LTC bulletin: August 30, 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 technologies happening inside IBM are tracked -- includes some new internationalization patches for GNU bash, news from the new SBLIM project, and an interview with Steve Best on JFS. To find out more about any of these projects, go directly to the Linux Technology Center.

The items in this bulletin are arranged alphabetically by project.

EVMS
The Enterprise Volume Management Systems has released version 0.1.5 and added a secondary package file with a patch against Linux kernel 2.4.[89]. According to the release notes, the changes to the current version include the following:

• The EVMS BBR feature is now functional in the kernel
• The drive Linking code in the Engine is now functional, except for the task interface
• LVM Utilities added pvcreate, vgextend, vgreduce, vgremove
• Automatic creation of EVMS dev tree and nodes, eliminating the need for manual mknod

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

Internationalization patches for GNU bash
The Internationalization patches for GNU bash include three new patches. Isamu Hasegawa wrote patches for GNU awk that change gawk commands to support multi-byte character sets and locale-sensitive behavior. He also wrote a patch for GNU sed that changes sed commands to support multi-byte character sets and locale-sensitive behavior. All three patches were submitted to the Free Software Foundation. Isamu also collaborated with Jiro Sekiba, Mitsuru Chinen, and Masahide Washizawa to write patches for GNU bash, which were submitted to the GNU bash maintainer and are updates of previously released patches for bash.

JFS for Linux
The Journaled File System (JFS) 1.0.3 is available, the forty-first release. No substantial changes are listed in the changelog. (Perhaps the team has finally taken a short break from all their hard work.)

OSnews is running an article on journaled file systems, which features an interview with Steve Best of the JFS team. Steve compares JFS to ReiserFS and XFS and talks about the differences between JFS for Linux and JFS for OS/2. He also talks about future plans for JFS.

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.

Omni
The Omni project has released version 0.4.0. with a substantial number of changes and additions. Several devices were added, among them, Device::getShortName (), which returns the name of the file (minus the lib and .so parts), DeviceXXX::getName (id), which returns the NLV translated name for a form (without creating a new form object and querying that object), and DeviceXXX::isXXXSupported (id), which will query whether an id is supported for that device without having to create a new object of that id. 21 new Hewlett Packard laser jets were also added in this release. A complete changelog is available on the project Web site.

Omni edits old device description files in order to create new devices and allows for the subclassing of previous device features, which simplifies printer driver development.

Samba
A Samba patch to prevent file ownership takeover has been posted by Jim McDonough. "The patch," according to Jim, "prevents Windows 9x users who don't have permission from taking ownership of files through NT Server Tools on a Samba server."

SBLIM
The new Standards Based Linux Instrumentation for Manageability has released the Native Provider Interface (NPI) for CIMOM (Common Information Model Object Manager) version 0.7.3, the File System and Volume Management (FSVOL) for WBEM version 0.6.4, and Software Packages support for WBEM version 0.7.3. The new NPI release added object debugging and fixed function prototypes. The FSVOL release includes LVM support.

The most important goal of the SBLIM project is to provide a complete suite of CIMOM providers for Linux (a.k.a. instrumentation) effectively implementing the CIM Schema. Doing this will enable GNU/Linux systems for WBEM. As of version 2.5, the CIM Schema consists of the following sub-schemas: Core, Application, Device, Events, Network, Metrics, Physical, Policy, Support, System, User, and Network. The CIMOM technology from SNIA, the Storage Networking Industry Association, provides client and server with CIM/WBEM technologies.

SBLIM (pronounced "sublime"), the Standards Based Linux Instrumentation for Manageability project, is working to enhance the manageability of GNU/Linux systems. It does so by enabling GNU/Linux for WBEM, Web Based Enterprise Management, a set of standards defined by the DMTF and fostered by the WBEMsource initiative.

System Configurator
System Configurator has released its first beta version, 0.87, otherwise named D'Argo 2+. This is the first package release of System Configurator, and will allow it to work in alignment with the upcoming beta release of SystemImager. It contains all the features required for the 1.0 release. The release notes list the following changes to appear since 0.85:

• Support for Palo (HPA-Risc bootloader)
• Initial Ramdisk generating libraries
• Grub bootstrapping fixed, as well as many documentation bugs (0.86)
• Major Code restructuring to help with maintainability (0.85)
• Separation of --configboot and --runboot options (0.85)
• Bug fixes to make System Configurator work with SystemImager (0.85)

The project has also released the libappconfig-perl package 1.5-2. "This is an RPM of Andy Wardley's AppConfig.pm," notes the team. "It installs into /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl by default, which should work for many configurations of Perl. The original sources can be found on CPAN.

System Configurator works in tandem with System Installer and SystemImager, which make up the System Installation Suite (SIS). 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.

Miscellaneous news
A patch for lanstreamer driver support for the 2.4.x kernel by Kent Yoder was added.

"The patch," according to Kent, "is an update to the Lanstreamer TokenRing driver. It fixes the hanging problem, rearranges the calls to netif_*_queue, makes sure interrupts are renabled before exiting interrupt code, and adds ioctl() functionality for debugging."

Resources

• Read the previous LTC bulletins on developerWorks:
  • August 22, 2001
  • 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:
  • Enterprise Volume Management System project (SourceForge)
  • Internationalization patches for GNU bash (developerWorks)
  • JFS project (developerWorks)
  • Omni project (developerWorks)
  • Samba project (developerWorks)
  • SBLIM project (developerWorks)
  • System Configurator, System Installer, SystemImager and System Installation Suite projects (SourceForge)
• Take our free JFS fundamentals tutorial on developerWorks.
• Read the OSNews article that features an interview with Steve Best of JFS.
• Check out SNIA, the Storage Networking Industry Association and the Distributed Management Task Force.
• Go to CPAN to get the RPM of Andy Wardley's AppConfig.pm.
• Check out more Linux resources and more Open source resources on developerWorks.

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

Copyright 2001