LWN: Comments on "Shutting down FTP services (kernel.org)"

Shutting down FTP services (kernel.org)

nix — Thu, 16 Feb 2017 18:17:07 +0000

In most cases VFS caching is ineffective. This observation was one of the fundamental causes of integrating coaching into ZFS.

Well, that says rather bad things about the Solaris VFS cache, then, because the Linux VFS cache is exceedingly effective. Throw enough RAM on a box and you'll never access the disk at all except to populate the cache for the first time and flush writes out. (In the case of RAID, the writes might incur WMR reads, as well, though.)

FTP vs HTTP

nix — Thu, 16 Feb 2017 18:13:55 +0000

Oh yes, how stupid of me for mixing the two up, particularly given that I was just dealing with the little monsters a few days before.

FTP vs HTTP

anselm — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 14:02:27 +0000

The problem with Slack is that once something has scrolled off the top of the browser window it is very inconvenient to refer to. Sure, you can always scroll back to look at it, but if you want to reply to something somebody said three screenfuls ago it is a hassle to re-establish the proper context.

Some of the open-source Slack competitors (such as Mattermost or Rocketchat) actually do this better, at least to a certain degree.

FTP vs HTTP

k8to — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 10:39:03 +0000

Just left a startup where they were using primarily Slack for communication, with email barely ever used.

For discussion-oriented stuff, this worked well, where parties were feeding off each others ideas in relatively tight timescales.

For asynchronous communication that shouldn't be dropped, it was horrifyingly awful. And they were uninterested in changing the pattern. I couldn't understand it at all.

Shutting down FTP services (kernel.org)

mathstuf — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 23:19:45 +0000

I don't use ZFS (though I might on FreeBSD if I ever get time), but I'd imagine anything on this page[1] would be useful. I have no idea if it is a complete list and I really couldn't care what Oracle does because I try to avoid things they've got an undue influence in, but if they did want anything the community implemented, they shut themselves out of that party of their own accord.

[1]http://www.open-zfs.org/wiki/Features

FTP vs HTTP

raven667 — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 19:06:42 +0000

There is certainly a continuum of communication technologies, we could go crazy and say

stone ->
books ->
web pages ->
email ->
IM ->
voice ->
video ->
in-person ->
telepathic?

Shutting down FTP services (kernel.org)

flussence — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 19:04:05 +0000

I never said *Solaris* was the relevant product. It's not.

FTP vs HTTP

Tet — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 11:31:59 +0000

It's actually exactly what you said. You're comparing synchronous and asynchronous communication mechanisms. Just like phone and snail mail. Instant messaging will never replace email because they do different things.

rsync rulez

marcH — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 06:09:48 +0000

Use rsync for everything; it's that good.

This is rsync's only issue: http://qdosmsq.dunbar-it.co.uk/blog/2013/02/rsync-to-slas...
(I suspect this trailing slash confusion exists to make rsync idempotent:
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/228597/how-to-cop... )

FTP vs HTTP

marcH — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 05:54:54 +0000

Indeed: gmail *does* "deal with all that non-sense" required to communicate with the outside world. All alternatives ignore the problem by simply not talking to each other! We're in 2017 and there's still no open and universal messaging solution that doesn't suck; what a shame.

Shutting down FTP services (kernel.org)

jschrod — Fri, 03 Feb 2017 00:06:01 +0000

> And that is make using OpenZFS a bit messy. Isn't it?

Maybe. But for sure it's one of the reason our clients cite for not trusting Oracle and why they migrate everything away from Solaris as fast as possible.

Cheers, Joachim
(CEO of a company who earns money from customers who want Solaris => Linux migrations)

Shutting down FTP services (kernel.org)

rahulsundaram — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 19:40:23 +0000

> And that is make using OpenZFS a bit messy. Isn't it?

That is the price of Free and open source software. People make branches and push code forward.

Shutting down FTP services (kernel.org)

kloczek — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 18:39:42 +0000

OK, please make a list of things which Oracle may want to incorporate in Solaris code.

Shutting down FTP services (kernel.org)

kloczek — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 18:38:20 +0000

And that is make using OpenZFS a bit messy. Isn't it?

FTP vs HTTP

diegor — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 15:06:17 +0000

The problem is that there is not one ftps but at least two kind of ftps: implicit and explicit. Note that they are not compatible. But what is really incompatible with modern internet world, is that use a secondary connection for data trasfer. So you have to use passive mode, because originally the client should connect to the server on a random port for data trasfert, but firewall usually block incoming connection on unknown port.

Recent firewall can do protocol inspection, for enabling specific dynamic port used by a known ftp session. But what happen if you use ssl with ftp? No more packet inspection :-D.

At work, I had to evaluate the possibility to use ftps for secure file trasfert, and my response was "I've tried, but is too complex, too clumsy. Let's use sftp." And even sftp, server side, was not so easy to setup, configuration was tricky, but much more reliable.

FTP vs HTTP

pabs — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 11:03:39 +0000

Personally I would disable that sort of data leakage, ick.

FTP vs HTTP

farnz — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 09:22:08 +0000

One thing that makes a difference is that modern IM services show you a richer set of statuses than just "online", "away", and "offline"; you have a per-message status telling you whether the message is still private to you, has reached the recipient but not been seen yet (is visible in the chat window, but the user has not interacted with the chat window since the message became visible), or has probably been seen (you've opened the chat window with the message in, and interacted with a UI element that's visually below the message, typically), plus usually a "typing" indicator to tell you that the recipient is crafting a response.

Thus, if I'm communicating with someone like you, I can see that the message is available for you to read, but that you haven't yet seen it. I can also see that you've probably seen it, and aren't yet typing a response, and I can see that you've seen it, but that you're crafting the perfect reply and I should wait for you to finish typing before I poke again.

In some situations, that extra information is useful - it reassures me that the lack of a response is not you ignoring me, but you ignoring the machine completely. In others, perhaps not so much - do you want your boss to know that you've seen a message they think is polite and reasonable but that you're ignoring it for 24 hours while you calm down enough to reply nicely?

FTP vs HTTP

micka — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 07:40:30 +0000

I don't know what the social expectations for IM are _in general_, but most people don't expect me to actually answer quickly. Maybe that's because I inadvertantly groomed everybody like this by disabling notifications (I do have notifications for mail on the other hand) and usually responding between 10 seconds and... very long. Worst case I had was more than 24 hours, being seen as online all this time.

FTP vs HTTP

dskoll — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 02:47:18 +0000

I think you'll find that despite email's problems, it's almost certainly the most important communication mechanism in business. I know that in my job, 95% of my communication (other than actual face-to-face interaction) is via email. And I would hate to use any sort of non-email-like tool in its place.

Email for personal communication is (for me) less important. In a pinch, I could get by texting, Facebook messaging, IM, etc. But I still like email the best in many situations.

FTP vs HTTP

hkario — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 13:15:22 +0000

all the other protocols centralise IM to some provider too, and unlike for Jabber, Google will need to remain compatible with external providers

Shutting down FTP services (kernel.org)

mathstuf — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 11:01:29 +0000

> In mean time Solaris ZFS made many steps forward which only part has been reimplemented (basing on general idea) in OpenZFS.

My understanding is that the reverse is also true. And because OpenZFS is still copyleft, Oracle can't use them (unless the copyright maximalist wants to get embroiled in a case aiming the other way).

Shutting down FTP services (kernel.org)

rahulsundaram — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 06:49:45 +0000

"It is OpenZFS and it bases on +6 year old ZFS code."

Oracle has made Solaris proprietary again including their implementation of ZFS, resulting in many forks. OpenZFS is not a single codebase. It is the name of a umbrella project of the different forks with feature flags to maintain compatibility.

Shutting down FTP services (kernel.org)

rahulsundaram — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 06:37:18 +0000

> 1) you don't need to buy Solaris support if you don't need it. It is exactly the same as with Linux.

Nope. You have to agree to the following license to even download the software.

Oracle Technology Network Developer License Terms

"We grant you a perpetual (unless terminated as provided in this agreement), nonexclusive, nontransferable, limited License to use the Programs only for the purpose of developing, testing, prototyping and demonstrating your applications, and not for any other purpose. "

FTP vs HTTP

Frogging101 — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 04:54:35 +0000

Which is a bad thing because it centralizes email to Google.

Shutting down FTP services (kernel.org)

kloczek — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 03:30:42 +0000

> I'm sure that's great news for the dwindling population enslaved to Oracle's despotic per-core licensing fees for their one remaining relevant software product.

1) you don't need to buy Solaris support if you don't need it. It is exactly the same as with Linux.
2) per core licensing is not in case Solaris but Oracle DB engine. Solaris support is per CPU *socket* (first level is for 1 to 4 sockets and next is for +5)
https://shop.oracle.com/apex/product?p1=OracleSolarisPrem...
3) please compare support costs in case RHEL and Solaris on the same hardware.

Shutting down FTP services (kernel.org)

kloczek — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 03:19:52 +0000

What is in *BSD it is not ZFS. It is OpenZFS and it bases on +6 year old ZFS code.
In mean time Solaris ZFS made many steps forward which only part has been reimplemented (basing on general idea) in OpenZFS.
OpenZFS can be used as will with Linux so you do't need to use *BSD.

Shutting down FTP services (kernel.org)

kloczek — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 03:15:44 +0000

Even Linux does not copies memory between VFS and block layer caching. Why Solaris should be doing this?
Did you heard ever about memory mapping?

Shutting down FTP services (kernel.org)

flussence — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 23:26:49 +0000

> PS. I see notes that Solaris is dead from almost 20 years and still Solaris is around and it still better than Linux on exactly the same hardware especially if comes to host heavy IO workload.
I'm sure that's great news for the dwindling population enslaved to Oracle's despotic per-core licensing fees for their one remaining relevant software product.

When people want ZFS specifically, they run BSD.

Shutting down FTP services (kernel.org)

Cyberax — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 19:13:33 +0000

Sure. You'll lose memory twice - once for buffer cache and another time for mapped files. But hey, that's just more profit for SnOracle.

Shutting down FTP services (kernel.org)

kloczek — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 18:35:11 +0000

Caching should be as close to slow devices as it is possible.
In most cases VFS caching is ineffective. This observation was one of the fundamental causes of integrating coaching into ZFS.

PS. I see notes that Solaris is dead from almost 20 years and still Solaris is around and it still better than Linux on exactly the same hardware especially if comes to host heavy IO workload.

FTP vs HTTP

mathstuf — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 12:50:06 +0000

> With e-mail this is largely up to the client program one is using. Some of them do a reasonably decent job, and if threaded discussions are important to you you can pick one that does.

Some clients mangle the relevant headers, breaking threads for everyone. I can stitch them back together in mutt, but unfortunately they don't sync with offlineimap.

FTP vs HTTP

anselm — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 12:11:35 +0000

Email is extremely bad at this.

With e-mail this is largely up to the client program one is using. Some of them do a reasonably decent job, and if threaded discussions are important to you you can pick one that does.

On the other hand, with most IM services you get exactly one client program (possibly per platform). If that program decides threaded discussions aren't worth bothering with, then you're stuck with it whether you like that or not.

In a wider sense, in the end e-mail is just files that you can deal with (format, sort, save, forward, print, backup, …) however you wish. IM messages are usually bits of data on a server that you can't access except through the official IM client. I know what I prefer.

FTP vs HTTP

drag — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 11:35:08 +0000

I didn't say they didn't have problems.

The first requirement in something replacing email is going to be that it needs to be widespread as email. This is not a technical problem.

> And then there's the whole bit about threaded discussions. How would you possibly handle that?

Email is extremely bad at this.

FTP vs HTTP

drag — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 11:32:47 +0000

> It's like complaining why hasn't the phone replaced snail-mail?

That does not resemble anything I said at all.

FTP vs HTTP

drag — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 11:28:30 +0000

I understand that.

I wasn't claiming that you would replace email with IM. The example I gave was a possible way you could extend jabber to use it for offline messages.

It's not the concept of Email that sucks.. it's the email protocol that sucks. It's insecure, spam is a constant problem and it's a nightmare to manage.

So far the best approach that people have discovered to deal with email is 'Lets all use Gmail and let Google deal with this nonsense'.

FTP vs HTTP

nhippi — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 06:24:23 +0000

This was pretty awesome to find out. I guess if you are already parsing "ls -al" output, the jump to parse uri's from html is not that big anymore.

Shutting down FTP services (kernel.org)

welinder — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 01:15:09 +0000

No weasel

FTP vs HTTP

Wol — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 16:54:26 +0000

It's like complaining why hasn't the phone replaced snail-mail? They serve very different purposes. If it was going to happen, that should have done so nigh on a century ago!

Cheers,
Wol

Shutting down FTP services (kernel.org)

mricon — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 14:35:38 +0000

alias kfinger='wget -q -O- https://kernel.org/finger_banner'

Shutting down FTP services (kernel.org)

Sesse — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 14:28:30 +0000

I know, but it's not accessible via finger. It was nice being able to just “finger @finger.kernel.org” from the command line instead of having to reach for a browser (or wget-ing that rather long URL).