Interview With Matt Dillon of DragonFlyBSD 91
animus9 writes "There is an interesting interview with Matt Dillon regarding the current status and future of DragonFlyBSD. In it he compares the difference between serializing tokens and the mutex model (a nice contrast to the previously posted Scott Long SMPng interview). He also describes the work being done in the VFS, along with his plans for Journaling, SSI Clustering, packaging, and more."
How timely (Score:1, Funny)
Re:How timely (Score:2, Funny)
My understanding is that he moved out West, became the Marshall of Dodge City [imdb.com], shot several bad guys each week, and was partly responsible for the cancellation [google.com] of Gilligan's Island.
Re:*BSD is dying (Score:1)
Re:*BSD is dying (Score:4, Informative)
NeXTStep & BSD (Score:2)
No more than, perhaps, but both statements are true to a certain extent. NeXTStep was the Mach microkernel with a 4.3 BSD userland (plus some GNU software, like gnutar and gcc) and NeXT's proprietary GUI (DisplayPostcript, etc.). OS X is the Darwin kernel with a (mostly) FreeBSD userland plus some GNU software and Apple's proprietary GUI (some parts of which are quite similar to DisplayPostscript, but PS is no
Re:*BSD is dying (Score:3, Informative)
Well, a number of points.
-It's a different kernel but Apple made it system call compatible. Mostly[1]. They have some extra ones I think.
-They took a lot of FreeBSD userland libraries and programs. With a compatible kernel there's simply no point in duplicating this work. A lot of the man pages are even marked FreeBSD.
-I've heard
Re:*BSD is dying (Score:2)
Re:*BSD is dying (Score:2)
Re:*BSD is dying (Score:1)
Linux: the moribund wraith (Score:5, Funny)
two BSD myths exposed, but only in your wet dreams (Score:1, Interesting)
a) linux is FAR more diverse, both in distros and in software available
A smaller, but stable and fully functional software base is far better than a greater software base full of software that is broken and can't even build (Gentoo has bad bad kung fu and you know that USB support on Linux is a joke). Not every kind of diversity is productive and Linux proves that point very well, its diversity is typical of inbreeding, you keep getting more and more horrible freaks all in the same family.
b) linux perf
Re:two BSD myths exposed, but only in your wet dre (Score:1)
Re:BSD most widespread unix variant (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, it's the XNU microkernel with a userland that's an amalgamation of Free-, Net-, and OpenBSD. The majority of
Darwin (the underlying "UNIX" of OS X) isn't FreeBSD and when you add in the other parts that make up OS X, you're left with something that only vaguely resembles FreeBSD.
For me, the biggest point is that the kernel is not FreeBSD-based (although, admittedly, the UNIX parts bolted onto XNU are pretty reminiscent of FreeBSD).
Don't even ge
Re:BSD most widespread unix variant (Score:3, Insightful)
It just needs the right spin... (Score:5, Funny)
"Jordan Hubbard, Apple's Darwin OS leader, and Matt Dillion, DragonFlyBSD founder & head guru, both formerly leading developers at the FreeBSD project that was the basis for Darwin, are refusing to confirm that the awesome new multi-processing and clustering technologies in DragonFlyBSD will be the rocket fuel that takes Darwin, Mac OS XI (G6 CPUs), and Mac OS XII (Cell-based CPUs) to #1 on the TOP500 Supercomputer list and keeps them there.
"With the run-away successes of the G5 Xserver and Mac Mini, Apple is clearly positioning itself to deliver blockbuster breakthrough distributed computing everywhere from average people's homes to the world's cutting-edge research laboratories...
"Continuing their 'hide it in plain sight' development of these awesome new technologies, Matt Dillion gave an interview..."
Do it that way, and i'll guarantee you 1000+ responses in 3 hours.
In a more sober vein, there probably aren't many people here who know much about DragonFlyBSD or are interested in the low-level technologies that Matt's focused on.
Re:It just needs the right spin... (Score:1)
I've worked with Matt Dillon, I use a Mac (powerbooks rule!), and I'm very interested in DragonFly
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:2, Interesting)
as for the rest, I'm not talking about GUIs. I'm talking about support for the whole system.
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:2)
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:2, Insightful)
that is the reason i use bsd.
i dont want my operating system to be a political statement or substitue penis, i just want the bugger to work reliably (my os, not my penis, which works fine thankyou). The ui is fine. maybe it is a little bare bones, but at least i can easily see exactly what is going on.
and you are wrong, they are very vocal when it matters, ie propriety systems/intefaces. something a lot of linux people ignore and
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I said "superior BSD userland." The only advantages to the GNU tools to their BSD counterparts are twenty thousand additional command line options. This isn't a "good UI", this is feature creep. Oh, the GNU tools are more portable, but that doesn't add any advantage because the BSD tools are already there and native.
Speaking of "good UI", wher
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:3, Funny)
"So what do you run?"
"BSD/Linux"
"Uh...yeah...which one? Both?"
"Both? What do you mean? I just run BSD/Linux."
"Err...you men GNU/Linux?"
"No No, BSD/Linux. Linux is just a kernel, remember."
"Uhh..."
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:2)
"What OS does that thing run?"
"BSD+Linux"
"Don't you mean BSD+GNU/Linux?"
"No, the GNU userland isn't there, so it's not GNU/Linux"
*RMS' head explodes*
Moll.
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:2)
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:1)
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:1)
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:1)
And this will almost for sure overwrite some config files.
If the upgrades would be the way I like, I wouldn't have to UNINSTALL applicaction packages before doing an upgrade, as this page [openbsd.org] suggests. I wouldn't have to add system users by hand.
To upgrade a Debian system to a next release, all I have to do is modify ONE con
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:2, Interesting)
But that aside, how does Debian get away from it? Because in Debian everything, including the kernel, is a package. Even the package manager is a package. This was been planned for FreeBSD so that everything was a package, but the project (libh) died through overengineering
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:1)
Well, latest freebsd migration documentation is 9 screens long in my browser, twice as long as the one for openbsd.
Yes, in debian everything is a package. All I can say, is that it is really not my fault that great hackers working on FreeBSD couldn't make a decent packaging system. APT is a extendable system and probably could be adapted with less effort than making a whole new solution.
But again, this supports my original thesis, which is that
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:2)
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:1)
Oh, there is plenty. Package management first comes to mind. Ports are a poor imitation of one.
Taking responsibility for the whole system and not only tiny handful of commands that are enough to make the system a DNS server or a firewall, but nothing more (almost all useful - in the real world sense - programs are in ports which aren't officially supported).
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:5, Insightful)
First FreeBSD ports was so well regarded that someone decided to make gentoo which might well be called "FreeBSD Ports, linux style"
And here we get to the _key_ difference between the BSD culture and linux.
Recently, I downloaded some source (the pm3 compiler, ~1 year old). Much to my surprise the linux version didn't build cleanly. Why? Glibc introduced incompatibilities going from 2.2.5 to 2.3.x but the library version number was left unchanged. This forced me to spend a while fixing up the pm3 source to build against glibc 2.3.2. When I mentioned this to a friend of mine, he replied, "Well that's what you're supposed to do; that was an old outdated interface" I don't mind newer versions dropping outdated features or implementation but not when I must decide to put EITHER the new OR the old libraries on my systems.
This particular problem would never occur on a FreeBSD system. Changes like that simply are not tolerated. Breakage of that sort is confined to major releases and when that happens the library version number changes as well--allowing you to keep the old libc on your systems. Moreover, the old libc will continue to get security fixes for years.
I've often heard people complain that ports isn't very good at updating all the installed packages at once. I have almost no interest in doing this. I upgrade software selectively because I have a specific reason to do so. Updates tend to simply replace known bugs with unknown bugs and as such are not to be taken lightly. The linux breakage model simply is not acceptible in a corporate environment (it's great if you think maintaining your system is fun). This is the reason companies like redhat are slow to upgrade components and rely so heavily on internal patches.
As for your complaints about the base system versus packages. Packages are maintained not as agressively, but they are maintained. e.g., at the very least the FreeBSD security officer keeps track of vulnerabilities in ports. FreeBSD maintains a database of said vulnerabilties and my system emails me notices when a bit from ports has had a security advisory posted against it.
The base system exists:
1) To provide a self-hosting build system
2) To provide ABI, and API stability I mentioned earlier (you'll often see this as POLA - policy of least astonishment)
3) To create a set of tools which are integrated together and have known symantics.
3a) Choice simply isn't that useful to many people. e.g., I dislike that gentoo provides several different system loggers and makes no effort to have uniform and reasonable default configurations.
3b) Most of the BSD projects I am familar with are interested in creating complete systems. This is a priori missing from linux distributions because the kernel development is not well connected to any of the userlands. Redhat attemps some integration within the userland and through some patching of the kernel. But Debian or Gentoo have very minimist conceptions of a "system" which consists essentially of a packaging framework and not much else.
Overview: What you see as limitations/flaws others see as Features and Functionality. Luckily, I can have my feature and functionality running FreeBSD and you can have your knobs running whatever distribution you use.
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:1)
You tried to hand-compile something on linux, while you are comparing this to getting something from ports. You are comparing stuff from the wild, with prepackaged one. I didn't say that there is no packaging on BSDs, What I said is that ports are poor packaging system.
As for your troubles with pm3 installation: this is what you get when you want to use bleeding edge. I personally can't remember when I did compile some piece of software I'm not working on m
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:3, Interesting)
I tried the binary route, the binary version that worked only a year ago cannot work now because of the incompatibilities introduced in the system libraries. Okay fine. So I tried the source version via the packaging system. Ooops, that's broken too. So I finally built it myself _because I had to_.
But why did I have to? What was the root issue that I was trying to highlight? The system library introduced a change that broken both ABI and API without bumping library version numbe
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, your constant references to Debian are quite confusing, since Debian is one of the most conservative Linux dis
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:2)
ld simply doesn't work the way you think it does. The only way to maintain ABI and API compat is to ensure any chan
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:1)
I think one could avoid the libc problems using some options of ld, and linux supports versioned symbols in libraries, but checking this would be a long and boring p
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:2)
As for management time: Our department used to maintain primarily BSD (~150 machines) and with several dozen Suns and an equal numberof HP-UX machines. One part-time admin managed this configuration. Since then all the systems switched to
Re:The problem iwth BSD... (Score:2)
There is this tiiiiny little thing called GCC that you BSD guys use...
*BSD Must be dead by now! (Score:1)
BSD users in general love *NIX for *NIX sake! we don't dilike other OS's as much as some groups of people, so we tend to be lurkers with less political motivation driving us(there are always exceptions)
Hell is still a very hot place, just ask the Beastie
RPR.
indeed (Score:2)
What I find interesting is that so many of the prominant BSD people are former Amiga users. This is true of both Dillon and de Raadt (leaders of the two BSDs with recognizable leaders).
Hopefully (Score:3, Interesting)
Years ago, FreeBSD fanboys said that FreeBSD's SMP implementation was going to be the best the world ever saw. Now, those same people are saying how much it sucks, and that DragonFlyBSD's is the boss of the boat. How about instead of all of this talk, we let the installations speak for themselves? FreeBSD is approaching a fully mpsafe kernel (albeit somewhat asymptotically) and I continue to be impressed with each release of the 5.x series. DragonFlyBSD has had one release, and it looks fine, but fact of the matter is, it's just not finished yet. I'm getting a little tired of all of the talk. Show me these DragonFlyBSD machines making water into wine. What we are dealing with is the classic "penis size" argument, and yet no one has brought a ruler to the scene.
I hope that DragonFly _does_ trounce FreeBSD in both performance and useability, so that I have a new OS that is greater than the greatest. I'm just going to wait until it's finished and showing it's stuff before I start playing with myself.
Re:Hopefully (Score:5, Insightful)
But frankly I'm not in the habit of picking OSes for performance. I use OpenBSD instead of a faster OS because of the features (stability, security, very nice firewall (yes all the BSDs have ported PF, but Open is always a few months ahead of on features)).
With DragonFlyBSD, it's apparent that VERY cool features will be possible. I can't be sure they'll deliver, but if they do they can win without necessarily beating FreeBSD or Linux in terms of performance.
Also... if they can provide an efficient and reliable SSI cluster, they're going to be HUGE regardless of their performance on a single machine.
But as you say, it's all in the future. The biggest accomplishment of 1.0 was changing a bunch of behind the scenes stuff without breaking everything. We will see what happens in the future.
Re:Hopefully (Score:1)
Please give them some time.
More like a memorial service... (Score:1, Offtopic)
All joking aside, I would like to see a *BSD get to the point where its "year of the desktop" might be as close as Linux's currently is. I tried Free and OpenBSD, and although they are both nice systems, they hold little appeal over Linux outside of the server market, and especially lag behind on the issue of desktop usage. That being said, I would pick OpenBSD for a public server over any Linux distro in a heartbeat... if it was important enough to justify le
Re:More like a memorial service... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, and *BSD is more ready for the desktop than Linux in at least one form - I've been using OS X on a desktop for some time now.
Re:More like a memorial service... (Score:1)
Re:More like a memorial service... (Score:2)