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LWN.net Weekly Edition for February 2, 2006Linux in Italian schools - five months laterBack in September, LWN ran an article about the FUSS project, which converted the entire computing infrastructure for the Italian-speaking schools of Bolzano, Italy to Linux. When that article was written, the FUSS staff had completed a major push to install its own Debian-based distribution on over 2600 systems, but the true test - the beginning of the school year - was still in the future. Now that the new system has supported a few months of teaching, it seems like a good time to go back and see how things went. Is Linux truly up to the task of running a school system?The FUSS organizers helpfully connected us with several teachers in the affected schools. These people, in turn, graciously took time out of their busy schedules to answer a long list of questions - and they didn't even complain about your editor's difficult Italian. The answers paint a picture of a not-entirely-smooth transition, but, in the end, the system appears to be coming together. More importantly, the new system, based on free software, would appear to have the strong support of the people who must make use of it to get their jobs done. School teachers everywhere tend to be busy people who are dedicated to their work. So your editor did not expect to hear them praise the way free software may have saved money for their central IT department or to talk about the ethical aspects of free software. It seemed more likely that these teachers would grumble about extra work, having to learn an unfamiliar system, and the glitches which are inevitable with a transition of this size. This expectation turned out to be only half correct. There were indeed some complaints. Printing was at the top of everybody's list; "cups" is indeed a four-letter word in Bolzano at the moment. One teacher described its administration tools as "delirious." Other peripheral devices - scanners, for example - were also problematic. It's not just that there were problems, but that these problems often required the intervention of the central FUSS staff (who received credit for much hard work) to resolve. Many of the teachers do not see a Linux-based network as something they can administer themselves. As one middle school teacher expressed it:
The FUSS group has done a truly excellent job, they have been well
prepared and quick to come to the school to resolve problems, but
this is insufficient in the long term. The schools need somebody
who works just to keep the system running. If this work gets
dumped onto a teacher (who may lack, as in my case, a technical
background) the system will never work correctly.
(All quotes translated from Italian by your editor). By most accounts, the key software - OpenOffice in particular - is working well for both students and teachers. The big exception is documents with macros; those macros must be rewritten to work on the new system. When asked what they would most like to see improved, most teachers talked about printers and related issues. There were also requests for better ease of use in general, and an interface closer to Windows in particular. A couple of teachers noted the relative scarcity of documentation in Italian, and one complained that Linux was bloated and slow. In the end, though, the transition appears to have been successful, and most of the teachers seem happy enough. Not one said that the schools should go back to the previous, proprietary systems. And these teachers - some of them at least - are beginning to see the advantages of free software. Here's a few quotes from various teachers:
Naturally some things still need to be fixed, but we maintain that
the change is important at both technical and cultural levels. The
benefits are not just the savings, but the fact that it opens a way
of access to technology which is more honest and aware.
The biggest advantage is the fact that it is free (libero) software. This has drawn a fair amount of interest from the parents of our students. I teach in a middle school and our kids are between 11 and 14 years old. They still don't really understand what free software means, but their parents do. I maintain that it's natural and obvious that the schools, as an institution, should use free software. The sharing of knowledge, the freedom of access to information, etc. should be at the base of any instructional process. It seems to me that the philosophy of free software rests on the same principles. The fact that you're not tied to licensing problems lets you move with a certain confidence; you're forever inspired to look for something which works better, which is closer to your needs. It's a great and beautiful thing. Of course, not everybody is quite so pleased. As one instructor put it:
For a teacher there is no advantage [to Linux]; just problems using
documents produced with other software and only partially
recognized by free software (example: Excel and Word macros, which
I use heavily in my teaching work, must be reconstructed).
How do the students feel about it? As we know, children tend to be more flexible, and, as a rule, they have smaller investments in old Word macros. So they seem to have taken the change in stride. Some amusement can be found in this article (in Italian); one school opened up a forum where 9-year-olds could post their impressions of the new systems. Here's a few:
Linux is cool it has programs which Windows doesn't have like
educational games...and it's also FREE (GRATIS)
!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The names are changed and with Linux I have done well and there have been some differences. And with Linux the CD's are free (gratuiti). When is my CD arriving? There's more things than we had last year. With Linux the programs are free (liberi). Changing the names of the programs gave me some trouble at the beginning but now I'm starting to get used to it. The programs are much better; there were good things in Paint but more good things in tuxpaint! With regard to payments the fact that you don't have to pay is beautiful. And being able to download it at home for free is even more beautiful! I think Linux is better than Ms Window because Linux is free (gratuito) and it turns us into a community. The theme should be clear by now. As can be seen from these comments, the students are not yet, in general, ready to think about where free software comes from and why it exists. Don't expect any patches from the students in Bolzano in the near future.
One of the goals of the Linux transition was to give each student a CD with the software; that way, they could use the same tools at home and at the school. At this point, however, it seems that, while some students are using free software at home, most of them have not made that change. Part of the problem here is that the promised live CD distribution has not yet been made available. This CD is evidently ready to go, it's just waiting for the obligatory launch press conference with the education minister. Once this CD goes out (which could happen within a week), there may be more students using Linux at home. Another obvious question which comes up is: will other school systems follow the FUSS project's example? Bolzano has two parallel school systems: the Italian-speaking schools (which moved to Linux) and the German-speaking schools (which did not). If any group of schools were likely to be inspired by FUSS, one might expect it to be the German-language schools of Bolzano. Views on whether that might happen soon were varied, but a number of teachers noted that there is some free software use in those schools now, and that the German-language schools were certainly watching to see how things go. Most teachers seem to expect that change to happen sooner or later. Finally, your editor asked the teachers if there were anything they would like to communicate to the free software development community as a whole. The answers ranged from the short and simple ("Documentation, people, documentation!") to the lengthy, but most shared the same theme. Thanks for the work that you do, please continue and make it even better and easier to use. Oh, and, if you could, make the printers work please?
GPLv3 and the kernelOne almost has to pity the crowd of mainstream technical journalists who clearly follow the linux-kernel mailing list with the hope of obtaining a good Linus Torvalds quote to write an article around. Working through 300 incomprehensible messages every day is a serious chore - trust your editor on this. But those reporters found their prize last week, when Linus let it be known that he was not much interested in adopting version 3 of the GPL for the kernel. A quick search on Google News turns up dozens of resulting articles, mostly with headlines like "No GPLv3 for Linux." That may well be how things turn out, but there's a few things which should be taken into account when making predictions about the future of Linux.One of those is that there will be no GPLv3 at all for another year. What is being circulated is a draft, and, if the Free Software Foundation is responsive to comments at all, there are likely to be changes. There is little point in debating the adoption of a license which does not exist, which is why most kernel developers have stayed out of the current discussion. While a certain ZDNet columnist engaged in a humorous exercise in wishful thinking:
More infighting among the Linux stalwarts and the formation of
polarized factions will turn the Linux community into open source
software version of the Mideast - lots of talk, posturing, and
little progress.
The simple fact is that most developers are taking a quiet "wait and see" approach for now. And, now or later, there seems to be little appetite for a big licensing fight. Another thing to keep in mind is that Linus can change his mind, even after seemingly painting himself into a corner with an absolute statement. One of your editor's favorite Linus pronouncements was issued almost exactly seven years ago. In response to a query on how to set up an i386 box with 4GB of memory, Linus stated:
Oh, the answer is very simple: it's not going to happen.
EVER. You need more that 32 bits of address space to handle that kind of memory. This is not something I'm going to discuss further... This is not negotiable. Less than one year later, Ingo Molnar's high memory patch was merged for 2.3.23. The lesson is clear: even when Linus says "never," the right argument can change his mind. And, in fact, Linus has left the door open to just that possibility:
Quite frankly, _if_ we ever change to GPLv3, it's going to be because
somebody convinces me and other copyright holders to add the "or
any later license" to all files, just because v3 really is so much
better. It doesn't seem likely, but hey, if somebody shows that the
GPLv2 is unconstitutional (hah!), maybe something like that happens.
So I'm not _entirely_ dismissing an upgrade, but quite frankly, to upgrade would be a huge issue. Not just I, but others that have worked on Linux over the last five to ten years would have to agree on it. The door may not be open very far, but neither is it barred shut. Then, there's the fact that, as Linus points out, it is not just his decision. Much code in the kernel is explicitly licensed with the FSF's recommended "or any later version" language; that code will be distributable (separately from the kernel) under the GPLv3 in any case. Relicensing the GPLv2-only code, however, would require the assent of every developer who holds copyrights on that code. Given that copyrights in the kernel are widely distributed and tracked by nobody, obtaining that permission would be a significant challenge. Or would it? Linus added the explicit GPLv2 language for the 2.4.0-test8 release. Another significant kernel contributor (Alan Cox) is unconvinced that this language will get in the way:
It isn't clear that this will be a problem. Very few people
specifically put their code v2 only, and Linus edit of the top
copying file was not done with permission of other copyright
holders anyway so really only affects his code if it is valid at
all.
If this view prevails, the number of copyright holders who would have to agree to a relicensing would be much reduced, and the problem might just become tractable. The relicensing discussion is premature now, and it can be expected to fade away. But it will certainly come back. The anti-DRM provisions found in GPLv3 resonate strongly with many developers, and, to many of those, said provisions only clarify a requirement which, they believe, is already present in GPLv2. To these developers, locking Linux into a DRM-equipped machine takes away the freedom that the GPL promised in the first place and is an abuse of the software they have contributed to the world. The opportunity to end that abuse with a license change will be appealing; expect to see developers pushing for that change after the license becomes official. Linus, however, has made it clear in the past that locking down systems with signed kernels is just fine with him. He reiterated that point recently:
I believe that hardware that limits what their users can do will
die just because being user-unfriendly is not a way to do
successful business. Yes, I'm a damned blue-eyed optimist, but I'd
rather be blue-eyed than consider all uses of security technology
to necessarily always be bad.
So blue-eyed Linus is unlikely to agree to a license change on the basis of the anti-DRM provisions. But it is possible that other factors could eventually bring about a change of heart (and license). For example, many of the changes in GPLv3 are motivated by the requirements of legal systems in various parts of the world; if GPLv2 turns out to be hard (or impossible) to enforce somewhere, a shift to GPLv3 could become more appealing. Such a change, however, cannot occur before the license moves out of the comment period and is adopted officially by the FSF. Until then, any predictions on whether the kernel will ever shift to the GPLv3 should be taken with a grain of salt.
Some Rockbox updatesLast week's Rockbox review was reasonably well received. Since then, however, a couple of things have happened - one good, one less so - which make an update in order.Starting with the good news: the iPod port can now produce audio on the iPod Nano and 4G Color/Photo models. That means that there is now a totally free (if still a bit bleeding edge) firmware offering for this otherwise proprietary, DRM-equipped player. iPods running Rockbox will have all of the features described last week, including a much wider variety of codecs. The iPod Rockbox hackers have put a lot of work into this port, and congratulations are in order. Support for a full-color "while playing screen" has also been merged since last week - a development which should reduce the number of people complaining that the Rockbox interface is ugly. The bad news relates to the voice menu support which makes Rockbox so appealing to blind users (and some others as well). The best set of voices provided for Rockbox, by many accounts, was generated with a copy of ATT Natural Voices. Recently, the Rockbox developers got a friendly little cease and desist notice from the folks at Wizzard Software, the company which distributes that product in the U.S. By distributing the output from this program, says Wizzard, Rockbox was violating the end user agreement for the software. So the ATT voices were pulled from the web site while the EULA was examined; further research seems to bear out Wizzard's claim. The licensing for that software is set up to require extra royalties if any voice output is redistributed or used in a product. So that set of voices is likely to be gone forever, and the developers are looking for replacements. Some efforts are afoot to generate a set of voice files the old-fashioned way - by recording an actual human and editing the result. Sort of like Tom Baker making voice files for British Telecom. That is a labor-intensive way of solving the problem, however, and keeping the voice files current in such a fast-moving project involves quite a bit more labor. So an automated means for generating high-quality voice files would be a welcome contribution to the project. Perhaps a Festival expert would like to help them out?
Security Looking forward to Kama SutraYour editor recently found a bit of security advice in his mailbox:
A calm, reasoned, policy-based approach that covers all possible
threats is what is needed to ensure that a company's corporate
servers and workstations are protected.
This advice showed up in a message with a subject line reading "IMAGE YOUR SYSTEM NOW BEFORE THE KAMA SUTRA WORM HITS." It's a good thing these folks (a company called Acronis, which will happily sell you the tools to "image your system") are so calm and reasoned; it might not be fun to be around if they were to go into a panic. Linux users, of course, remain blissfully unaware of the "Kama Sutra" worm (or "BlackWorm"). At most, it manifests itself as a couple of "give me a kiss" emails which SpamAssassin quickly learns to kiss off by itself. Those who work with Windows, however, may well find themselves more aware of this worm in the near future. Kama Sutra/BlackWorm, like so many others, spreads via email attachments. It does have a couple of interesting features, however. One is that it goes out of its way to disable antivirus systems on infected systems, making those systems susceptible to other bits of roving malware which might wander by. And, on February 3, it will attempt to destroy files on infected systems. Anybody who is not aware of being infected is likely to find out fairly abruptly at that point. Estimates of the number of infected systems run as high as 600,000 as of January 31. Most of those systems are in the U.S., India, and, interestingly, Peru; see this page for details. If you would like more information on this worm, including Snort signatures for blocking it, see the ISC BlackWorm page. And, for now, be glad you are running Linux.
New vulnerabilities drupal: several vulnerabilities
gallery: cross-site scripting vulnerability
LibAST: privilege escalation
libmail-audit-perl: insecure temporary file creation
lsh-utils: local file descriptor leak
mydns: denial of service
nfs-server: buffer overflow
Paros: default administrator password
mozilla-thunderbird: GUI display truncation vulnerability
trac: cross-site scripting vulnerability
unalz: arbitrary code execution
Updated vulnerabilities apache: cross-site scripting
auth_ldap: format string vulnerability
blender: integer overflow
bzip2: race condition and infinite loop
ktools: buffer overflow
ClamAV: arbitrary code execution
cpio: arbitrary code execution
crawl: insecure program execution
curl: buffer overflow
cyrus-imapd: buffer overflows
dia: missing input sanitizing
emacs21: format string vulnerability in "movemail"
enscript: arbitrary code execution
evolution: format string issues
fetchmail: multidrop bug
ffmpeg: buffer overflow
firefox: multiple vulnerabilities
flyspray: missing input sanitizing
Foomatic: Arbitrary command execution in foomatic-rip
gaim: buffer overflow
gdb: multiple vulnerabilities
gdk-pixbuf: multiple vulnerabilities
gedit: format string vulnerability
gettext: Insecure temporary file handling
grip: buffer overflow
groff: insecure temporary directory
gzip: arbitrary command execution
imagemagick: arbitrary command execution
imap: buffer overflow in c-client
ipsec-tools: denial of service
kdebase: local root vulnerability
kdelibs: heap overflow
kdelibs: kate backup file permission leak
kernel: multiple vulnerabilities
kernel: multiple vulnerabilities
kernel: multiple vulnerabilities
kernel multiple vulnerabilities
libconvert-uulib-perl: arbitrary code execution
libdbi-perl: insecure temporary file
libgadu: memory alignment bug
libgd2: buffer overflows in PNG handling
libnet-ssleay-perl: weakened cryptographic operations
libpam-ldap: authentication bypass
libTIFF: buffer overflow
libungif: memory corruption
libxml2 - arbitrary code execution
libxml2: multiple buffer overflows
libXpm: new buffer overflows
lynx: arbitrary command execution
mailman: denial of service
mod_auth_pgsql: format string flaws
mod_python: remote access vulnerability
mysql: low-impact security fix
nbd: arbitrary code execution
ncpfs: multiple vulnerabilities
nfs-utils: arbitrary code execution
ntp: uses wrong gid
openmotif: buffer overflows
openssh: GSSAPI credential disclosure
OpenSSH: double shell expansion
otrs: multiple vulnerabilities
pcre3: arbitrary code execution
perl: setuid vulnerabilities
perl: symlink vulnerability
perl: integer overflow
phpbb2: multiple vulnerabilities
phpMyAdmin: multiple vulnerabilities
postgresql: database initialization errors
pound: HTTP Request Smuggling Attack
pstotext: remote execution of arbitrary code
Py2Play: remote execution of arbitrary Python code
scorched3d: multiple vulnerabilities
scponly: privilege escalation
spamassassin: denial of service
squid: authentication handling
struts: cross-site scripting vulnerability
sudo: vulnerability via scripts
sudo: missing input sanitizing
sudo: race condition
File overwrite vulnerability in tar and unzip
tcpdump: multiple DoS issues
tetex: integer overflows
texinfo: temporary file vulnerability
trac: missing input sanitizing
ucd-snmp: denial of service
udev: insecure files in /dev/input
up-imapproxy: format string vulnerabilities
uw-imap: buffer overflow
vixie-cron: crontab allows any user to read another users crontabs
w3c-libwww: possible stack overflow
wine: Windows WMF vulnerability
xine-lib: buffer overflows
xine-ui - insecure temporary file creation
xloadimage: buffer overflows
xorg-x11: heap overflow
xpdf: buffer overflow
xpdf: heap overflows
xpdf: denial of service
xpdf: integer overflows
zlib: buffer overflow
Resources Nmap 4.00 ReleasedVersion 4.00 of the Nmap security scanner is out. There is a long list of changes and new features; click below for the full announcement. "A popular open source security scanner recently went proprietary, complaining that their community never contributes much. We are sorry to hear that, but happy to report that the Nmap community is as vibrant and productive as ever!" We hope to have a closer look at this release within the next two weeks.
John the Ripper 1.7 is outVersion 1.7 of John the Ripper, a password cracker, is out. Most of the changes would appear to be performance oriented: John is now a faster Ripper in many situations.
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Kernel development Brief items Kernel release statusThe current 2.6 prepatch remains 2.6.16-rc1. Linus has been busily merging patches, however, with the apparent aim of releasing -rc2 immediately after this article is published. 2.6.16-rc2 will contain a lot of fixes, but it also has another set of semaphore-to-mutex conversions, a USB driver for ET61X151 and ET61X251 camera controllers, a big Video4Linux update, the direct migration patches, and various architecture updates.The current -mm tree is 2.6.16-rc1-mm4. Recent changes to -mm include some per-CPU variable tweaks, a representation of system CPU topology in sysfs, and various fixes. As Andrew puts it: "Things have been pretty quiet lately - most activity seems to be concentrated about putting bugs into the various subsystem trees." The current stable 2.6 release is 2.6.15.2, announced on January 30. It includes a handful of fixes and a security patch. Expect another update before too long, however, as a few "box-killing bugs" are still known to exist in 2.6.15. The stable kernel team has recently agreed to continue support for the previous kernel for a little longer. The result is 2.6.14.7, with a handful of important fixes.
Kernel development news Quotes of the week
The Linux networking stack isn't broken. The people who take care
of the stack know what they're doing & do good work. Based on all
the measurements I'm aware of, Linux has the fastest & most
complete stack of any OS.
-- Van Jacobson's linux.conf.au slides
To do this stuff right you want networking experts (not UNIX
interface standards experts) to come up with how to do things,
because folks like POSIX are going to make a rocking implementation
next to impossible.
Only folks like Van Jacobson can take us out of the myopic view we currently have of how networking receive is done. -- David Miller
OSDL and the kernel communityA group of kernel developers has been working for some time to try to help OSDL improve its interactions with the development and vendor communities. The result was a set of proposals presented to the OSDL board. Greg Kroah-Hartman has now published a summary of the proposals and noted that the OSDL board has agreed to implement the full set. "There is no Linux technical conference in the US anymore. If this could be addressed with a conference much like ALS used to be, it would be a very good thing. We need to nurture the technical community across the US with regional conferences that are easy to access in order to help seed the creation of new developers for Linux."
Van Jacobson's network channelsYour editor had the good fortune to see Van Jacobson speak at the 1989 USENIX conference. His talk covered some of the bleeding-edge topics of the time, including TCP slow start algorithms and congestion avoidance. It was the "how Van saved the net" talk (though he certainly did not put it in those terms), and, many years later, the impression from that talk remains. Van Jacobson is a smart guy.Unfortunately, attending Van's talk at linux.conf.au this year was not in the program. Fortunately, David Miller was there and listening carefully. Van has figured out how the next round of networking performance improvements will happen, and he has the numbers to prove it. Expect some very interesting (and fundamental) changes in the Linux networking stack as Van's ideas are incorporated. This article attempts to cover the fundamentals of Van's scheme (called "channels") based on David's weblog entry and Van's slides [PDF]. Van, like many others, points out that the biggest impediment to scalability on contemporary hardware is memory performance. Current processors can often execute multiple instructions per nanosecond, but loading a cache line from memory still takes 50ns or more. So cache behavior will often be the dominant factor in the performance of kernel code. That is why simply making code smaller often makes it faster. The kernel developers understand cache behavior well, and much work has gone into improving cache utilization in the kernel. The Linux networking stack (like all others) does a number of things which reduce cache performance, however. These include:
To demonstrate what can happen, Van ran some netperf tests on an instrumented kernel. On a single CPU system, processor utilization was 50%, of which 16% was in the socket code, 5% in the scheduler, and 1% in the application. On a two-processor system, utilization went to 77%, including 24% in the socket code and 12% in the scheduler. That is a worst case scenario in at least one way: the application and the interrupt handler were configured to run on different CPUs. Things will not always be that bad in the real world, but, as the number of processors increases, the chances of the interrupt handler running on the same processor as any given application decrease. The key to better networking scalability, says Van, is to get rid of locking and shared data as much as possible, and to make sure that as much processing work as possible is done on the CPU where the application is running. It is, he says, simply the end-to-end principle in action yet again. This principle, which says that all of the intelligence in the network belongs at the ends of the connections, doesn't stop at the kernel. It should continue, pushing as much work as possible out of the core kernel and toward the actual applications. The tool used to make this shift happen is the "net channel," intended to be a replacement for the socket buffers and queues used in the kernel now. Some details of how channels are implemented can be found in Van's slides, but all that really matters is the core concept: a channel is a carefully designed circular buffer. Properly done, circular buffers require no locks and share no writable cache lines between the producer and the consumer. So adding data to (or removing data from) a net channel will be a fast, cache-friendly operation. As a first step, channels can be pushed into the driver interface. A network driver need no longer be aware of sk_buff structures and such; instead, it simply drops incoming packets into a channel as they are received. Making this change cuts the CPU utilization in the two-processor case back to 58%. But things need not stop there. A next logical step would be to get rid of the networking stack processing at softirq level and to feed packets directly into the socket code via a channel. Doing that requires creating a separate channel for each socket and adding a simple packet classifier so that the driver knows which channel should get each packet. The socket code must also be rewritten to do the protocol processing (using the existing kernel code). That change drops the overall CPU utilization to 28%, with the portion spent at softirq level dropping to zero. But why stop there? If one wants to be serious about this end-to-end thing, one could connect the channel directly to the application. Said application gets the packet buffers mapped directly into its address space and performs protocol processing by way of a user-space library. This would be a huge change in how Linux does networking, but Van's results speak for themselves. Here is his table showing the percentage CPU utilization for each of the cases described above:
The bottom line (literally) is this: processing time for the packet stream dropped to just over 25% of the previous single-CPU case, and less than 20% of the previous two-CPU behavior. Three layers of kernel code have been shorted out altogether, with the remaining work performed in the driver interrupt handler and the application itself. The test system running with the full application channel code was able to handle twice the network bandwidth as an unmodified system - with the processors idle most of the time. Linux networking hackers have always been highly attentive to performance issues, so numbers like these are bound to get their attention. Beyond performance, however, this approach promises simpler drivers and a reasonably straightforward transition between the current stack and a future stack built around channels. A channel-based user-space interface will make it easy to create applications which can send and receive packets using any protocol. If Van's results hold together in a "real-world" implementation, the only remaining question would be: when will it be merged so the rest of us can use it?
The search for fast, scalable countersThe kernel needs to count a lot of things. There are counters for networking statistics, usage of various resources, and so on. One would ordinarily think that operating a counter would be a relatively straightforward task, but ordinarily simple things can become complicated in the kernel context, especially when the number of processors involved gets large.In theory, a counter is just a simple integer variable. In an SMP environment, however, that variable must be protected against concurrent updates, or it will eventually get corrupted. The tool that kernel hackers reach for first in this situation is the atomic_t type. Atomic variables are simple integers with a set of atomic operations. If you have an atomic_t variable called counter, that counter can be incremented with a call like:
atomic_inc(&counter);
and its value will be changed in an SMP-safe, interrupt-safe manner. These operations are relatively fast, being hand-coded to use the mechanisms provided by each host architecture. In many cases, an atomic_t counter is the best solution to the problem. The problem with atomic_t counters is that they use expensive locked operations, and they require that the current CPU obtain exclusive cache access for the variable. A frequently-modified atomic counter can cause a cache line to bounce constantly between CPUs, impacting the performance of the entire system. As an example, consider this patch set from Ravikiran Thirumalai. He replaced a single counter (the memory_allocated field of the proto structure) in the networking code with a more SMP-friendly counter, and reported a 5% improvement in an Apache benchmark on an eight-processor system. 5% is a nice improvement for changing a single counter, but it seems that perhaps even better results could be had. Ravikiran replaced the atomic_t counter with the percpu_counter type. These counters use per-CPU variables to hold a CPU-local count. Modifying that count is fast, since it is local to the given CPU, no locking is required, and no cache lines need be moved from other processors. If any given processor's count exceeds a given threshold, its value is added to a (spinlock-protected) global count, and the CPU-local count is set back to zero. Queries of the counter look only at the global count. The result is a counter which is somewhat approximate, but quite fast. In many cases, an "almost right" count is entirely good enough. Per-CPU counters become increasingly inaccurate as the number of processors grows, however. Each processor has a certain residual count which has not yet been folded into the global count. In situations where counters tend to increase, the result will be a global count which underestimates the real value, and which is increasingly wrong on larger systems. Per-CPU counters are also memory-intensive, partly due to inefficiencies in how per-CPU variables are allocated. So the discussion wandered toward another possibility implemented with the somewhat obscure local_t type. This type is apparently intended to function as a sort of atomic_t which is only visible to a single CPU; it is currently only used in two places in the kernel: to manage module reference counts and in the x86-64 architecture code. It supports a set of operations similar to atomic_t: local_set(), local_read, local_add(), etc. There is also a set of variants (cpu_local_set(), ...) intended for use with a local_t declared as a per-CPU variable. The default implementation uses atomic_t for 32-bit systems and a strange three-variable structure for 64-bit systems. All architectures are encouraged to reimplement the type in a more efficient, interrupt-safe manner, however, and that has been done for several of them. The local_t solution would set up two counters for each CPU, a flag saying which of the two is in use, and a global count. For many operations, they would behave just like percpu_counter, and they could yield the same approximate answer. Should a precise count be needed, however, the "which counter" bit would be flipped and all of the per-CPU offsets summed. The result would be an exact count at the time the bit was flipped, at the cost of taking a spinlock and iterating through the array. All of this starts to look a little elaborate, however, and that may be the point where kernel developers lose interest. A counter should only be so complex, and making the code more twisted can only improve things to a point. Sooner or later, people will decide that there are more important things to be working on.
Two software suspend image writing patchesThe software suspend story seems to repeat itself endlessly. Developers debate multiple implementations while no decision gets made and software suspend in Linux continues to fall short of what it could really be. One place where this discussion might actually come to a head soon is in the storage and retrieval of the suspend image - the copy of system memory which is stored on disk while the system is down. Two approaches are being pushed; they reveal two very different views of the problem.One approach is the user-space interface, currently being developed by Rafael Wysocki. Rafael's patch is similar in spirit to the user-space patch covered here last September. It no longer uses /dev/kmem, however; instead, it sets up a dedicated device for the software suspend operations. A user-space program can then invoke a set of ioctl() operations to freeze the system, allocate swap space, and move memory pages to their resting place - possibly compressing or encrypting them on the way. The documentation file provided with the patch gives a good introduction to the interface and how it should be used. In the other corner we have Nigel Cunningham, who has recently broken out the modules mechanism from his Suspend2 patch set. Rather than move image writing and reading support to user space, this patch sets up a complex kernel interface for plugins which take on parts of that task. There are two types of plugins: "filter" plugins which transform the image data (performing encryption, say) and "writer" plugins which handle the actual storage I/O. Parts of the code anticipate "misc" and "checksum" plugins as well, but those are not currently supported. The plugin API is somewhat complex. Each plugin has eleven methods to provide to the core suspend code; these handle memory allocation, configuration, initialization and cleanup. Filter plugins must define three more methods to handle data passing through for processing. And writer modules have an additional 21 methods to provide for dealing with various parts of that task. There are, it seems, a lot of things that have to be done to get an image written to (and read from) persistent storage. The two patches are clearly incompatible - there is no point in setting up an elaborate in-kernel interface if the whole process is to be moved out of the kernel altogether, and vice-versa. So, before merging either of these patches, somebody will have to make a decision. Anyone looking for tea leaves to read might take a hint from the fact that the user-space patches are currently in the -mm tree. As the reiser4 folks (among others) know, however, the road from -mm to mainline can be long and perilous.
Patches and updates Kernel trees
Core kernel code
Development tools
Device drivers
Memory management
Networking
Architecture-specific
Security-related
Miscellaneous
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Distributions News and Editorials What's New in SUSE Linux 10.1The testing of SUSE Linux 10.1 is in the final stages. Following the recent release of its second beta, three more development releases are scheduled to appear over the next three weeks before the new version is declared stable. It will then be formally released - after a delay required to package the usual SUSE retail boxes and to update the printed documentation. This means that, barring some last minute package upgrades and bug fixes, the latest SUSE beta is close to what the final release will look like. So what can we look forward to in March? And how does the result of this intensive development process compare with the upcoming Fedora Core 5, due for release at roughly the same time as SUSE 10.1?Having recently investigated the second test release of Fedora 5, my testing of SUSE Linux 10.1 beta2 started with a deficit on the first impressions barometer. Firstly, unlike Fedora Core, SUSE doesn't offer a DVD edition of its beta releases, so testers need to download and burn five CD images (or three if a basic installation with KDE and/or GNOME is sufficient). Yes, there are smaller delta ISOs, but these are only really useful on a SUSE installation since they require the "deltarpm" package, only available in SUSE Linux. Secondly, the Fedora developers usually produce comprehensive and well-written release notes, accessible also from within the installation program, with details about the changes and any known issues users might experience. This is especially important during beta testing in order to prevent testers from reporting known issues as bugs and to waste time discussing them on mailing lists. Yes, SUSE does provide a changelog, but it is just a dry list of package and feature updates in chronological order, while the beta2 release notes, barely a page long, mention little beyond the origin of Agama, an African lizard that gave the release its code name. On to the installation. Unlike Anaconda in Fedora 5, the SUSE installer has been subjected to only light modifications. The first obvious one is a screen allowing the user to perform a media check to ensure that the installation CD/DVD images are not defective. The second notable change is the removal of a "default" when choosing the desktop environment. Historically, SUSE has always given clear preference to KDE over GNOME, but Novell, with its eye on the enterprise desktop and with many GNOME applications under its umbrella, wants to see the simpler interface of GNOME promoted to at least equal status. As such, the user has to make an explicit decision between GNOME and KDE (or choose a text-only or minimal graphical system). In the partitioning stage, formatting partitions with the XFS file system is no longer supported and the choice of journaling file systems is limited to ReiserFS (default) and ext3. One of the applications frequently mentioned in SUSE's release announcements and developer blogs, even more so than in Fedora's, is NetworkManager. This is a Red Hat-initiated GNOME program that should, at least in theory, take the pain out of re-configuring networks on mobile computers that access the Internet in varied locations. On the latest SUSE release, this is not turned on by default (at least it wasn't on the desktop system I installed SUSE on), but it can be enabled during installation. In this case it will seamlessly integrate into the system trays of both the GNOME panel and KDE Kicker. Although still considered a work in progress, NetworkManager is a promising tool with a potential to beat other operating systems in ease of network re-configuration. Incidentally, an excellent article about the present status and features of this application was recently published in Red Hat Magazine. On the desktop, in sharp contrast with Fedora Core 5, there is little evidence of any significant changes - except perhaps for the presence of the Beagle desktop search tools, which now installs by default. Naturally, most applications have been updated to their latest versions; among the major components, SUSE's second beta ships with kernel 2.6.16-rc1, X.Org 6.9, KDE 3.5.1, OpenOffice.org 2.0.1rc2, Firefox 1.5 and Apache 2.2.0. Xen has also been updated to 3.0. Interestingly, the developers have decided to stay with the stable GNOME 2.12, instead of moving on to the current beta release of 2.14 - wisely so, given the fact that SUSE 10.1 will be finalized before March 15th, the expected release date of the new GNOME. As in Fedora 5, SUSE's latest beta also includes glibc 2.3.90 and GCC 4.1.0 - both are testing versions, but both carry major enhancements that are likely to shape the development work of other distributions throughout 2006. All in all, there isn't much new in SUSE 10.1 to get terribly excited about. Sure, there is the usual: a cutting-edge kernel, update packages and improved hardware support, but it seems that most of the work has been put into general polish of the product, rather than major feature enhancements. It is entirely possible that SUSE Linux will be used as a basis for the new versions of both SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) and Novell Linux Desktop (NLD), as the current stable releases of both have now become somewhat long in the tooth. How do Fedora 5 and SUSE 10.1 compare at this late stage of development? To tell the truth, there isn't much to justify recommending one over another. If anything, in terms of features and available packages, the two distributions have been converging - they both ship with five CDs worth of programs and both seem to copy the best features from each other (e.g. Beagle, introduced into SUSE several releases ago is now part of Fedora Core, while the Red Hat-sponsored NetworkManager is being talked up by SUSE as a major new feature). After the recent simplifications of Anaconda, Fedora is perhaps easier to install, but it still lacks a comprehensive YaST-like central administration tool. The convenience of YaST is perhaps one point that could sway certain users to SUSE. On the other hand, some might consider the presence of a modular X.Org 7.0 and familiar SELinux in Fedora an advantage over the monolithic X.Org 6.9 and less widely-used AppArmor in the latest SUSE. In the end, however, the choice of one over the other will probably come down to personal preference, rather than major differences in features or quality.
New Releases NexentaOS Alpha 2 releasedThe second alpha release of NexentaOS (Debian on top of the Solaris kernel) is out. Lots of work has been done on this release - it has 829 additional packages. Highlights include wireless network support, KDE, Mono, Java, and more.
SUSE Linux 10.1 Beta2 AnnouncementSUSE Linux 10.1 Codename "Agama Lizard" Beta2 is ready for testing. Click below to see some known issues. SUSE Linux 10.1 supports the Intel and AMD x86 and x86-64 platforms as well as the PowerPC platform.
Distribution News Ubuntu Distro SprintThe Ubuntu Distro Sprint is currently underway at a hotel in London. This is where developers are squashing bugs, updating packages, writing documentation, and otherwise working on the Dapper Drake, aka Ubuntu 6.04. Here's a summary of the activities during day 1 & 2 and day 3.
Daily Ubuntu kernel builds availableBen Collins has made his daily kernel builds available to Ubuntu users. These kernels are for test purposes and should not be considered stable. The primary purpose of these kernels is finer grained regression analysis between major kernel uploads.
Localized www.opensuse.org and more....The opensuse.org website has been updated to MediaWiki version 1.5, which allows the hosting of localized instances. The wiki is currently available in English, Spanish, French and German. Further translations are planned.
Distribution Newsletters Debian Weekly NewsThe Debian Weekly News for January 31, 2006 covers the donation of two MIPS boards, more GPLv3 discussion, Debian Day call for papers, the removal of debmake, more ways for volunteers to contribute to Debian, Debian archive key maintenance, launchpad for Debian?, and other topics.
Fedora Weekly News Issue 31This week the Fedora Weekly News covers Red Hat Magazine January 2006, Fedora Projects Weekly Report 2006-01-30, Fedora Reloaded Episode 4 Podcast, Fedora Core 5 Test 2 Screencast, My desktop OS: Fedora Core 3: Feedback, Unofficial Fedora Core Starter Guide, and several other topics.
Gentoo Weekly NewsletterThe Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for January 30, 2006 looks at modular X as it moves into testing, an end of life announcement for old-style configuration Apache packages, Gentoo's PHP Herd meeting, MySQL packages that support SLOTing will be moving into testing, and more.
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 136The DistroWatch Weekly for January 30, 2006 is out. "We'll start with news about rPath, a Linux distribution and company, formally launched last week after concluding a round of venture capital financing. Which Windows applications would you most like to see running under Linux? That's what Novell wants to know -- with some preliminary results of the survey already available -- in order to help with porting them to our favourite operating system. This will be followed by more news about Xandros, Morphix, and SUSE, as well as a link to a mouthwatering bunch of KDE 4 screenshots. In our First Look series, we'll check out the progress the developers of Symphony OS have made during the last three months."
Package updates Fedora updatesUpdates for Fedora Core 4: SDL (enable ALSA output by default), system-config-soundcard (add log for kudzu, text clean-up), iptraf (fix bad display of frames).
Mandriva updatesUpdates for Mandriva Linux 2006.0: dynamic (call scripts correctly when hardware is plugged/unplugged), gthumb (bug fix), libgphoto (bug fix), mozilla-thunderbird (bug fixes)Updates for Multi Network Firewall 2.0: mdkonline (connect to mandrivaonline.com not mandrivaonline.net),
Newsletters and articles of interest My desktop OS: Ubuntu (NewsForge)NewsForge hears from a long-time Windows user who finds Ubuntu's Breezy Badger to be a pretty good replacement. "Ubuntu's pre-installed GNOME applications were suitable for my needs. OpenOffice.org allowed me to manipulate all my Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files without any difficulty. It lacks some of the extra features of the commercial competition, but I didn't suffer at all in my early use. Switching from Quickbooks to GnuCash was more difficult. GnuCash has fewer familiar features than Quickbooks, but free software fits into my budget nicely."
Distribution reviews OpenWrt nears prime-time (Linux.com)Linux.com reviews OpenWrt, the GPLed Linux distribution for wireless routers. "Now you have OpenWrt on your router - so what? OK. You're cool. You have Linux running on your router. So what? So a lot more than I ever would have imagined, that's for sure. Putting OpenWrt on your router is like adding the magic sauce that can turn your ordinary router into something special. A lot of different something specials, actually."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol Development The Sylpheed-Claws Email ClientSylpheed-Claws is a branch of the Sylpheed project, a light weight email client which we explored last August on the LWN development page.
Sylpheed-Claws started as the bleeding-edge version of Sylpheed, in order to act as a testbed for new features for Sylpheed. The idea was to regularly resync with Hiroyuki's main branch, and vice-versa. Sylpheed-Claws then evolved into the stable extended version of Sylpheed, and is now an entity in its own right, mainly due to different goals and the fact that syncing both codebases doesn't happen anymore.
The Sylpheed-Claws users manual and FAQ explain the project's features in more detail. Version 2.0.0 of Sylpheed-Claws was announced on January 30, it includes:
Source code and packages for a number of Linux distributions and other platforms are available here.
System Applications Database Software Firebird 2.0 UpdateA status update is available for version 2.0 of the Firebird database. "Currently we are preparing the Beta 2 release. The CVS tree has been tagged and the Release Notes are being updated. The binaries will be packaged soon. It was intended to release it earlier, but there were a few issues that needed fixing first. Also the final V1.5.3 release also needed to be done. If nothing critical is reported in the near future, we expect that the next official build will be Release Candidate 1."
PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe January 29, 2006 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL database information.
Interoperability Samba 3.0.21b Available for DownloadVersion 3.0.21b of Samba has been announced. "This is the latest stable release of Samba. This is the version that production Samba servers should be running for all current bug-fixes. This release addresses several crash bugs in smbd and over 30 fixes for bugzilla reports."
Libraries libcmml 0.9.1 releasedVersion 0.9.1 of libcmml is available, it is a maintenance release. "libcmml is a C library that provides a complete programming interface including functions, data structures, and sloppy or strict error handling to parse a XML file in CMML. CMML is the Continuous Media Markup Language defined as part of the Continuous Media Web project."
Networking Tools iptables 1.3.5 releasedVersion 1.3.5 of iptables has been announced. "The netfilter coreteam proudly presents: iptables version 1.3.5. The 1.3.5 version contains accumulated bugfixes to the last 1.3.4 version. It also fixes some compilation problems with old kernel headers."
Nmap 4.00 ReleasedVersion 4.00 of the Nmap Security Scanner has been announced. "Nmap has undergone many substantial changes since our last major release (3.50 in February 2004) and we recommend that all current users upgrade." See the ChangeLog file for more information. SecurityFocus also has a recent interview with the Nmap author. (Thanks to Fyodor.)
OpenSSH 4.3 releasedOpenSSH 4.3 is out. This is primarily a bugfix release, and it deals with one security-related issue (which has already been addressed by most distributors). There is a new, experimental tunneling feature as well, however, which can be used to construct true virtual private networks with OpenSSH.
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Ecasound 2.4.4 releasedVersion 2.4.4 of Ecasound, a multi-track audio processing package, is available. "A severe bug related to audio routing in the engine has been fixed. It is now possible to set initial values for any MIDI-CC controlled effect parameters. Many minor bugfixes and improvements have been made to the Ecasound Control Interface implementation. Some improvements have been also made to the ecasignalview utility."
Rivendell version 0.9.65 announcedVersion 0.9.65 of the Rivendell radio automation system has been released. "This is a bugfix release of Rivendell. Among the issues corrected are: RDLogManager issues, including a problem with autofill events when the associated traffic or music import source has no matching events. Problems with Services whose name contained one or more spaces."
Sweep 0.9.1 ReleasedVersion 0.9.1 of Sweep, an audio file editor, is available. "The previous release (0.9.0) had a bug that prevented sweep from populating the ALSA devices in settings. The bug was only apparent when you built with ALSA and didn't have a previous installation of sweep that used ALSA. If you installed sweep 0.9.0 and had problems getting any sound output then please upgrade to 0.9.1."
Desktop Environments GNOME Software AnnouncementsThe following new GNOME software has been announced this week:
Announcing KDE 3.5.1The KDE project has announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.5.1. This is a maintenance release. "KDE, including all its libraries and its applications, is available for free under Open Source licenses. KDE can be obtained in source and numerous binary formats from http://download.kde.org/ and can also be obtained on CD-ROM or with any of the major GNU/Linux."
Electronics gEDA Suite CDROM 20060124 releasedA new CDROM ISO image of the gEDA Suite, a collection of electronics tools, is available. See the change log for details.
Layout Editor 20060125 releasedVersion 20060125 of Layout Editor, an IC fabrication CAD package, is available.
Robowerk Robot Simulator V1.0.rc1b releasedVersion 1.0.rc1b of the Robowerk cross-platform Robot Simulator has been announced. "Robowerk is an application that simulates and controls robots. Robowerk specializes in walking robots with two or more legs."
Graphics New features on the way for Inkscape (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop details the next wave of changes that are being added to Inkscape, an SVG editor. New features will include a new outline mode, a selected style indicator, removal of overlaps, snapping improvements, connector improvements, a move of swatches to the main interface, improvements to the transformation dialog, retention of transformation rotation centers between sessions, rendering speed improvements, and more.
Imaging Applications Create mosaic images with Perl and ImageMagick (IBM developerWorks)Nathan Harrington uses Perl scripts and ImageMagick to create mosaics in an IBM developerWorks article. "Use simple Perl scripts to automate the image manipulation, text creation, and compositing of arbitrary mosaic images. Learn how to use ImageMagick, GD, and The Gimp to create your own mosaic images suitable for static display and dynamic content. Explore the capabilities of ImageMagick and open source graphical editing tools."
Interoperability Wine Weekly NewsletterThe January 29, 2006 edition of the Wine Weekly Newsletter is available. Topics include: WineTools & Wine, SCSI Tape Drive Support, JACK Audio Driver, Overriding Executables With Winecfg and Hook Problems.
Music Applications liblo 0.23 announcedVersion 0.23 of liblo is out with bug fixes and more. The code is being managed by a new maintainer. "Liblo, the Lite OSC library, is an implementation of the Open Sound Control protocol for POSIX systems*. It is written in ANSI C99 and released under the GNU General Public Licence. It is designed to make developing OSC applictions as easy as possible."
Office Applications SeaMonkey 1.0 Released (MozillaZine)MozillaZine covers the release of SeaMonkey 1.0. "Robert Kaiser writes: "The SeaMonkey Council is proud to announce SeaMonkey 1.0, the first end-user release of their internet suite. SeaMonkey is available as a free download from its mozilla.org-hosted website, features a state-of-the-art web browser, a powerful email client, a WYSIWYG web page composer and a feature-rich IRC chat client. For web developers, mozilla.org's DOM inspector and JavaScript debugger tools are included as well.""
Office Suites KOffice 1.5 beta 1 Released (KDE.News)KDE.News announces the release of the first KOffice 1.5 beta. 1.5 is a major release, adding OpenDocument as the default file format, much improved accessibility features, a new scripting framework, Kexi 1.0 (a database access application), and more.
tcluno release 0.2 announcedRelease 0.2 of tcluno has been announced. "Tcluno is a set of Tcl packages, which provide acccess to OpenOffice.org using the urp socket interface. Since release 0.1 the C/C++ part has been eliminated and the packages are Tcl only now."
OpenOffice.org NewsletterThe January, 2006 edition of the OpenOffice.org Newsletter is online with the latest OpenOffice.org news.
PDA Software GPE 2.7 released (Handhelds.org)Version 2.7 of GPE, a GTK+ environment for PDA devices, is available. "It took a little bit longer than expected, but now all important bits are in place: GPE 2.7 is finished. This is the first release of a new - more strictly defined - type."
Web Browsers Mozilla Newsgroups Migration Completed (MozillaZine)MozillaZine covers the migration of Mozilla Newsgroups to Giganews. "The previously announced Mozilla Newsgroups Migration has been completed. The new newsgroups are hosted by Giganews. For more information, refer to the FAQ and the list of new newsgroups."
Languages and Tools Caml Caml Weekly NewsThe January 24-31, 2006 edition of the Caml Weekly News is online with new Caml language articles.
Lisp GNU CLISP 2.38 releasedVersion 2.38 of GNU CLISP, an open-source Common Lisp implementation, is available. "This version can generate standalone executables, makes the berkeley-db module compatible with Berkeley DB 4.4, and provides a few fixes."
SBCL 0.9.9 releasedVersion 0.9.9 of Steel Bank Common Lisp is out. "This version provides experimental support for the Windows operating system, adds some optimizations and fixes a few bugs."
Perl Perl 6 SummaryThe January 1-24, 2006 edition of the Perl 6 Summary covers the latest Perl 6 development news.
More Advancements in Perl Programming (O'Reilly)Simon Cozens discusses the latest edition of the book Advanced Perl Programming in an O'Reilly article. "Around Easter last year, I finished writing the second edition of Advanced Perl Programming, a task that had been four years in the making. The aim of this new edition was to reflect the way that Perl programming had changed since the first edition. Much of what Sriram wrote in the original edition was still true, but to be honest, not too much of it was useful anymore--the Perl world has changed dramatically since the original publication. The first edition was very much about how to do things yourself; it operated at a very low level by current Perl standards. With the explosion of CPAN modules in the interim, "advanced Perl programming" now consists of plugging all of the existing components together in the right order, rather than necessarily writing the components from scratch. So the nature of the book had to change a lot."
PHP PHP OpenID 0.9 ReleasedVersion 0.9 of the PHP OpenID library, an OpenID consumer library for PHP, is available. "This release completes the port and includes an OpenID server implementation and much-improved example code."
Python Building Recursive Descent Parsers with Python (O'ReillyNet)O'ReillyNet looks at the Python class library, Pyparsing. "Pyparsing provides a basic framework for creating recursive-descent parsers, taking care of the overhead functions of scanning the input string, handling expression mismatches, selecting the longest of matching alternatives, invoking callback functions, and returning the parsed results. This leaves developers free to focus on their grammar design and the design and implementation of corresponding token processing. Pyparsing's nature as a combinator allows developers to scale their applications from simple tokenizers up to complex grammar processors. It is a great way to get started with your next parsing project!"
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!The January 30, 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is out. Take a look for new Python language article links.
Ruby Ruby Weekly NewsThe January 29th, 2006 edition of the Ruby Weekly News looks at the latest discussions from the ruby-talk mailing list.
Scheme Metaprogramming using SchemedeveloperWorks covers metaprogramming. "Metaprogramming -- programming with code generators or writing programs that themselves write code -- has numerous useful attributes, such as simplifying code maintenance and making it easier to craft boilerplate code. The first article of this series explained why metaprogramming is necessary, looked at some of the components of metaprogramming, showed how to build a code generator, and introduced language-sensitive macro programming. In this article, learn techniques and applications of metaprogramming in the Scheme programming language, and see how macros are programmed and how they can make your large-scale programming tasks significantly easier."
Tcl/Tk Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!The January 30, 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online with the latest Tcl/Tk news and resources.
XML Scripting Flickr with Python and REST (O'Reilly)Uche Ogbuji works with Flickr on O'Reilly. "Flickr probably needs no introduction for readers of this column. It's a hugely popular social-network site owned by Yahoo, focusing on sharing of photographs. It embodies most of the the current web buzzwords, including tagging, web feeds, AJAX, and accessibility to scripts. Flickr provides a set of HTTP-based APIs for accessing features both as a publisher and as a viewer of pictures. You get to choose between XML-RPC, REST (simple XML over HTTP), or SOAP, and the available functions cover every corner of the core Flickr service. In this article I'll look at some Python libraries for integrating with Flickr (all code tested with Python 2.4.2)."
Page editor: Forrest Cook Linux in the news Recommended Reading Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)Here's a ZDNet weblog entry trashing the anti-DRM provisions in the GPLv3 draft. "Though Stallman may wish otherwise, most of the world still uses primarily proprietary software. That means there are plenty of options should Stallman create a situation where GPLed code can't be used by businesses or individuals who want DRM (which in 10 years, will be most businesses and MOST users)."
Torvalds: No GPL 3 for Linux (eWeek)Linus is not planning on using the GPL3 license for the Linux kernel, according to this article on eWeek. "In a message to the Linux Kernel Mailing List on Jan. 25, Linus Torvalds made it plain that the Linux operating system is going to stay under General Public License 2 and not migrate to GPL 3. Torvalds announced this in response to a discussion on the list of Linux developers, which had been started by Jeff Merkey. The former Novell and Canopy Group developer, Merkey is best known in Linux circles for his attempt to buy a non-GPLed version of the Linux code."
Thinking About GPL3...According to this entry in Jonathan Schwartz's weblog, Sun is considering GPLv3 for OpenSolaris. "We also recognize that diversity and choice are important - which is why we've begun looking at the possibility of releasing Solaris (and potentially the entire Solaris Enterprise System), under dual open source licenses. CDDL (which allows customer IP to safely comingle with Solaris source code) and under the Free Software Foundation's GPL3. It's early days, but we're looking at two things as we make that decision."
E-Trade VP Talks Open-Source (eWeek)eWeek has posted a lengthy interview with Lee Thompson, the VP of architecture at E-Trade. "So we're now at summer of 2002, and at this point, I realized, this is a much, much bigger phenomenon than simply taking [down the] dramatic cost of the data center, which it definitely was - millions and millions and millions of dollars came out of our expenses to run our facility.... However, something else was also going on, and I did a deep dive on open source at this particular time. I started running lots of different distros. I ended up running Gentoo. Personally, I run the Gentoo distro."
The SCO Problem It's Raining Stock Options in Lindon (Groklaw)Groklaw covers a stock option deal at SCO. "It's raining stock options on that happy band in Lindon. On January 23, SCO granted executives Darl McBride, Chris Sontag, Ryan Tibbits, Sandy Gupta, Tim Negris, Jeff Hunsaker, and Bert Young a combined total of 400,000 stock options at $3.78. Gupta got as many as Darl, 80,000, but he has to wait a year for them to be exercisable, as do all the rest, except for McBride. His options appear to be immediately exercisable. Oh, they all fully vest immediately "upon the occurrence of certain specified events.""
Companies What Application Do You Want Ported to Linux? (Linux Journal)Linux Journal covers the Novell Cool Solutions survey. "On an individual basis, many Linux users for years have been requesting a Linux port of QuickBooks or Photoshop, to no avail. The standard response from developers and vendors has been "there isn't enough of a user base to make Linux ports worthwhile". With this survey Novell is hoping that many voices united finally will motivate the application vendors."
Patent ruling forces Office upgrades (ZDNet)ZDNet UK reports that, as the result of a software patent ruling, Microsoft is forcing Office users to upgrade to a new, non-infringing version. "The question for companies, though, is if they are exposing themselves to potential legal liability if they don't quickly move to the new software. Microsoft promises to indemnify customers from third-party patent claims, but [Gartner analyst Michael] Silver said the license terms also require customers to 'immediately' move to any new noninfringing version that Microsoft releases."
Legal Notes on the GPLv3 (NewsForge)NewsForge has some notes on the GPLv3 conference from Benjamin Mako Hill. "The GPL is so widespread that it is frequently referred to as "the Constitution of the free software movement." As it introduces changes, any discussion draft creates a potentially dangerous moment for the free software movement. While this danger is real, it does not exist to the extent or for the reasons that many in the community believe. In a way, the GPLv3 is both more and less important than many of us think."
DRM and the Death of Culture, by Simon Phipps (Groklaw)Groklaw reposts an entry from Simon Phipps' blog. "DRM - the imposition of restrictions on usage of content by technical means - is far more than that. It's like checking the lift ticket, yes, but also the guy checks you are only wearing gear hired from the resort shop, skis with you down the slope and trips you if you try any manoeuvers that weren't taught to you by the resort ski instructor; then as you go down the slope he pushes you away from the moguls because those are a premium feature and finally you get to run the gauntlet of armed security guards at the bottom of the slope checking for people who haven't paid."
Interviews Tom Chance (People Behind KDE)The People Behind KDE have interviewed Tom Chance. "Which section of KDE is underrated and could get more publicity? There are lots of KDE applications that aren't shipped as part of KDE and that don't get a lot of attention because they're generally not used by computer science geeks. But I've come to depend upon Kile, which makes writing essays much easier than a cumbersome word processor; KDissert is a very nice little mind mapping tool; RSIBreak keeps me from wearing out my wrists before I hit the age of 30. But really KDE as a whole needs more publicity. People ought to see how well applications can fit together, how working with remote files becomes painless, and so on." (Found on KDE.News)
Resources Everything Your Professor Failed to Tell You About Functional Programming (Linux Journal)Here's an article on functional programming on Linux Journal. "In computer science, we enjoy using mathematic models, but the science still works if you violate the math. And, much to the dismay of purely functional programming enthusiasts, we almost always do. However, when we embrace the math, sometimes the loss in flexibility is more than compensated for by the increase in functionality."
Chrooted SSH HowTo (HowToForge)HowToForge sets up chrooted ssh sessions. "This tutorial describes how to install and configure OpenSSH so that it will allow chrooted sessions for users. With this setup, you can give your users shell access without having to fear that they can see your whole system. Your users will be jailed in a specific directory which they will not be able to break out of. This setup is based on a Debian Sarge (Debian 3.1) system, and the chrooted SSH will be installed in such a way that it will still use the configuration files of the standard OpenSSH Debian package which are in /etc/ssh/, and you will be able to use the standard OpenSSH Debian init script /etc/init.d/ssh. Therefore you do not have to create your own init script and configuration file."
My sysadmin toolbox (Linux.com)Linux.com has another list of favorite sysadmin tools. "If the Internet is the Information Superhighway, then Perl is the Fix-a-Flat and the spare tire -- and the spare drive-shaft, should you need it. Anything you can do in a shell or sed or awk script, you can do in Perl. With the -ne options, you can iterate automatically over every line of input in a pipe chain."
Reviews Open source software and games (NewsForge)NewsForge looks at open source games. "Open source games do exist, and the development scene is active and creative. You can get a taste of this by visiting sites devoted to Linux gaming, such as The Linux Game Tome, which highlights updated open source game projects every day. You can usually find a couple of announcements for new open source game projects every week."
Gentium: An award-winning font joins the free software world (NewsForge)NewsForge looks at the Gentium font, which is available under the SIL Open Font Licence. "Gentium is something new in fonts. Its design is a mixture of the practical and aesthetically pleasing. It supports the diacritical marks needed to render a wide range of Latin and Greek characters, yet it is also designed for readability, compactness, and visual appeal. What is really unusual is that its designer, Victor Gaultney, has released it under a free licence and is developing it as a free and open source project."
SARA, spawn of SATAN (Linux.com)Linux.com reviews SARA, a network auditing tool. "If you are an old school Linux or Unix user, you probably remember the System Administrator's Tool for Scanning Networks (SATAN). In 1995, SATAN brought browser-based network auditing to the world. Despite its initial splash, SATAN fell to the wayside due to lack of updates. Thanks to the kind folks at the Advanced Research Corp., SATAN is back, in the form of the Security Auditor's Research Assistant (SARA), a kinder, gentler, easier to use, and more updated auditing tool."
Review: vile editor is anything but (Linux.com)Linux.com reviews vile, the "vi like emacs" editor. "vi has several clones, such as calvin, Elvis, nvi, viper, and Vim, but vile isn't another vi clone, according to its maintainer, Thomas Dickey. It has the most common vi commands, but doesn't look quite like vi. vile is an editor that works and feels like vi but, like Emacs, incorporates features for editing multiple files in multiple windows."
Miscellaneous ReactOS suspends development for source code review (NewsForge)NewsForge reports that the ReactOS project, which is working to make a free version of Windows, has suspended work and started an audit as a result of some possibly tainted code making its way into their repository. "Jeremy White, founder and chief executive officer of CodeWeavers, which develops a commercial product based on Wine, said a number of developers from ReactOS have contributed to Wine, but several have been banned from contributing to the project because of concerns about code they offered. This was not necessarily because the code included something stolen or illegal, but because Alexandre Julliard, chief technology officer for Codeweavers, reviews the contributed code and was concerned about what the banned individuals had claimed as their own."
Secure Shell standard moving forward (NewsForge)NewsForge reports that the Secure Shell protocol is one step closer to becoming an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard. "IETF standards define a number of protocols that make the Internet what it is today. For example, TCP/IP, the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), the Post Office Protocol (POP), and the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) are all standards that most users depend on every day. Without adherence to these standards it would be difficult for users and devices to communicated effectively using different mail clients and servers, Web browsers, and network adapters."
Free software advocate finishes third in Canadian election (NewsForge)NewsForge looks at free software advocacy and the Canadian election. "Mathieu Allard, the free software advocate who ran for the New Democrats in the riding of Saint Boniface, Manitoba, finished third in the Canadian national election on January 23. Since he was not elected, he is returning to his job as executive assistant to Christine Melnick, the Minister of Housing and Social Services in the Manitoba provincial government. He plans to look for new ways to promote the use of free software in government."
Oxer, Waugh retain Linux Australia spots (ZDNet)ZDNet reports on election results at Linux Australia. "Incumbents Jon Oxer and Pia Waugh have retained their respective positions as president and vice president of Australia's peak Linux body for another year."
Page editor: Forrest Cook Announcements Non-Commercial announcements EFF: Supreme Court Tackles Dangerous Patent RulingThe Electronic Frontier Foundation announced effort to overturn a patent ruling. "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the United States Supreme Court Thursday, asking justices to overturn a court ruling in a patent case with dangerous implications for free speech and consumers' rights. The Public Patent Foundation, the American Library Association, the American Association of Law Libraries, and the Special Library Association joined EFF on the brief. At issue is a case involving online auctioneer eBay and a company called MercExchange."
iPods for SenatorsAfter seeing how getting an iPod from his daughter made U.S. Senator Stevens more aware of fair use rights, the folks at IPac came up with an idea: give each Senator an iPod. "Plus, we're going to pre-load each one with examples of the cultural richness made possible by sharing and collaboration - public domain content, Creative Commons content, and audio messages about the importance of balanced copyright policy. It will be engraved with the words 'listen to the people.'" Needless to say, they are looking for donations to make this happen.
Nevada Court Rules Google Cache is Fair UseThe Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent out a press release concerning Google's Cache feature and copyrights. "A federal district court in Nevada has ruled that Google does not violate copyright law when it copies websites, stores the copies, and transmits them to Internet users as part of its Google Cache feature. The ruling clarifies the legal status of several common search engine practices and could influence future court cases, including the lawsuits brought by book publishers against the Google Library Project."
Open Voting ConsortiumThe Open Voting Consortium seeks to make U.S. elections open and transparent. From a recent news item: "The Open Voting Consortium and California Clean Money campaign sponsored a highly successful Open House acquainting rank and file California Democrats with Open Voting and consolidating support for the already well known Clean Money issue. The event was held at the Manhattan Beach Marriot where the California Democratic Party held its Executive Committee meeting on January 27th and 28th." (Thanks to Jay R. Ashworth)
Patent activist starts campaign against Microsoft-sponsored awardNorbert Bollow, founder of the Truth50 campaign against software patents, is challenging the legitimacy of the Microsoft-sponsored EV50 European of the Year award. "Norbert Bollow launched www.truth50.com, a Web site on which people can sign a bundle of open letters (http://www.truth50.com/en/open-letters.html) to European political leaders and others involved with an EU-related award, including Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer. Truth50 will at a future point in time deliver those letters along with lists of the names of the people who signed. The campaign demands a verification or a retaking of the Microsoft-sponsored public poll in which the "EV50 European of the Year 2005" was elected."
Commercial announcements Larry Augustin Joins Fonality's Board of DirectorsFonality has announced the joining of its board by Larry Augustin. "Fonality, the leader in affordable IP-PBX systems for small businesses, today announced that Open Source pioneer Larry Augustin has joined its board of directors and will assist the company with its corporate strategy in the Open Source IP telephony market. Fonality's PBXtra IP-PBX is based on the Open Source Asterisk platform and, since it began shipping in October 2004, has placed millions of calls and has been deployed by hundreds of businesses with thousands of lines."
Nokia to Release Python for S60 Source CodeNokia has announced that the company will release the source code for its Python for S60 Platform software package. The source code for Python for S60 Platform will be posted by Nokia to SourceForge.net. Further information and a link to the project can be found here.
Novell Delivers Comprehensive Bundled Linux Solution for Mid-sized EnterprisesNovell has announced it will bundle support and training offerings with its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. "With this new offering, Novell(R) solution provider partners, the company's primary channel to the mid-market, can now deliver a comprehensive Linux solution, including 24x7 support and online assistance, to their customers."
OpenVZ Project Releases Beta for Latest Linux KernelThe OpenVZ project has announced improved features and performance of its operating system level server virtualization software technology with availability of beta level software based on the Linux kernel 2.6.15.
Open-Xchange OXtender Enables Replacement of Windows ServerBeginning in March, customers of Open-Xchange, Inc. will have full access to and seamless integration with Linux-based Logon, File and Print services for Microsoft Windows workstations through Open-Xchange Server 5 giving customers the option to fully replace Microsoft Exchange as well as Microsoft Windows Server.
Oracle Database 10g Achieves Record PerformanceOracle Corporation has announced the achievement of a new database speed record running on a Linux system. "Running on NEC's Express5800/1160Xe Server, corresponding to "NX7700i/3040H-16" server in the Japanese market, with 8 Intel(R) Itanium 2 1.6 GHz processors, Oracle Database 10g on Red Hat Enterprise Linux v4 operating system, achieved 254,471 tpmC (transactions per minute) with a price-performance ratio of $5.32/tpmC."
ARINC 653 for RTLinuxPro ReleasedFSMLabs has announced the availability of ARINC 653 for its RT Linux Pro embedded platform. "Designed for avionics control and advanced hardware-in-loop simulation, ARINC 653 provides a fully protected and partitioned scheduling environment configured using a standard XML format. The ARINC scheduler has been added to FSMLabs' industry leading Process Space Development Domain (PSDD) product which executes real-time threads in the address space of Linux or BSD processes."
samba4WINS: cooperation creates free software innovationThe samba4WINS project aims to improve the standalone capabilities of Samba. "Until now Samba3 offers the possibility to start a WINS server but it cannot synchronize in a ring with other WINS servers, an ability that is requested in many complex networks. Even after complete migration to Linux/Unix/Samba Windows servers are still inevitable in those networks. This remarkable cost factor will be abolished with samba4WINS."
Sleepycat Software Releases New Berkeley DB Java EditionSleepycat Software, Inc. has announced version 2.1 of its Berkeley DB Java Edition database. "The new version of Sleepycat's pure Java, transactional database features multi-key secondary databases, multi-threaded performance improvements, and new controls for optimizing concurrency."
TimeSys Introduces LinuxLink Subscriptions for MIPS32TimeSys has announced the availability of LinuxLink Subscriptions for the MIPS32(R) 24KE(TM) Core Family. "Licensees of a MIPS32 24KE core can choose among a number of flexible LinuxLink subscription options to receive continuous access to the latest MIPS Technologies-developed Linux, hundreds of cross-compiled packages, a processor-optimized cross-development environment, alerts to relevant updates and Developer Exchange access to interactive support from TimeSys, MIPS Technologies and the Open Source community."
New Books Google Maps Hacks--O'Reilly's Latest ReleaseO'Reilly has published the book Google Maps Hacks by Rich Gibson and Schuyler Erle.
Pearson publishes How to Break Web SoftwarePearson has published the book How to Break Web Software by Mike Andrews and James Whittaker.
PSP Hacks-More Than Just Games--O'Reilly's Latest ReleaseO'Reilly has published the book PSP Hacks by C.K. Sample, III.
RFID Essentials - O'Reilly's Latest ReleaseO'Reilly has published the book RFID Essentials by Bill Glover and Himanshu Bhatt.
No Starch Press releases "Wicked Cool Perl Scripts"No Starch Press has published the book Wicked Cool Perl Scripts by Steve Oualline.
Contests and Awards Firefox Flicks Ad Contest (MozillaZine)MozillaZine covers the latest from the Firefox Flicks Ad Contest. "Asa Dotzler writes: "The Firefox Flicks Ad Contest is starting to gain some serious momentum. The latest developments are the addition of some great new rewards for Ad Contest winners. We've been working with some friends in the indy film world to get more outreach going and along the way we've been able to expand those relationships to include some major visibility opportunities for the winners. In addition to having your ad included in our world-wide marketing campaign for Firefox and the prizes we've already talked about, we're now able to offer some great exposure for entrants with a screening of top entries at the Vail Film Festival which had more than 10,000 attendees last year. Firefox Flicks first place winner will automatically qualify as a Shortlist finalist in the 2006 New York Festivals of Advertising (NYFA) competition.""
Andrew Tridgell wins 2005 Free Software AwardSamba project's Andrew Tridgell has been awarded a 2005 Free Software Award from the FSF. "Andrew Tridge Tridgell was recognized for his work as originator and developer of the Samba project. Samba reverse-engineered Microsoft's version of the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol, which is used for file-sharing and print services. This software enables free operating systems to fit into Microsoft-based environments, encouraging greater use and adoption of free software. Samba has been implemented on millions of servers throughout the world. Tridge also released rsync, a highly respected remote file-distribution system, and contributed code to the Linux kernel."
Voting open for 2005 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice AwardsLinuxQuestions.org has announced that voting is open for its 2005 Members Choice Awards. "The Members Choice Awards allow the Linux community to select their favorite products in a variety of categories. Awards will be given out in 20 categories, including Distribution of the Year, Browser of the Year, Office Suite of the Year, Desktop Environment of the Year and Database of the Year. The polls will close on March 16th and winners will have the option of receiving their award at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in Boston."
The OpenOffice.org Developer Article ContestThe OpenOffice.org Developer Article Contest has begun. "OpenOffice.org, with the support of Team OpenOffice.org e.V. and extra sponsorship from Sun Microsystems, announces its first Developer Contest starting February 1, 2006. The goal of the developer contest is to generate more developer documentation. We are also interested in promoting OpenOffice.org to developers at the same time."
Upcoming Events FOSDEM 2006The folks at FOSDEM have sent out a reminder for the upcoming event. "FOSDEM 2006 is approaching. The event will take place on the 25th and 26th of February in Brussels, Belgium. The FOSDEM is a free and non-commercial event for the community and organised by the community. FOSDEM 's goal is to provide Free and Open Source developers and communities a place to go over the latest developments in the Free and Open Source arena and to promote the development and the benefits of Free and Open Source solutions."
LISA 2006 CFPA call for papers has gone out for the 2006 Large Installation System Administration (LISA) conference. The event takes place on December 38, 2006 in Washington, D.C., proposals are due by May 23.
rPath to introduce technology at NOVALUGrPath has announced the company has been invited to present at an upcoming Northern Virginia Linux Users Group (NOVALUG) meeting. Matt Wilson, rPath founding engineer and former OS engineering lead for Red Hat, will represent rPath to discuss the company's rBuilder and Conary technology to the group of Linux professionals.
ClearHealth at SCALE '06 (LinuxMedNews)LinuxMedNews covers events relating to the ClearHealth electronic medical record system at the SCALE conference. "Uversa will offering ClearHealth training and new feature demonstrations in our booth (#38) at the upcoming Southern California Linux Exposition (SCALE) February 11 & 12 at February 11-12, 2006, at The Radisson Los Angeles Airport."
2006 USENIX Annual Technical ConferenceThe 2006 USENIX Annual Technical Conference will take place in Boston, Massachusetts from May 30 to June 3, 2006.
Events: February 2 - March 30, 2006
Web sites Launch of SpreadKDE.org Promotional Community Site (KDE.News)KDE.News covers the launch of the new SpreadKDE.org site. "The KDE marketing group is pleased to announce the release of SpreadKDE.org, the new home for KDE's promotional activities. Such a hub for marketing activities has been sorely lacking in KDE until now, and we consider this site a to be a key milestone in establishing a solid foundation in growing KDE's promotional activity."
Page editor: Forrest Cook
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