dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/blog

It is hard to believe that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still has the majority of market share in the web browser world (62.12%). I am just glad to see the rising popularity of Mozilla Firefox (24.43%), Google Chrome (5.22%) to even others such as Apple Safari (4.53%), Opera (2.38%), etc. Whenever I spend time to do various Javascript to even CSS development for various dynamic webpages, I am always held back by the non-compliant Internet Explorer. Today I will be picking IE8 as it is the latest and greatest from Microsoft.

For instance, I was doing some Javascript development earlier in the day yesterday morning and IE8 would fail on the following code:

<script language=“javascript” type=“text/javascript”>
    grabURL=window.location.href.split(”?”);
    if(grabURL[1] == null)
        window.location = ‘error.html’;

    [ ... ]

</script>

Specifically it would fail on the line of code changing the window’s location. I am not looking for any answers or workaround in this blog entry. I am merely venting off some frustration. Why does Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari not see any problems with this perfectly legal piece of code and Internet Explorer errors on it? Also, the error never gives a detailed enough reason as to what it had a problem with exactly.

I come across this kind of thing all the time. The above sample of code is one of many I have had to hack around for IE. It becomes very difficult to take the browser seriously but at the same time it is hard not to since they still own a good chunk of browser share.

I was just having a conversation with a colleague when we had gotten to the topic of the disposable PC.  If you are not familiar with the concept, this post will highlight the details below. When I first dabbled with computers back in the late 80’s, it was an Apple. We didn’t own it. It was available at the local school in the school’s computer lab of no more than 25-30 computers. They were running the Apple IIe and even though they were outdated at the time, they didn’t have the finances to upgrade the systems. By the time the 90’s hit I was already well acquainted with Macintosh line of PCs but again our family didn’t own any. All computers were just too expensive. At around 1995 (maybe a little earlier) our family dropped nearly $2,000 (USD) into a Packard Bell (rated as one of the worst PCs of all time). I am going off of memory but it ran no more than 70 MHz (Intel Pentium) and had no more than 8 or 16 MBytes of EDO RAM. I don’t remember the hard drive space, although I believe it was 2 GBytes supplied from one of the old school big foot drives. The PC came with Windows 3.11 but was soon later upgraded to Windows 95.

Note that I still use those big foot drives. I actually have a few scattered around the house and are used as door stops. It is all about recycling old computer equipment.

So there you have it, that is what almost $2000 bought you. So when you had a problem with your PC, you spent the money to fix. That is you bought all the necessary software or paid the appropriate technicians to handle all of the work. The PC was an investment and you were not going to drop it for anything else.

Flash forward to the year 2001, when Windows XP was released. A decent computer could be purchased as low as $700 USD. That included a licensed copy of Windows XP. Flash forward to the present when mobility is a constant demand, and a decent notebook or even netbook could be purchased at $500 USD. Obviously thanks to manufacturers such as Intel, AMD among others, the prices for hardware components have dropped significantly. It is very affordable to acquire the necessary equipment and has gotten easier to set it up in a home or anywhere else.

When I write about the disposable PC, blame for the creation and maintaining of such a culture does not belong to a single entity. It has gotten to the point where hardware has become so cheap that whenever someone who lacks any real technical knowledge comes across a computing problem (whether it be hardware or software related) has no problem running out and purchasing a new replacement. Microsoft and retail stores add to this culture.

For instance, what happens when you (a non-technical person) are prompted with a bunch of error dialog boxes, a virus or a system crash? If you do not personally know anybody who can fix it, you will take it in to a retail store that offers PC repair services, such as Best Buy. The only reason why I pick on Best Buy is not because I harbor any negative feelings toward them (they are a business selling services and products) but instead because in the late 90’s to around 2001/2 I used to work for them and was familiar with the processes and routines when it came to PC repair.

Note that prices may have changed since then.

To diagnose a PC, it was $60. We would not have repaired the PC, even if the problem was apparent unless this diagnostics fee was paid in full. This $60 was never applied toward any other repairs either. So if we came back saying that your hard drive went bad and you need to replace it and reinstall the OS, you looked at spending another $120 for a hard drive, $60 to re image Windows followed by another $20 or more to install all Windows Updates and/or any other applications or device drivers. Add another $60 if we were able to salvage data from your old hard drive and transfer it to the new one. At times you were looking to spend over $320 for repairing a PC. This could have been more than half the price of buying a new PC. So why invest into something that is already outdated? And if the service prices have increased since then, then what is the point when you can spend $400 or less and get a netbook with a Linux distribution or Windows 7 pre-installed?

Some of you may be asking: how does Microsoft fit into this? Deep down, I believe that more than half of the problems in Windows are intentional primarily because Microsoft (and good for them) is a money making machine. In order for them to make money, the people that sell and repair their products have to make money. I am pretty sure that if Microsoft wanted to invest the time and money to create the most secure and stable operating system, they could. They don’t have idiots working for them. I think it is that “if you scratch my back, I will scratch yours mentality.” It also doesn’t help that whenever a call is placed to a support center or when a PC is brought into a repair shop, the solution usually given by the technician is to re-image Windows. If I have a virus, why can’t you just remove the virus and I will be on my way?

I, as many of my readers, on the other hand know better and choose to rely on something a lot more stable and secure with (insert flavor of Linux or UNIX here). Why be bothered with constantly having to maintain or repair your OS. Sometimes you just need things to work. Maybe that is why you read stories about how repair shops such as Best Buy’s will refuse the repair of a computing device if you are not running a version of Windows. They probably don’t see any money it.

Linked from linuxtoday.com, I found an interesting article posted on FlexTk regarding NAS Performance Comparisons between Linux, Windows and OpenSolaris. The results are very interesting. Under each category, comparisons are drawn between:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 (64-bit)
• Ubuntu Server 9.04 (64-bit)
• OpenSolaris 2009.06 (64-bit)
• Windows Server 2003 (64-bit)
• Windows Server 2008 (64-bit)
• Windows Storage Server 2008 (64-bit)

I assume that each operating system is utilizing the default file systems with default settings for that specific release. Red Hat and Ubuntu should be using Ext3-fs, Windows obviously uses NTFS while OpenSolaris is built on top of ZFS. The CIFS/NFS exported share(s) in turn are running on top of these defaulted file systems. Either way, with average overall performance, OpenSolaris seemed to really shine. It also did well in some of the other categories which made sense when knowing the design of the ZFS file system.

Yesterday afternoon I was really bored at work and had eventually navigated to a website dedicated to Easter Eggs that could be found on an operating system, software application and more. Naturally I went to the list of operating systems and started looking up the operating systems which were accessible to me. As I read through the Linux and UNIX related ones, I had already known some but there were a few that I was interested in trying.

Seeing how I was on an OpenSolaris laptop I decided to first look through the SunOS list. Unfortunately none of them seemed to work. It would appear that they were taken out. But I did remember one from many years ago that a friend (Marian Lakov) had shown me. Originally found on an installation of RHEL, it was in the man page for the xorg.conf file.

Listed under the VIDEOADAPTER SECTION you will read the following: Nobody wants to say how this works. Maybe nobody knows…

If you know of any hidden secret(s) that is not listed on the site posted earlier, please feel free to share.

Two days ago Sun Microsystems released the latest update to the VirtualBox virtualization application as version 3.0.4. You can download it here and view the Changelog here.

Please note that this is only a personal opinion of mine as I have been observing the growth and various decline of storage concepts within the data storage industry. The views of the reader may differ from my own which is why I would invite you to please post your opinions as a comment to this post.

One of the most volatile and yet needed industries is the data storage industry. As computing technologies become more cloud centric and rely upon the web for business, productivity, education to even recreation, there is a constant push to increase capacities but even more so increase I/O throughput. As a result of recent demands, our approach with these technologies need to be re-evaluated. The primary focus of this article is on the future of data storage concepts and the limited life and functionality of RAID.

Back in 1987 when the idea of RAID was first conceived, the goal or vision was to be able to scale multiple drives into a single volume which was represented to a host as such while also offering a form of redundancy with a more sensitive magnetic platter-based disk technology. Flash forward to the present and we are still reliant upon the same technologies. Is that because RAID is so perfect or have we just grown too comfortable and are too afraid of change?

Hardware Vs. Software RAID 

There was a time when processing power was limited and it became advantageous to utilize external methods for creating and managing arrays of data storage, but as time progressed, this approach became increasingly insignificant. At least that is to say for the Small-to-Medium sized Business (SMB). For the last decade, a lot of efforts have been placed toward increasing the reliability, stability and enhanced features with the software-based RAID. This has slowly been eating away at the hardware vendors. Although it has been rarely noticeable.

These software implementations are integrated with methods of Logical Volume Management (with built in redundancy via RAID 1-6), Load Balancing/Multipathing capabilities, data encryption, along with the abilities to utilize incremental snapshot(s) over designated volumes. These software implementations include dynamic resizing, quota/permission management, enhanced copy-on-write file systems that perform very well along with routine checksums to correct noisy and silent data corruption; almost all of which can be managed while volumes are on-line. Some of these volume managers have the capability to export iSCSI & FCoE targets and can also be tuned to support FC targets.

To name a few you have ZFS (an all-in-one solution), Btrfs (still in development and under test), device-mapper / LVM2 / multipath-tools, mdadm, DRBD, etc. The list goes on. What is to stop an SMB from setting up an array of JBODS and (if more redundancy is needed) cluster a couple of Solaris / OpenSolaris or Linux servers to manage their software RAID while also exporting it via a file server or into a SAN? Note that Lustre support for ZFS is still in development. Realistically most entry-level modular external RAID solutions don’t run on the latest and greatest of hardware components (as they are intended for a limited purpose and not to provide other hosting services). You will most likely achieve much greater performance with the software approach while also utilizing a much more efficient virtual memory manager (for enhanced caching) alongside a finely tuned schedular.

On the enterprise end of computing you will find some very impressive storage solutions that are intended to take the workload of the enterprise environment. Such companies as Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) have been doing an excellent job with providing high-quality and well performing storage solutions that are also easily manageable. Other companies have resorted to being a little creative in order to gain some market share with the SMB and larger companies. Such notable companies are NetApp, Data Domain to even Cleversafe.

Earlier I found an interesting link differentiating the positives and negatives of both hardware and software RAID implementations. It should be noted that times have changed and some of the key points highlighted are no longer an issue. For instance, under the category /boot partition, this seems to no longer be an issue with at least ZFS.

Enter the SSD

In more recent years, the Flash-based Solid State Drive (SSD) has been entering into enterprise markets. This is a result from such notable providers as Sun Microsystems, etc. Currently the percentage in SSD usage in the enterprise is somewhat minimal as their is a limit in maximum capacities for the drives. This may soon change as in Q3 of 2009, PureSilicon will release their Nitro 1TB SSD drive. The throughput and performance speeds seem very optimal in arenas where greater speeds are needed, but the technology introduces additional handicaps (in the form of write operations and a limited cell life) which most environments and some manufacturers have a difficult time in accomodating to. To combat the limited cell life, vendors have implemented their own method of wear leveling, transparent to the host. With this concept, the same data cell, when accessed and written to multiple times will not get written to the exact location but instead, through an “intelligent” built in firmware the data will get written to another cell on the drive. To the operating system, it is still the same “sector” location. While there is very little latency in seeking performance (sequential and random), write operations take a huge hit, especially with smaller I/O transfer sizes, when typically the flash medium erase/rewrite a 128K page at a time.

SSD Tuning

With the recent hype of Flash-based SSDs, many vendors and UNIX/Linux distributions have been writing file systems tuned to perform extremely well on SSDs (and limit the impact of these handicaps). For example, Sun Microsystem’s ZFS (available on Solaris, OpenSolaris, MacOS X [read-only], FreeBSD and Linux [over FUSE]) had recently added tunable support for SSDs in their release versions for Solaris & OpenSolaris, while the development of Btrfs for Linux has done the same. In contrast the Microsoft developed NTFS does not offer such features or functionality. In fact the file system has remained somewhat unchanged over the course of the years and is just as inferior now as it was when it was first released as a replacement to the FAT series of file systems. I wrote an entire post explaining why the NTFS file system is not well suited for today’s methods of computing here.

In recent releases it should be noted that Microsoft’s Windows 7 has been tuned for SSDs that are to be provided on netbooks. What this means, I do not know? And by tuned, this is still unclear. You can read some of that information here. The only reason for the lack of changes in NTFS is to preserve backwards compatibility. This approach limits the ability to update a current existing server’s (if not running Windows 7) NTFS module if it needed to serve backend storage utilizing SSD media.

The Impact on RAID Technologies

As SSDs become more popular the advantages to using RAID are reduced, where the only benefits are gained from a simple stripe in a RAID 0 or mirroring to a backup array within a SAN or other form of network using RAID 01 (not to be confused with a RAID 10); just in case access to the first fails for whatever reason. This is where DRBD would come in real handy. As I briefly mentioned earlier, the whole concept of this form of redundancy was dependent upon the problematic nature of a magnetic disk device; where failures were imminent. And for those who are concerned with a method of error detection for both silent and noisy data corruptions, the majority of RAID implementations (both hardware and software) do not validate the data like the ZFS or Btrfs checksum implementation.

Changes in Protocol Layers?

With the popularity of SSD technologies growing and its costs reducing, the one drawback that is setting manufacturers and consumers back are the limitations offered by the protocols that they are working with. Today, Fibre Channel, SAS and SATA are not capable of handling full SSD speeds and serve only as a bottleneck to the technology. There have been recent attempts from vendors as Fusion-io to even PureSilicon to rely on other protocol interfaces such as PCI Express (PCI-E). Capable of handling up to 1 GB per second, it only seems natural for these vendors to move in that direction. I anticipate that shortly, others will follow. Fibre Channel and SAS may continue to serve the SAN (and with the appropriate load balancing mechanisms configured, it will perform well) but when it comes to the drive within the chassis, I expect to see more PCI Express in the near future. But who knows, with the recent drop in prices for 10Gb Ethernet or the supported high throughput offered from Infiniband, things may be moving toward another direction altogether.

In conclusion, I predict that in five years time we will start to see some huge and very interesting changes. I am looking forward to it.

I came across this blog entry and it got me thinking about another blog entry which I cannot find at the moment. The latter briefly covered a topic which made a lot of sense. One reason for Linux not gaining wider market share is that it was not available as a pre-installed operating system.

Face it, no matter how user friendly, stable and well performing the operating system becomes, the majority of basic PC users will never get a chance to touch it because they will never install it. Think about it. An individual whose only objective and limited knowledge of personal computing is to turn on the PC, wait for the OS to finish loading and open up a web browser or an office productivity application. The most they know is what already comes pre-installed. So if they walk into a Best Buy or order from Dell’s website, they trust that whatever comes with the PC will work for them. They do not know the difference.

So when I read entries like the one I linked to above on where to obtain copies of Linux, does it really matter? Are you going to tell your neighbor’s mom or your co-worker’s grandfather that he/she should go to the download sites of Ubuntu, Fedora or <enter other distro here>. And even if you do, what are the chances that they will really understand the installation process enough to be able to feel comfortable in doing it. Yes, Ubuntu is easy to install, but if a user has never done it before they may be reluctant in doing it for the first time and scrap the idea altogether.

What we need to find is more of a combined effort in getting some of the major distributions pre-installed on more desktop/laptop solutions. I have seen articles and advertisements (and the link above mentions it also) for Ubuntu on Dell and ZaReason PCs. I am not talking about netbooks here but instead regular PCs. On the UNIX front, I know I have seen an article about OpenSolaris pre-installed on certain models of Toshiba laptops. I do not think we will see any changes until we see more offerings of a reliable solution: a GNU/Linux solution.

I came across an article yesterday by Paul Rubens where he discusses the security of monolothic kernels and voices his opinions on the adoption of microkernels. He said something which had me laughing for quite some time; in response to the words of Microsoft’s COO Kevin Turner regarding the most secure OS in the world being Microsoft’s Windows Vista:

This quote goes in my book of funny quotes, right after Tom Van Vlecks conversation with Dennis Ritchie:

Sometimes I sit back and wonder about the direction technology has taken, especially with regards to operating systems. I think back to my Apple days and even when I got my first PC running MS-DOS with Microsoft Windows 3.11. Obviously, some of you can go even further back in history while others not far at all. But when I think about it, I think of how simple things were and by the end of the day, it all still worked! As the years had gone by additional “fluff” has been added to these simple computing machine, now adding complexity into the equation. Complexity in terms of how things are accessed and managed. What is even more amazing is the fact that by attempting to focus on simplifying modern day computing (while adding more security), more complexity is introduced! Why? Is it because the average PC user has grown so accustomed to the more complex methods that by attempting to simplify things, you are challenging what they knew?

Is this the problem holding GNU/Linux back as a more popular choice for the desktop? While I have never had the displeasure of playing around with it myself, I have read that this was the case with Microsoft’s Windows Vista. Microsoft had attempted to simplify things for the average user and by doing so they challenged that same user. The user now had to be concerned with administrator rights along with other things. We all know that a huge majority of PC users rarely know the difference between their RAM and their hard drives, so why take things away and replace them with other methods? From network/user management to even basic navigation and file creation/modification. Now, in Microsoft terminology “simplicity” does not mean”faster.” In a Microsoft operating system or application, when something is simplified, it means that there are at least a minimum of 3 additional steps added. Windows 7 is following in the same direction. Will the average user be just as disappointed from 7 as they are with Vista?

Overall, for a while now Apple has remained somewhat consistent with its appearance and functionality (details aside). The same cannot be said for GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows. GNU/Linux had been redefining itself through multiple interfaces where now many can say it is truly user friendly and ready for the desktop. I agree 100% with that assumption. As for Windows, owning the majority of the market share and remaining consistent between Windows 95-ME, slowly reinventing itself with XP and now turning its environment upside down and confusing the average user, how does this bode for its future? Chances are it will still do well but who knows how much success it will truly achieve and if it falls short of its success, will it help with the future of GNU/Linux? I hope so. The sub-notebook industry is increasing the usage of GNU/Linux (as is seen on Network Applications). Even entire countries such as Russia and China are creating their own distributions to be widely used across their nations.

While the graphical user interfaces of GNU/Linux are excellent and have plenty of similarities with their Mac OS X and Windows counterparts (for easy transitions), are its slight differences going to hold it back for mass adoption? I will express my opinion to this further down. I have been running GNU/Linux since 2001 and now I cannot imagine using anything else. I am writing this post from my laptop under Fedora Linux and when I think of how efficient I am on this machine, I know going back to Windows will slow me down. Efficiency is introduced with great tools such as Avant-Window-Navigator, GNOME-Do, Firefox with its numerous plugins, the command shell to even my own whipped up python/pygtk scripts, one of which is used to enable/disable and manage my Network Manager. Enable the special effects with Compiz-Fusion and we are talking about a graphically appealing and rich filled experience in GNOME, KDE or whatever GUI is the user’s preference. The point-and-click mentality as seen in a Windows environment, does lack in efficiency. And while GNU/Linux can still function in the same manner without any faults and in less steps, is it still too “radically different” from its Windows counterpart that through its simplicity, more complexity is added for the average user, as they have to learn a new environment? I say no. The average user is not as dumb as we have stereotyped them to be and they usually do nothing more than surf the Internet, checking their Facebook and MySpace pages while streaming music. They do their on-line banking and pay bills. They quickly bring up OpenOffice to do word processing, etc. At least this is the case for my wife. She uses Ubuntu Linux and never calls me for help. I installed it, which was so simple and from that point, she already knew what Firefox was. A quick study of task bar with drop-down menus revealed to her all that she needed to know. The Network Manager has been easily accessible and easy to use. She has had no problems coming from Windows XP.

I would love to hear what you have to say. While all interfaces are different, everyone seems to be heading in the same direction of development and design. I ask, do you feel that this simplicity will affect the adoption of GNU/Linux?

Earlier today I came across a blog entry from an employee of Sun Microsystems. He addressed the frustrations of the many worldwide when it came to running much needed applications that were built only for a Microsoft Windows environment. As some of you may already know, the reality is that not everyone runs Microsoft Windows as their operating system and in other cases, some of those same people may have a dual boot set up but rarely if ever boot up into the Windows partition unless it is absolutely necessary.

The author spoke specifically about a topic I too had many problems with and it related to protocol analyzers. Working in the storage industry, a SCSI, Fibre Channel or SAS analyzer is a must have tool. The problem lies with the fact that the providers of such solutions (Lecroy, Finisar, etc.) develop the hardware management and trace viewing interfaces for Windows ONLY! No Mac OS X. No BSD or Linux versions. No Solaris. Why!?! As I had mentioned in numerous earlier posts, IDC reports show that UNIX + Linux combined own more of the enterprise market than Windows. Are these companies just too lazy or do they lack the skill-set to provide something on anything else other than Windows? Do they not see any money in it? If I work for a UNIX only solutions provider, the last thing I would want to do is install a Microsoft Windows console to do any work.

Well, rants like this make me all the more happier in being able to provide the solutions that people like this author are looking for; that is, SCSIGen v2.0, which is still in development and coming to a POSIX compliant platform near you!