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LWN.net Weekly Edition for March 4, 2004This week's SCO funIt has been a busy week for people watching the rapidly growing set of SCO cases. Here we will try to summarize the current state of affairs.The company announced its first-quarter results, which were just as bad as had been expected. SCO's revenues are down almost 20% from one year ago, and the reported loss is $2.3 million. The actual loss, however, was $5.2 million; some residual accounting weirdness in the BayStar deal allowed SCO to paper over the difference. SCO will not be able to use that trick in the future, however; instead, the restructuring of the BayStar deal will likely force the reporting of a significant loss in the second quarter. The end result is that SCO is not making any money. The Unix business is dying, helped along by SCO's "sue your customers" business model. The company has only managed to sell "a handful" (Darl McBride's word) of "Linux licenses" - $20,000 worth in the first quarter. The company's stock has fallen to about half of its peak value ($22.29, last October). Things are not looking good for the SCO group. In such a situation, the quarterly conference call did not look like it would be much fun for SCO's management. So it was time to set up a diversion. That diversion came in the form of two new lawsuits - the long-promised end-user suits, sort of. The first is against AutoZone, a former SCO customer which switched to Linux. SCO claims "AutoZone violated SCO's UNIX copyrights by running versions of the Linux operating system that contain code, structure, sequence and/or organization from SCO's proprietary UNIX System V code in violation of SCO's copyrights." The actual complaint (available as an 8-page PDF file) is surprisingly vague; the core of the suit can be found in two paragraphs:
On information and belief, parts or all of the Copyrighted Material
[Unix] has been copied or otherwise improperly used as the basis
for creation of derivative work software code, included one or more
Linux implementations, including Linux versions 2.4 and 2.6,
without the permission of SCO.
Defendant has infringed and will continue to infringe SCO's copyrights in and relating to Copyrighted Materials by using, copying, modifying, and/or distributing parts of the Copyrighted Materials, or derivative works based on the Copyrighted Materials in connection with its implementations of one or more versions of the Linux operating system, inconsistent with SCO's exclusive rights under the Copyright Act. In the IBM case, SCO has alleged that IBM helped AutoZone misuse SCO's Unix shared libraries on Linux. When dealing directly with AutoZone, however, that claim has gone away. The complaint as a whole looks like a desultory effort, not something that was months in the making. The second suit is against DaimlerChrysler. In this case, SCO is picking on a Unix licensee which has refused to answer SCO's "compliance certification" demand from last December. This suit is not directly related to Linux, yet; SCO is just trying to force compliance with a Unix license clause (allegedly) giving SCO the right to demand this sort of certification. Darl McBride admitted in the conference call that less than half of the recipients of the demand letter have responded to it. Conceivably, SCO might actually have a case here - but it has little to do with Linux users. SCO did announce one new SCOsource customer: EV1Servers.Net. This company (formerly RackShack) bought a license to cover its 20,000-some Linux servers. EV1Servers claims that it is just trying to protect its customers, but quite a few of those customers have been rather vocal in their discontent. Surely EV1Server.Net's appearance in this Microsoft case study last September is purely coincidental. The Novell case is currently waiting for SCO's response to Novell's motion to dismiss the case. SCO has asked for more time (until March 5) to put together this response; Novell has indicated that it will not oppose that request - but only as long as SCO files no other motions during that time. In this way, perhaps, Novell will be able to get quick consideration of its motion without being slowed down by the usual SCO delaying tactics. In the IBM case, the long-awaited ruling on the various motions to compel discovery has finally been issued; we have it in PDF format. Both sides are ordered to come up with a lot of stuff. SCO is told to be very specific about what lines of code it's complaining about, and also "the lines of code that SCO distributed to other parties." IBM has to come up with a lot of AIX and Dynix code, and to talk more about its Linux contributions. The ruling does not appear to be a clear victory for either side. The Utah court also allowed SCO to amend its complaint against IBM, deleting its trade secret claims and adding copyright violation claims. IBM had not contested this change, so there was no real reason for the court to turn it down. The Red Hat case is still waiting for the judge to rule on SCO's motion to dismiss. This ruling should be easy; SCO, remember, claimed that it was not threatening Red Hat or its customers. Red Hat had plenty of evidence to the contrary already, but the fact that AutoZone was a Red Hat customer has clarified the situation even further. In Australia, CyberKnights has taken the next step and filed a formal complaint with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. The ACCC has already been sitting on one complaint; time will tell if the second complaint results in action. In Germany, SCO reached an out-of-court settlement with Univention stating that SCO will refrain from making claims against Linux without evidence. It is a minimal agreement which does little to truly shut the company up, however. Increasingly, the SCO story looks as if it is entering the final chapters. Regardless of how many more suits the company files, it appears unable to halt the decline of its stock price and of how the company and its claims are perceived (the questions at the latest conference call were rather less friendly than in the past). SCO, by all appearances, is going down; unfortunately, the company may well be able to make quite a bit more trouble before its story ends.
The Committee for Economic Development on digital copyrightThe Committee for Economic Development is a 60-year-old pro-business think tank. This group has recently dedicated some of its resources to the problems associated with intellectual property rights in a digital setting. The resulting report could easily have become another rabid missive on the evils of "piracy" and the need for heavy governmental involvement. But the CED took a different approach. The report (available as a 100-page PDF file) takes a surprisingly broad view of the situation. It contains little that is truly new for people who have been following the situation, but it does show that the business community is beginning to figure out that there is more to think about than the entertainment industry's immediate complaints.The introduction talks about the challenges posed to publishers by ubiquitous computers and high-speed networking. It notes that sales of audio CDs have dropped significantly, but also discusses a number of (non-piracy) reasons for why that is happening. Movie sales, in contrast, are better than ever; bandwidth limitations have something to do with that, but the fact that movie customers feel they are getting their money's worth also is relevant. Potential responses to unwanted copying of copyrighted materials are discussed. The report notes, however:
New business arrangements have consistently emerged in response to
new technologies. Over the long term, the creators of advances in
science and the arts have profited from advances in new production
and distribution technologies. And attempts to protect existing
production and distribution arrangements by law have failed.
The report then goes into a detailed history of copyright law. The authors are clear on the fact that the real purpose of modern copyright law is to promote artistic and scientific advancement; the provision of certain monopoly rights to copyright holders is simply a means to that end. It is often repeated that creators of copyrighted materials rely heavily on work that was done before; there is little that is truly and completely original. The importance of fair use rights and the public domain is discussed several times. There is a discussion of responses to piracy which covers most of the usual topics: the DMCA, various other legislative efforts (broadcast flag, the CBDTPA), enforcement actions, digital rights management schemes, etc. The authors are not enthusiastic about legislative "solutions" to the problem; they see laws like the DMCA and state "super DMCA" proposals as anti-competitive, inimical to fair use rights and the public domain, and ineffective. Among other things, they point out that legally-required copy protection schemes can enshrine weak technology and inhibit the development of stronger alternatives. The report has little good to say about digital rights management (DRM) systems. For starters, DRM systems usually fail in the long term; once a DRM system has been broken, the exploit code can be spread far and wide over the net. DeCSS is used as an example - and the authors even note that DeCSS was created to play DVDs on Linux systems rather than as a piracy tool. Privacy issues with DRM systems are mentioned. The report talks about the innovation which has resulted from the widespread dissemination of general-purpose computers, and how legally-mandated DRM threatens to put an end to that. There are a few paragraphs dedicated to the effect on free software:
The role of open source software is being systematically ignored in
many of the proposals under discussion in this report, and
particularly in the broadcast flag context. Open source software
is increasingly important as a source of innovation; it can be
far more reliable and secure than proprietary software because
talented programmers around the world can examine the code and try
to break its security, without having to worry about hidden
backdoors or holes. Yet such examination and the resulting
improvement appears incompatible with a prohibition on tampering.
There are also societal costs to be paid. Widespread use of DRM systems threatens the public domain and fair use rights, and will thus inhibit further development.
We grant limited privileges to creators because we want them to
create and to share their works for the benefit of society as a
whole, not in order to give them total control over how their works
are used. The central problem with broad use of DRM is not that
software code will be regulating users, but that content creators
will be unilaterally regulating private uses of content and
controlling the course of subsequent innovation.
Almost every innovation is "subsequent" to many others, and, as the authors point out, this subsequent innovation is usually done by new, unrelated creators. Allowing creators to choke off subsequent works will thus result in fewer works being created, which is contradictory to the original purpose of copyright protection. The biggest complaint that the authors have with DRM, however, would appear to be the fact that such systems shift copy protection costs from copyright holders to consumer electronics manufacturers and users. Finally, the report points out that oppressive DRM (and rights enforcement in general) is bad for the social contract which holds the whole system together:
The existence of private license agreements containing
"unreasonable" terms -- terms inconsistent with shared values --
undermines the societal interest in self-enforcing contracts. The
self-enforcement aspect of private agreements is essential; after
all, voluntary compliance with private agreements is what makes a
society livable. If we create a world where license terms do not
appear to represent a fair bargain, and are contrary to shared
values, we are likely to have built a world where there is little
inclination for voluntary compliance and much delight taken in
rule-breaking. Such a world will be filled with obtuse letters
threatening dire legal consequences, or (more likely) widespread
remote disabling of the machines upon which we rely.
One might well argue that we have already proceeded far down that path. The report concludes with a set of recommendations:
For those of us who are concerned about ever-increasing copyright terms, criminal charges against software developers, and the lack of ability to use and control our computers as we see fit, this report will fall short of what we would like to see. It is, however, a clear sign that the wider business community is starting to become aware of the costs of unrestricted copyright rights. We are seeing the beginning of a real debate where, before, there was only the illusion of consensus. That can only be a step in the right direction.
FreeS/wansongThe FreeS/WAN project is winding down after five years. For those unfamiliar with the project, FreeS/WAN was created by John Gilmore, who has contributed more than his share to the Internet era. He helped create the "alt" newsgroups, co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Cygnus Solutions (now part of Red Hat), and has contributed to a number of other important projects.FreeS/WAN was designed to provide a Secure Wide Area Network (S/WAN), and has been widely used to deploy IPSec Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). But Gilmore was looking to go beyond VPNs with FreeS/WAN and to push the concept of Opportunistic Encryption (OE). The idea behind OE was to provide software that would encrypt packets, without intervention from the user, when communicating with machines that support encryption. Using OE, a FreeS/WAN machine would automatically create an ad hoc Virtual Private Network (VPN) when encryption was available at both ends, and send data in the clear when encryption was not available. Either way, the operation would be transparent to the user. Gilmore was optimistic that OE would offer the "fax effect" for encryption:
As each person installs one for their own use, it becomes more valuable for
their neighbors to install one too, because there's one more person to use
it with. The software automatically notices each newly installed box, and
doesn't require a network administrator to reconfigure it. Instead of
"virtual private networks" we have a "REAL private network"; we add privacy
to the real network instead of layering a manually-maintained virtual
network on top of an insecure Internet.
Gilmore wanted to secure 5% of Internet traffic against passive wiretapping by 1999, and eventually all communications on the net. Perhaps someday FreeS/WAN, or similar software, will drive widespread adoption of encrypted communications. But users have been slow to utilize FreeS/WAN for OE, even within the Linux community. FreeS/WAN has been popular for setting up VPNs, but OE just hasn't caught on in a big way. This is one of the FreeS/WAN project's stated reasons for quitting:
Nine months after the release of FreeS/WAN 2.00, OE has not caught on as
we'd hoped. The Linux user community demands feature-rich VPNs for
corporate clients, and while folks genuinely enjoy FreeS/WAN and its
derivatives, the ways they use FreeS/WAN don't seem to be getting us any
closer to the project's goal: widespread deployment of OE. For its part, OE
requires more testing and community feedback before it is ready to be used
without second thought. The project's funders have therefore chosen to
withdraw their funding.
Gilmore also wanted to challenge U.S. crypto export regulations with FreeS/WAN, and barred U.S.-based developers from contributing code to the project. While there have been some small victories, including the U.S. government's retreat in the Bernstein case (which Gilmore was heavily involved in), the ability to export strong cryptography from the U.S. is far from guaranteed:
After the watershed Bernstein case, US export regulations were
relaxed. Since then, many US companies have exported strong cryptography,
without seeming restriction other than having to notify the Bureau of
Export Administration for tracking purposes.
This comfortable situation has perhaps created a false sense of security. The catch? Export regulations are not laws. The US government still reserves the right to change its export regulations on short notice, and there is no facility to challenge them directly in a court of law. This leaves the US crypto community and US Linux distributions in a position which seems safe, but is not legally protected -- where the US government might at any time *retroactively* regulate previously released code, by prohibiting its future export. This is why FreeS/WAN has always been developed outside the US (in Canada and in Greece), and why it has never (to the best of our knowledge) accepted US patches. It probably shouldn't be surprising, then, that FreeS/WAN suffered from lack of community support. The decision to exclude U.S.-based developers from working on FreeS/WAN meant that many kernel developers, including Linus himself, would be unable to contribute to the project. But while U.S.-based developers were barred from contributing to FreeS/WAN, they were not barred from working on other implementations of IPSec. The 2.6 kernel now includes an IPSec implementation of its own, negating the need for an add-in implementation like FreeS/WAN. Though the FreeS/WAN project is ending, the situation is not as dramatic as it sounds. No open source application is dead if the community does not wish it so, and FreeS/WAN will live on for some time after the last official release. The FreeS/WAN team plans to push out at least one more release, including changes to allow its use with the 2.6 kernel series. Openswan, a fork of the FreeS/WAN project, seems poised to continue development where FreeS/WAN leaves off. Linux users are not being left out in the unencrypted cold. The code remains, and development of IPSec VPNs for Linux continues without a hitch. At some point, we may even realize Gilmore's goals of a fully-encrypted Internet.
Security Brief items Keeping spamassassin currentLongtime users of SpamAssassin know that it can do an outstanding job of identifying spam. They also know, however, that the effectiveness of any particular SpamAssassin release tends to decline over time as spammers figure out how to craft messages which get past the rules. The Bayesian filter buried inside SpamAssassin can help a lot; it catches a fair amount of spam which evades the rules, and it evolves over time to keep up with what the spammers are doing - especially if you make a point of training the filter with its mistakes. Even so, frustrating amounts of spam can get through.The situation is not helped much by the fact that the SpamAssassin rule base seems to be evolving slowly in recent times. The SpamAssassin developers have too many other things to do, perhaps, or maybe they would rather see the work done by the filter. In any case, some users would certainly like to see the rules updated more frequently. The maintenance of an up-to-the-second set of SpamAssassin rules could well be a business opportunity for somebody, if the licensing issues could be worked out. But SpamAssassin users should also be aware of the custom rulesets page hosted on the SpamAssassin Wiki. This is a place where additional rules can be found to deal with specific problems; some of them might cut your spam load considerably. Currently available rulesets include:
Several others exist as well; there is also a "RulesDuJour" script which can be used to automatically keep up to date with the rulesets as they are maintained. The custom rulesets won't solve the spam problem, but they can help to keep a mailbox a bit cleaner.
New vulnerabilities libxml2 - arbitrary code execution
xboing - buffer overflows
Updated vulnerabilities apache2: Denial of Service vulnerability
CUPS: denial of service
Filename disclosure vulnerability in fam
fetchmail may crash on specially crafted message
fileutils/wu-ftpd: denial of service
GnuPG: ElGamal signing keys compromised
gtkhtml: malformed messages cause crash
hsftp - format string vulnerability
iproute: local denial of service
kdepim: VCF file information reader vulnerability
kernel: local root exploit
kernel: local root exploit in 2.4.22
kernel-utils: setuid vulnerability
lbreakout2 buffer overflow
libpng, libpng3: buffer overflow
libtool - Insecure handling of temporary files
mailman: cross-site scripting vulnerabilities
mailman denial of service
mc: arbitrary code execution
metamail: integer and buffer overflows
mikmod: buffer overflow
mod_python: denial of service vulnerability
mpg321: format string vulnerability
mplayer: remotely exploitable buffer overflow vulnerability
mutt: buffer overflow
Nessus NASL scripting engine security issues
netpbm: insecure temporary files
nfs-utils xlog() off-by-one bug
openssh: timing attack leads to information disclosure
perl information leak
postfix: denial of service vulnerabilities
PWLib: possible Denial of Service
rsync - remotely exploitable heap overflow
screen: privilege escalation
synaesthesia - insecure file creation
File overwrite vulnerability in tar and unzip
tcpdump: flaws in the ISAKMP decoding routines
Multiple vendor telnetd vulnerability
util-linux: information leak in the login program
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Kernel development Brief items Kernel release statusThe current 2.6 release is 2.6.4-rc1, which was announced by Linus on February 27. This large patch contains support for Intel's "ia32e" architecture, a new syscalls.h include file with prototypes for the various sys_* functions, various network driver fixes, a UTF-8 tty mode, dynamic PTY allocation (allowing up to a million PTY devices), sysfs support for SCSI tapes and bluetooth devices, the "large number of groups" patch (covered in the October 2 Kernel Page), the generic kernel thread code (January 7 Kernel Page), an HFS filesystem rewrite, and a massive number of other fixes. See the long-format changelog for the details.Linus's BitKeeper tree contains a number of parallel port fixes, various architecture updates, the reversion of a patch which had removed threads from /proc (and broke gdb), an XFS update, a FireWire update (including one which notes that IEEE1394 support is no longer experimental), and numerous fixes. The current kernel tree from Andrew Morton is 2.6.4-rc1-mm2. Recent additions to the -mm tree include more scheduler tweaks, some big NFS updates, the POSIX message queues patch, a 4K stack option for the x86 architecture, some VM optimizations, the removal of some old network device API functions (see below), and numerous other fixes and updates. The current 2.4 kernel is 2.4.25. Marcelo has released no 2.4.26 prepatches since 2.4.26-pre1 on February 25.
Kernel development news A retry-based AIO infrastructureThe asynchronous I/O infrastructure was added in 2.5 as a way to allow processes to initiate I/O operations without having to wait for their completion. The underlying mechanism is documented in this Driver Porting Series article. The actual implementation of asynchronous I/O in the kernel has been somewhat spotty, however. It works for some devices (which have specifically implemented that support) and for direct file I/O. Other sorts of potentially interesting uses, such as with regular buffered file I/O, have remained unimplemented.Part of the problem is that buffered file I/O integrates deeply with the page cache and virtual memory subsystem. It is not all that easy to graft asynchronous I/O operations into those complex bodies of code. So the kernel developers have, for the most part, simply punted on cases like that. Suparna Bhattacharya, however, has not given up so easily. For over a year, now, she has been working on a set of patches which bring the asynchronous mode to the buffered I/O realm. A new set of patches has recently been posted which trims down the buffered AIO changes to the bare minimum. So this seems like a good time to take a look at what is involved in making asynchronous buffered I/O work. The architecture implemented by these patches is based on retries. When an asynchronous file operation is requested, the code gets things started and goes as far as it can until something would block; at that point it makes a note and returns to the caller. Later, when the roadblock has been taken care of, the operation is retried until the next blocking point is hit. Eventually, all the work gets done and user space can be notified that the requested operation is complete. The initial work is done in the context of the process which first requested the operation; the retries are handled out of a workqueue. For things to work in this mode, kernel code in the buffered I/O path must be taught not to block when it is working on an asynchronous request. The first step in this direction is the concept of an asynchronous wait queue entry. Wait queue entries are generally used, surprisingly, for waiting; they include a pointer to the process which is to be awakened when the wait is complete. With the AIO retry patch, a wait queue entry which has a NULL process pointer is taken to mean that actually waiting is not desired. When this type of wait queue entry is encountered, functions like prepare_to_wait() will not put the process into a sleeping state (though it does add the wait queue entry to the associated wait queue), and some functions will return the new error code -EIOCBRETRY rather than actually sleeping. The next step is to add a new io_wait entry to the task structure. When AIO retries are being performed, that entry is pointed to an asynchronous wait queue entry associated with the specific AIO request. This task structure field is, for all practical purposes, being used in a hackish manner to pass the wait queue entry into functions deep inside the virtual memory subsystem. It might have been clearer to pass it explicitly as a parameter, but that would require changing large numbers of internal interfaces to support a rarely-used functionality. The io_wait solution is arguably less clean, but it also makes for a far less invasive patch. It does mean, however, that work can only proceed on a single AIO request at a time. Finally, a few low-level functions have been patched to note the existence of a special wait queue entry in the io_wait field and to use it instead of the local entry that would normally have been used. In particular, page cache functions like wait_on_page_locked() and wait_on_page_writeback() have been modified in this way. These functions are normally used to wait until file I/O has been completed on a page; they are the point where buffered I/O often blocks. When AIO is being performed, instead, they will return the -EIOCBRETRY error code immediately. The AIO code also takes advantage of the fact that wait queue entries, in 2.6, contain a pointer to the function to be called to wake up the waiting process. With an asynchronous request, there may be no such process; instead, the kernel needs to attempt the next retry. So the AIO code sets up its own wakeup function which does not actually wake any processes, but which does restart the relevant I/O request. Once that structure is in place, all that's left is a bit of housekeeping code to keep track of the status of the request between retries. This work is done entirely within the AIO layer; as each piece of the request is satisfied, the request itself as seen by the filesystem layer is modified to take that into account. When the operation is retried to transfer the next chunk of data, it looks like a new request with the already-done portion removed. Add in a few other hacks (telling the readahead code about the entire AIO request, for example, and an AIO implementation for pipes) and the patch set is complete. It does not attempt to fix every spot which might block (that would be a large task), but it should take care of the most important ones.
The end of init_etherdev() and friendsThe last few 2.6 kernel releases have seen a lot of patches removing calls to a set of network driver support functions, including init_etherdev(), init_netdev(), and dev_alloc(). With the integration of networking and sysfs, static net_device structures have become impossible to use in a safe way; these structures must now be allocated dynamicly and properly reference counted. See this Driver Porting Series article for details on the currently supported interface.As of 2.6.3, there are no users of those functions in the mainline kernel tree. There are, however, certain to be out-of-tree drivers which still use them. Those drivers will need to be fixed soon; the 2.6.3-mm4 kernel tree added a patch which removes those functions forevermore. Once that patch works its way into the mainline kernel, any driver relying upon init_etherdev() and friends will cease to work until it is fixed. Don't say you haven't been warned.
pramfs - a new filesystemSteve Longerbeam (of MontaVista) has sent out an announcement for a new filesystem called "pramfs." He would like to see pramfs merged into the mainline kernel in the near future; let it not be said that embedded Linux companies do not contribute to the kernel.Pramfs (the "protected and persistent RAM special filesystem") is a specialized filesystem; it is intended for use in embedded systems which provide a bank of non-volatile memory for user data storage. Think, for example, of a phone book housed within a mobile telephone. Such memory tends to be fast, but it is not normally part of the system's regular core memory. It also tends to be important; cell phone users will not tolerate a phone which scrambles their phone numbers. To meet the special needs presented by non-volatile RAM filesystems, pramfs does a number of things differently than normal filesystems. Since there is no need to worry about the (nonexistent) performance impacts of block positioning, pramfs doesn't. Since pramfs filesystems are expected to live in fast memory, there is generally no performance benefit to caching pages in main memory. So pramfs, interestingly, forces all file I/O to be direct; essentially, it forces the O_DIRECT flag on all file opens. In that way, pramfs gets the benefits of shorting out the page cache without having to change applications to use O_DIRECT explicitly. Pramfs also goes out of its way to avoid corruption of the filesystem. If the underlying non-volatile RAM is represented in the system's page tables, it is marked read-only to keep a stray write from trashing things. When an explicit write to the filesystem is performed, the page permissions are changed only for the time required to perform the I/O. Pramfs disallows writes from the page cache; one practical result of that prohibition is that shared mappings of pramfs-hosted files are not possible. See the pramfs web site for more information.
Time to thrash the 2.6 VM?Those who have been watching kernel development for a little while will remember the fun that came with the 2.4.10 release, when Linus replaced the virtual memory subsystem with a new implementation by Andrea Arcangeli. The 2.4 kernel did end up with a stable VM some releases thereafter, but many developers were upset that such a major change would be merged that far into a stable series. Especially since many of those developers were not convinced that the previous VM was not fixable.The 2.4 changes are long past, but the memories are fresh enough that when Andrea put forward a set of VM changes which, while they are for 2.4, are said to be applicable to 2.6 as well, people took notice. Andrea's goals this time are little more focused; he is concerned with the performance of systems with at least 32GB of installed memory and hundreds of processes with shared mappings of large files. This, of course, is the sort of description that might fit a high-end database server. Andrea has found three problems which make those massive servers fail to function well. The first has to do with how 2.4 performs swapout; it works by scanning each process's virtual address space, and unmapping pages that it would like to make free. When a page's mapping count reaches zero, it gets kicked out of main memory. The problem is that this algorithm performs poorly in situations where many processes have the same, large file mapped. The VM will start by unmapping the entire file for the first process, then another, and so on. Only when it has passed through all of the processes mapping the file can it actually move pages out of main memory. Meanwhile, all of those processes are incurring minor page faults and remapping the pages. With enough memory and processes, the VM subsystem is almost never able to actually free anything. This is the problem that the reverse-mapping VM (rmap) was added to 2.5 to solve. By working directly with physical pages and following pointers to the page tables which map them, the VM subsystem can quickly free pages for other use. Andrea is critical of rmap, however; with his scenario of 32GB of memory and hundreds of processes, the rmap infrastructure grows to a point where the system collapses. Instead, for his patches, he has implemented a variant of the object-based reverse mapping scheme. Object-based reverse mapping works by following the links from the object (a shared file, say) which backs up the shared memory; in this way it is able to dispense with the rmap structures in many situations. There are some concerns about pathological performance issues with the object-based approach, but those problems do not seem to arise in real-world use. The second problem is a simple bug in the swapout code. When shared memory is unmapped and set up for swap, the actual I/O to write it out to the swap file is not started right away. By the time the system gets around to actually performing I/O, there is a huge pile of pages waiting to be shoved out, and an I/O storm results. Even then, the way the kernel tracks this memory means that it takes a long time to notice that it is free even after it has been written to swap. This problem is fixed by taking frequent breaks to actually shove dirty memory out to disk. Andrea's final problem came about when he tried to copy a large file while all those database processes were running. It turns out that the system was swapping out the shared database memory (which was dirty and in use) rather than the data from the file just copied (which is clean). Tweaking the memory freeing code to make it prefer clean cache pages over dirty pages straightened this problem out, at the cost of a certain amount of unfairness. With these patches, Andrea claims, the 2.4 kernel can run heavy loads on large systems which will immediately lock up a 2.6 system. So he is going to start looking toward 2.6, with an eye toward beefing it up for this sort of load. Andrew Morton has indicated that he might accept some of this work - but not yet:
We need to understand that right now, 2.6.x is 2.7-pre. Once 2.7
forks off we are more at liberty to merge nasty highmem hacks which
will die when 2.6 is end-of-lined.
I plan to merge the 4g split immediately after 2.7 forks. I wouldn't be averse to objrmap for file-backed mappings either - I agree that the search problems which were demonstrated are unlikely to bite in real life. The "4g split" is Ingo Molnar's 4GB user-space patch which makes more low memory available to the kernel, but at a performance cost. Before Andrew merges any other patches, however, he wants to see a convincing demonstration of why the current VM patches are not enough for large loads. The 2.6 "stable" kernel may well see some significant virtual memory work, but, with luck, it will not be subjected to a 2.4.10-like abrupt switch.
Patches and updates Kernel trees
Build system
Core kernel code
Device drivers
Documentation
Filesystems and block I/O
Memory management
Architecture-specific
Security-related
Miscellaneous
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Distributions News and Editorials Gentoo Linux 2004.0A new version of Gentoo Linux was announced earlier this week, the first new release since version 1.4 in August 2003. Although many people will argue that Gentoo releases are effectively just "reference points", since Gentoo installations are continuously updated, this release has enough innovative new features to warrant a closer look. Also, according to a recent Netcraft report, Gentoo is one of the fast growing Linux distributions in terms of usage as web servers. Although its total market share is still comparatively low, Gentoo Linux is slowly finding its way into server usage statistics, proving that it is no longer just a hobbyist distribution for users with much time on their hands, but a serious product with a lot of potential. Besides the immediately apparent new versioning scheme, what else does Gentoo Linux 2004.0 bring to the table?Updated software. Source-based distributions tend to keep highly up-to-date and Gentoo Linux 2004.0 is no exception. It comes with Linux kernel 2.6.3, GCC 3.3.2, glibc 2.3.2, KDE 3.2 and GNOME 2.4.2, just to mention the main components. Although this release claims to be fully compatible with the 2.6 kernel series, the two recommended kernels, according to the release notes, are 2.4.24 for uniprocessor machines and 2.6.1-smp for multiprocessor systems. Higher kernel versions are provided in the so-called "unstable" tree; the Gentoo developers were unable to overcome numerous problems with integrating a fully functional 2.6 kernel into the distribution before the release - hence the experimental nature of the 2.6 kernel provided for experts, rather than general use. Support for five architectures. Gentoo 2004.0 now supports five architectures: x86, AMD64, PowerPC, Sun SPARC, and SGI MIPS. The aim of these individual sub-projects is to provide not only a distribution, but also architecture-specific kernels, stage tarballs, live CDs, specialist packages, and complete documentation. Increased security. Hardened Gentoo is a Gentoo subproject with the goal of "making Gentoo viable for high security, high stability production server environments". This is an ambitious project with many of the well-known Linux security tools, including SELinux, Propolice, PaX/Grsecurity, Hardened GCC, Prelude and Bastille now incorporated into Gentoo. Secure Auditing for Linux (SAL) with encrypted and protected logs, as well as CryptoAPI support for a cryptographic file system are planned for future releases. Hardened Gentoo is available from mirrors as stage tarballs, marked as "pie-ssp" in their file names, for the x86 architecture. Because a Gentoo installation is usually compiled from source, implementing some of the security features is easier than with binary distributions. As an example, using Hardened GCC is just a matter of installing the "hardened-gcc" package which is then able to compile all source code into executables with stack smashing protection support. Similarly, those who prefer Propolice as their way to guard against stack overflows can simply add -fstack-protector as one of the CFLAGS in make.conf before compilation. Getting SELinux work is somewhat more complex, but the excellent installation and quick start guides are well-written and in line with other Gentoo documentation. Installation and use of Prelude Intrusion Detection System is also covered. Documentation is definitely one of the strong points of Gentoo. Catalyst. Although it has been in development for several months, catalyst makes its first official appearance in Gentoo 2004.0. What is catalyst? In simple terms, it is a tool that can be used to build all forms of a Gentoo Linux release: Live CDs, stage tarballs and GRP package sets (more on these momentarily). Its purpose is to provide a reliable tool for those users who wish to build a custom distribution or a live CD. To build one, the user will need the catalyst package, a portage tree snapshot and a "spec" file specifying a handful of variables, such as target, architecture, path to the portage tree and a few identifiers. A stage tarball or a Gentoo live CD can then be built with one simple command. As always, the catalyst project page and its reference manual cover all the details. Live CDs, stages and GRP. Unlike the products created by most other distributions, Gentoo releases consist of a large number of files, which can be confusing at times. Here is a quick summary of what is available:
The Gentoo project continues to impress with innovative ideas, their effective implementation, and superb documentation. Gentoo Linux 2004.0 improves on an already excellent product - a multi-platform, highly secure distribution, suitable for both the enthusiast and, increasingly, for the enterprise.
Distribution News Debian GNU/LinuxThe Debian Weekly News for March 2, 2004 is out. This week read about an upcoming bug squish, the GIF patent, the Debian Project Leader Elections, and more.Nominations are over and there are three candidates in the running for Debian Project Leader; Martin Michlmayr, Gergely Nagy, and Branden Robinson. Platform statements are available here. DPL Martin Michlmayr has a conference summary of Open Source World Conference (OSWC) in Spain, FOSDEM in Belgium, and a conference in Italy organized by Firenze Tecnologia.
Gentoo LinuxGentoo Linux has announced the release of Gentoo Linux 2004.0 for the x86, AMD64, PowerPC, Sun SPARC, and SGI MIPS architectures. Additionally, the Gentoo Hardened team has announced the inaugural release of a security-enhanced Gentoo platform for the x86 architecture.Here's the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of March 1, 2004. This week's lead topic is the release of Gentoo Linux 2004.0, several other topics are included. An ebuild for webapp-config v1.0 has been committed into Portage and should be available on the mirrors now. webapp-config is the first tool to be delivered from GLEP 11.
New LSB Certification for ThizLinux LaboratoryThe Open Group has announced that ThizServer for IA64 7.0 conforms to the LSB Runtime Environment for IA64 version 1.3 product standard.
A Global Survey of Linux Distributions (O'ReillyNet)O'Reilly's LinuxDevCenter looks at some of the better known distributions worldwide. "You may be familiar with one or more distributions already, but do you know what's available worldwide? Here are a few of the more popular commercial Linux distributions in various languages of the world. Note that I said commercial -- distributions such as Debian and Gentoo are lead primarily by a community, not a commercial organization, and really have no geographic center. They're fine distributions, though, and well-worth using."
DistroWatch WeeklyThe DistroWatch Weekly for March 1, 2004 has news about SLAX, the Linux Mirror Project and more.
Fedora CoreUpdates for Fedora Core 1:
Slackware LinuxThis week the slackware-current changelog shows some bug fixes, upgrades to some /bin tools including a SlackBuild rewrite, an upgrade to esound 0.2.33 with a kernel recompile, and more.
New Distributions DNA LinuxDNA Linux is a live Linux distribution with bioinformatics software preloaded. It is for people who find it hard to install EMBOSS, Primer3, BLAST, and other bioinformatics software or who want to have a test system for class or demonstration purposes.
TunixTunix is a small Linux setup, a toolkit to build your own small Linux image, and boot from a floppy or flash card. It's based on uClibc and busybox, using a pretty straightforward approach, based on KISS principle (Keep it simple, stupid). Tunix joins the list at version 0.11, released February 28, 2004.
Minor distribution updates 2-Disk Xwindow embedded Linux2-Disk Xwindow embedded Linux has released source code v1.2.10 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: X has become smaller in memory footprint. Further kernel size optimization has been performed. Libraries have been refactored. Numerous other changes have been made. Certain words have pupated into documentation. Obfuscation has been reduced. The project has been cleaned up. Some profanity has been removed. The overall size has been reduced by 120 KB."
AdamantixAdamantix has released v1.0.3. "Changes: This release has improved RSBAC support, many more packages, security and bug fixes, updated packages and updated kernel patches, XFS support, and more."
ADIOSADIOS has released v3.0 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: This release is based on the Fedora Core and Kernel 2.4.24."
Arch LinuxArch Linux has released v0.6 (widget). From the announcement: "We've made a lot of improvements over the last seven months, and hope you enjoy our efforts. We've seen a surge of activity in the Arch community, and it's resulted in more documentation, a huge increase in packages, and tons of useful information in our forums. Keep it up everyone, Arch Linux is slowly becoming the mature distribution we want it to be."
BG-Rescue LinuxBG-Rescue Linux has released v0.3.1 with minor feature enhancements. "Changes: Many new keyboard layouts were added, so 30 layouts are now available. Support was added for compressed loop images with transparent decompression. cmdftp was updated to 0.7.3, ntfsprogs was updated to 1.8.4, and reiserfsprogs was updated to 3.6.12. It is now possible to load F-Prot semi-automatically from the harddisk."
Coyote LinuxCoyote Linux has released v2.10 Beta 2 with major bugfixes. "Changes: This release adds missing kernel options that prevented QoS from working properly, better support for DHCP to DNS integration, and new features to the firewall management in the Web admin."
Damn Small LinuxDamn Small Linux has released v0.6.1 with minor feature enhancements. "Changes: The Monkey Web server and Naim have been upgraded. The Firebird download has been switched to a special i586 build of FireFox. A command line FTP client, betaftpd, Mutella (gnutella client), and wmix (Dockapp mixer) have been added. The telnet client has been restored. Some bugs have been fixed and a few usability enhancements added . frugal install is an evolution of the poor man's install."
Deep-Water/LinuxDeep-Water/Linux has released v0.3. "Changes: This version has a new kernel configuration and a new startup to make it easier to mount /system_usr. It also adds a new hackedbox with a new fast panel, a program that creates icons according to the mounted disk partitions, and a new deep view that understands the "working directory" arg."
Feather LinuxFeather Linux has released v0.3.7 with minor feature enhancements. "Changes: This release adds betaftpd, gqcam, e3, lua, ettercap, wavemon, wmsetbg, and iptables (no firewall config script yet). Some changes have been made to sndconfig. The "nolisten tcp" option for the Xvesa and Xfbdev servers has been moved. The menu has been put into some semblance of order. localscript.sh has been added to /home/knoppix to execute custom commands on bootup via USB, floppy, or hard disk restore. A Flash script has been added. The Firefox script has been changed to work with 586 machines. APT has been tweaked a little. SWAT has been removed."
Linux Embedded Appliance FirewallLEAF has released Bering-uClibc 2.1. "Changes: This is the final release moving to kernel version 2.4.24. The kernel has been patched to fix CAN-2004-0077. PPP and shorewall have been upgraded to new upstream releases. There are some minor fixes and changes."
MoviXMoviX has released v0.8.1 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: Mouse support is now working, MoviX and MPlayer menus are available in 6 languages (de, en, it, pl, pt, and ru), config files can now be saved automatically in the boot device, and many small bugs have been fixed."
Puppy LinuxPuppy Linux has released v0.8.3. The release notes can be found here.
QuantianQuantian release 0.4.9.4 is now available. The announcement contains information about some new mailing lists along with the release news.
ThinTUXThinTUX has released v0.12 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: Support has been added for writing to CD-RW. Kernel 2.6.1 is used. Support for the Open Sound System has been replaced with support for the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture. Clients for 3270 and 5250 emulation have been added, as well as tools to format a floppy, format a CD-RW, and partition and format USB disc."
UHU-LinuxUHU-Linux has released v1.1.
Distribution reviews Linux on the Opteron (OSNews)OSNews looks at several Linux distributions on an Opteron box. "TurboLinux claims to have had Opteron support the longest, and it does seem polished, but it does have a few oddities to it (disk install problems, etc) but again, most of these have been fixed with the update CD. Gentoo is moving right along with porting, they now have window managers (for those interested) and they are using the 2.6 kernel on the live CDs. Fedora Core is still beta, but it has never given me any problems (it is the desktop OS of choice on my Opteron) and everything works. I did do some small, highly debatable benchmarking on these different distributions, but I stronly recommend that if you want to use the Opteron for any CPU intensive task, benchmarking of the application to be used should be performed."
Swapping Red Hat for a Fedora (The Star)The Star Online trades in Red Hat for a new Fedora (Core 1). " When asked about Fedora, I've always offered the same response -- it's meant for those who want to stay on the bleeding edge of Linux development. I feel that Fedora is more a change of concept and mindset for Red Hat users and developers rather than being merely a Linux distribution."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol Development The GNU Compiler Collection Version 3.3.3Version 3.3.3 of GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection, was recently released. "This release was actually completed on February 14, but technical issues with the transition to new security measures for protecting FSF servers required a delay in the announcement."The Changes, New Features, and Fixes document details the new features in the larger GCC 3.3.X release. The changes for version 3.3.3 include a ton of bug fixes and some performance optimizations. A few minor features have been added, including a new --with-sysroot flag, automatic detection of executable stacks, support for SSE3 instructions, and support for thread local storage debugging on the S390 architecture. The project build status page lists the many operating systems and Linux distributions that this version of GCC has been tested on. Congratulations to the many contributors for helping to move this huge project forward.
System Applications Audio Projects ALSA 1.0.3 releasedVersion 1.0.3 of the ALSA sound driver is available. The comments say: "added driver for ATI IXP 150/200/250 chips and HDSP MADI driver".
Ogg TrafficThe February 25, 2004 edition of Ogg Traffic is out with the latest Ogg Vorbis audio compression software news. The search is on for a new Ogg Traffic editor.
Planet CCRMA ChangesThe latest changes from the Planet CCRMA audio utility packaging project include the addition of XMMS LADSPA, Caps LADSPA Plugins, and Open Music for Linux, and new versions of LADCCA, Fluidsynth, Vkeybd, and the TAP LADSPA Plugins.
Clusters and Grids MyGrid: version 0.1.4 (Jobs Visualizer) (SourceForge)Version 0.1.4 of MyGrid, a cross-platform grid computing management system, is available. "Version 0.1.4 adds many structure enhancements to the project. Java 'foundry' of MyGrid now contains 3 projects: visualizer, engine and shell job processor. More to come!"
Database Software Getting Reacquainted with dbXML 2.0 (O'Reilly)Tom Bradford writes about dbXML 2.0 on O'Reilly. " dbXML is a native XML database written in in Java. Native XML databases (NXDs) are databases that store XML using an internalized format for faster overall processing, and representational flexibility. NXDs also provide support for indexing XML for improved query performance. The dbXML project has quite a bit of history behind it. Some have likened it to something of a soap opera. Though there has been quite a bit of flux in the project, at its core the focus has remained the same, which is to provide an easy to use native XML database implementation, with both good performance and stability."
Configuring JBoss 4.0 JDBC Connectivity (O'ReillyNet)Deepak Vohra shows how to use non-default databases with JBoss. "JBoss 4.0, developer edition, is an open source application server configured to use HypersonicDB by default. However, some Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) developers would like to use databases other than HypersonicDB to develop and deploy applications. In this tutorial, we'll look at how to configure JBoss to use other databases."
PostgreSQL 7.3.6 Now AvailableVersion 7.3.6 of the PostgreSQL database is available with several bug fixes. "After several fixes were backpatches to the 7_3_STABLE branch, we have now released a 7.3.6."
PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe March 1, 2004 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is out. Take a look for PostgreSQL database development news.
phpMyAdmin 2.5.6 is released (SourceForge)Version 2.5.6 of phpMyAdmin, a web-based database administration tool, has been released. "Welcome to this new version, aimed at stabilization of the 2.5 branch."
Filesystem Utilities ntfsprogs 1.8.5 released (SourceForge)Version 1.8.5 of ntfsprogs, a set of NT filesystem utilities, is available. "This is basically a spring cleaning of the build process with lots of cleanups and a few bug fixes thrown in for good measure. Upgrade is not essential."
Mail Software Cooking with sendmail (O'Reilly)Craig Hunt works with sendmail and LDAP in an O'Reilly book excerpt. "Sendmail Cookbook offers hundreds of step-by-step solutions to configuration problems just like the one in today's excerpt, on routing mail with LDAP. If you're an administrator, you know you can't spend hours tracking down the answer to every problem; the solutions and configuration code included with each recipe in the book can be implemented immediately."
Networking Tools JavaGroups version 2.2.1 released (SourceForge)JavaGroups version 2.2.1 is available. "JavaGroups provides reliable group communication based on IP multicast and configurable protocol stack. This release includes a number of bug fixes and enhancements."
Twisted 1.2.0 releasedVersion 1.2.0 of the Twisted networking framework is out with lots of new capabilities.
Printing LPRng 3.8.26 releasedVersion 3.8.26 of the LPRng print system is available. Change information is in the source code.
Security Nmap Security Scanner 3.50 ReleasedVersion 3.50 of the Nmap Security Scanner is out. "Nmap has undergone many substantial changes since 3.00 and we recommend that all current users upgrade. Improvements from 41 intermediate releases have gone into 3.50."
Telecom reSIProcate 0.4 available (SourceForge)Version 0.4 of reSIProcate, an RFC 3261 compliant SIP stack that is used for Voice over IP applications, is out. "A new tarball containing many major improvements is now available. General stability, performance and many bugs have all been fixed or improved."
Web Site Development MediaWiki 1.2.0rc1 released (SourceForge)Version 1.2.0rc1 of MediaWiki is out. "This release includes improved inline image and thumbnailing support, smoother account management, and a number of interface tweaks as well as numerous bug fixes and backend features (squid cache purging, authenticated SMTP, tighter upload security, better PHP compatibility). Also fixes an incompatibility with MySQL 3.2.x in the default install that cropped up in 1.1."
Mod_python's PSP: Python Server Pages (O'ReillyNet)Gregory Trubetskoy explains Python Server Pages on O'Reilly. "For simple web sites, inlining code in the pages themselves s shockingly effective. For more complex sites, it can even work with good MVC design. Fear not, Pythonistas, mod_python's PSP brings the power and clarity of Python to web programming."
PyGoogle 0.6 releasedVersion 0.6 of PyGoogle, a Python wrapper for Google's web API, is out. "This release adds support for the current SOAPpy module from the Python Web Services project. It also contains significant internal refactorings and API documentation updates."
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Audacity 1.2.0 releasedStable version 1.2.0 of the Audacity sound editor is available. "This release features major improvements over version 1.0, including new effects, improved audio quality, and an updated user interface." See the release notes for the full change description.
Boss Ogg 0.13.4 released (SourceForge)Version 0.13.4 of Boss Ogg, a server-based music player for ogg, mp3, and flac files, has been released. "The 0.13.4 release features a new import script, preliminary genre support and tons of stability and bug fixes."
Tkeca-4.0.2 released!Version 4.0.2 of Tkeca, a GUI front-end to the Ecasound audio utility, has been announced. This version features a bug fix for the mixdown properties window.
Desktop Environments GNOME CPUFreq Applet 0.1.1 released (GnomeDesktop)Version 0.1.1 of the GNOME CPUFreq Applet is available. "GNOME CPUFreq Applet is a CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor for GNOME Panel. This specific release adds support for userspace governor."
KDE-CVS-DigestThe February 28, 2004 edition of the KDE-CVS-Digest has been published. The topic summary says: "Kolourpaint adds transparent selections. Some preliminary work on a new control center. KMail adds IMAP folder expiry. KDevelop adds Opie code templates. Plus bugfixes in Quanta and Kopete."
KDE Traffic (KDE.News)KDE.News summarizes the contents of KDE Traffic #75. "KDE Traffic #75 is out with news regarding KDE's future, KDE Edu, HTML message composition for KMail and more. In case you missed the previous edition, which wasn't announced on the dot due to personal problems, follow the link to KDE Traffic #74."
Connect KDE applications using DCOPMartyn Honeyford illustrates the use of KDE's Desktop COmmunication Protocol (DCOP) on IBM's developerWorks. "Hidden deep within the KDE desktop lies a powerful set of scripting technologies that can allow the power user to automate many tasks. In this article, Martyn Honeyford introduces us to these technologies and explains how they can be used to the fullest."
XFree86 Release 4.4.0Version 4.4.0 of XFree86 has been announced. Changes include updated video and input drivers, IPv6 support, X Server updates, client and library updates, I18N and font updates, and more. See the release notes for more information.
Electronics XCircuit 3.2.12 releasedVersion 3.2.12 of XCircuit, an electronic schematic drawing package, is out. Change information is in the source code.
Games Pydance 1.0 releasedThe PyGame site mentions the release of version 1.0 of Pydance, an arcade-style dancing game.
WorldForge Weekly NewsThe WorldForge Weekly News for February 27, 2004 is out with the latest WorldForge game project news. Also from WorldForge, version 0.1.1 of Sage, an OpenGL extensions library, is out.
Imaging Applications KolourPaint 1.0 'Seagull' Released (KDE.News)Version 1.0 of KolourPaint has been announced. "KolourPaint is an easy-to-use paint program for KDE that makes user-friendly painting and image editing a reality for the desktop user. If you're sick of those broken KDE paint programs that can't undo or handle images the size of a screenshot, then KolourPaint is for you."
Interoperability Wine TrafficIssue #212 of Wine Traffic is available with the latest Wine project news.
Music Applications amSynth 1.0.0 releasedVersion 1.0.0 of amSynth, the Analogue Modeling SYNTHesizer, has been released. Changes include build fixes for alsa version 1 and efficiency improvements.
PDA Software Mozilla Firefox on Sharp Zaurus PDA (MozillaZine)MozillaZine reports on a port of the Mozilla Firefox browser to the Sharp Zaurus PDA. "Laze writes: "The pdaXrom team, found at www.pdaXrom.org, has been successful in making Mozilla Firefox run on the Sharp Zaurus series PDA (at the moment only the C7X0 series), which means that users now can use this wonderful browser for 'pocket browsing'."
Video Applications dvd-slideshow 0.5.4 released (SourceForge)Version 0.5.4 of dvd-slideshow is available. "dvd-slideshow makes a DVD slideshow video with menus from a text file listing of pictures, effects, and audio tracks. You can add some nice effects like fades, crops, scrolls, or Ken Burns effects. The updates are slowing down now since the program does mostly what I want it to do. This update adds some features in the audio system: two audio tracks are possible now, and it is possible to re-define the background image anywhere in the slideshow."
Web Browsers mozilla.org Status Update #224 (MozillaZine)The March 1, 2004 mozilla.org Status Update is available. The MozillaZine summary says: "It includes news on Mozilla 1.7 Alpha, Minimo 0.1, the string code, layout, large downloads, support for Sun keyboards and more."
Independent Status Reports (MozillaZine)The Mozilla Independent Status Reports for February 29, 2004 have been published. "The latest set of status reports includes updates from Feed Parser, JRex, Mycroft, HONcode, Forumzilla, IE View, Compact Menu, QuickNote, MozManual, MessageID-Finder and Launchy."
Mozilla Links NewsletterThe Mozilla Links Newsletter for March 2, 2004 has been published. Take a look for articles on the Mozilla browser and related topics.
Miscellaneous Bidwatcher 1.3.13 releasedVersion 1.3.13 of Bidwatcher is available. "Bidwatcher is a free auction tool for eBay users, available for Linux and (soon?) Microsoft Windows." See the project news page for recent change information.
GnomeMeeting 1.00 released (GnomeDesktop)GnomeMeeting version 1.00, a videoconferencing and VOIP/IP-Telephony application, has been announced. " Major new features include a redesigned configuration assistant, a redesigned preferences window, new status support, audio and video devices plugins with native ALSA support, a new manual, ..."
gkrellsun 0.10.5 released (SourceForge)Version 0.10.5 of gkrellsun, a sun and moon monitor, is available. "This release combines gkrellsun and gkrellmoon. The user can click on the Sun/Moon image to toggle between them."
OSAF Announces the Release of Chandler 0.3Version 0.3 of the Chandler personal information manager (PIM) is out. "We are pleased to announce Chandler 0.3! Our architecture is finally stable enough to start developing end-user features. Release 0.3 targets developers who want an early preview into our architecture as we are developing it."
Languages and Tools Caml Caml Weekly NewsThe March 2, 2004 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with links and news about the Caml language.
Java Aspect-oriented changes with Javassist (IBM developerWorks)IBM's developerWorks has published part six in a series on the Javassist framework. "Java consultant Dennis Sosnoski saves the best for last in his three-part coverage of the Javassist framework. This time he shows how the Javassist search-and-replace support makes editing Java bytecode practically as easy as a text editor's Replace All command. Want to report all writes to a particular field or patch in a change to a parameter passed in a method call? Javassist makes it easy, and Dennis shows you how."
JPOX 1.0.0 Beta 2 released (SourceForge)The Beta 2 release of JPOX 1.0.0 has been announced. "JPOX is a Java Data Objects (JDO) API full compliant implementation. The Java Data Objects (JDO) API is a standard interface-based Java model abstraction of persistence. JPOX is free and released under an Open Source license, and so the source code is available for download along with the JDO implementation. In the Beta 2 release we reach an important milestone, the JDO compliance verified by the JDO TCK tests."
Taming Tiger: Loading Properties from XML (IBM developerWorks)John Zukowski works with Java and XML configuration files on IBM's developerWorks. "The Properties class is an old favorite, around since the beginning of Java programming time with very few changes. The Tiger release of J2SE enhances this class, which allows you not only to use it to specify key-value pairs on a single line separated by an equal sign, but also to use XML files to load and save those key-value pairs. In this installment of Taming Tiger, John Zukowski demonstrates how to use this updated work horse."
JSP Cooking with Java Servlets & JSP (O'Reilly)O'Reilly has published an excerpt from The Java Servlet & JSP Cookbook by Bruce W. Perry. "In these samples, learn how to use the Java Plug-in HTML Converter tool to generate the tags for embedding an applet, how to configure a javax.sql.DataSource for use in a servlet with the Tomcat web container, and how to use the JSTL's XML and XSLT-related tags."
Lisp Lisp Resource KitA new bootable Lisp Resource Kit CD is available. "The Lisp Resource Kit is "a dedicated development/learning environment on a self-booting CD. It is designed to be an easy to use single resource for those who are interested in exploring Common Lisp, regardless of their experience or domain of expertise". The self booting CD, which is based on Knoppix Linux, includes Common Lisp books, documentation and development environments."
Vanilla Lisp Shell: first public releaseVersion 1.2 of VLS, the Vanilla Lisp Shell, has been announced. "VLS is "an Emacs facility that allows many different kinds of commands for running Lisp Shells (also referred to as an inferior Lisp process)". It provides commands for starting Common Lisp and Scheme sessions and interacting with them via expression evaluation, information, package, debugging and other commands."
Dynamically changing running Lisp codePaolo Amoroso sends along some links to a set of articles called Dynamically changing running Lisp code, by Bill Clementson.
ML MLton 20040227 releasedVersion 20040227 of MLton, a Standard ML compiler, is out. See the change log for details. Thanks to Stephen Weeks.
Perl Perl 5.005_04 Released (use Perl)Perl 5.005 release 4 is out. "This release updates Perl 5.005 to enable building with current compiler/operating system configurations."
Parrot 0.1.0 Released (use Perl)Version 0.1.0 of Parrot, a virtual machine for Perl 6 (and more) has been announced. "The Parrot team proudly presents the Parrot 0.1.0 leap release. It provides some milestones like objects and multi-threading and supports many more platforms."
Exegesis 7 (O'Reilly)Damian Conway has written the Perl Exegesis 7, which delves into formats in Perl 6. "Unlike Perl 5, Perl 6 doesn't have a format keyword. Or the associated built-in formatting mechanism. Instead it has a Form.pm module. And a form function."
This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)The February 29, 2004 edition of This Week on perl5-porters has been published. "This week's summary, a bit late, will tell about the approaching development release, the new bugs discovered and fixed, and the side-effects of the new warnings."
This week on Perl 6 (O'Reilly)The February 22, 2004 edition of This week on Perl 6 is out with the latest Perl 6 developments.
PHP PHP Weekly Summary for March 2, 2004The PHP Weekly Summary for March 2, 2004 is out. Topics include: Migration Appendix, Method signature check on inheritance, SimpleXML and elements and attributes as strings, Fixing get_browser().
Python Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!The March 3, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is out with another roundup of Python language articles.
Tcl/Tk Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!The March 1, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk article links.
TclXML, TclDOM and TclXSLT v3.0b2 released (SourceForge)Version 3.0 of TclXML, TclDOM and TclXSLT are available. "The TclXML family of packages provide XML support for the Tcl scripting language. There are several subprojects: TclXML (the parser), TclDOM, TclXSLT and xmlgen."
XML A survey of XML standards: Part 4 (IBM developerWorks)Uche Ogbuji has assembled a cross-reference of XML standards. "The world of XML is vast and growing, with a huge variety of standards and technologies that interact in complex ways. It can be difficult for beginners to navigate the most important aspects of XML, and for users to keep track of new entries and changes in the space. XML is a basic syntax upon which you develop local and global vocabularies. Uche Ogbuji has presented the most important standards relating to XML in three in-depth articles. In this fourth article, he provides a detailed cross-reference of all the covered standards."
Community Developments (O'Reilly)Kendall Grant Clark writes about two XML projects, RDDL 2.0 and genx. "RDDL provides a kind of XML document suitable to put at the end of an XML namespace URI, a document which describes, by means of typed links, a bundle -- schemas, transformations, even bits and bobs of code -- of related resources in both human and machine readable ways.""The second, interesting bit of work on XML-DEV in the past few months is the C library, genx, for generating XML."
Cross Compilers GDC Pre-Release 2.91Pre-Release 2.91 of GDC, the GNU Development Chain for 68HC11 & 68HC12, is available. "Pre-Release 2.91 of the GNU Development Chain for 68HC11/68HC12 is available. It is based on Binutils 2.14, Gcc 3.3.3, Gdb 6.0 and Newlib 1.11.0."
Small Device C Compiler 2.4.0 released (SourceForge)Version 2.4.0 of the Small Device C Compiler is available. "A new release of SDCC, the portable optimising compiler for 8051, DS390, and Z80 microprocessors is now available. Included is preliminary support for the HC08, Pic 14, and Pic 16 series."
Editors Jext developer quitsRomain GUY, the lead developer of the Jext programmer's editor has called it quits. "I've created Jext exactly five years ago and had very good time maintaining it. But it is time for me to quit. I'd like to warmly thank all the people who helped me all along (and particularily Paolo Giarusso, who did incredible job those last months, and Slava Pestov, who'll know why) as well as every single person who took the time to download Jext. But let's be honnest, I'm not any more motivated by this project."
Version Control Arch 1.2 (stable) releasedStable version 1.2 of Arch, a version control system, is available. See the release notes for details.
Page editor: Forrest Cook Linux in the news Recommended Reading How I Lost the Big One (Legal Affairs)Legal Affairs is running a lengthy retrospective by Lawrence Lessig on the Eldred case. "This case could have been won. It should have been won. And no matter how hard I try to retell this story to myself, I can't help believing that my own mistake lost it."
The Luxury of Ignorance: An Open-Source Horror Story (catb.org)Eric S. Raymond writes about his frustration in configuring a popular open source software package. "I've just gone through the experience of trying to configure CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System. It has proved a textbook lesson in why nontechnical people run screaming from Unix. This is all the more frustrating because the developers of CUPS have obviously tried hard to produce an accessible system -- but the best intentions and effort have led to a system which despite its superficial pseudo-friendliness is so undiscoverable that it might as well have been written in ancient Sanskrit."
IBM urges Sun to make Java open source (News.com)News.com reports that IBM has sent an open letter to Sun Microsystems urging the company to make Java technology open source. "IBM is proposing that Sun, IBM and others choose which portions of the Java technology -- such as the Java Runtime environment, code libraries or even server software -- should be submitted to open source. Optimally, an official open-source version of Java would emerge to replace a "hodgepodge" of open-source Java technologies and efforts, Mr. Sutor said."
Trade Shows and Conferences Eben Moglen's Harvard Speech - Transcript (Groklaw)Groklaw has posted a transcript of FSF attorney Eben Moglen's talk at Harvard. "The GPL has succeeded for the last decade, while I have been tending it, because it worked, not because it failed or was in doubt. Mr. McBride and his colleagues now face that very same difficulty, and the fellow on the other side is IBM. A big, rich, powerful company that has no intention of letting go."
The SCO Problem USENIX Letter to Congress Refuting SCO's Letter (Groklaw)Groklaw has gotten permission to reproduce a letter written by the Board of Directors of USENIX and sent to Congress, in reply to SCO's open letter to Congress. "SCO specifically argues that open source (free) licensing "undermines our basic system of intellectual property rights." This assertion lacks any legal justification and therefore appears to be merely self-serving. Nothing in our intellectual property laws requires inventors to charge substantial fees for access or use of their inventions. In fact, the laws of copyright and patents, which underlie the intellectual property rights that most often protect computer software programs, give their owners complete discretion in deciding how large their licensing fees should be, or, indeed, whether to impose fees at all."
The FUD Is Mighty Thick Today (Groklaw)Groklaw responds to this LinuxInsider article. "LinuxInsider, whoever they are, goes along with the charade, which is a very big giveaway that while they may be insiders, they aren't likely *Linux* insiders. I had never heard of them. SCO's is a campaign of defamation in the press, not in the courts, despite Stowell's sanctimonious hypocrisy. If SCO would stop their defamatory PR, they might have a moral leg to stand on. This interview is a verbal attack on the Linux community. If you attack someone's mom, it doesn't matter that you used a polite tone of voice."
SCO files suit in Linux-using court (ZDNet)A ZDNet UK reporter did some research on Netcraft with amusing results. "The Nevada court where SCO Group has filed a lawsuit against US retailer AutoZone could itself theoretically be subject to legal proceedings because the court is using Linux to run its Web site."
Judge Wells' Order - SCO Doesn't Get All AIX Files, IBM Doesn't Have to Go First (Groklaw)Here is Groklaw's take on the order in the SCO/IBM case. "What it all means in practical terms is that the court didn't buy SCO's argument that it needed all of AIX and Dynix and it specifically rejected its request that IBM *first* provide AIX and Dynix, so that after that SCO could find what it needed."
Linux Adoption Editor of 'The Inquirer' Mike Magee Switches to Mozilla (MozillaZine)MozillaZine notices that the editor of The Inquirer has switched to Mozilla. "Magee, who also founded The Register, says that Mozilla 1.6 "is fast and has far better features than Internet Explorer, and far less drawbacks too."" We'd like to see him to switch the underlying OS platform as well.
Legal Court: DeCSS ban violated free speech (News.com)News.com reports that a California appeals court has reversed an order barring the publication of DeCSS. "The plaintiff, the DVD Copy Control Association, had argued that Andrew Bunner violated its intellectual property rights by posting on the Internet code known as DeCSS that can be used to bypass Hollywood's encryption scheme for DVDs. Bunner's attorneys had countered that the code was no longer a secret by the time he posted it on his Web site. On Friday, California's Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, reversing a trial judge's order first issued in 1999."
Interviews The People Behind KDE: Aaron Seigo (KDE.News)KDE.News mentions the availability of an interview with Aaron Seigo. "At The People Behind KDE this week an interview with the man who represents what working and contributing to a project like KDE stands for. He is outspoken, always helpful, has broad view of things that KDE needs and it's future, he is passionate about politics and social issues. He is from Cowtown, in The Great White North: Canada's own Aaron Seigo!"
Resources Linux wireless networking (developerWorks)developerWorks is running a low-level look at Linux wireless networking support. "You'll first see how WLAN devices work on Linux by tracing the code flow for an example WLAN card. Then you'll see how several Bluetooth devices interface with the Linux Bluetooth stack and other kernel layers. Next, you'll learn how to get GPRS and GSM devices to work with Linux. The article ends with the examination of Linux IrDa support and a brief look at performance issues faced by wireless networking devices."
Reviews At the Sounding Edge: OpenMusic and SuperCollider3 (Linux Journal)The Linux Journal reviews a couple of new Linux sound utilities ported over from MacOS. "OM is similar to its IRCAM synthesis sibling jMax in its use of icons to represent its various classes and libraries. These icons are placed on the canvas and wired together to create a patch. An OM patch may be a note generator, a MIDI event processor or even a simple playback device. OM's icons include classes and functions for arithmetic, list manipulation, random number generation, various MIDI actions, program control and many others."
February Mini Book Reviews (Linux Journal)Linux Journal has some mini book reveiws of Learning Perl Objects, Text Processing in Python, Core PHP Programming, 3rd Edition, and MySQL, 2nd Edition. "Part desktop reference and part programming guide, Core PHP Programming is a great book for both the beginning PHP programmer and those with more experience. It has been updated to include PHP 5, as well as new material covering XML, object techniques and design patterns."
Miscellaneous Toward a new kind of 'Linux distribution' (NewsForge)NewsForge has an article by Ian Murdock on how Linux distributions are built. "For the commercial Linux-as-product distributors, it is a sensible strategy to portray their distributions as monolithic wholes, as this allows them to position the distributions as platforms unto themselves and, thus, pursue traditional OS business models based on locking users in to a platform (I've argued before this will be a losing strategy in the long run, but that's another topic)."
The luxury of ignorance: A follow-up (NewsForge)Eric S. Raymond has gotten some fallout on his CUPS rant. "This rant made it onto all the major open-source news channels, so I was expecting a fair amount of feedback (and maybe pushback). But the volume of community reaction that thundered into my mailbox far surpassed what I had been expecting -- and the dominant theme, too, was a bit of a surprise. Not the hundreds of iterations of "Tell it, brother!", nor the handful of people who excoriated me as an arrogant twerp; those are both normal features of the response when I fire a broadside. No, the really interesting part was how many of the letters said. in effect, "Gee. And all this time I thought it was just me...""
Page editor: Forrest Cook Announcements Non-Commercial announcements EU IP enforcement directive advancesThe European Parliament's Legal Affairs committee has voted in favor of the draft "intellectual property enforcement" directive. This directive, which we looked at last August, would add a number of DMCA-like provisions to European law. The full Parliament will take up the directive starting on March 8. Now is the time for Europeans to make themselves heard on this issue; the software patent fight has shown that activism can make a difference. Click below for details from FFII.
AGNULA Libre Music Project launchedThe AGNULA team has launched the Libre Music project, a.k.a. the muzik project. "One of the objectives of the AGNULA-IST project is help spreading sensibility on the topics of Libre Software, with specific attention paid to audio/video applications and content distribution."
AIST and Free Standards Group Release Multilingual C LibraryThe National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) of Japan and the Free Standards Group have announced the release of a new library for the multilingualization of software written in the C programming language. The library, known as m17n, has been released under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
Austin Group Minutes of the Feb 26 2004 TeleconferenceThe minutes are available from the Austin Group's Teleconference of February 26, 2004.
Another Netfilter GPL enforcementThe Netfilter/iptables project has announced another successful GPL compliance action - this one is against Fujitsu-Siemens. The company will release source for its AP-600RP wireless router and make donations to Linux-Kongress and the Free Software Foundation Europe.Netfilter/iptables leader Harald Welte has sent us an article giving some details about how the project is going about enforcing its license and why it is taking a rather different approach than the FSF has. Click below (no subscription required) for the details.
Announcing the KDE Quality Team (KDE.News)KDE.News has an announcement for the new KDE Quality Team Project. "The KDE Community is pleased to announce the launch of the Quality Team Project, a community of contributors who will serve as a gateway between developers and users in the KDE Project, and as a new way for people to begin contributing."You can read more about the project on NewsForge.
www.python.org needs YOU!The folks at www.python.org have sent out a request for volunteer help. "The team that administers www.python.org is looking for additional maintainers, both to keep the text updated and to create automated solutions that require less human interaction."
Commercial announcements Introduction to Databases with MySQLMySQL AB will be conducting three instances of a course entitled Introduction to Databases with MySQL. The course will be held in Washington DC, Stockholm, and San Francisco in April, May, and June. "This course covers the fundamentals of SQL and relational databases, using MySQL as a teaching tool."
SCO sells a licenseThe SCO Group has announced that it has found a taker for its "Linux license." The company is EV1Servers.Net, a Houston-based hosting provider. No terms have been disclosed, of course. For what it's worth, EV1Servers.Net was featured in a Microsoft case study last September claiming that Windows servers can be deployed faster than the Linux-based variety.
XNotesPlus Version 3.6 is availableVersion 3.6.0 of XNotesPlus, a Personal Information Manager for the Linux and Unix desktop with PalmOS connectivity, is available.
New Books Syngress Releases "Ethereal Packet Sniffing"Syngress Publishing, Inc. has published the book Ethereal Packet Sniffing by Angela D. Orebaugh and Gilbert Ramirez.
Resources LDP Weekly NewsHere's the weekly report from the Linux Documentation Project, where you'll find out what's happening in the world of Linux documentation.
LinuxFocus March/April 2004 issueThe LinuxFocus issue for March 2004 is out; with a look at the XFree86 license and several other articles.
PEAR HTML_QuickForm Getting Started GuideKeith Edmunds has published the PEAR HTML_QuickForm Getting Started Guide, which is available online.
Threads for LSB 2.0The LSB-VSTHlite1.0 Beta Release is available. "This release is targeted for use with LSB version 2.x testing and certification. There are a number of bug fixes and configuration changes over previous releases. The test suite takes 30 minutes to configure install and run."
Surveys Nine Out Of Ten Linux Developers Refute Scos Linux Lawsuit (Evans Data Corp.)Evans Data Corporation has released the results of a survey of Linux users concerning the SCO lawsuit. "More than 90% of Linux developers dont believe the SCO/Linux lawsuit has any merit, according to the Spring 2004 Linux Development Survey from Evans Data Corporation. Three percent "absolutely" believe the lawsuit has merit, a further 5% think it "probably" has merit but more than half answered "absolutely not"." The survey also looks into the expanding use of the Eclipse development platform and Java on Linux.
Event Reports Slides from Brendan Eich's Mozilla Futures Talk (MozillaZine)The slides from Brendan Eich's Mozilla Developer Day talk on Mozilla Futures are available. "In the presentation, the Mozilla Foundation's Chief Architect outlined Mozilla's strengths and weaknesses and described a future strategy plan. Proposals include accelerating work on integrating SVG, implementing support for more scripting and programming languages (such as JavaScript 2, Python and Perl 5), creating a XUL builder plug-in for the Eclipse platform, improving native widget and desktop integration and setting up a new developer.mozilla.org site with programmer documentation."
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference Wrap-upO'Reilly has sent out some wrap-up coverage of their 2004 Emerging Technology Conference.
Upcoming Events Rally against EU IP DirectiveThe European Union "Intellectual Property Rights Directive" is coming up for a vote soon. A rally has been set for March 8 in Strasbourg to protest this directive and to call attention to the threat it presents. Click below for the details and a discussion of why this directive should be defeated.
PIM Team at Chemnitzer Linux-Tag 2004 (KDE.News)KDE.News previews the KDE PIM team's involvement at Chemnitzer Linux-Tag 2004 in Germany. "The PIM meeting will be used to discuss integration of groupware servers into the KDE PIM Framework and working on other features listed on the feature plan, which will eventually trigger the release cycle for the pending KDE PIM 3.3 release."
European Firebird-Conference 2004The 2004 European Firebird Conference will be held in Fulda, Germany on May 16-18, 2004.
Open Source Business Conference speakers announcedThe Open Source Business Conference (San Francisco, March 16 and 17) has sent out a press release listing the people who will be speaking at the event. The list includes executives from HP, IBM, Intel, Novell, VERITAS, and others, but the more interesting list is found in the fine print at the bottom: Clayton Christensen, Larry Lessig, Tim O'Reilly, and Eben Moglen.
Ottawa Linux Symposium paper submissions openThe 2004 Ottawa Linux Symposium paper submission site is now open. The window for submissions is short - the deadline is March 15 - so if you would like to speak at OLS this year, now is the time to get a proposal together. See the call for papers for more information.
International PHP Conference 2004 Spring EditionThe Spring 2004 International PHP Conference will be held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands on May 3-5, 2004.
YAPC::Europe::2004 Call for Papers! (use Perl)A call for papers has gone out for YAPC::Europe. "They're looking for mostly 20 minute talks, and suggesting that those who want to speak for longer should split their talk into two parts. There will still be room for lightning talks, but they're going to ask for those later."
Perl training courses in Brisbane and SydneyTwo Perl training courses will be held in Brisbane and Sydney, Australia in April, 2004.
Events: March 4 - April 29, 2004
Web sites The GNOME Chinese User Portal goes live (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop.org has an announcement for a new Chinese GNOME portal site. "This site is designed for both end users and software developers of GNOME and dedicated to improve GNOME by addressing and solving issues related to Chinese processing."
The KDE Wiki Has Moved (KDE.News)KDE.News reports on the move of the KDE Wiki. "Luciash D' Being (aka luci) has announced the successful completion of the move of the KDE Wiki to the KDE Dot News server. With the move, KDE Wiki gains not only more computing resources, but also a new domain name in the form of wiki.kdenews.org."
Community Driven Geolocation Servicehostip.info is a new site that allows you to look up the physical location of an IP address. "It is running on Linux, releases all the data under GPL, and has a cool (IMHO :-) animation once the city's located (needs java)".
Software announcements This week's software announcementsHere are the software announcements, courtesy of Freshmeat.net. They are available in two formats:
Page editor: Forrest Cook Letters to the editor RE: Toward a new kind of 'Linux distribution'
I really like the concept of "a componentized distribution."
Letter of Support to AutoZone
The Linux community, and the wider open-source software movement of
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
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