LTC bulletin: June 19, 2001
News in brief from IBM's Linux Technology CenterMaya Stodte (mstodte@us.ibm.com)
Contributing editor, developerWorks
June 2001
Our biweekly news in brief from the Linux Technology Center -- where all the Linux-related technologies happening inside IBM are tracked -- includes some new projects, ppc64 and Scalable Scheduling for Linux; some new version releases and patches; a merger between the LUI project and SystemImager; a few new white papers and events; and an election to the GNU C Library Steering Committee. You'll find quick summaries here, along with links to the Linux Technology Center for greater detail.
PowerPC 64
The PowerPC 64 Linux kernel team has released the ppc64 port of the Linux kernel.
ppc64 runs on both iSeries and pSeries boxes with 64-bit PowerPC processors. "In
January of 2001 the port of PPC64 was up and running and to a state where 32-bit
applications wouldn't know the difference between running on the new ppc64 Linux
kernel or the old 32-bit ppc Linux kernel," according to the PPC64 project team.
"In the past few months we've been filling in the holes and tracking down all those
hard-to-find problems to yield a dependable, well performing system."
Linux Scalability Effort
The Linux Scalability Effort and Andrew Theurer of the LTC have posted preliminary
results from their investigation into Linux 2.4 SMP scalability, using Netbench
as a workload with Samba.
Next Generation POSIX Threading
The NGPT project is posting its third beta release, version 0.9.6, to the site.
The Next Generation POSIX Threading project derives from the GNU Pth package. It
aims to solve problems associated with the pthreads library on Linux.
Version 0.9.6, according to the release notes, "contains a kernel patch that provides a full implementation of the CLONE_THREAD flag option of the clone() API. A diff is provided. It also contains additional platform support and bug fixes for signal handling and pthread_cancel handling." The major focus of this release was to stabilize the package on SMP. There are numerous locking and signal-handling changes, and most NGPT pthread applications should work as expected on SMP machines.
Scalable Scheduling for Linux
The Scalable Scheduling for Linux project has announced a call for participation.
"This projects deals with the scalability limitations of the current task scheduler
under Linux 2.4.x," explains Hubertus Franke, one of the key team members working
on the project. "The current scheduler is organized around a single runqueue protected
by a single spinlock. As the workload and the number of CPUs increases, this organization
can become a bottleneck leading to increased lock contention, lock hold times, and
lock wait times that limit scalability. We have implemented different versions of
schedulers.
"We implemented a priority-level scheduler that maintains the single lock, but organizes the runqueue into multiple priority lists that allow for a shorter lock hold time. We have shown that in a majority of test cases this is not sufficient to substantially increase scalability. In contrast, in our multiqueue scheduler we assign a separate runqueue together with its own lock to every CPU in the system. This scheduler first derives a scheduling decision for the invoking CPU, but then scans the top candidates from the remote queues to ensure that global scheduling semantics are maintained.
"Lock hold times are shorter, as only the local runqueue has to be scanned. Lock contention is substantially reduced, as remote locks are tried rather than spun on. The multiqueue scheduler has demonstrated substantially better scalability in various benchmarks."
The Scalable Scheduling project is run by Hubertus Franke, Bill Hartner, Mike Kravetz, and Shailabh Nagar. Mike Kravetz and Bill Hartner are Software Engineers at the LTC. Hubertus Franke and Shailabh Nagar are Research Staff Members at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center.
CScope
CScope has added two new patches against Cscope CVS. Cscope is a developer's tool
for browsing program code. The patches address the following problems, as described
on the home page: "The ocs -q option does not work if inverted index files do not
already exist, and ocs can make undesired database updates." The OCS script is described
in the patch README file as "designed to avoid updating the cscope database if either
the ocs generated file list ($TMP) or a file list generated by another process ($LST)
does not exist."
EVMS
The Enterprise Volume Management System project has released version 0.1.2 and is
now being hosted on Source Forge. "We decided that having Source Forge host our
project would give us more exposure to the open source community at large," comments
John Stiles of the EVMS project. " As this project will only be successful if we
have suggestions and participation from the community, having that extra exposure
will help us get word out to more people."
Runtime (kernel-space) highlights from 0.1.2 are:
Engine (user-space) highlights from 0.1.2 are:
EVMS does logical volume management with plug-in model architecture in order to maximize extensibility and flexibility. EVMS is now being hosted on SoruceForge.
JFS
JFS version 0.3.3 has been released. The functions and fixes from this and the previous
(0.3.2) release are as follows, according to the changelog by Steve Best:
Drop 33:
"Also included in 0.3.3," according to Steve, "is a JFS Root Boot HOWTO. This HOWTO describes a method for converting an ext2 filesystem-based Linux system to one running entirely on IBM's Journaled File System (JFS).
Drop 32:
The Journaled File System technology from IBM, currently used in its enterprise servers, provides a log-based, byte-level file system designed for high-throughput server environments. Work is underway to complete the port to Linux.
S/390
The Linux for S/390 project has released alpha patches for Linux 2.2.16. The project
ports Linux to the S/390 architecture, IBM's "standard bearer" for enterprise computing.
The first patch, linux-2.2.16-iucv.tar.gz, "fixes the behavior of the IUCV driver in tansmit error situation," according to the release notes. Linux-2.2.12-io-tar.gz "prevents the kernel from ending in a retry loop during IPL when multi-pathed devices suffer irrecoverable I/O errors during path groupin, e.g. when tapes units are intervention required."
S/390 also has an updated patch against yamd-0.32. "YAMD," the S/390 team explains, "is Yet Another Malloc Debugger. It's a package to help in finding bugs related to dynamic memory allocation such as memory leaks and array boundary checking." The patch accounts for an error code change in the kernel and was ported to S/390 by Greg Lambert, a Software Engineer at the LTC working on the zSeries Linux Application Development Tools.
SystemImager and LUI
SystemImager has been added to the list of LTC collaborations, and will soon merge
with the LUI project to form the SIS project (System Installation Suite), which
will be hosted on Source Forge. LUI is a utility that installs workstations remotely
over an ethernet network by providing tools to manage installation resources on
the server. The VA SystemImager automates Linux installation to multiple machines.
"SystemImager," according to Richard Ferri of the LUI project, "excels at installation when nodes are homogeneous (similar hardware and software requirements). This new installation tool will provide installation methods for all the major distributions of Linux, on the major architectures (PowerPC, Intel-32, Itanium, and Alpha). It will retain aspects of the original LUI technology, and will provide the community with an integrated solution." The LUI team will be contributing the SystemInstaller and SystemConfigurator to the SIS project. SystemConfigurator has just released version 0.2.0, "code named Zhaan," according to the release notes. "As of this release it now supports Network Scripts of four different types, and hardware detection of ethernet, token ring, and scsi devices."
Richard Ferri has written a letter to the community explaining why LUI and SystemImager have decided to merge. "Ultimately," he explains, "we want to make it simple to install the OS on clusters with hetero compositions, and to pave the way to run parallel applications on such clusters. At the same time, we want to make it easy to install a pile of machines with the same OS quickly and simply."
Richard has also had several articles published in recent months. In SysAdmin his article on LUI was published in April, and his article on AIX/Linux affinity will be published in the June AIX supplement. In the February UnixReview his Overview of Extreme Linux Developers Forum held in Santa Fe was published. The article covers four new trends to look for in the Linux industry.
iSeries
There is a new checkpoint Linux kernel patch for Linux on the iSeries LPAR (Logical
Partitioning). "The iSeries checkpoint patch is a patch against the Linux kernel
demonstrating the progress of the Linux on iSeries team," Steve Fox of the LTC explains.
"People can use this test version if they want to contribute to the development."
A new Linux kernel patch has also been added for the iSeries device drivers.
The IBM e-server iSeries is a set of enterprise servers designed for e-business solutions. Although Linux distributions for the iSeries are yet to be made available, you can run Linux on the iSeries unsupported. Note that this requires the next version of OS/400, which is still in beta testing.
ACP modem driver
MWave, the ACP Modem Driver project, has an updated How To and a patch for Linux
kernel 2.4.4. SuSE is planning to include the Mwave driver and application in its
upcoming 7.2 release.
"The ACP modem (Mwave) for Linux is a WinModem. It is composed,"the project site explains," of a loadable kernel module and a user-level application. Together these components support direct attachment to public switched telephone networks (PSTNs) and support selected worldwide countries." It supports the IBM ThinkPad 600E and the standard communications port interface (ttySx), and is compatible with the Hayes AT Command Set.
"The patch," according to Paul Schroeder of the MWave project, "is a version of the driver that already exists, integrated into the kernel. We hope it will be integrated into the official kernel source tree so that Mwave users won't have to deal with getting a driver separate from the kernel to build, install, and configure.
"One thing the patch does add," he notes, "is the ability to build the driver into the kernel proper, that is, not as a module. One can configure the driver as a kernel or as a module via the standard kernel config tools (make config, menuconfig, xconfig)."
New white papers
The LTC regularly posts a list of Linux white papers written by its members. Two
recent additions covering security are the "Linux Security State of the Union" by
Robb Romans and Emily Ratliff of the LTC and "Addressing Security Issues in Linux"
by Mark Chapman of the IBM Server Group.
Romans' and Ratliff's paper focuses on Enterprise Linux security. The authors argue that Linux is part of a "whole, integrated [security] strategy" that does not differ significantly whether commercial or open source UNIX machines are being used. They also briefly cover twelve ongoing security projects including the Linux Kernel Auditing Project, SE Linux, the NSA security enhancements to Linux, SNORT, "a lightweight network intrusion detection system," LOMAC (Low water-mark Mandatory Access Control), and TCFS (Transparent Cryptographic File System). Rob Romans and Emily Ratliff are on the LTC "Red Team," which deals primarily with operating system security as it relates to Linux in the enterprise.
Mark Chapman gives a general overview of strategies and products that deal with Linux security issues, targeting individual users and network security administrators. He covers fourteen individual topics, ranging from passwords and permissions to data encryption, software bugs, programming tools, and security analysis. He also mentions the TCPA (Trusted Computer Platform Alliance) and offers a section on miscellaneous tips, including: use your logs, disable floppy and CD-ROM boots and the file system from Apache, and use as many layers of security as possible.
Elected to the GNU C Library Steering Committee
Mark Brown of the LTC has been elected chairman of the GNU C Library Steering Committee.
His fellow committee members will be Paul Eggert, Andreas Jaeger, Jakub Jelinek,
Roland McGrath, and Andreas Schwab. "The Steering Committee," according to the announcement,
"will provide a focus for discussion and decision of policy and planning issues
facing the project, and should allow more actual development work to be done by
the code maintainers."
Mark Brown is a Senior Technical Staff Member with IBM, and has been working on AIX and UNIX operating system development since 1988. His current responsibilities include the AIX C runtime and API, and representing IBM to the Open Group and IEEE POSIX. He holds a BS in Computer Science from Southwest Texas State University.
Events
Several new listings have been posted in the LTC events calendar.
Dan Frye and Steve Best both participated in the LinuxWorld Expo, held in Tokyo May 30 - June 1. Dan Frye of the LTC presented a keynote address entitled The Future of Linux. Daniel D. Frye is the Director of the LTC and is responsible for overseeing IBM's Linux technical strategy and IBM's participation in the open source Linux development community. Dr. Frye has an M.A. in Physics from The Johns Hopkins University (1982) and a B.A. in Physics from the University of Idaho (1979). He also received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Atomic Physics from The Johns Hopkins University (1985). Dr. Frye is a core team member of the U.S. Government Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee on open source.
Steve Best presented a session on JFS where he covered the features of JFS, gave an overview of how journaling works in the file system, and talked about the goals of the JFS project and its function in working on Linux. Steve works in the Linux Technology Center in Austin, Texas. He is a member of the File System development department and is currently working on the port of Journaled File System (JFS) to Linux. Steve has done extensive work in operating system development with a focus in the areas of file systems, internationalization, and security.
The IEEE ICC Communications Conference was held in Helsinki, Finland on June 11 - 14. Boas Betzler presented a session on embedded Linux. Boas Betzler studied computer science at the Berufsakademie Stuttgart (Germany). He joined IBM in 1992 to work on design and architecture of operating systems. He is known as the "grandfather" of Linux/390, having started the grass roots project, and was Chief Architect after it became a centerpiece of the IBM strategy. Currently he leads the team in the Linux Technology Center that is focused on embedded systems.
The LinuxWorld Conference and Expo will be held in San Francisco on August 26 - 30. Ross Mauri (IBM VP eServer Development, and President of the Open Source Development Lab) will moderate a panel session titled "Best Practices with Linux for an e-Business Infrastructure". Ross Mauri is responsible for the hardware and software development of all IBM eServer series products and oversees IBM�s open source contributions to the Linux operating system. Mr. Mauri joined IBM in 1980 as a programmer for the MVS mainframe operating system and has held various management positions with IBM since then. In January 2000, Mr. Mauri was named vice president, UNIX Software, where he was responsible for the marketing and development of IBM�s UNIX and Linux initiatives. He assumed his present position in IBM�s Server Group in September, 2000. Mr. Mauri holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Computer Mathematics from Marist College and currently serves as a member of the Marist College Board of Trustees. He is also the President of the Open Source Development Lab, a consortium of companies providing resources to open source developers.
Steve Best, mentioned above in connection with the LinuxWorld Expo in Tokyo, will also present a session at the LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco titled "Journaled File System for Linux".
Boas Betzler, mentioned above in connection with the IEEE ICC Communications Conference, will present a session at the LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco titled "Growing Success of Linux on the Main Frame".
Dan Powers (Director of Early Stage Internet Technology) will present a session at the LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco titled "Linux: How a Penguin will Change the Face of the Internet".
Eddie Daghelian (Product Manager for DB2 on Linux) will present a session at San Francisco's LinuxWorld Expo titled "Database Clusters and Massively Parallel Processing on Linux". Eddie Daghelian is the product manager for IBM's DB2 for Linux at IBM's Toronto Software Laboratory. He received his bachelors degree in Computer Science at York University, and is in the process of completing an MBA at Schulich School of Business this summer. Eddie has worked with databases for over nine years, seven of them with IBM. He was previously a technical analyst in the development organization. Eddie's previous position was manager of the DB2 support team in Toronto.
Resources
About the author
Maya Stodte is a contributing writer and editor for developerWorks. She can be reached
at mstodte@us.ibm.com.
Copyright 2001