I am currently using Ubuntu Server 10.04 in two ways:

1. Development platform in VirtualBox - The simplified installer allows me to get a base system up and running in a VM guest. I usually decline to install any additional packages but the base and when I am up and running, I will invoke apt-get to grab anything else I was too lazy to customize from the installer. The advantages are that I have a very light weight system. No GUI, just CLI and all the standard packages I need to test my developed device drivers and applications.
2. To host my much needed services - I had an older Dell PC collecting dust in my office. So I decided to revive it and install Ubuntu Server 10.04 on it. It is currently configured to run and host Apache (Bugzilla), MySQL, a git repository, FTP and a bit more. After spending some time to secure MySQL, Bugzilla, ssh and my iptables firewall rules, the PC has been up since and I am able to function more productively; especially since I enabled the node to be accessible outside of my local network.

In both scenarios, the operating system has been a pleasure to work with. Although I do have one complaint and that is when you get to the point of package selection during the installation process, the interface kind of sucks. I am sure that I am not the only one who feels that way but it is what it is.

Now that I finished sharing my personal experiences with the operating system I will continue on to the main topic of this article and that relates to Canonical’s release cycles for their server catered OS. I for one know from experience that the IT industry doesn’t like change. That includes operating systems. The mentality is always that “if it ain’t broke, why fix it.” With that in mind I can see why Red Hat takes many years to release a new official stable release of their flagship OS while continuing to support the current with almost service pack like updates (via a new release such as 5.x or through yum). Truth be told, when a facility deploys and manages an operating system, they usually get comfortable with the release and do not want to stray far off it until one of three conditions are met:

1. It is not supported anymore and they are forced to move on.
2. A new release comes out and it introduces [a] much needed feature(s).
3. Or new hardware is acquired.

So…why do I mention this? I understand the concept of 6 month release cycles and an LTS release every two years. Ideally, you would want to attract potential customers at every LTS release; but those inbetween releases seem like a waste of time and effort ONLY for the server series. Let me explain.

A lot of the general public are still somewhat confused by the whole Long Term Support (LTS) concept and what that truly means. For both desktop and server operating systems, with Canonical, everything inbetween is considered a concept or feature testing release in preparation for the next LTS OS. While this may not be an official explanation coming from Canonical, it has always been general perception. In a non-LTS release you saw the introduction of the Software Center, Upstart, Plymouth, etc. (as is evident with 8.10, 9.04 and 9.10) and now btrfs support is planned for 10.10 (also a non-LTS release) among other features.

For the desktop OS, this is all fine but when we get to the server side of things, why is it still necessary to maintain the same release cycle? Nobody wants to deploy a non-LTS release in a production environment. Especially when the support for that release is not as long as an LTS one. And if something needs to be tested, it can always be tested in the desktop non-LTS releases. This is where I feel that companies such as Red Hat, Novell, Sun/Oracle to even Microsoft got it right. The server editions of their operating system are not meant to see dramatic changes and or additions so often. This is why it is easy for a system administrator to transition from Microsoft Server 2000 to Server 2003 and again 2008. Don’t misunderstand me, I know from experience that a Microsoft Service Pack or upgrade can cause some damage but generally the operating system are focused on stability and standardizing the environment until the next major release.

If I were to suggest a recommendation for Canonical, it would be: “Maintain the 6 month release cycle for the desktop (and netbook) releases with an LTS appearing every two years but as for the server OS, drop the 6 month cycle and adopt an every two year LTS release.“

From the late 70’s to the 80’s Apple markets personal computers with a proprietary operating system tied to its proprietary hardware. They charge high prices in exchange for a feature rich and an evolving simplified UI. During this time period Microsoft is providing their software solutions as a software only company.

Originally built on MS-DOS (with the first stable release in 1985), Microsoft distributes Windows for the Intel architecture. Over time, they pushed a radical idea of providing an operating system that was not tied to specific proprietary hardware. This enabled many hardware manufacturers to install and distribute licensed copies of the operating system. Although not as advanced as Apple’s OS UI, it was just good enough to get most people to become more productive.

Cheaper hardware + Hardware independent software = Cheaper PCs = Microsoft’s success of the desktop market

Truth be told. You did (and still do) get what you pay for. Microsoft’s applications and series of operating systems were never necessarily well known for stability and security. Overall, their approach to business made sense for its time.

But what do you have now? The focus has shifted to mobility. A lot of applications are now provided services over the web (i.e. the cloud) and our mobile devices provide us access to these services. For the past decade Apple has made a huge comeback and found itself a market which has been leading to its recent success. Although, they continue to push their proprietary model on all their products.

While other companies are competing with Apple, the most noteworthy is Google (indirectly via its ad-based model) and specifically the Android operating system. Google has taken more of an open approach to how Android is presented but in the end, similar to Microsoft with Windows, it is designed to run on varying hardware platforms. With a nice UI (maybe not always as crisp and clean as the iPhone’s OS) and a constantly growing Market with tens of thousands of applications to choose from, Android has proven itself to be a very worthy competitor. Its market growth numbers have reflected this and Android is significantly catching up to the power players of the smart phone industry.

My question is: Is Apple doomed to repeat its own history? Should we continue to expect Apple market share growth? Or will this plateau as more and more Android devices flood the market offering more affordable and feature rich mobile computing experiences?

Initially Oracle had publicly announced that it will stay involved in the OpenSolaris community and continue to support it. This was more than a few months ago, and they have been silent since. If they do decide to kill the OpenSolaris project to shift all focus on Solaris Next alone, then I am curious as to if they will kill the OpenSolaris binary distribution project (opensolaris.com) only or the binary plus the community (opensolaris.org). The community can still live on without the binary. They will instead focus on the Solaris Next builds as opposed to OpenSolaris.

I guess what it boils down to for Oracle is, do they see a profit from this open source project? What does OpenSolaris bring to Oracle and how does it help them solidify their newly acquired Solaris platform? If we ask for my personal opinion, I feel the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. A working example can be seen with Red Hat and the Fedora Project. The more open platform (in this case OpenSolaris) defines the bleeding edge technologies, stabilizes them and is a testing ground for all that will be ported to the official stable release (Solaris). In fact that is how it was under Sun Microsystems.

Although as the months pass by, the more dim OpenSolaris’ future gets. Fortunately enough it is an open source project and can easily be forked into a new community driven distribution. So even in the darkest of hours not all is lost.

Extract from article:

“Google’s idea of an operating system that consists of only a web browser sounds interesting, and unfortunately, very restrictive. There are a staggering number of applications out there that people use on Windows/Mac/Linux machines — any of which would give enough reason to avoid switching operating systems.“

He goes on to explain a feature Google is designing into the Chrome OS that functions similar to a remote desktop.

It just seems that through all this hype of Google’s much anticipated release of its Chrome OS, many look to it as Google’s replacement to all competing Operating System when the reality shows that this will not be the case.

First of all, let us look at the audience this new OS is catering to: someone who pretty much uses the web for everything (i.e. entertainment, productivity, communications, etc.). Someone like my wife would fall under this category. For the past 2-3 years I have had my wife using a Linux-based operating system. She is no different than your traditional PC user. Except for a few rare cases in which she would need to rely on a local application, everything else she does is accomplished on the web: Facebook, e-mails, e-Bay, Amazon, streaming music/videos, chatting, online banking, etc. If she needed to word processor or spreadsheet, I am sure I can help her configure a Google Docs account but for now, she uses OpenOffice.org. I can see someone like my wife utilize the Chrome OS with no issues. It will do everything that she needs to do.

As for me on the other hand, it is a bit too limited and restrictive. I also feel the same way about Microsoft Windows, but that is another story. The point I am trying to make is that there are many people like my wife out there who would be just fine with a setup like the Chrome OS. It will not be for everyone.

Second, let us look at packaging. Do we know how this new OS will be packaged onto the netbook, tablet, or other mobile device? Again, the OS will be installed on mobile devices. That means, it is not intended for intense workload. If you are a casual user then this would not be a problem.

Also relating to packaging, I remember reading in early reports about the Chrome OS that it will be delivered as a dual-booted system alongside another full-blown operating system (insert Microsoft Windows, Ubuntu Linux, etc.). Chrome OS is an instant on with quick access to the internet solution. Within seconds you are up and running and should have access to your local drive(s). If that is the case, then the concern for using special purpose applications means nothing here; as you could reboot into the other operating system and do what you need to do.

Third, let us look at its limitations. We know that it will look to the web for web-based services and solutions to work with and utilize. At least to my knowledge and at this point it will not allow the user to install any applications. Files on the other hand (i.e. images, music, etc.) are a different story. These limitations and restrictions is what will increase the security of the OS. Without the ability to install potentially malware infected programs, the threats of the Internet are much less. But this goes back to my discussion of the intended audience. People like my wife will not need to install anything. Everything will already be available to them.

What Chrome OS is not:

• It was never intended to be a replacement for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, or any of the Linux/UNIX -based distributions.
• It is not going to cater to everybody’s style in computing.
• It will not necessarily bring everything that you are looking for in an OS (see previous statement).

Chrome OS is a solution, but a solution that will not be intended for everyone. It may succeed. It may fail. Who knows? This is why we have choices. If this operating system does not meet your requirements, then you will find something else. I just don’t understand why we keep on comparing this solution to others that are drastically different.

“Compatible with Windows 2000 SP4/Windows XP/Windows Vista/ Windows 7, Mac OS 10.x and above.“

What about Linux? Coincidentally this device was getting plugged into and used only by a Fedora Linux system. Now I know that this would have worked (despite the package’s information) and not have any problems with ANY Linux and for the most part almost all UNIX -based operating systems. The device (as all other USB Flash Drives) are labeled with a FAT32 file system and Linux, like any other OS kernel can read a FAT32 labeled volume with no problems. On top of that, most mainstream distributions (if not all) enable automount and an auto open of USB storage devices. The user doesn’t need to do it themselves, similar to Windows and the Mac OS. So what is the problem? Why couldn’t the package say “Linux 2.6 and above” or something to that extent?

You would think from a marketing point-of-view it would have been wise to place this on the package for individuals new to the world of Linux and unsure about a few things. Maybe someone new to Ubuntu or Mint or even SUSE just got a netbook with a preloaded Linux-based image on it. They are looking to find some hardware compatible with it and wait a minute the Geek Squad USB Flash Drives sold at Best Buy do not say that they will work. There is a lost sale.

Some of you may think that this is not such a big deal and that I am thinking too deep into this. I don’t disagree. I am thinking too deep into this, but it is only because I am still surprised when I come across things like this. For instance, not too long ago I was looking at laser printers and guess what some said on it (I specifically remember Lexmark):

“…compatible with Linux“

I remember buying a pack of labels to print names and addresses, guess what the package of labels said on the back:

“…compatible with Linux“

The list goes on. Whether end-user market share for Linux is 1%, 0.01% or 100%, manufacturers need to get used to the fact that its market share is creeping up especially with the huge influence Linux holds on mobile devices. For instance, when the Android-based tablets come out, people are going to be looking for:

“…compatible with Linux” or “…compatible with Android“

Ubuntu Control Center (UCC)

In the GNOME desktop environment, most of us have become familiar with the gnome-control-center. The gnome-control-center provided a centralized interface to access various components and elements of your GNOME desktop environment to your general computing experience. This included shortcuts to network configuration tools, disk management tools, display and screensaver related tools, power management and more.

UCC is not that much different. The way in which it stands out is that it is a little more visually appealing to the eye and continues to maintain the new style and themes presented by Canonical for Ubuntu. It is also simplified in presentation and organization. I can see it to be less intimidating to a lesser experienced Ubuntu Linux user. It is my opinion that this is a great step into the right direction. It is these little things that help one distribution stand out over the others. In the open source world we call this differentiation (a topic I will write about in my next post). Although I don’t see myself using it that much, as I usually know which commands to invoke from the command line or which files to modify instead, I can see someone like my wife utilizing this interface and actually be somewhat comfortable with it.

Also note that when it is installed, the application can be launched from Applications > System Tools > UCC.

Global Menu

While this is not an Ubuntu original project, it is one that Canonical desires to use in their distributions intended for smaller devices (i.e. netbooks). At least for now, it is planned to have this feature implemented in the future release of Ubuntu Network Edition (UNE).

The interface reminds one of the similar feature in the Mac OS series of operating systems. Instead of wasting LCD  space for every open application by dropping a File, Edit, etc. menu system, Global Menu will integrate it into the top GNOME panel. This is very desirable for the netbook devices with smaller screens (i.e. 1024×600).

I actually like this. Truth be told, I grew up on Macs, so I am very familiar with this setup and while it is going to take a little bit of getting used to, I have decided to keep it installed with my 10.04 installation on my everyday notebook. Here you can see it in action when a terminal is open:

There are a few drawbacks to this though. It would seem that this feature is only fully functional for GTK+ developed applications. Or at least something to that extent. Certain applications such as Firefox, OpenOffice.org to even VirtualBox will only result in the name of the application to show up in the global menu with options to show the desktop or maximize/minimize the current application. Instead you will find that the generic menu interface will still be presented in the application’s window. Despite this, I still do look forward to seeing what this project grows into.

Oprofile is built around the autotools framework which is a great method by which one can create a portable application for multiple architectures. For the most part it works great, that is until you are building for a platform and environment that is built from the ground up to serve only the company’s purposes and in turn will contain the bare essentials for features and functionality ensuring a lightweight core OS for embedded architectures. This is where we start getting into dependency hell: rebuilding binutils (specifically libbfd) for the ARM and pointing the configure script to look at libbfd alongside some headerfiles.

After resolving that, I then coming across compilation errors specific to C++. Let it be known for the record: I do not like C++. Being a kernel and device driver developer, I have always been entrenched within C and when I need to get into Object Oriented Programming, I would prefer Python and in the rarest of cases, Java. It is just much cleaner and easier to work with. Usually Python best fits my needs especially when it comes to graphical development and I write GNOME based applications with pyGTK. C++ was a good concept and major stepping stone in the programming world but it is just sloppy. Even when you come across an error, a lot of times it is just too cryptic. In my most recent situation though, it seemed that it was a stdlibc++ issue built into the GCC toolchain used.

I will save you from the nasty details. To conclude, it was an unsuccessful effort. The module built (written in C) and was loadable with no problems. The only problems that existed were around the user-land tools alone. A whole week spent on something that could not be used in the end; at least until we have more time to invest in addressing the obvious issues. But I guess it was a learning experience nonetheless.

Some additional excitement came when I saw that Bruce Perens has been consulting our group for the past few days to ensure that we are complying with all used open source licenses. Yesterday, he took the time to give a very interesting 2 hour lecture about companies and their uses of open source license. Some of you may recognize that name, if not then you should read more on the open source movement. I found it humorous to observe that his character in person was no different then what I would see in video and documentaries such as Revolution OS.

1. For instance, the update loses all your contact information. You needed to resynchronize it from your Gmail account. A good thing to do is to occasionally export your contact information from Gmail into vCard format. This way you can hold a backup copy just incase of failure. The Android OS reads the file format and can re-import the contact list from the local SD Card with no problems.
2. A second annoyance was that all of your widgets were defaulted to the default HTC setup. Whatever. It took 5-10 minutes of my time to lay everything out and download some newly 2.1 available widgets from HTC.

All of this was not preserved and yet I was surprised to find that all of my e-mail accounts were intact. I guess this was saved on the SD Card. Go figure.

Other than that, all seems to work great. There are a lot of great new features and the appearances (including icons) look sharper and cleaner. Also I noticed that the phone (tuned to my liking with Advanced Task Killer) consumes less battery power with this update.

While HTC had always supported multitouch capabilities, they expanded on it in the 2.1 release. For instance, in the HTC phone, I have 7 desktops which I can slide side-to-side to get to. They have a new feature where I can do a multitouch pinch at the center of any desktop screen and it zooms out to view all 7 of my desktops. I can then select one to zoom back into.

Also with this release, there is support for animated backgrounds. HTC added some neat looking animation to the Sense UI. For instance, the weather applet will animate on update by showing transparent sun rays, clouds moving to even rain on the screen. It looks nice but I am sure it will get old after some time.

The Android Market Place has a nicer and cleaner look and feel and the new HTC provided widgets are also kind of neat (i.e. for quick not taking among other things).

The only problem that I did notice was when I upgraded my wife’s phone to 2.1 (she has the same HTC Droid Eris phone). The HTC Weather applet would error everytime it was launched and do a force close. This was easily resolved by going into all of the weather related applications (Menu > Settings > Applications > Manage applications) and clearing all cached data contents.

With Android 2.1, I finally had the opportunity to play around with applications such as Google Goggles, which works great in limited use (so far). Now as I am finally playing with Android 2.1, I am hoping that 2.2 will make its way to the Droid Eris as it supports Wi-Fi tethering.

My only frustatrions with ZFS are that cluster support is currently not available, at least until Lustre 3.0 is out, whenever that will be. Another frustration is trying to write an application that will work directly with a zpool. For instance, there is no simple method to send a zpool a generic ioctl() such as DKIOCGGEOM to obtain the size of the volume. In most cases I don’t care about the number of cylinders, heads and sectors. In the end I calculate the total volume block and/or byte count. So those values could be generic and made up.

In the early stages of my discovering this, I posted a simple question on the OpenSolaris Forums:

“As I was navigating through the source code for the ZFS file system I saw that in zvol.c where the ioctls are defined, if a program sends a DKIOCGGEOM or DKIOCDVTOV, an ENOTSUP (Error Not Supported) is returned.

You can view this here: http://src.opensolaris.org/source/xref/onnv/onnv-gate/usr/src/uts/common/fs/zfs/zvol.c

My question is, what is an appropriate method to obtain the zpool’s volume size from a C coded application?”

After posting my question, I immediately went to view the open source to the general zpool/zfs binaries and observe how zpool reported the drive pool’s capacity back into user space. Unfortunately it utilized some cryptic method not as straight forward as sending a simple ioctl() to the desired volume. This was a bit frustrating as it was such an ugly approach to only receive the size of the volume.

I was grateful to have a response confirming my fear of choosing the ugly route; but it also made me realize the true value of open source. What if I simply patched a supported ioctl() definition to return the total accessible “block” count of a zpool? It would be similar to the Linux BLKGETSZ/BLKGETSZ64. This would be the most realistic and proper method; to add a new ioctl() and then modify all storage modules to accommodate it. For instance in the usr/src/uts/common/sys/dkio.h file we would need to define:

And then go back to the zvol.c file and add the extra ioctl() to handle this:

To give a level of consistency across all storage devices, we will need to add the ioctl() definition to the following modules:

Although we do not necessarily have to support it and can instead interpret it as such:

Who knows, one of these days I may get around to patching this myself and if the OpenSolaris community doesn’t accept it I can always make it available on any one of my website. I will most definitely post about it.