are either historical or current development filesystems, either as a testbed for future filesystems, or attempts to actually build a new filesystem for use. The current major experimental Linux filesystem is BTRFS. Has previously included Reiser4, Tux / Tux2 / Tux3, and probably a load more. Although pretty much all of them were usable as primary filesystems, they're all either still experimental (BTRFS) or have since become unmaintained (like Reiser4).

Network filesystems - NFS and SMB / CIFS are the major ones, but Linux also supports serveral others, either for compatibility with other (older) operating systems, or new ones. Again, nothing really to do with Linux,

That just leaves oddball filesystems. Things like SquashFS (read-only compressed FS for use on small read-only media), various filesystems designed for directly connected flash devices that you can't directly use a conventional filesystem on (JFFS / JFFS2, probably more), or other filesystems designed for specific kinds of storage device, like NILFS2. Most of these are for embedded systems, which have strange storage requirements anyway,

So, you've got one set of native filesystem drivers, a few experimental filesystems, a few filesystems for embedded use, and almost everything else is for compatibility with another OS.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[pjr.cc]

heh, this particulary "modding" of informative needs to be on the mod'er guidelines for what not to do.

"Informative!" seriously, someone did mod it "Funny" (as it should be) and it keeps going back to informative and if i understand the mod'ing methodology the guy who got the mod right with "Funny" is the one who'll suffer from all the mod'ers who didnt understand it was a joke.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[harryandthehenderson]

having to spread out resources to commit to maintaining multiple file systems.

So what? If someone wants to spend their time maintaining a filesystem or something like that why does it matter? It's not your time being spent.

I'm not saying I'm an advocate for anything specific here, and I'm not saying Windows is better,

It's not. There have been at least a dozen filesystems created for Windows.

i'm just trying to answer your question on why it *can* be a bad idea to just keep pushing out file systems.

But none of your answers are compelling in the least bit. They amount to you basically caring way too much about what someone else decides to do with their own free time and effort.

Of course, Linux might need this direly, and then this fs might be a good idea.

And even if Linux didn't need it direly that's not a valid reason to say that the filesystem isn't a good idea.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Anonymous Coward]

From my understanding, this problem comes from:

1. Windows, being a corporate product, must adhere to efficiency standards. Er go, it costs money for their pawns to crawl through their code looking for loop holes and exceptions. So, they must balance a percentage of cost vs performance within a margin dictated by their superiors. "We have enough payroll for you guys to make things ~99% secure, but fret not on the minutia."

2. Linux, being open-source, has a boundless community of people who answer to no one, and strive only for the good of the product (we would hope).

Analogy: You must build a dam.

1. MS: You get 10 workers, 60 days, and hopefully it works when you're done.
2. Linux: You get 10e6 workers, as many days as you need, and when it's done, it's done.

Ta da!

Aside: Yes, those figures are silly for building a dam, allow poor representation in exchange for significance of message.
Long and Short: It's not easy, can be done, but how affordable is it? Especially with all the money to be made with tech support *inno*

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Opportunist]

It should be easier. Problem is, most programmers already learned how to write for Windows, they got used to the DDK, they're settled in... I see it in me. I had to learn how to write drivers for Linux. Know what? It's all wrong. All of it.

In retrospect, it's rather that it's all wrong in Windows. But when you start learning something new, it's of course all wrong because you're used to something different.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[not-my-real-name]

And then Microsoft will steal it from Apple.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Simetrical]

This is something quite different and exciting: a log-structured file system, for storing your files on dead trees.

Um, mods, I think you meant "Funny", not "Informative". The "logs" here are a way of structuring data on the storage medium. Specifically, by writing changed blocks sequentially to the end of the filesystem instead of changing them in-place. They don't have to do with trees.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[chthon]

This is bullshit. When I started working in 1990, there where quite some viruses which ran under Mac OS. One of the vulnerabilities on the Mac was the fact that when you inserted a floppy, there was always code that was immediately executed.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an in-joke. When NILFS2 is stable it will be renamed to Mature Implementation of a Log-structured File System, so you can get MILFS.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they have fewer filesystems?

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[mcgrew]

True. Like I said, there are far more reasons than I listed.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Mr. DOS]

And haven't there been at least two major versions of NTFS so far, too? (NTFS4 for NT 4.0, and NTFS5 for 2000/XP/Vista/7.)

      --- Mr. DOS

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[profplump]

Did you miss the abstraction layer linux already has for file systems -- VFS? The layer that lets all file-related system calls like be unified among all file systems, so that a file system is only responsible for actually talking to the disk? The same sort of system used by BSD and Windows? Doesn't that essentially make new file systems as minimal as possible while still allowing "tuning"?

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux has just fallen back below the 1% desktop share. Why I mention this? No special reason, I'm sure this has nothing to do with the Virus issue....

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Flammon]

You must be kidding right? There's tremendous code sharing and abstraction done in the kernel. Hardware specifics are placed in their own files but the rest is shared. Most hardware drivers work on all architectures and share common code. Here's one example, of many, where code was consolidated. i386 and x86_64 merge Code sharing works because of well thought out abstractions.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[tabrnaker]

Are you volunteering for the position? Or are you just good at bitching?

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[domatic]

Many of them are there for compatibility reasons. I've rescued Apple and Amiga disks by sticking them in Linux boxes. Others are there for very specific contexts like flash devices. Of the ones that can be used as root filesystems, some are better at certain workloads. In practice there only a handful of that can be used to host the system itself with ext3 soon to be ext4 being the most common for workaday use.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[dotgain]

People have been avoiding the Funny mod for some time now because it only exposes the poster to Karma-burn (because Funny is the only mod that doesn't increase Karma). Even the most pathetic of jokes inevitably get modded to +5, somebody finds them not as funny, and mods them back down (burning the Karma). Another moderator spots an IN SOVIET RUSSIA joke that is not at +5 yet, and mods it back up. Ad infinitum. Just for making a wisecrack that wasn't universally appreciated, your Karma is in the gutter.

tl;dr: Moderation has never worked here. Read at -1 and refuse to moderate.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[dotgain]

Yeah, because movie critics don't rubbish flicks, they buy some film, get out there, and prove they can do better! Right?

FOSS need to learn that it's possible for non-developers to have valid criticisms, yet not be able to rectify them directly.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[dotgain]

... a lesson still not learned by MS years later, AutoRun/AutoPlay alive and well in XP. Hello Conficker!

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[dotgain]

1. 10 MS workers get to work. Project not necessarily completed on time, might even be mediocre. But those 10 workers know who's paying their bills, and get their heads down. One of them falls out with the rest of his team, and gets replaced immediately.
2. Day 1. Entire Linux team forks, unable to agree on the name. Half of them want to call it "GIND Is Not a Dam", the other half think it should be called "xkjrtl" and install to /opt/bin. Now two teams of 5e6 workers each.
   Day 3. One member expressed his distaste at the brown colour of the bricks they had to use. x teams of 10e6/x
   Day 480. 10e6 bricks lie at various positions on the riverbed, all with their own SourceForge page.

No, I'm no MS fanboy. I just dumped Linux after 14 years for an Apple. It's not perfect, but OSX seems to waste the least of my time.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[drsmithy]

The Unix based Mach kernel at the core of OSX and Linux inherently make the assumption of the multi-user system. Thus, privilege separation is build into the DNA of the system, and no app assumes you have root privileges.

Your whole premise is wrong. At its core Windows NT is, if anything, *more* of a multiuser OS than the classic UNIX model you are talking about.

It's time to update your knowledge past Windows 95. It's nearly a decade, now, since consumer-level Windows was based on single-user DOS.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[drsmithy]

Well the idea that NTFS got it right is funny to start with. Defrag??? I still have to freaking Defrag?

No. Not unless you've got some sort of pathological disk access pattern that is also going to require a "defrag" on _any_ filesystem.

Take a look at the feature set of ZFS and NTFS and tell me that NTFS got it right.

Interestingly enough, there are a few ZFS features that NTFS had first (eg: compression, encryption).

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[drsmithy]

File system stack in Windows is slow. No. It's SLOOOOOOWWWW.

Benchmarks ?

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Atriqus]

Considering it's called a New Implementation of a Log File System, perhaps the people who think that this is a new concept aren't exactly the cream-of-the-crop of the userbase. Every group has that guy who'll say uninformed stuff; it's not exactly something worth getting a complex over.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Cyberax]

http://www.rsdn.ru/forum/philosophy/1710544.1.aspx - sorry, it's in Russian. You can download benchmark here: http://www.rsdn.ru/File/37054/benchmark.zip Basically, it creates, stat()s and deletes lots of files. As you can see, performance in Windows is quite poor.

I have several more microbenchmarks and _all_ of them work faster on Linux. As a not-very-micro-benchmark: git works way faster on Linux.

And it's not the problem of NTFS itself, because ntfs-3g on my computer _still_ works faster for a lot of operations than the native NTFS in Windows!

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[LWATCDR]

Actually Novell Netware had those features before NTFS.
No NTFS still requires defrag every now and then.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[bcnstony]

Can anyone explain to me why Linux has so many filesystems? Windows has had NTFS for years (admittedly, several versions, but never any compatibility issues that I've come across), and Linux has, what, 73 or something?! Is it really that hard to get it right?

Well, I've had 73 girlfriends over the years, so I think I have gotten it right. Much like file systems, each of my ex's offers something uniquely special.

.

Of course, it's a lot easier to bring a filesystem back to my mother's basement where I live . . . sigh

.

--
http://myhovercraftisfullofeels.com/

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[ejasons]

Another moderator spots an IN SOVIET RUSSIA joke that is not at +5 yet, and mods it back up. Ad infinitum. Just for making a wisecrack that wasn't universally appreciated, your Karma is in the gutter.

Exactly why I agree with the current system -- I'd prefer that every discussion did not end up getting filled with "In Soviet Russia" jokes. Posts that are actually funny end up being modded appropriately; stupid wisecracks get the karma burn that they deserve.

Just one man's opinion (whose karma will now get burned)...

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[ejasons]

The reason why you have so much Windows malware and so little for Mac (aside of the smaller target) is simply the same why you get more Windows software and fewer Mac software (at least in areas where core system knowledge is required, as is for malware): Fewer programmers who know the inner workings of the OS.

This doesn't explain why MacOS8/9, which had much less penetration, had (relatively) quite a large number of viruses. No, I don't have an explanation...

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[that_itch_kid]

I propose giving meta-moderation a "+1 Funny" option.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[dotgain]

Sorry, now that you mention it, I.S.R was a very stupid example on my part, and agree with you in that regard. What unfortunately happens is that because people's sense of humour is so varied, this practice of up/down modding happens on all funny posts. Just about anything that's funny is bound to offend somebody, and to use I.S.R to illustrate that was foolish of me.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is something quite different and exciting: a log-structured file system, for storing your files on dead trees.

Actually its for storing all your shit.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[tabrnaker]

um, are you seriously implying that film critics are a benefit to society? What are you, a film critic?

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pffft, put it away, micro-penis. Only pussy-whipped bitch slaves wear condoms. If you're going to wrap it, you might as well whack it.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Alpha830RulZ]

I can't read the benchmarks, but this was true for an application of ours a few years back. Specifically, NTFS sucked when we were creating large numbers of files in a directory. Moving the app to Linux dramatically increased our document harvest rate in this text processing application. I don't have the exact numbers, but it reduced a process that took 4 to 5 days to run to something like 6 to 8 hours, with no other changes. We used the exact same boxes. This was a java app, doing text data mining, and this time was for the harvest and parsing of the docs.

We also took advantage of moving to 64 bit java that we could only do on Linux at the time, so there may have been something there as well - I wasn't the developer, so I don't know the internals.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Can anyone explain to me why Linux has so many filesystems?

It's just like distros. There are loads of them but only a handful really count. For most people (?90%+), the sucessive ext versions are the default and work just fine.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Elrond, Duke of URL]

Would it really be that hard to have ONE good fs that you could tune to different use cases? Probably not. But the average Linux coder sees that something isn't fast in case X and goes ahead redoing the entire wheel. And why? Because the thing he just looked at wasn't designed very well either and can't be adapted easily to different use scenarios. And why? Because it was done by a half-assed coder like himself. And so the circle closes.

Actually, yes, it is that hard. There's a good reason why so much research goes into filesystem development. A desktop use-case is very different from a database use-case which is again different from a web server use-case. Sure, you could find a middle ground, but it would result it mediocre performance (even after tuning) for all concerned.

Also, haven't you noticed that there is, essentially, "ONE good fs" that the vast majority of Linux systems use? It's called ext3 and it's the default for pretty much every major Linux distribution for the very reason that it does offer good performance in most cases. Desktop PC, laptop, small web server, DVR, development machine... ext3 is a perfectly fine choice for all of these uses.

Contrast this with Windows where you basically have a choice between FAT32/VFAT for memcards and NTFS for hard drives. It tries to be everything to everybody, but in the end it is merely adequate for everybody. That, and it still requires periodic defragmentation. Really now... this is a problem that the rest of the filesystem/OS development world solved a long long time ago. Microsoft is constantly adding/tweaking/reworking NTFS... isn't it about time they fixed that?

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Elrond, Duke of URL]

Well the idea that NTFS got it right is funny to start with. Defrag??? I still have to freaking Defrag?

No. Not unless you've got some sort of pathological disk access pattern that is also going to require a "defrag" on _any_ filesystem.

Yes, you still need to defragment your NTFS partitions occasionally. NTFS still frequently creates files with hundreds of fragments depending on how they are created.

For example, copying a large file off a CD will result in just a handful of fragments (it really *ought* to be one, but rarely is). Compare this to some update auto-downloader app that reads a stream of bytes over the Net and writes them to disk in many small increments. You might end up with a few thousand fragments for a file of 20-30 MB. Once, I even saw an under-1KB text file have 124 fragments. Wow.

Now, Vista does go out of its way to make this less noticeable as it will automatically start defragging the drive in the background when your computer has been idle for a short time. Oddly, though, while you might expect it to continue to defrag as long as you leave the machine idle, it doesn't. After it has "finished", run a defrag program that gives you more information than Vista's included "Disk Defragmenter" (which isn't hard as Defragmenter tells you *nothing* whatsoever). You will find that there are still many files with varying degrees of fragmentation.

Still, this auto-defrag in Vista is good enough that most users will almost never need to manually defrag their drives since it seems to activate often enough to keep the level of fragmentation under control. That said, after you install a very large program (say, an 8GB game), the level of fragmentation might increase significantly (only on the new files, obviously). Since the idle-time defragmenter never completely "finishes" during a single run, it might take a bit of time before all those new files have actually been defragmented.

Personally, I only use Windows (Vista in this case) for gaming and generally leave the defragmenting alone. After I install a new game, and sometimes after uninstalling one, I will manually run the defragmenter. I use AusLogics Disk Defrag to do the job since it's free and it gives some basic information about what it's actually doing, a visual approximation of how far along it is, and a report of the files it touched. I think it can also move more files than the Vista defragmenter, but I'm not positive about that.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Elrond, Duke of URL]

Also, backward compatibility. There is a whole heap of filesystems in Linux that exist only to fetch data from old media and old systems. For example, nobody in their right mind would actually *use* the Amiga filesystem for /home.

These filesystems all increase the count, but they are rarely used and don't see any development other than to make sure they still function with the latest kernel.

Re:Why another filesystem?!

[Sunnz]

Yes love it is called VFS.

Re:DRM support? In the kernel?

[harryandthehenderson]

Direct Rendering Manager

Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[Bob9113]

Integrity Management Architecture

Contributor: IBM

Recommended LWN article: http://lwn.net/Articles/227937/

The Trusted Computing Group(TCG) runtime Integrity Measurement Architecture(IMA) maintains a list of hash values of executables and other sensitive system files, as they are read or executed. If an attacker manages to change the contents of an important system file being measured, we can tell. If your system has a TPM chip, then IMA also maintains an aggregate integrity value over this list inside the TPM hardware, so that the TPM can prove to a third party whether or not critical system files have been modified.

From the recommended article, the key dilemma:

There are clear advantages to a structure like this. A Linux-based teller machine, say, or a voting machine could ensure that it has not been compromised and prove its integrity to the network. Administrators in charge of web servers can use the integrity code in similar ways. In general, integrity management can be a powerful tool for people who want to be sure that the systems they own (or manage) have not be reconfigured into spam servers when they weren't looking.

The other side of this coin is that integrity management can be a powerful tool for those who wish to maintain control over systems they do not own. Should it be merged, the kernel will come with the tools needed to create a locked-down system out of the box. As these modules get closer to mainline confusion, we may begin to see more people getting worried about them. Quite a few kernel developers may oppose license terms intended to prevent "tivoization," but that doesn't mean they want to actively support that sort of use of their software. Certainly it would be harder to argue against the shipping of locked-down, Linux-based gadgets when the kernel, itself, provides the lockdown tools.

OK, maybe this is overdramatic, but trading freedom from third-party oversight through trusted computing for the security of first-party oversight through trusted computing seems a little like:

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

But I can see both sides. Pondering... what are your thoughts?

Re:Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many problems that seem to have been created by technology (DRM, spam, net neutrality, violence in games etc.) are not the fault of technology. They're the fault of the way people use that technology. So the solution will also have to come from the people and how they use the tech.

Refusing the tech altogether because there are certain evil ways of using it is not the answer.

An analogy: there are valid use cases for using BitTorrent, and there are valid use cases for putting DRM in the Linux kernel. If you want DRM thrown out altogether from the kernel because some companies use it to peddle crippled files, it probably means it's ok to outlaw BitTorrent altogether too, because some people use it to do illegal stuff. Right?

Wrong. Leave the technology alone. The problems are in the people's heads.

Re:Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[Anonymous Coward]

some hardware needs to be 'trusted', most does not

the economics of it will sort it out, never mind

Re:Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[je ne sais quoi]

Refusing the tech altogether because there are certain evil ways of using it is not the answer.

That's right. The answer is that, don't worry, if you have the source code, you have the power to remove the DRM. Freedom, yeah, baby. The only problem with this is if companies like NVIDIA who use binary blobs to interact with the kernel force us to use it, it will be annoying, or perhaps some companies with proprietary software start requiring its use (but then, if one has the source, couldn't one just fake it?). More reason to go with a completely open source solution perhaps.

Re:Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[DarkOx]

DRM is not digital rights management in this case, its Direct Rendering Model or something to that effect. Its about video rendering performance not IP.

Re:Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[MostAwesomeDude]

http://trousers.sourceforge.net/faq.html

Re:Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[rtkluttz]

I saw this and fumed up also. Trusted computing has shown up.

I should never have to prove anything about MY computer to a third party. If trusted computing doesn't work for the owner of the computer it is running on, why is it there?

Re:Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[PitaBred]

If you need the kind of security for a teller or voting machine, build the chip and drivers for it. It shouldn't ever be part of consumer machines without a full disclosure in big red letters, something like "Operating this computer gives various companies complete control and access to all of your data while preventing you from monitoring such access"

Re:Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[Sancho]

If your system has a TPM chip, then IMA also maintains an aggregate integrity value over this list inside the TPM hardware, so that the TPM can prove to a third party whether or not critical system files have been modified.

This sounds more like it's for auditing. It allows you to prove to an authority that system files were not modified after a certain point.

Trusted computing is not inherently evil. I, for one, would love the ability to prove to myself that my system hasn't been compromised from the bootloader on up. Nothing says that trusted computer must be used by a third-party to regulate what I do on my machine.

Re:Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[somenickname]

The chips already exist on the machines. This change might make it easier to use the chips for nefarious purposes (like "tivoization") but there has been nothing preventing people from writing their own driver (or possibly finding a reference implementation) to do this anyway. It sounds like there are a number of compelling reasons to add the feature and the only drawback is that now it's slightly easier for vendors to take advantage of this functionality for anti-consumer type behavior. In that case, simply do research before buying a new device and don't buy it if it's using the TPM hardware.

Re:Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[EsbenMoseHansen]

DRM is not digital rights management in this case, its Direct Rendering Model or something to that effect. Its about video rendering performance not IP.

It is confusing, I know, but this version includes both Digital Restrictions/Rights Management support (under the name of IMA) and something call DRM, which in this case is a video driver support thing. So IMA is what is often abbreviated DRM, and DRM is an abbreviation for support for -- among other things --- flickerless terminal switching.

Re:Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[Eil]

TPM, from my understanding, just makes it more difficult to tinker with things that were designed not to be tinkered with. Those of us who buy hardware and use software that explicitly *was* meant to be tinkered with will see no change, so TPM support in the kernel ultimately means little to me. If a company releases a cool gadget or computer with a TPM but doesn't give me the keys, then I simply don't buy that gadget.

Re:Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[Bob9113]

If a company releases a cool gadget or computer with a TPM but doesn't give me the keys, then I simply don't buy that gadget.

I like to believe that the free market knows all -- I'm a big fan of it.

I worry though about computers. Will there come a day when all computers will ship with TPM? As far as I know, there is only one HD tuner card that does not meekly succumb to the copy bit. Will the rest of the hardware follow? Or are we, who prefer to own the things we buy, too small a tail to sway the mass market obsessed vendors?

Re:Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[Alsee]

don't worry, if you have the source code, you have the power to remove the DRM. Freedom, yeah, baby.

Unfortunately, incorrect. I'm a programmer and I have studied the Trusted Computing technical specifications in depth.

One of the central points of Trusted Computing is exactly to defeat that. Trusted Computing in fact manages to make the source code substantially useless. Under Trusted Computing you an "remove the DRM" lines of code from the source, but all that does is leave you with unreadable files and an effectively non-functioning software.

The key you need to unlock the files does not exist in the source code, the key does not exist in the executable. The key you need for successful internet communication does not exist in the source code, the key does not exist in the executable.

I'm going to oversimplify here, but essentially the key you need is locked inside the Trusted Platform Module chip. The chip will only supply that key to the exact unmodified executable. If you alter so much as a single line of code, the chip hands over a completely different effectively random key to you. A useless random garbage key. Your modified program cannot read the files you want it to read, and the internet connections you want will fail to open. If you modify so much as a single bit of source - if you modify so much as a single bit of the executable - the software no longer works. The source code is largely useless.

In general it's impossible to crack Trusted Computing in software. There's a chance you might find an exploitable bug defeat DRM in some particular program, but it would only apply to that one program, and they have ways to actually FORCE down patches on everyone to fix that bug (the program will refuse to run at all until you accept the patch, and you could even be any access until you apply operating system patches). The Trusted Computing scheme itself is pretty well immune to software crackage. To beat the Trusted Computing system you need to physically crack the chip on your motherboard. With current deigns you might be able to get away with hacking into the wiring on your motherboard, but once they move the Trust chip inside the CPU you need to physically rip open your Trust chip and read out your key locked in the silicon. And even that is a limited victory. Every computer or other Trusted device has its own unique key. You need to crack them open and physically read out the keys from the devices one by one. If you want four Trust-unlocked computers you pretty well need to physically rip open four microchips and read out four keys. You can't put a key to multiple-use because they will spot that multiple use and revoke that key. Any DRM files you unlocked with that key obviously still have their DRM removed, but that revoked key becomes useless for unlocking any more DRM files, and it no longer enables you to open Trusted internet connections. And even when you do physically crack systems one by one, you still have to be ultra careful that they do not detect that you system is Trust-cracked. If any of your internet connections or any of your software in any way leak the fact that you have cracked your system, in any way leak the fact that you can do things that you're not supposed to be able to do, again, your key gets revoked. That key becomes useless, it can no longer unlock any additional files all attempted Trust-related internet connections will be denied. If they detect that you managed to read your key, if they detect that you managed to regain full control of your computer and override the Trust locks, then they revoke that key and you then need to go out and pay for new physical hardware with a new key locked inside, and you need to physically rip open that chip and read out a new key. Each time they detect that you cracked your computer, they revoke the key and you pretty much need to buy a new computer over and over and over again.

I have simplified and glossed over a huge number of issues. If you have any questions or you want a technical level explanatio

Re:Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[Alsee]

I, for one, would love the ability to prove to myself that my system hasn't been compromised

You don't need Trusted Computing for that. You could get that from a similar but pro-owner system where you were permitted to know the master key controlling your computer.

It's like a poison apple. They claim that a poison apple is a Good Thing or that it is merely "neutral technology" because it has vitamins and minerals. No, a poison apple designed evil - you could get all of the claimed vitamin and mineral benefits and none of the poison from a plain apple.

The overriding design aspect of Trusted Computing is that the owner of the computer is absolutely FORBIDDEN to know the master key "securing" his system. It is explicitly designed to secure the computer against the owner.

Consider this, two machines with absolutely identical hardware - and therefor with absolutely identical capabilities. The only difference being that you know the master key securing one of your computers but you are denied permission to know the master key securing the other of your computers. They have identical capabilities to secure your computer FOR you. They have identical benefits for you. However since you don't know the key securing the second computer, that computer is secure AGAINST you. For the first computer you do know your master key, and that knowledge gives you the ability to unlock and read your files if you wish. That key gives you the ability to override or alter your security settings if you wish.

The fundamental design criteria of Trusted Computing is to deny you knowledge and control of the key securing your computer. The Primary design criteria is to deny you that full control of your computer. The primary design criteria of Trusted Computing is the ability/feature of locking the computer against the owner.

The meaning of Trusted Computing is that other people can Trust your computer - they can Trust that you computer is secure even against you.

-

Re:Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[Alsee]

don't buy it if it's using the TPM hardware

While I agree with that for moral and philosophical reasons, the fact is that from a strictly practical or functional view, that is essentially incorrect.

Trusted Computing is incredibly insidious. It is essentially the old Microsoft "Embrace, Extend, and Exterminate" tactic. he way Trusted Computing is designed there is absolutely no practical or functional reason NOT to buy a computer with a TPM in it. That's the "Embrace" part. A TPM computer can do everything and anything a normal computer can do. Think of it like speakers - there is absolutely no reason NOT to buy a computer that has built in speakers. If the price is cheaper, or if it's all the store carries, you might as wall accept the computer-with-speakers, take it home, and simple never turn the speakers on.

Their plan is to ship TPMs as standard hardware on all motherboards. If you go in and buy a new PC, you may as well buy the TPM computer, take it home, use it just like a normal computer, and just never "turn on" the TPM chip. It's incredibly insidious... there's no actual reason to reject a TPM computer, so they can just make it standard on all PCs and in just a few years everyone will have a TPM-equipped computer by default.

A TPM computer is a normal computer "plus more", it is a normal computer "plus" it has the option of the new TPM mode. The TPM computer can run all your old programs and read all your old files, "plus" it can enter TPM mode and run the new Trusted programs and it can read the new Trusted files and it can access the new Trusted websites.

If you have an old computer, or if you have a new TPM computer and refuse to use the TPM, then none of the new Trusted stuff works. You can't run the new Trusted software, you can't use any of the new Trusted files, you can't view any of the Trusted websites.

If you buy a TPM computer you have a choice - you can "opt in" and "voluntarily" put on a pair of handcuffs and activate the TPM chip - in which case everything works, all the old stuff works and all the new stuff works. Or you can refuse to turn on the TPM chip and you get screwed, the old stuff still works but none of the new stuff works.

If you by a computer without a TPM chip then you have no choice, you just plain get screwed. he old stuff still works, but you get locked out of all the new stuff.

The really evil part is Trusted Network Connect (TNC). TNC is currently targeted for businesses for securing their internal networks, but in a number of years - maybe a decade or so - it might be used by ISPs. In fact government officials have already called on ISPs to implement something like TNC in order to "secure the National Information Infrastructure against terrorist attack". What does TNC do? It checks the "health" of your computer to make sure that it's not infected by viruses or trojans, and that your operating system is has the latest patches to secure your computer against infection. Because your ISP doesn't want you connecting to their network and spewing virus infections to others. They are protecting their network and they are protecting you. Gee, isn't that good? Gee, isn't TNC a swell thing?

Oh, did I forget to mention.... the way TNC works is that it uses Trusted Computing to do that "health check" on your computer. If your computer doesn't have a TPM then you can't preform the health check. If you computer does have a TPM but you refuse to turn it on, then you can't preform the health check. If you can't or wont do the TPM health check then you can't PASS the health check. And what do you think happens if you don't pass that health check? Well your computer might be infected or be vulnerable to infection. And of course they can't allow an infected machine (or a vulnerable machine) onto their network. So what happens is that TNC "quarantines" your computer. It denies you any internet access until you "fix" your "problem" and pass the TPM health check.

If you reject the TPM you may eventually get effectivel

Re:Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[Alsee]

Will there come a day when all computers will ship with TPM?

Members of the Trusted Computing Computing Group have explicitly stated the intention for all motherboards to come with a TPM as standard hardware. An explicit design goal was to keep the chip low-processing-power and simple and small enough to be a sub-$5 item mounted on all motherboards and in all cellphones and included in all digital TVs and in all iPod-type media devices. A lot of work went into minimizing the chip horsepower requirements and components, exactly so it could be "ubiquitous" in any networked device or any small electronic device that might come in contact with copyrighted content.

-

Re:Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[Alsee]

If a company releases a cool gadget or computer with a TPM but doesn't give me the keys, then I simply don't buy that gadget.

By definition that means ALL TPMs.
The central design criteria for the TPM chip is that the master keys are locked inside and that the owner is forbidden to know or control those keys.

TPM, from my understanding, just makes it more difficult to tinker with things that were designed not to be tinkered with.

A fair percentage of laptops are already shipping with TPMs inside, and members of the Trusted Computing Group have explicitly stated the intention for TPMs to become standard hardware included on all computer motherboards.

TPM support in the kernel ultimately means little to me

Assuming they do go ahead with making TPMs standard on motherboards, and lets assume Microsoft revives their plan to make it a hardware requirement in order for a PC to be fully Certified Windows Compatible (Microsoft had intended exactly that for Vista, but it got cut along with all the other Vista cuts), yeah all the Linux support could indeed help push this TPM crap along. Linux is huge in webservers. And one of the things you can do with the TPM system is check if a website visitor is running any sort of adblocker. There are tons of websites out there that would absolutely JUMP at the chance to enforce ad views... to jump at the chance to block visitors who are running adblockers. If your computer doesn't have a TPM, or if you refuse to turn it on, then the website can't check if you running an adblocker. If you can't or won't comply with the TPM adlocker check then the presumption is that you are blocking ads, and the website will block you.

If this crap successfully goes forwards you could find yourself locked out of an increasing percentage of websites. The fact of Linux incorporating all of this TPM crap can indeed have a very real effect in helping it succeed. The more Linux business systems use the TPM the more general economic support there is for it to trickle out to general usage.

-

Re:Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[Alsee]

Consider you own two identical computers with identical hardware. The first computer is a TPM computer with the master key locked inside and you're forbidden to know or control that key. The second computer is identical hardware with identical, except you are allowed to buy it with a printed copy of the master key if you want to know it.

The first computer, the TPM computer, the Trusted Computer, you are forbidden to know your key. The fundamental design criteria is that it can be "secured" AGAINST you. Other people can Trust that your computer is secure against you. You can be locked out of your own files, you can be locked into particular software. It is exactly the DRM machine that the RIAA&MPAA&Microsoft have been dreaming for. You can't read or modify your own files because you don't know your key. You can only play them under the control of the TPM chip, the TPM chip only permits you to play them with the Officially Approved DRM Media Player.

The second computer, well you can have your key if you want it. That key enables you to unlock and read your own files if you want. With that key you can modify or override any of your security settings if you want. You have absolute and total control of your computer, if you want it. Your key gives you the control to override any lock in or any lock out. That makes it useless for DRM, and it means the TPM system can't he hijacked against you for any other malicious purpose.

Both computers have identical capabilities to secure your computer for you. Every single benefit to you they claim TPM gives you, you also get from the second computer. The only difference is that the second computer eliminates DRM and eliminates all of the negative uses of the TPM.

The second computer preserves ALL of the owner benefits, and eliminates ALL of the harms.

The Trusted Computing Group refuses to permit you to buy that second computer. The central design goal of Trusted Computing is EXACTLY to enable DRM and the other negative issues of Trusted Computing.

They are trying to shove a poison apple down your throat, and they are advertising it as a GOOD thing because apples have wonderful vitamins and minerals. These justifications for Trusted Computing are just plain bullshit. You cannot justify a poison apple by citing vitamins and minerals, because you could get ALL of those vitamins and minerals from an otherwise identical poison free apple.

The answer to TPMs and Trusted Computing is simple:

Give me my key. No Key, No Sale.

-

Re:Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[Eil]

Assuming they do go ahead with making TPMs standard on motherboards, and lets assume Microsoft revives their plan to make it a hardware requirement in order for a PC to be fully Certified Windows Compatible (Microsoft had intended exactly that for Vista, but it got cut along with all the other Vista cuts), yeah all the Linux support could indeed help push this TPM crap along.

I guess I don't understand, then. So presumably, in order to get the keys to TPM, you'd have to pay the manufacturer of the TPM for them? If so, how is it going to work in Linux? In order to use the TPM kernel module (or whatever) and set policies on your own machine, you have to purchase the keys for your own machine?

Linux is huge in webservers. And one of the things you can do with the TPM system is check if a website visitor is running any sort of adblocker.

If I'm running an open-source software stack top to bottom, I don't see how a module on the motherboard could help enforce such an arbitrary policy as ad-blocking upon someone with complete control of the code running on their machine. Wouldn't the network stack and web browser both have to be specifically configured to enforce the displaying of ads, TPM or no?

I admit to not fully understanding how TPM works, so if I'm wrong, I'd be grateful if you could point me toward some documentation that explains these things a bit better, especially as how TPM apply to a machine running fully open source code.

Re:Trusted Computing Slithered In?

[Alsee]

I guess I don't understand, then. So presumably, in order to get the keys to TPM, you'd have to pay the manufacturer of the TPM for them?

No, in oder to get the key to a TPM you would need to physically rip open the microchip and use sophisticated hardware to physically read the key out of the silicon.

Not only do they NOT EVER give you the key, but if they ever discover that you DID get your key, they revoke that key effectively killing that key and killing that TPM.

The entire point of Trusted Computing is that you do not know your key, that you are forbidden to know your key. The "Trust" in Trusted computing is the idea that OTHER PEOPLE can trust your computer - they can trust that you do not know the master key securing your computer - they can trust that you the owner cannot override the "security" restrictions on your computer - they can trust that you the owner cannot read or modify the file on your computer except under the permission and control of the TPM - they can trust that you computer will enforce DRM against you and that you do know know the key to override the DRM and that you cannot get the key to read the DRM files - they can trust that the computer will deny software from working if you make any "unauthorized" modifications to that software.

The TPM enables the computer to send a crypto-signed "spy report" saying exactly what hardware you have and exactly what software you are running. If you have modified any of your software, the TPM "spy report" will list it as unknown/unapproved software. The primary intended purpose of that spy report being for the computer at the other end to then deny or terminate that internet connection if you run the "wrong" software or if you attempt to make unapproved modifications to that software.

If you knew your key then they could not trust that spy report. If you know your key, you could have your computer SAY that you are running Internet Explorer when you're actually running Firefox, and you could use the key to sign that faked spy report. If you knew your key then they could not trust your computer. If you knew your key you would not have a Trusted Computer. The whole point of Trusted Computing is that they do not trust YOU. They want to be able to trust that your computer will send accurate spy reports on you hardware and software, they want to be able to trust that that hardware and software will do exactly what they expect it to do, they want to trust that it will NOT do anything it's not supposed to do, they want to trust that your computer will not permit you to read or copy files such as DRM'ed music, they want to be able to trust that your computer will not let you modify files such as the play-count on a pay-per-play DRM music file, they want to be able to trust that your computer will not permit software to work if you have "hacked" that software with unapproved modifications, they want to be able to trust that your computer will deny you access to files or software if the time limit on it expires or you have used up your paid usage limit.

Trusted Computing means YOU are Not Trusted.
Trusted Computing means that the TPM is the Trusted Master of the "security systems" on your computer.

The way the Trust system works is a bit odd and often misunderstood, so let me clarify. It basically boils down to two things - the spy report which is called "Remote Attestation", and crypto-locking files which is called "Sealed Storage".

The first important point is that the TPM is like speakers on a computer - it doesn't do anything unless you turn it on and actively it. If you go out to buy a computer and you don't want speakers - and the store hands you an equal-or-lower-price computer WITH speakers, you might as well accept it. There's no actual reason to avoid the computer with speakers - you can accept it with speakers and just never turn them on. Well, same deal with the TPM. They plan to make it standard on ALL computers, and if you don't want it they can say it's harmless it doesn't even do anything unl

Yes to NFS local caching!

[GnuPooh]

I found the kernel thread where the original author of the FS-Cache patches, David Howell, makes it clear that on a quiet network with a quite fast server metadata will take longer from the cache. However, at my work we have very busy large NFS servers connected over the building network which is very busy. When you try to read a large file repeatedly in the middle of the day the traditional NFS caching just doesn't work if the time between reads is more than about 5 minutes. I've resorted to manually copying my datasets to /usr/tmp on the local disk and seen huge performance improvements. (this has other serious issues, like getting confused about which copy you just modified and migrating any changes back to the official NFS copy.) I know this feature makes sense for me and others in similar environments. The problem of course is: (1) it will be years before it makes it into RHEL and (2) it won't be turned on by default, (3) my system admins are weary to trying anything kernel-related that's not stock RHEL. However, if I can show them an order of magnitude improvement in speed, which I think this will do, they might think twice.

Re:Yes to NFS local caching!

[Anonymous Coward]

RHEL5 already has FS-Cache included. Check your kernel messages next time you mount a NFS filesystem.

Re:Yes to NFS local caching!

[TooMuchToDo]

Have you looked at pnfs for performance reasons? We use it with upwards of 300TB of spinning media and 17PB of tape, and it works like a champ.

Re:Yes to NFS local caching!

[GnuPooh]

Wow, you're right!

FS-Cache: Loaded
FS-Cache: netfs 'nfs' registered for caching

Maybe they just don't have it configured for enough disk space or something?

Nice, But...

[maz2331]

If you want a mainframe, maybe calling IBM and ordering one is a better way to go?

Re:Nice, But...

[ta bu shi da yu]

Or he could buy commodity hardware and install a VM.

Re:Nice, But...

[kenp2002]

That is the problem, no way to throttle the VMs on commodity hardware, thus the whole point of the post.

Re:Nice, But...

[ta bu shi da yu]

I know :-) I both strengthened your point and explained the issue to maz2331, who seems to have missed the point entirely.

Re:Nice, But...

[OrangeTide]

I think only VMware's ESX (and possibly Xen, but don't quote me on that) will solve those problems on commodity hardware.
ESX is an expensive way to go though, especially considering that there is a very short list of hardware it will work on. And you basically need a SAN for the full feature set. Although there must be nearly a half dozen SCSI controllers that are compatible with it now. (yes I know there are a few SATA raid cards that will work too)

Re:Nice, But...

[cartoon]

POWER5/6 systems are pretty much commodity systems, and there you can do weighted sharing of CPU time between LPARs with a guaranteed minimum. Some of the low end boxes are pretty competitive to similarly configured Intel/AMD boxes, tho it varies a lot with memory/disk configs.

But for virtualization work where SLAs are involved, it might be something to at least consider.

Re:Nice, But...

[kenp2002]

Yeah but some shops just won't do business in non-Intel. And those wanting to research clustered VM fabrics for managing VMs POWER5/6 isn't an option. Just exploring Linux\KVM's possibilities.

Some Great Work...But "rt2500 Realtek Drivers"

[mrpacmanjel]

Have wireless "issues" been fixed with this release.

I have a laptop with generic realtek rt2500 wifi hardware.
For many kernel releases I have to compile seperate drivers (Legacy serialmonkey) because the "stock" drivers are woefully unstable.
I either lose my connection, painfully slow( have tried the "rate 54" fix) or I cannot reconnect to my network at all.

I don't mind compiling seperate drivers (a huge benefit of open source stuff & Linux) but I am concerned how long I will be able to do this (E.g. something changes in the kernel makes the "external" driver break - in fact actual development of the legacy drivers has ceased - http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page)?

I know I should not be moaning about this but this issue has been around for ages and seems to affect a lot of hardware.

This is my only niggle with Linux and I am grateful for everything. Computing become much more interesting and fun again.

Huge thanks to Linus and the kernel developers.

Re:Some Great Work...But "rt2500 Realtek Drivers"

[Nursie]

Can't remember when I last had dealings with this. I have used ralink devices though....

Looking at the rt2x00, kernels from 2.6.24 onwards should have the rt2x00 driver right there in the kernel, so it should Just Work(TM). You shouldn't need to build the older, legacy drivers any more.

I agree though, it's a pain making sure to rebuild the driver modules every time you have a kernel update. I've had to do it with the atheros chipset in my laptop. Hopefully, as these device drivers become official, we get to stop doing that.

Re:Some Great Work...But "rt2500 Realtek Drivers"

[Bigby]

I don't have any issues with rt2500 in 2.6.28. However, I do have issues with ath9k and also issues with using smbfs and autofs, like my card is half duplex.

Re:Some Great Work...But "rt2500 Realtek Drivers"

[morgan_greywolf]

With individual driver issues like this, you're better off tracking the changes in the module than the changes in the kernel. Individual driver module versions (or at least diffs) will be released more quickly than kernel versions, IOW, if you're going to use drivers undergoing heavy development, don't rely on each successive kernel version to fix the problem; instead be prepared to patch what you've got for a few releases.

Re:Some Great Work...But "rt2500 Realtek Drivers"

[mrpacmanjel]

That's right - think it was that version of the kernel I started having problems.

Maybe the rt2500 in some laptops may affect the driver - I'm not sure.

I have to blacklist the following drivers; rt2x00pci, rt2500pci and rt2500lib. (I think thats right)

They just don't seem to work properly.

I then compile the legacy version of the rt2500 drivers.

(Mind you I could not get the drivers to compile properly on SUSE 11.1 - it's the only thing that stopped me using SUSE)

Re:Some Great Work...But "rt2500 Realtek Drivers"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I remember before they had an in-kernel driver for the rt2x00. I have an ASUS card in my laptop that was really slow with weird behavior but eventually after compiling 2.6.25 (?) the rate 54M trick started working. Haven't had any problems since (other than maybe having to do rate 54M a couple times before it worked).

Hopefully it will work for you this time. I know for me the only thing that worked was upgrading to the newest kernel and crossing my fingers. Good luck!

Ivo van Doorn (and others) have put in a lot of work on the driver and I can only appreciate what they've accomplished.

Re:Some Great Work...But "rt2500 Realtek Drivers"

[fast turtle]

what's so damn hard about

make && make modules modules_install

when re/building a kernel?

Re:Some Great Work...But "rt2500 Realtek Drivers"

[CAIMLAS]

That's not the half of it. The kernel devs appear to break things - intentionally - and leave them that way.

Case in point, PCMCIA was/is supposedly being rewritten. It broke around kernel 2.6.27 for me (I think) on several systems with ricoh integrated chipsets: I'm unable to use my cardbus or CF slot unless I boot with the device in the slot (and not remove it). Supposedly (according to mailing list info I found) this is due to a 'rewrite' of the pcmcia architecture code. I guess they didn't want to leave it well enough alone until they got it right.

Likewise, I have a USB card reader (recognized as "Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0bda:0151 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Mass Stroage Device") which does not work with the current Ubuntu 9.04 stock kernel. It's recognized, but no devices plugged in work. It worked under 8.10 just fine.

Maybe it's Ubuntu breaking things, but since it appears to be a cross-distro problem (in both cases), I'm betting it's just the kernel devs doing "business as usual" and "letting the distros sort it out".

Re:Some Great Work...But "rt2500 Realtek Drivers"

[Nursie]

Remembering to do it, so that next time you need wifi you're not there saying "damn, wait a moment, just gotta rebuild my driver..."

It's not that hard, it's just an extra thing.

So when's KMS going to happen?

[Chemisor]

Does anyone know the status of kernel modesetting for R6/700? As in, being able to run a regular framebuffer console without X. I can't find any mention of anyone working on this.

Re:So when's KMS going to happen?

[peppepz]

No kernel modelsetting in 2.6.30 for anything but Intel chips.

There is some work in progress for ATI chips, but nothing in the mainline kernel.

In the meantime you can use uvesafb in the current kernel to get a framebuffer console if you like it. But you will get a bad vt switching experience.

Re:So when's KMS going to happen?

[loutr]

from this recent phoronix article : "There is also no kernel mode-setting at this time for the ATI Radeon R600/700 (HD 2000 series and later) hardware".

Re:So when's KMS going to happen?

[MostAwesomeDude]

It'll get done once KMS for earlier Radeons gets merged upstream, in a week or so.

Re:So when's KMS going to happen?

[PitaBred]

You can get the absolute latest info from the horse's mouth (AKA the ATI dev's that are working on the open source driver) at the Phoronix open-source AMD forums

Re:ehem...

[harryandthehenderson]

And those are responsibilities of the kernel, how?

I like it

[dburkland]

local NFS caching along with ext4 improvements make this a pretty nice update imo. I will have to compile it later tonight on my Arch Laptop

Re:ehem...

[Nursie]

Yes, yes and yes.

Next please.

Re:DRM support? In the kernel?

[AndrewNeo]

You forgot RMS.

Re:ehem...

[zevans]

You can run OpenOffice, and I pass files back and forth between that and MS Office all day, no problem. I might add that I seem to have to restart the latter rather more than the former.

I have also had several webcam conversations on this very machine here.

And you can play Windows games under Linux, never mind the Linux games.

What's your point?

Ralink Driver Clarification

[Vu1turEMaN]

When they say "Support for rt3070 driver for recent RaLink Wi-Fi chipsets", they really mean support for RT2870, RT2770, RT307X, RT3572 chipsets (they're all the same, with just features enabled or disabled, or signal strength improved between them).

This was the one last thing for me to fully switch over to linux. Netgear and alot of other Wireless-N USB adapters use these chipsets, and they are the best around.

Previously, the method of installing this driver was the largest pain in the ass I've ever had to go through as a linux noob (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=960642) and I'm so very very glad to see that this chipset is now supported.

The reason it was so hard is that the normal controlling app for the USB device has many advanced features you normally don't see on a wireless adapter (act as a router, full cisco network compatibility, etc etc).

Re:Ralink Driver Clarification

[Vu1turEMaN]

Another great installation tutorial for SLED

http://forums.novell.com/novell-product-support-forums/suse-linux-enterprise-desktop-sled/sled-hardware/340340-ralink-rt2870-usb-stick-works-well-sled-10-a.html

Re:Ralink Driver Clarification

[x78]

They patched the rt2870 to work for the Edimax EW7710Un, now I can finally stop patching it myself!

Re:Ralink Driver Clarification

[da_matta]

Must be the year of the Linux laptop if they got the WLAN working...

Re:ehem...

[ta bu shi da yu]

Can I run MS Office?

Yes.

Can I have a webcam conversation?

Yes.

Can I play games?

Yes.

POHMELFS

[Anonymous Coward]

Epecially I like this feature, which if you read it in Russian would mean in English "file system created after a good party night" - or "hangover fs" ;-)

NILFS2 is better than MILFS2

[Dystopian Rebel]

NILFS2 is the successor to MILFS2, which was based on the "Mother" specification.

NILFS2 is based on the "Nanny" specification, which means it is younger, firmer, *and* keeps the child nodes quiet when you are not actively updating its data.

Re:NILFS2 is better than MILFS2

[wastedlife]

NILFS2 is the successor to MILFS2, which was based on the "Mother" specification.

NILFS2 is based on the "Nanny" specification, which means it is younger, firmer, *and* keeps the child nodes quiet when you are not actively updating its data.

Make sure to keep your data in a protected wrapper, or else NILFS2 may start creating new child nodes and degrade to MILFS2.

ati

[n30na]

So, wait, does this mean that more ati cards get proper 3d acceleration? Or is that still ati's fault, like I thought?

Auto flushing

[AvitarX]

automatic flushing of files on renames/truncates in ext3, ext4 and btrfs/quote?

I assume this means fighting over following the minimum in the POSIX spec has been ended by Linus weighing in on what he felt was proper (no disappearing of files that existed at boot time).

This makes sense, as Linus is on the whole for more caching than the spec allows for (for performance), but also for integrity. This should allow for caching and integrity.

For evidence that Linus wants to allow for more caching (less syncing), and does not feel strict spec compliance is important, see his discussions about atime.

I am glad that someone from on high has settled this.

Re:Auto flushing

[iYk6]

For evidence that Linus wants to allow for more caching (less syncing), and does not feel strict spec compliance is important, see his discussions about atime.

False dichotomy. Strict spec compliance is important, but so is sane filesystem behavior.

Re:Auto flushing

[AvitarX]

see here:
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/08/1810243

I think that relatime breaks the spec.

Re:Auto flushing

[swilver]

It's nice, but actually only solves one specific way applications could guarantee integrity of their files. There's numerous other assumptions one can make of an ordered filesystem in your typical program which will not be caught by this little fix.

I still think it would be a really bad idea to use any filesystem (or database for that matter) that doesn't flush data and metadata up to the same point in time.

Re:Auto flushing

[AvitarX]

Fair enough, but one for potential trade in performance vs security is nice too.

My understanding is that ext3, and now ext4 support a mount option for ordered writing.

Re:DRM support? In the kernel?

[Knitebane]

And this RMS.

Ralink 2860 Drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

Just purchased an Asus 1000HE which unfortunately came with Ralink :(

Can anyone tell me if this will help get the Ralink 2860 drivers fixed, so that I can use injection in this otherwise neat little piece of hardware?

Re:DRM support? In the kernel?

[mizzouxc]

like WTF.. :)

Re:ehem...

[mcgrew]

Yes, you can. No, it isn't.

Re:Features

[oracleofbargth]

Don't speak too hastily. http://www.chris-crockett.com/blog/wpg2?g2_view=keyalbum.KeywordAlbum&g2_keyword=chainmail+bikini&g2_itemId=1910

Re:ehem...

[ta bu shi da yu]

Plenty of good games for Linux. Not really the kernel's domain though, dufus.

Re:Sad, but true:

[mcgrew]

Actually, you COULD use Linux as an OS for a British cigarette vending machine, in which case it WOULD be for fags!

Just get your shit together or give up

[Anonymous Coward]

If Linux is ever going to make it on the desktop, developers are going to need to get their shit together and: make webcams work (they don't in the majority of cases at the moment); stop regressions in graphics drivers; get other hardware working, e.g. iPods; make dual-screen work without spending 20 minutes fucking around (see Lunduke's presentation); get GNOME on to QT and develop a decent HIG (sorry, the current GNOME HIG is an excuse to put off doing anything about bugs, see Apple's for how this should be done); finally pick one -- namely .deb -- package format and stick to it; so developers aren't put-off by the idea of spending days creating packages for different platforms.

I'm sure some smug twat will pop-up and say how they don't care about Linux on the desktop, my answer is: why are you bothering to reply, if you don't care? There are obviously loads of people who do care, just look around at all the advocates. They told me Linux is ready for the desktop, and I tried it, only to find everything's slower, my iPod didn't work, then upgrading hosed my sound and video!

If you're thinking of advocating Linux to someone: stop! Go and do some work on getting drivers working instead, your time won't be wasted and you won't lose any friends.

Re:Just get your shit together or give up

[Helix666]

Yes, I know, silly me for feeding the troll...

finally pick one -- namely .deb -- package format and stick to it; so developers aren't put-off by the idea of spending days creating packages for different platforms.

Why not just stick to using tarballs, and let the distro developers package it into whatever package format they want. Also, why should DEB be the template for every distro's packaging format? Let me guess... Ubuntu user? That would also explain it being slow and things blowing up on upgrades...

get GNOME on to QT

What did you mean by this? Re-develop Gnome using QT?

stop! Go and do some work on getting drivers working instead,

Only if you stop commenting on /. and start paying me to do the driver work. It's a hobby, the developers will work on what they bloody well feel like. (Unless, of course, they're getting paid to develop drivers... =] )

Re:Just get your shit together or give up

[dotgain]

• He's not trolling, he's moderated troll. He's talking about touchy subjects.
• Tarballs have no inherent way of specifying package dependencies. Basically, a tarball is /just/ a tarball. Why .deb's? Well, they're prevalent, and seem to have worked well. There's a wealth of utilities for working with them. They're not the only choice, but they wouldn't be a bad one.
• Yes, that's what he meant. I don't know if I entirely agree, but I see what he's getting at for sure. While GTK is indeed horrible, getting Gnome on QT just is not going to happen. Gnome will die first.
• Exactly, as long as it's a hobby OS, it's always going to look and feel like one. That's what's really giving the commercial OS's the edge here. Bosses. Deadlines. Sackings. All alien to FOSS. Where on one hand you've got a leader taking responsibility for the direction of his team and project, on the other you get faction-ism, infighting and ultimately, forks (which the FOSS crowd talk about like it's a good thing).

I was explaining to my sister the other day that Linux is not one OS, but available though any of thousands of distributions. Yes, thousands. How did there come to be so many? I explained it with an alalogy to the 'parallel universe'. For every single yes/no left/right up/down design consideration, every single distribution forks into exactly two, and goes on to the next design consideration. The process will continue until every single person including Steve Ballmer is running their own distro, and society as we know it will end with each person slicing himself in two while arguing over which suicidal filesystem to use as the default.

Re:Just get your shit together or give up

[mvdwege]

Eh. He is trolling. This stupid point ("The devs should drop everything and create a system just like I want") keeps coming up, and it keeps getting refuted.

If, after years of Slashdot and Linux, you once again bring up that stupid flamebait argument, there is only one conclusion: you're trolling.

Mart

Re:Just get your shit together or give up

[corychristison]

make webcams work (they don't in the majority of cases at the moment)

Who uses webcams? Text is much more efficient and doesn't hog bandwidth. aMSN kicks ass for those who still use MSN/Live Messenger.

stop regressions in graphics drivers

That's not entirely upto the Kernel dev's... Ati/nVidia/Intel all have their own driver packages that aren't included in the kernel. 9/10 times it's their problem, not the kernel dev's.

get other hardware working, e.g. iPods;

Definitely not a Linux developer issue. Apple changes the iPod connectivity system and obfuscates it so often it's not worth the hassle.
There are some solutions out there, though. Your mileage may vary though, depending on which model/revision/colour iPod you own.

make dual-screen work without spending 20 minutes fucking around

This depends on which set of drivers you are using. ati-config has an option to set it up nearly instantly. nvidia-config does, too. I haven't dealt with Intel video cards for a long time so I'm unsure of their options.

get GNOME on to QT and develop a decent HIG (sorry, the current GNOME HIG is an excuse to put off doing anything about bugs, see Apple's for how this should be done)

Not going to happen. There are alternatives to GNOME and KDE (and GTK/QT respectively). But you wouldn't want to use those because they aren't "pretty". Seeing as how you're a fan of Apple (and probably a douchebag-mac-fuck) that just won't do for you because fashion and beauty is everything to people like you.

finally pick one -- namely .deb -- package format and stick to it; so developers aren't put-off by the idea of spending days creating packages for different platforms.

Also probably never going to happen. .deb is not a good choice for some people (like me). Gentoo seems to have it right. Gentoo employs a ports-like system borrowed from BSD. Since you're such a fan of Apple, you could appreciate that. Seeing as Mac OSX is a fusion of MacOS and FreeBSD (_basically_ -- NOT getting into the technical aspect of this)

I'm sure some smug twat will pop-up and say how they don't care about Linux on the desktop, my answer is: why are you bothering to reply, if you don't care? There are obviously loads of people who do care, just look around at all the advocates. They told me Linux is ready for the desktop, and I tried it, only to find everything's slower, my iPod didn't work, then upgrading hosed my sound and video!

I guess I'm a twat... but who's holding the iPod?
Anyway. I'm replying because I want to maybe set you straight on a few things. You are obviously a Mac user because you are very imaginative. We all know only fruity apple guys are imaginative, right?
Perhaps your experience using Linux sucked, but my family uses it for _all_ tasks (from messaging, to e-mail, to programming, to book-keeping, to writing a letter, to watching Media on the TV, to the firmware in my networking equipment) and it works great.
I don't understand the speed comment you made. I've used Mac OS/X and every version of Windows. Speed certainly is not an issue here. Ubuntu may be your problem there (never used it past installing and wiping because I didn't like it)

If you're thinking of advocating Linux to someone: stop! Go and do some work on getting drivers working instead, your time won't be wasted and you won't lose any friends.

I'm guessing you are some hip-cool teen that doesn't seem to comprehend anything past "Ohhnoooes! My iPood Odesn't work! WTFBBQ :cry: /wrist"
That's fine. We don't want your business anyway. Maybe one day when you grow up and realize life is more important than your iPod will you understand.

Thank you, and have a good night.
Sincerely,
    Cory Christison

Re:Just get your shit together or give up

[Anonymous Coward]

As you should know, the number of distros is almost completely irrelevant. The issue is how many distros there are which have a significant market share or influence. The answer to that is probably about 5-10, not thousands.

The process will continue until every single person including Steve Ballmer is running their own distro,

No it won't; 99% will continue to run one of the few popular distros, since these always have the most packages and the most community support.
Likewise with filesystems, 99% will use the default for their distro or one of a couple of popular alternatives.

Re:Just get your shit together or give up

[shish]

developers are going to need to get their shit together and: make webcams work (they don't in the majority of cases at the moment);

Funny you should say that -- I've just spent the morning trying to get some webcams working in windows, and failing (default windows does nothing, official drivers cause all video input related programs to crash when a webcam is inserted). Then plugging them into my linux box, works out of the box, first time :-)

Performance?

[omuls are tasty]

Intel's integrated graphics performance has been pretty progressively worse ever since switching from XAA, and rather abysmal ever since Xorg 1.5. Since then every release of X/mesa/xf86-video-intel made it even worse. Hopefully this release brings the entire GEM/UXA/KMS/whatever stack to a usable state. All this on a 945GM.

What's your experience with it so far? I'll try it out myself in a few days, but I'm eager to hear the results...

Re:Performance?

[zevans]

GEM/UXA/KMS/whatever stack is now GEM/UXA/KMS without the "whatever" - the other options have been dropped out of the code tree for the drivers 2.7.99 and onwards.

The kernel support for these now works properly in 2.6.30 for the first time, but that's only necessary, not sufficient!

At the time of writing the nightly(ish) version from xorg-edgers of the driver blows up on 3D apps, so I'm still on 2.7.1 with some ubuntu patches (that have been pushed upstream because they really did fix stuff). With RC8 of the kernel and xorg-1.6 or the edgers version 1.6.1.901.blahblahblah it's all been nicely stable on UXA for last few days and quite snappy in 2D. UXA is still half the speed of EXA for 3D, even simple stuff like ppracer. Maybe 2.7.99 will fix that soon.

Re:Sad, but true:

[Opportunist]

So, then tell us, how do you like it?

Re:DRM support? In the kernel?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

(Let me guess, you're going to actually read and research things before you make your scathing replies because you have to defend your point of view instead of running your mouth?)

Imagine that, researching first -- far better than spouting off before one reads, and looking the fool. *cough*different DRM*cough*

Re:ehem...

[Opportunist]

Can I run MS Office?

Yes, MS adheres to their own standards (was a surprise for me, too!) and it runs flawlessly in Wine. If you had asked whether Photoshop (or any Adobe product) runs, my answer would have been quite different...

Can I have a webcam conversation?
Umm... Dunno. To be honest, I never considered this a "OS decision" question. It's a bit like "can I read other OSs discs?". Nice to have, but no breaker if I can't.

Can I play games?
Again, surprisingly enough, most Windows games, the poster child of incompatibility (try running them in the "wrong" version of Windows and you know what I mean...), run fine in Wine. Actually, I need Linux+Wine for a few of my older games if I wanted such fancy things like sound.

ext4?

[Zancarius]

Where'd my wife and the extra seat from my car go?

With Reiser in jail, the only thing you have left is to blame ext4. :)

Err, excuse me. The application developers.

DRM killed FBDEV

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunatelly if DRM had *one* effect, that was stopping the evolution of the framebuffer drivers :(

OK. DRM and KMS is supposed to be a techincally superior solution in the long run, but hey, Hurd was supposed to be a superior solution and that didn't stop the early linux hackers. Being left with ancient fb drivers for such a long time is not acceptable!

It harms the evolution of non-X11 fb-based backends.

Should Never Go Together

[Nom du Keyboard]

DRM support for the Radeon R6xx/R7xx graphic cards

DRM and Linux -- two words that should never go together.

Re:Should Never Go Together

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM = Direct Rendering Manager in this case.

Re:DRM support? In the kernel?

[kill-1]

And a bunch of other things: RMS

802.11w Draft?

[russlar]

802.11w draft? Can we get 802.11n out of draft before we get distracted by something else? Please?

Damnit...

[Blankw]

...I compiled 2.6.29.4-rt16 not two days ago. Took 45 mins using a core2duo, and 6+ hours on a p3 1GHz (I gave up after 6 hours).

If only I'd known...

Re:Damnit...

[xororand]

This sounds like you've built the kernel with lots of modules that you eventually don't use. Building an only moderately stripped down version of 2.6.30 took about 7 minutes on my Core 2 Duo E8400 desktop, with concurrent threads, i.e.: make -j4

Re:Damnit...

[Blankw]

I'm not surprised, I don't know very much when it comes to kernel compilation. Probably should've explored 'make menuconfig' a bit more.

WinFS

[OrangeTide]

Microsoft was supposed to release WinFS, but they gave up. I'm guessing it's because filesystems are hard to get right.
Linux and Windows both vitally need a next generation filesystem for certain types of applications to work effectively.

All these new filesystems (including the 73 that don't work right) leave NTFS in the dust. Ext3 has roughly the same features and similar scalability to NTFS, and you can consider them technologically equivalent as well as being both very stable with only a few obscure bugs that almost nobody has noticed.

Things you might want in a filesystem that NTFS and Ext3 do not provide: Snapshots(freebsd has this already), remote replication(stream your backups 24/7), integrated special RAID(liked RAID-Z and RAID-RP), clustering(as in distributed), hard-real time provisioning(for multimedia where you can guarantee a certain bitrate under all conditions), very high performance on multiple drives(lots of tricks involves that are integral to the design and layout of the filesystem).

Also, there are other possible features that may be hard to have in a general purpose filesystem.

Re:WinFS

[drsmithy]

Microsoft was supposed to release WinFS, but they gave up. I'm guessing it's because filesystems are hard to get right.

WinFS isn't (wasn't ?) a filesystem. It was a metadata layer on top of NTFS.

Re:WinFS

[OrangeTide]

True enough. I guess Microsoft has(had?) no interest in offering recent(within the last decade) filesystem technology. Snapshots, replication and clustering have been around in the enterprise storage industry for some time.

Re:WinFS

[drsmithy]

True enough. I guess Microsoft has(had?) no interest in offering recent(within the last decade) filesystem technology. Snapshots, replication and clustering have been around in the enterprise storage industry for some time.

Windows+NTFS has supported these for about a decade now.

Re:WinFS

[Anonymous Coward]

No sir, it does not support clustering or replication (do you need a definition of replication?). It does sort of have snapshot support, but it's more like Linux LVM snapshots and not an integral feature of the filesystem. I'd prefer to say it doesn't have snapshot support, but it runs on top of a volume manager that does.

NILF is News I'd Like To ...

[ChrisCampbell47]

One of the funniest Daily Show bits ever:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=87155&title=News-I%27d-Like-to-F@#k

It's too easy these days ...

[DrogMan]

Downloaded. Compiled. Installed and rebooted, and it's running on a little test "embedded" box I'm playing with. (Geode LX800) It's passed all my own tests, and that's that.

Like the new compression stuff. Compressed kernel under 1MB again - First time I've seen that for a while.

Now to try it on my Acer Aspire One...

Re:uhh-oh, a new filesystem......

[moderatorrater]

It's just so fucking overdone. Please, please, please stop making dumb comparisons to Hans Reiser, we'd all appreciate it.

Re:uhh-oh, a new filesystem......

[Anonymous Coward]

I fucked your dead great grandmother and reiser's dead wife!

Elves

[Ltap]

a new distributed networking filesystem (POHMELFS)

I always knew it would be "palm[-sized?] elves" that would bring us into the future!

In all seriousness, they need to find a way to make their acronyms shorter, or make acronyms inside acronyms, HURD-style.

Re:uhh-oh, a new filesystem......

[Anonymous Coward]

My flying car runs on only 640k of RAM and uses Reiser4 as its file system!

a ha . a ha ha ha.

Re:uhh-oh, a new filesystem......

[cheftw]

And where did kerneltrap go?

It used to be great for keeping abreast of kernel development but now it just has an oddly appropriate article from september last.

Re:ehem...

[harryandthehenderson]

And everything you talk about is not a domain of kernel hacking and as such it's not the kernel devs fault of MS Office, web cams or games can or not be used or played on a Linux distro.

Re:ehem...

[EsbenMoseHansen]

t deceptive. Again, the software selection of Linux is very limited. Most commercial games have no Linux port. Some might work with Wine, but with severe problems. There are some free games, but they aren't that great. If you love games, Linux is a very bad choice.

I do love games, but I am 34 now. I can't keep up with playing just the *good* games on linux in the time I have for playing. If I did want more games, I think a console would be a better choice in any case. Or try wine.

Of course, I might want to play games with my friends, but it seems only a very few friends are into games in any case, and none in the games I like. So for me, that is irrelevant.

PS: The only windows game I really miss, Severance: Blade of Darkness, doesn't work in windows anymore either :/

Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

That's awesome. I'm right on the verge of needing to build two new boxes for MythTV, and the Intel G45 chipset looks like it might be exactly what I want, but I'm seeing a lot of conflicting reports about whether or not they've got it working yet.

The driver (kernel?!) issue cascades into other things; if I want that video chipset, then I'm buying Intel CPUs instead of my usually-preferred AMD.

Hundreds of bucks are riding on this. Nvidia doesn't want my money so they're out, but Intel and AMD/ATI are trying. The question is: who is trying hard enough to actually deliver a product before the other guy?

NILFS2

[Eil]

So I've been reading that NILFS is the dog bollocks when it comes to solid-state disks in terms of speed and longevity of the disk. However, what I'd like to know is whether any of the advantages will hold for regular old mechanical disks as well. If so, I'd love to try NILFS. Having a real honest-to-goodness versioning filesystem with instant snapshots on my file servers would be so great, I can hardly find the words to describe it.

Re:DRM support? In the kernel?

[bcnstony]

different DRM. this isn't 'rights mgmt' drm.

sometimes, 3 letters can mean different things.

well, FU. errrr, STFU? Damn, I can't think of any 3 letter curse acronyms.

--
myhovercraftisfullofeels.com

Re:DRM support? In the kernel?

[NeoTron]

WTF are you talking about? ;)

Re:DRM support? In the kernel?

[adavies42]

i don't know about that, but i do know that he sometimes signs his name

      _____
     / ___
  \ /    2
   V    x

Why is Linux relatively immune to viruses?

[deek]

There are many reasons, but I think the best one is, in short, History.

Windows users typically run with administrator rights. This is especially true of home users. It's been that way for so long, that's what many windows programs expect to be able to run properly. Viruses and trojans love this sort of environment.

Unix users have rights only to their home directory. It's been that way for so long, that unix programs are very multi-user aware. Running programs with administration access is only done very selectively, only when really needed, and you generally have to enter a code to allow the program to have admin rights.

All this really stems from the initial design of the system. Windows was initially designed as a single user system. Unix was designed as a multiple user system. In some ways, Windows is still struggling to cope with growing beyond its initial design constraints.

Re:DRM support? In the kernel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, his parents gave him those initials 'cause they were thinking ahead :D

enough is enough

[luxitan]

First we got a filesystem created by a murderer, now we got a filesystem for incest? NILFS - Nieces I'd Like to Fsck ??? When will it end?