RE: [Ntop] OpenBSD 3.6 and ntop 3.0

[Burton Strauss]

Understood.  And stuff like this is really, really, hard.  You're dealing with edge cases and interpretation of fuzzy grey areas in standards...  often things that aren't actually even understood to be interpretations!     For example, POSIX threads is POSIX threads, right?  Well, no.  There are behaviors we have grown to expect in how threads work that turn out to be artifacts of the use of separate OS processes and that are not required by POSIX.  Move to a true light-weight (user land) threads situation like FreeBSD and lots of things go 'wrong'.  The only reason ntop does it right is a lot of hard work done around the time we realized that Red Hat's NPTL did things 'differently'.     If you have the choice, stick with Linux.  FreeBSD works, but it's rougher.       Signal delivery is another area where you get hung up - POSIX doesn't require that a signal be delivered to a particular listener, just somebody listening for that signal.  So if you have two users generating long html reports, both set the alarm() call in their thread.  If it's separate OS processes, each has their own signal handler and receives their own alarm.  W/ user land threads, there is a thread handler that receives the alarm() and 'decides' which handler to invoke.  So you could get the alarm() for the other user!  Perfectly legal, but not what you expect...   This is especially true because we use the 'prohibited' thread+fork() coding style.  Forget that almost every other multi-threaded project does it (there are some serious performance gains in using fork() with it's copy-on-write memory snapshot, vs. safely copying the whole data structure - which requires shared memory (ug) and holding locks for long periods).     -----Burton   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Shane Mullins Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2004 10:31 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Ntop] OpenBSD 3.6 and ntop 3.0 Thanks Burton,       I will have to stay with a supported platform.  I wish I was a strong programmer, but I am very far from it.  If I was a strong programmer I would pitch in and help.     Thanks so much,   Shane   PS OpenBSD 3.6 produced the same error. ----- Original Message ----- From: Burton Strauss To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2004 11:15 PM Subject: RE: [Ntop] OpenBSD 3.6 and ntop 3.0 Do ya think it might just mean what it says??  It actually does.  "It will almost certainly fail".  Yup!   Read the back traffic on ntop-dev..  In the case of OpenBSD, two of us have tried it at different times over the last years.  3.2/3.3 were hopeless.  3.4/3.5 were closer to mainstream *nix and Justin (?) thought he had it working until he tried to actually use ntop.  3.6 might have a better chance at success or it might be just as bad as 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5 ... no clue.        Please keep the ntop-dev mailing list updated with any successes you have ...   Means that what it needs is somebody with some programming skills who cares to work on it.  If that's you, great.  Otherwise, use a supported platform.   If you do attempt this - and more power to you - please move to ntop-dev.     -----Burton       From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Shane Mullins Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2004 8:20 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Ntop] OpenBSD 3.6 and ntop 3.0 I get the following error when trying to build ntop 3.0 from source.  Can anyone help me resolve this, or should I just build it on a FreeBSD box?   Thanks Shane     Checking for support status of i386-unknown-openbsd3.5, gcc...   Testing for special configuration options for OPENBSD   ******************************************************************* * * ERROR: Attempting to build ntop for an unsupported platform * *            'i386-unknown-openbsd3.5' * *>>> This is unsupported. *>>> It will almost certainly fail *           (that is why it is listed as 'unsupported' - doh!) * *    Please keep the ntop-dev mailing list updated with any *    successes you have or problems you encounter... * *   Support is unverified... * ******************************************************************* _______________________________________________ Ntop mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://listgateway.unipi.it/mailman/listinfo/ntop

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