Shining more light on the problem [LWN.net]

Shining more light on the problem

Posted Aug 23, 2006 0:51 UTC (Wed) by dowdle (subscriber, #659)
Parent article: Who maintains RPM?

Jon,

Thanks for the article. While the problem was public and there for all to see, by bringing it out as a feature article of LWN, chances that the situation will change for the better have increased.

It wouldn't be a bad idea to mention that rpm works well for most everyone most of the time... and that in the corner cases where something does go wrong, there is usually a lot of info to be found on how to fix the problem and/or avoid it in the future. Those admissions aren't an attempt to avoid resolving the situation.

I credit Red Hat for acknowledging the problem with a named individual... rather than the typical corporate anonymous insider comment.

Now we see the problem. We know the solution... we just have to make it happen.

I would like to comment in defense of Jeff Johnson. I think he was unnecessarily vilified... not really here but in various posts linked to in this article. Now, that doesn't mean I agreed with all of his comments, reasoning, or tactics... but what he didn't say was obvious... that with regards to that bug... he really didn't want to fix the issue and didn't want to admit it. If he wasn't being paid to fix it, and it worked well enough for him, and he was happy with it, he isn't a horrible person for not fixing the problem. It was just another opportunity for someone else to say that's not good enough for me, I'll fix it. It is sad that so much effort was put into nagging at him rather than someone just fixing it and submitting a patch. Sure, he egged people on by pretending there wasn't a problem... the but the axiom of "show me the code" always applies. Of course, that is easy for me to say since I'm not a programmer. :)

I would also like clarify that perhaps there should be some sort of group formed by the various distros that use rpm (not just Red Hat and/or Fedora) to maintain it. I would imagine that all of the various companies using rpm have someone assigned to work on rpm when needed... so having all of those people, across distros, work together seems like a no-brainer. Nothing too elaborate... just a commitment to work together, find problems... and hey... maybe even set a direction for the future... unless everyone just wants to adopt that new management system that was created by all of the former Red Hat folks. What was the name of that one again? I read up on it a while ago and it had so much lingo and so many layers and features, it was really above my head. How about an article about that one?? I ask the question rather than googling it, to give others an opportunity to add to this discussion.

Yes, Red Hat created RPM and it has worked well for a long time... but Red Hat set it free some time ago... and I think it should stay that way if at all possible... as long as it finds the way to continuing to work well for years to come... or a path to something better is forged for those using it.

This is just more evidence that Red Hat is suffering from PR shell shock... and they don't want to accidentally piss off the Slashdot hordes again by grabbing control back of something that they really wanted to free... like what happened with Fedora. Yeah, some people just can't grasp reality... and I think most of those folks go into politics.

Now off the beaten path... IMNSHO, Red Hat needs to merge Cluster Server, GFS, Directory Server, and Certificate Server... into RHEL AS/ES... and then reduce the price of RHEL... to somewhere around the cost of Mac OS X Server Unlimited... and/or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Really they do. Then I'd use RHEL everywhere... and CentOS wouldn't even cross my mind in some situations. Yes, all of their top 100 customers have deep, deep pockets and can afford their fairly close to reasonable existing price structure... but just think how many people would buy it if it was more affordable? Volume could make up for reduced margins. Really it could.

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Shining more light on the problem

Posted Aug 23, 2006 2:05 UTC (Wed) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link] (5 responses)

I credit Red Hat for acknowledging the problem with a named individual...

Well I don't. This wasn't the first episode -- pressing Ctrl+C when running RPM once upon a time corrupted the database too. We were a paying customer and submitted a bug report. A similar level of lack of ownership and vitriol was displayed by the developer.

This was a showstopper bug for a production billing system. His supervisor didn't appear to take any action. There seemed to be no automated escalation. There seemed to be no level of management that would act upon our complaints and escalate the issue to a more capable developer. The local Red Hat office advised us that they had no influence. The resolution dragged on and on and was eventually to prevent Ctrl+C having any effect upon RPM. Of course that meant that any runaway RPM process could only be stopped with kill -9, which would of course corrupt the database.

I can't think of any other software company that would have allowed this sort of behaviour from an employee for such an extended period of time. It doesn't surprise me at all that other RPM bugs struck similar issues.

It is sad that so much effort was put into nagging at him rather than someone just fixing it and submitting a patch.

No. If we wanted that we'd use Debian. We pay Red Hat so that they take ownership of problems. If a Fedora user reports a showstopper problem we expect it to be addressed before it effects our applications running on RHEL. That's why we're happy to have our payments for RHEL used to subsidise the Fedora distribution.

Red Hat software maintenance is often more expensive than Solaris, AIX or Cisco -- and they include hardware maintenance too. We expect a level of service which matches the scale of those payments.

Shining more light on the problem

Posted Aug 23, 2006 9:55 UTC (Wed) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (2 responses)

Ouch! If I got a corrupt database everytime I hit Ctrl-C while running dpkg, I'd be pretty pissed.

Dpkg may not be perfect, but it's never ever corrupted it's database on me, and I've beaten it pretty badly over the years.

Shining more light on the problem

Posted Aug 23, 2006 16:22 UTC (Wed) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link] (1 responses)

That was a bug from long ago... and the rpm database could be repaired by using the rebuild flag. They fixed that the bug.

I'd rather not see this discussion digress into an rpm vs. dpkg thing.

Shining more light on the problem

Posted Aug 23, 2006 17:04 UTC (Wed) by anonymous21 (guest, #30106) [Link]

Let's correct that:

... the rpm database could be repaired (sometimes) by using the rebuild option...

RPM was always a fearful tool for me.

Although it has probably vastly improved since then. (redhat 6,7,8)

Mark

Shining more light on the problem

Posted Aug 23, 2006 16:19 UTC (Wed) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]

I'm confused. There needs to be some sort of timeline here.

RPM reporting on Red Hat's bugzilla was part of the confusion... as the open project was using the commercial vendor's bugzilla for bug tracking. Were bugs reported for the open project or for the vendor? Bugzilla *IS NOT* the Red Hat Support system and anyone using it for that is spinning their wheels.

When was Jeff Johnson working as a Red Hat employee and when was he NOT? Were his responses in bugzilla an official part of his Red Hat job or part of the open project?

See, lots of room for confusion.

Shining more light on the problem

Posted Aug 24, 2006 8:33 UTC (Thu) by hadess (subscriber, #24252) [Link]

[...] We were a paying customer and submitted a bug report. [...]

Bugzilla is not a support system. From the front page of the Red Hat Bugzilla:

Bugzilla is not an avenue for technical assistance or support, but simply a bug tracking system.

I think that makes it pretty clear.

Shining more light on the problem

Posted Aug 25, 2006 19:03 UTC (Fri) by Tet (subscriber, #5433) [Link]

I would like to comment in defense of Jeff Johnson. I think he was unnecessarily vilified

As the original submitter of the bug mentioned, I feel I should comment here. I gave Jeff the benefit of the doubt for a long time, until he proved utterly unable to listen to reason. You can bleat "Show me the code" as much as you like (and I'd even agree with you -- were it more of a problem for me, I'd almost certainly have written a patch myself by now), but a maintainer of a package as significant as RPM simply has to listen to bug reports from users, and take some appropriate action. Denying that the bug even exists is simply not acceptable.