LTC bulletin: August 22, 2001

Maya Stodte (mstodte@us.ibm.com)
Contributing editor, developerWorks

August 2001

Our biweekly news in brief from the Linux Technology Center -- where all the Linux-related projects inside IBM are tracked -- includes several new releases, such as JFS drop 40 and new releases from LUI, MWave, and NGPT, and new projects, such as the Linux Test Project, openCryptoki, and the PAQ (the Prioritize Accept Queues) project. To find out more about any of these projects, go to the Linux Technology Center.

JFS
JFS has released its fortieth drop, version 1.0.2 -- JFS 1.0.0 was released at the end of June. The first drop, in February of 2000, had the MKFS functional and able to format an existing or newly created partition for JFS; the mount/unmount was functional, and the self(.) and parent (..) directories entries were viewable. The current release has the following function and fixes to the utilities:

• Fixed mkfs to display the correct error message if device name is not valid or missing
• gzip the man pages and place /usr/share/man/man8
• Fixed mkfs to properly setup buf_ai (caused Bus error with mkfs on SPARC Linux)
• Fixed fsck to display path correctly

and to JFS:
• Fixed multiple truncate hang
• Fixed hang on unlink a file and sync happening at the same time
• Improved handling of kmalloc error conditions
• Fixed hang in blk_get_queue and SMP deadlock: bh_end_io call generic_make_request (jitterbug 145 and 146)
• stbl was not set correctly set in dtDelete
• changed trap to printk in dbAllocAG to avoid system hang

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.

SNIA CIMOM
Viktor Mihajlovski has written two new SNIA and CIMOM patches, a threading deadlock patch and a method providers exception patch. The threading patch, "fixes a deadlock situation that occurs when the maximum number of concurrent threads is exceeded," notes Mihajlovski. "The method providers patch fixes a bug with exceptions in method providers."

SNIA is the Storage Networking Industry Association. The CIMOM (Common Information Model Object Manager) technology from SNIA provides client and server with CIM/WBEM technologies. Viktor Mihajlovski of the LTC explains this further in the LTC Bulletin from July 31.

NGPT
The Next Generation POSIX Threads project has released version 1.0.1, the first patch to the general release of NGPT. "It contains a kernel patch that provides a full implementation of the CLONE_THREAD flag option of the clone() API," according to the release notes. "It contains significant changes affecting usage on SMP machines and quite a few bug fixes. The main focus was SMP load balancing and binary compatibility with glibc/LinuxThreads." More information can be found in the project's complete changelog.

The Next Generation POSIX Threading project derives from the GNU Pth package. It aims to solve problems associated with the pthreads library on Linux.

System Installer and System Configurator
System Installer has released version 0.1.0. "The commands are functional, but currently limited to data storage," according to the release notes. "The basic libraries for building images are functional, but currently only for RPM packages. There is also a minimal package list for building a basic image supplied. The disk partitioning libraries have some limited function, but will create a valid disk partition table."

System Configurator has released version 0.85, its final alpha release. It is now working with a modified version of SystemImager for any Lilo based Linux Distribution. (Turbo, RedHat, Debian, and SuSE have been tested).

System Installer builds Linux images. It works in tandem with System Configurator and System Imager, which make up the System Installation Suite. SIS is the result of a recent merger between the LTC LUI project and SystemImager from VA Linux. Read more about the merger in the LTC Bulletin from June 19.

Linux Test Project
The Linux Test Project, which will be hosted on Sourceforge, has been announced. "The Linux Test Project is a group aimed at testing and improving Linux," the team notes. "The goal of the LTP is to deliver a suite of automated testing tools for Linux as well as publishing the results of tests we run." The latest package from the LTP is version 20010801. The changelog notes that "there are several minor bugfixes and enhancements to this release as well as some new tests. New tests include an ipc semaphores test, an nfsstat test, a large file test, a filesystem permissions test, and several memory stress tests."

openCryptoki
The LTC now hosts the openCryptoki project, the operating system implementation of PKCS#11, V2.0. It provides a generalized abstraction for interface with cryptographic hardware and supports both the IBM 4758 PCI Cryptographic Coprocessor and the IBM eServer Cryptographic Accelerator.

Crypto Accelerator Library and Driver
The Cryptographic Accelerator Device Interface Library and Cryptographic Accelerator Device Driver have been added to the list of projects hosted by the LTC. The library is a Linux implementation of the ICA interface library, which is used to provide a generalized abstraction to the ICA device driver interface. The driver is a device driver for the IBM 2058 eServer Cryptographic Accelerator (ICADD). The current ICADD patch is a beta 0.9.0. The ICA is a server class device providing RSA Cryptographic operations (>1000 1024bit Private Key Operations per second).

ACP Modem Driver
The ACP Modem (MWave) project has released version 1.0.1. According to the changelog, in the new version ./configure accepts --disable-mwtrace, the mwaved script uses new module parms, the HOWTO has been updated accordingly, and the latest 2.4.7 driver patch has been included. The driver patch contains the following fixes:

• Cleanup proc stuff for picky compilers
• More consistent naming for module opts and /proc info (Thomas Hood)
• Sanity checking on port and irq values for register_serial() (Hood)
• In mwave_init, back out initialization steps properly (Hood)
• MW_TRACE macro now defined in Makefile (Hood)
• Driver parms actually work now (Hood)

The ACP modem (Mwave) for Linux is a WinModem. "It is composed of a loadable kernel module and a user-level application," the project site explains. "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.

PAQ
The new Prioritize Accept Queues patch, an inbound connection control mechanism, has been released. PAQ provides admission-control and service-differentiation based on connection and application level information by configuring and prioritizing incoming connection requests. "This feature can be used to guarantee low delay and high throughput to preferred clients on a Web server," according to the project team, "by assigning higher priority to connection requests in which the source ip address matches the ip address of the preferred clients. It can also be used on a server hosting multiple websites on which each site is identified by its own ip address. In this case the prioritization can be done based on the destination ip address of the connection requests."

EVMS
The Enterprise Volume Management Systems project has released version 0.1.4. They are currently in pre-Alpha development status. Among the changes mentioned in the release notes are:

• New engine list functions for listing volumes, objects, regions
• Task and Options interface is functional
• Four Linux LVM Compatibility Utilities complete - vgscan, lvscan, pvscan, vgcreate
• First drops of GUI (only display functions), engine drive linking feature (discover only) and BBR runtime code (not functional yet)
• AIX Read and (maybe) Write support for basic volumes

EVMS does logical volume management with plug-in model architecture in order to maximize extensibility and flexibility.

Miscellaneous patches
Judy Barkal and Jim Washer have written a switch_mm patch for the Linux kernel, which fixes a bug in switch_mm causing stale ldt's to be used. The patch works on versions 2.4.5 to 2.4.7 and has been accepted into the kernel.

LUI
The Linux Utility for cluster Installation project has released version 1.12.1, which includes a new build tool that will dynamically download and build a network boot kernel. The project is looking for contributions in the following areas: automatic MAC address-collection testing on distributions other than RedHat, wider range of ethernet-adapter support, support for adapters other than eth0, manage the dhcpd.conf file just like the /etc/bootptab file

LUI is a utility that installs workstations remotely over an ethernet network by providing tools to manage installation resources on the server. Read about the merger between LUI and the VA SystemImager to form SIS, the System Installation Suite.

Linux for S/390
The Linux for S/390 project has released four alpha patches for 2.2.16, as well as several new experimental patches -- three for Linux kernel 2.2.19. Some object code only (OCO) modules were also updated. The project documentation has also been updated.

Among the fixes in the first alpha patch for 2.2.16 are problems with: kernel reboot, in_interrupt counting, parameter parsing, console device node, and issues related to the compiler version. The second patch provides two LINUX for S/390 stand alone dump records for generating system memory dumps on dasd volumes and tapes. And the third patch enhances the kernel with a device driver for channel-attached tape devices. All of these patches are recommended, and hence have each been tested. They will all be included in the next release.

The experimental OCO module (z90crypt device driver ) for Linux kernel version 2.4.5 31-bit provides an I/O-like interface to any PCI Cryptographic Coprocessors (PCICC) attached to an S/390/. The three experimental patches for 2.2.19: update the experimental Standalone Dump, bring the experimental tape device driver up to standard and contain the backport of the new channel to channel device driver from kernel version 2.4.5. These patches are experimental , and have had limited testing. They may not work with all installations, and need not be compatible with other S/390 patches. Experimental patches may not be used on a production system or on any system that may get authority over a production system or access to data of a production system.

Linux for S/390 is a port of Linux to the S/390 architecture. It is a pure Linux from a user point of view. It supports the S/390 processor architecture and some devices that are specific to S/390 environments. S/390 is IBM's standard bearer for enterprise computing.

Miscellaneous news

• Turbolinux for IBM eServer iSeries has been released. Support for IBM's eServer pSeries is also available. "Turbolinux 6.5 (TL 6.5) features complete Linux server distributions which provide functionality previously unavailable to iSeries customers," Turbolinux notes, "including Linux's firewall and Web server, and Windows-compatible file, print and email services." Daily call center support, training, application enabling, and onsite professional services are available.
• NEWSWire/400 has an article covering Linux on IBM eServer iSeries (free registration required).

Events
Isamu Hasegawa will present a paper on "Deterministic Finite-state Automaton handling multibyte characters " at Linux Conference (Japan) in September. "The algorithm of constructing (DFA) from Non-deterministic Finite state Automaton (NFA) assumes that the sets of input characters are small. Therefore when the algorithm is adapted for multibyte character," issues of size arise, he explains in his abstract. Hasegawa will "propose a method of constructing DFA adaptable for multibyte character by constructing a DFA state from the power set of the set of destination states, and by dynamic state transitions."

The 5th Annual Linux Showcase and Conference will be held in Oakland on November 5-10. Hubertus Franke, Shailabh Nagar, Mike Kravetz and Rajan Ravindran of the LTC will present a paper titled "CPU Pooling and Load Balancing for Linux MultiQueue Scheduling". In a previous publication, we introduced two new alternatives to DSS, namely the Multiqueue Scheduler (MQS) and the Priority Level Scheduler (PLS). MQS has been shown to scale much better than DSS and PLS at the high end," they note in their abstract. We will now "present further enhancements to MQS to improve its performance at the low end and to make it even more scalable for NUMA and large SMP systems."

Updates from the LTC is a regular bi-monthly column.

Resources

• Read the previous LTC bulletins on developerWorks:
  • July 31, 2001
  • July 16, 2001
  • June 19, 2001
  • May 21, 2001
  • May 7, 2001
  • April 23, 2001
• Visit the Linux Technology Center and take a look behind the scenes at the LTC.
• Browse the Linux Documentation Page.
• Learn more about the projects and patches covered in this LTC bulletin:
  • ACP Modem Driver project (developerWorks)
  • Crypto Accelerator Driver project (developerWorks)
  • Crypto Accelerator Library project (developerWorks)
  • Enterprise Volume Management System (SourceForge)
  • iSeries project (developerWorks)
  • JFS project (developerWorks)
  • Linux for S/390 (developerWorks)
  • Linux Test Project (SourceForge)
  • LUI (developerWorks)
  • Miscellaneous patches (developerWorks)
  • Next Generation POSIX Threads project (developerWorks)
  • openCryptoki project (developerWorks)
  • OSCAR project (SourceForge)
  • SNI CIMOM patch (developerWorks)
  • System Configurator, System Installer and System Installation Suite (SourceForge)
  • Scheduler Scalability (SourceForge)
• Take our free JFS fundamentals tutorial.
• Check out more Linux resources and more Open source resources on developerWorks.
• Find out more about IBM's storage networking and the IBM e-server iSeries.
• Check outSNIA, the Storage Networking Industry Association and the Distributed Management Task Force.
• Find out more about the Linux Conference Japan.
• Find out more about the 5th Annual Linux Showcase and Conference to be held in Oakland, CA, November 5-10.

About the author
Maya Stodte is a contributing writer and editor for developerWorks. She can be reached at mstodte@us.ibm.com.

Copyright 2001