Update from Rocky EL
I do not currently have the time or inclination to address the various points raised in the exchange/commentary, to which I am adding some comments, in sufficient detail. UC CSRG BSD original deployment largely evolved for DEC hardware platforms, such as the PDP-11 (with segmented overlay memory) and the VAX 11/780 (the first "large deployment" production "non-mainframe" with demand-paged virtual memory), with -- by current standards -- very slow, limited RAM, low bandwidth bus (such as UNIBUS), and "ethernet" NICs such as the DEUNA. All of this hardware platform was much less capable than a current X86-64 home "PC" platform, or even some ARM based "tablets" or "smart phones". BSD did promulgate "sockets", and other innovations. It was somewhat constrained by early ATT Unix, with a version of the Unix source license from ATT. Had the legal games over "unix" not ensued, and had there been some entity similar to CSRG and the community that supported and used BSD (largely "professional"), some of what you wrote might not have happened. However, it was a policy to build each installation of BSD from source, much more tedious than installable "executable" packages from commercial vendors, the same methodology adopted by the Linux community (communities?). Was the BSD C compiler system as good as ultimately the FSF GNU C compiler? Again, a matter for discussion -- but ultimately for a number of reasons, including open source, the GNU compilers have become a widely used implementation. It was a too long time interval before a BSD variant was ported to the first widely deployed IA-32 machine with demand paged virtual memory, the 80386 with 80387 FPU; if memory serves, this was after ATT released a Unix for that platform. We could discuss the file system debates to some length. Would either the BSD file systems or EXT3, etc., scale to distributed WAN "file systems"? Would either be "reliable" at such scales? I daresay no. As for ultimate performance (say in minimizing actual CPU clock cycles, memory accesses, etc., per "program execution"), a monolith typically will outperform a microkernel design, just as a traditional unstructured FORTRAN program (or in some cases, an assembly program) will outperform an OO-design C++ program with encapsulation, etc. Which program is longer-term maintainable? Which can be built by a large and dispersed team? These are issues of practical software engineering, and again, a subject of another discussion. On 12/17/20 5:59 PM, Konstantin Olchanski wrote: Rumination time, I jump in. Why did monolithic kernel Linux, based primarily upon the non-production-environment OS Minix from Tanenbaum used as an implemented example for teaching OS at the undergraduate level, achieve sector dominance over micro-kernel BSD-derivatives? ... Linux killed everybody with superiour performance, for every competitor, both microbenchmarks and real-use performance of the Linux kernel were/are measurably better. [what happened to BSD & derivatives?] ... it boils down to a great deal of uncertainty around BSDI, UCB's CSRG, Bill Jolitz, and 386BSD, all of which descended from the Unix codebase ... The USL-BSD lawsuit came just at the right moment to cut the BSD movement down at the knees. By the time the dust settled and BSDs were running on PC hardware, Linux was already established. correlate the timelines of lawsuit against Linux and BSD timeline: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_UNIX-5FSystem-5FLaboratories-2C-5FInc.-5Fv.-5FBerkeley-5FSoftware-5FDesign-2C-5FInc=DwIDAw=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A=47s95Ne0aOss4Lm0rou8QPxpzTQCi3wXRAuoDuFUQCk=RFr_K56_2XQYOg5Dxhg6Opq3kewSaB-o7k4ldfvsSwk= . Linux is greenfield I tend to think that was the key. Linux always had the advantage over BSD in three areas (if you studied, programmed and used both, you already know this): - better TCP/IP stack in Linux - better virtual memory system in Linux - better filesystems in Linux In all three, Linux had the "green field" advantage, plus the incentive to beat competitors (at the time, BSD UNIX, SGI/IBM/DEC/SUN Unix derivatives). In the TCP/IP stack, Linux people implemented zero-copy transfers and support for hardware-acceleration pretty much right away. In the VM system they figured out just the right balance between application memory, kernel memory and filesystem caches, compared to BSD "active/inactive" (and nothing else). In filesystems, Linux was the first to solve the problem of "no corruption, no need for fsck" after unexpected system reboot (i.e. on crash or power loss). (with ext3/ext4). (ok, maybe SGI was there first for the rich people, with XFS, but look what happened, XFS is now a mainstrean Linux filesystem). Although, re-think your statement; Darwin with the macOS skin on it has a great deal more marketshare than Linux. In many ways the
Re: Update from Rocky EL
Rumination time, I jump in. > >Why did monolithic kernel Linux, based primarily upon the > >non-production-environment OS Minix from Tanenbaum used as an > >implemented example for teaching OS at the undergraduate level, > >achieve sector dominance over micro-kernel BSD-derivatives? ... Linux killed everybody with superiour performance, for every competitor, both microbenchmarks and real-use performance of the Linux kernel were/are measurably better. > [what happened to BSD & derivatives?] > ... it boils down to a great deal of uncertainty around BSDI, > UCB's CSRG, Bill Jolitz, and 386BSD, all of which descended from > the Unix codebase ... The USL-BSD lawsuit came just at the right moment to cut the BSD movement down at the knees. By the time the dust settled and BSDs were running on PC hardware, Linux was already established. correlate the timelines of lawsuit against Linux and BSD timeline: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_UNIX-5FSystem-5FLaboratories-2C-5FInc.-5Fv.-5FBerkeley-5FSoftware-5FDesign-2C-5FInc=DwIDAw=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A=47s95Ne0aOss4Lm0rou8QPxpzTQCi3wXRAuoDuFUQCk=RFr_K56_2XQYOg5Dxhg6Opq3kewSaB-o7k4ldfvsSwk= . > Linux is greenfield I tend to think that was the key. Linux always had the advantage over BSD in three areas (if you studied, programmed and used both, you already know this): - better TCP/IP stack in Linux - better virtual memory system in Linux - better filesystems in Linux In all three, Linux had the "green field" advantage, plus the incentive to beat competitors (at the time, BSD UNIX, SGI/IBM/DEC/SUN Unix derivatives). In the TCP/IP stack, Linux people implemented zero-copy transfers and support for hardware-acceleration pretty much right away. In the VM system they figured out just the right balance between application memory, kernel memory and filesystem caches, compared to BSD "active/inactive" (and nothing else). In filesystems, Linux was the first to solve the problem of "no corruption, no need for fsck" after unexpected system reboot (i.e. on crash or power loss). (with ext3/ext4). (ok, maybe SGI was there first for the rich people, with XFS, but look what happened, XFS is now a mainstrean Linux filesystem). > > Although, re-think your statement; Darwin with the macOS skin on it > has a great deal more marketshare than Linux. In many ways the > BSD-system-layered-on-a-microkernelish core did win; just not the > hearts of developers. > I would say, MacOS "won" not because but despite it's BSD foundations. If you look behind the curtain (heck, if you look *at* the curtain), you will see a BSD-ish kernel firmly stuck in the 1990-ies. No semtimedop() syscall, incomplete pthreads (no recursive locks), no /dev/shm (no command line tool to see and control POSIX shared memory). The only visible kernel level innovation are the "never corrupts" filesystem (mostly due to "never crashes" hardware, I suspect) and improved VM (encrypted *and* in-memory compressed, impressive!). Anyhow, today, MacOS wins at ping-pong while the game is hockey, if Apple still built hardware for serious computing, for sure the MacOS BSD "win" would count. -- Konstantin Olchanski Data Acquisition Systems: The Bytes Must Flow! Email: olchansk-at-triumf-dot-ca Snail mail: 4004 Wesbrook Mall, TRIUMF, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 2A3, Canada
Re: Joint Fermilab/CERN statement on recent CentOS Changes
On 12/17/20 2:21 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: The URL document linked below mentions various repos -- are these available outside the CERN HEP collaborations, the same as SL (and ElRepo, etc.) are "public"? If these repos are public, is there a public list (not restricted to the CERN HEP collaborations) that conveys the same sort of information as the current SL users list? I would say "try them and see" but I seem to remember something about your uni firewall or somesuch. So, since I do have complete control over the firewall here, I tried the links. Clicking on the links for both sets of repositories worked for me; I get a directory listing of the repositories hosted at CERN. The page was a bit slow to load, though. As far as mailing lists are concerned, I think this one that we're on is the one you want.
Re: Update from Rocky EL
On 12/17/20 2:07 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: You present a well-organized commentary; however, I must amplify, and thus take exception, to some of your statements. Thank you for the compliment. By all means amplify; I always reserve the right to be wrong! First: Linux and Torvalds. Some might compare Torvalds to Bill Joy who left a Berkeley PhD program for work in the private sector; Joy had a sound background in what was "known" at that epoch. By comparison, I suggest one consider the Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate ... I watched it happen in real-time. A lot has changed in kernel architectures since then. They both were passionate about their respective points-of-view. Both were wrong, and both were right, in various areas of the argument. It devolved into a bit of a flame war, though. Why did monolithic kernel Linux, based primarily upon the non-production-environment OS Minix from Tanenbaum used as an implemented example for teaching OS at the undergraduate level, achieve sector dominance over micro-kernel BSD-derivatives? ... The answer to the question of why Linux won the mindshare that it has is one for the historians. But it boils down to a great deal of uncertainty around BSDI, UCB's CSRG, Bill Jolitz, and 386BSD, all of which descended from the Unix codebase. Linux is greenfield; GPL makes contributions 'viral' in nature, and people enjoyed working on something totally new. Technical merits had nothing to do with it. If technical merits won wars, Microsoft Windows would have a Xenix kernel. Amateurs, volunteers, from all over jumped on the Linux bandwagon, and anybody and everybody could contribute. Some contributions were obviously better than others, but the vast majority were by noncompensated amateurs. Although, re-think your statement; Darwin with the macOS skin on it has a great deal more marketshare than Linux. In many ways the BSD-system-layered-on-a-microkernelish core did win; just not the hearts of developers. ... Your comment upon "amateur" status of various persons who have made major research/engineering contributions is not my meaning of amateur. ... I'm using the strict definitions: "professional" = paid to do the job; "amateur" does the job without pay or other compensation. This is the commonly-accepted definition across several areas, including sports. You used the word "professional" in that sense in the post to which I replied. As for the other comments you make, we can pursue these mostly off-list if you prefer. I do note that some Rocky EL personnel you envision to be "paid" developers. Full time? "Gig"? From where do you envision the pay to come? With proper benefits (not required in those nation-states that have social services and benefits for all)? Does it actually matter what kind of paid developers? In my case, I have participated in a diverse development group before, primarily as a volunteer. From July 1999 until October of 2004, I was the RPM package maintainer for PostgreSQL. You can read my message on stepping down from that role at https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.postgresql.org_message-2Did_200410251334.36550.lowen-2540pari.edu=DwIFaQ=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A=2DWWGD6QnYoIeN460KaIUgzPOSnIfZx1sWazV_Vx2GY=BTrS2VPkotDfKz0C8PFjIKfphFz4fNsfRy_e1ujInMA= and one of the PostgreSQL Core Team members subsequent post at https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.postgresql.org_message-2Did_200410251354.53583.josh-2540agliodbs.com=DwIFaQ=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A=2DWWGD6QnYoIeN460KaIUgzPOSnIfZx1sWazV_Vx2GY=Yz6Q_n8iXOR0lapHkoJ4YIAFzkLr9K9uJiHotxDv8Z0= which specifically mentions that I was a volunteer. Now, I wasn't always a volunteer; in 2000 I was hired as a contractor to do a gig for GreatBridge to spin RPMs for several Linux distributions. But the PostgreSQL Global Development Group, which is still a vibrant and dynamic community rolling out the best of the open source databases, is very diverse: many are volunteers; some are full-time fully-benefitted employees; some do the work as a side hustle or gig; some have made their whole business supporting PostgreSQL and make good money rolling support for the BSD-licensed database. While I was volunteering for the project, who paid for my time? For a while my full-time employer did, since we used PostgreSQL in production, and it had great benefit for me to do that work, even at no charge to the project. Later I just did it on my own time as a donation of time. Extending the analogy to Rocky Linux (or any other arbitrary project), some developers will likely be volunteers; some will possibly be paid by their current employers to do the work since their employers are CentOS shops; some will do side gigs related to Rocky Linux in support services; some will be employed
Re: Update from Rocky EL
I respectfully disagree with the analogy. It is true that an open source available to rebuild (without IP logos, etc.) is far better than closed source for reasons of software engineering (and security) upon which I can elaborate if there is interest. However, having any product enter wide use, and in particular, mission critical production use, without oversight is hazardous. Everyone makes mistakes; however, some mistakes are bigger than others. Professional designs can be very wrong (e.g., Chernobyl). In the current epoch, Zoom is being widely deployed (it is default mandatory at my institution), but it was never tested at the current scale nor properly hardened, and is being patched as it is being used. If the "bazaar" (or the "cathedral", for that matter) offers (sells) a good or service that has long term hazards, or even short term post-sale hazards, others may never be informed of the reality. In terms of wide area network computer information systems, we no longer live in the epoch of Arpanet or even NSFnet -- we live in a hostile environment with constant attacks. Without frequent counter-measures (often through revisions), not just use-inhibiting defects appear, but actual compromises are perpetrated, including identity theft for criminal actions (sometimes done within the laws of the nation-state employing the actors in a clandestine service). On 12/17/20 9:14 AM, P. Larry Nelson wrote: This whole discussion brings to mind Eric Raymond's three essays; later an iconic 1999 book: "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". They discuss software development, culture and control, and business models between open-source and closed-source models. A decent synopsis of them can be found here: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__informatics.bmj.com_content_23_2_488=DwID-g=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A=kTytgzKkdHhIqdndyIcBX0DwNa_qVjjolf67ZOV5G10=oyQdXE2psOUlCUbuAYDOan3V_Lie-oK7KsICGigaoDo= They bear revisiting, I think. Teh, Kenneth M. wrote on 12/17/20 10:14 AM: Hear hear! *From:* owner-scientific-linux-us...@listserv.fnal.gov on behalf of Lamar Owen *Sent:* Thursday, December 17, 2020 10:04 AM *To:* scientific-linux-users *Subject:* Re: Update from Rocky EL On 12/16/20 9:55 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: ... The question I raised still needs to be addressed: will Rocky EL be done by paid professionals (as with SL or Springdale Princeton EL) or will it be done by volunteers, some (many) of whom are "amateurs"? I am very concerned about the use in a production professional environment of an "amateur" port of RHEL. ... Conflating "amateur" with a lack of quality and "professional" with high quality and guaranteed support is provably fallacious. One of the very first RHEL rebuilds, White Box Enterprise Linux, was, to use your notation, a "professional" production, sponsored by and for the Beauregard Parish Public Library in DeRidder, Louisiana (read "County" where they write "Parish," it's a Louisiana thing); see https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__distrowatch.com_-3Fnewsid-3D01205=DwIFAw=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A=JTBeF2QPN2-NB4l7sB0VdZhNuE_mxophQaMcRPYwn5E=se-D6Q6pwAPkByDwIbTumyo9JAE46Eo5L8V6yTTzYvY= But being "professional" didn't guarantee success; the last release was in 2007. The "amateur" CentOS ended up with far better support with mostly volunteers. I have liked and respected the Scientific Linux developers and their attitude for quite some time, but it honestly wasn't a surprise to me when it was announced that there would be no SL8. The SL community seems to expect long-term support for any arbitrary point release; that is really unsustainable with a small staff and budget. "Amateurs" can afford to dedicate more time in some cases than "professionals;" in my own field at $dayjob the whole science of radio astronomy owes its very existence to a talented and persistent amateur by the name of Grote Reber. Sure, Jansky made the initial discovery while on Bell Labs' payroll (as a "professional" he had to follow his employer's money and go to the next project); Reber did the legwork and got others interested, paving the way for "professional" radio astronomers. In another major area of physics, thermodynamics, medical doctor Julius von Mayer was overshadowed by James Joule; it didn't help that von Mayer was a medical doctor, not a "professional" physicist. (a good overview of that history: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Mechanical-5Fequivalent-5Fof-5Fheat-23Priority=DwIFAw=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A=JTBeF2QPN2-NB4l7sB0VdZhNuE_mxophQaMcRPYwn5E=p0ZIGrcPxwlbndK4YUIC_ynHLup-BPnuyhqss6Ez9pY= ). In computer science (using
Re: Joint Fermilab/CERN statement on recent CentOS Changes
The URL document linked below mentions various repos -- are these available outside the CERN HEP collaborations, the same as SL (and ElRepo, etc.) are "public"? If these repos are public, is there a public list (not restricted to the CERN HEP collaborations) that conveys the same sort of information as the current SL users list? Yasha Karant On 12/17/20 8:07 AM, Takashi Ichihara wrote: URL: CentOS 8 Linux@CERN https://linux.web.cern.ch/centos8/ Regrds, Takashi On 2020/12/18 0:17, James F Amundson wrote: CERN and Fermilab acknowledge the recent decision to shift focus from CentOS Linux to CentOS Stream, and the sudden change of the end of life of the CentOS 8 release. This may entail significant consequences for the worldwide particle physics community. We are currently investigating together the best path forward. We will keep you informed about any developments in this area during Q1 2021. James Amundson, Fermilab Scientific Computing Division Head Elizabeth Sexton-Kennedy, Fermilab Chief Information Officer *-- James Amundson* /Head, Scientific Computing Division/ Office of the CIO Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory +1 (630) 840-2430 office +1 (630) 488-6910 mobile
Re: Update from Rocky EL
You present a well-organized commentary; however, I must amplify, and thus take exception, to some of your statements. First: Linux and Torvalds. Some might compare Torvalds to Bill Joy who left a Berkeley PhD program for work in the private sector; Joy had a sound background in what was "known" at that epoch. By comparison, I suggest one consider the Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate (see https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Tanenbaum-25E2-2580-2593Torvalds-5Fdebate=DwIDaQ=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A=p5LpkUSrDNa-AR53evz49_bezk928Gx00qoMLYEf4ys=2Cu2yWlCn1CePb2Zo769L4rY45NC0zplZHSqlCXvP1c= for an overview). Why did monolithic kernel Linux, based primarily upon the non-production-environment OS Minix from Tanenbaum used as an implemented example for teaching OS at the undergraduate level, achieve sector dominance over micro-kernel BSD-derivatives? History, ease of deployment (BSD typically was built from source even for end-users, whereas Linux was "executable package deployed" as with Microsoft, the prevalent desktop environment vendor. Linux picked up many, many end-user applications, whereas BSD was much more sparse. Although both are "POSIX", without various adaptation layers (not originally deployed or even properly available), BSD cannot run a generic Linux binary executable. The example of a "small" regional USA government supporting a distro does not address the "amateur" status -- there are paid persons who have professional-status appointments but who are not professionals in the academic/research/engineering proper sense. One may observe this in the present USA Executive Branch (presumably changing under the current USA President-elect); political persuasions aside, one may compare Dr. Atlas to Dr. Fauci. Your comment upon "amateur" status of various persons who have made major research/engineering contributions is not my meaning of amateur. Oliver Heaviside ( https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Oliver-5FHeaviside=DwIDaQ=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A=p5LpkUSrDNa-AR53evz49_bezk928Gx00qoMLYEf4ys=y1LzX5fWUYJGJYtRf68p5Uf-S9dlyQH1FzulLHH4NQA= ) did not have an undergraduate diploma, let alone any formal graduate school education. Thus, in some "academic" sense, he was an "amateur" -- but in reality, he was a consummate professional who made significant advances in both the implementation and underlying formalism (including "new" mathematics) of the physics (as well as the engineering and technology) of his epoch. It is the understanding, knowledge, skills, and dedication that make a "professional", not necessarily "formal" education and diplomata; self-education will suffice (although often deny that person the opportunity). Thus, in my opinion, neither Torvalds (nor Gates) is a Heaviside. The "amateurs" you mention are much closer to a Heaviside. As for the other comments you make, we can pursue these mostly off-list if you prefer. I do note that some Rocky EL personnel you envision to be "paid" developers. Full time? "Gig"? From where do you envision the pay to come? With proper benefits (not required in those nation-states that have social services and benefits for all)? Take care. Stay safe. Yasha Karant On 12/17/20 8:04 AM, Lamar Owen wrote: On 12/16/20 9:55 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: ... The question I raised still needs to be addressed: will Rocky EL be done by paid professionals (as with SL or Springdale Princeton EL) or will it be done by volunteers, some (many) of whom are "amateurs"? I am very concerned about the use in a production professional environment of an "amateur" port of RHEL. ... Conflating "amateur" with a lack of quality and "professional" with high quality and guaranteed support is provably fallacious. One of the very first RHEL rebuilds, White Box Enterprise Linux, was, to use your notation, a "professional" production, sponsored by and for the Beauregard Parish Public Library in DeRidder, Louisiana (read "County" where they write "Parish," it's a Louisiana thing); see https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__distrowatch.com_-3Fnewsid-3D01205=DwIFAw=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A=JTBeF2QPN2-NB4l7sB0VdZhNuE_mxophQaMcRPYwn5E=se-D6Q6pwAPkByDwIbTumyo9JAE46Eo5L8V6yTTzYvY= But being "professional" didn't guarantee success; the last release was in 2007. The "amateur" CentOS ended up with far better support with mostly volunteers. I have liked and respected the Scientific Linux developers and their attitude for quite some time, but it honestly wasn't a surprise to me when it was announced that there would be no SL8. The SL community seems to expect long-term support for any arbitrary point release; that is really unsustainable with a
Re: Sustainable computing - Re: CentOS EOL - politics?
Hi, ~Stack~ writes: > I'm curious about your thoughts on what it means to have that > sustainable footing going forward. A little bit pontificating but here is my take: "sustainable computing" must be "community all the way down". We must reject attempts by flighty (or other) corporations to inject profit-motivated gatekeeping. Embrace DIY and do-in-house expertise and reject outsourcing and brain drain. Prefer GPL and the AGPL licenses over MIT/BSD and certainly not proprietary for our own software and the software we base it on. Embrace decentralized distribution patterns for code, data and human-to-human information and reject centralized "cloud" services. Keep discussions (like these) on open mailing lists and out of locked up web forums. Of course, we may soften from this hard stance and still obtain some measure of sustainability but must then accept an increased risk of eventual upheaval. The fact that we got as far as we did with RH shows this trade off in action. Maybe Rocky gives us another decade or so until the cycle that CentOS started repeats. Or, maybe its future leadership never allow themselves to be bought out and the project perverted. But, even so, Rocky is not based on the effort of a community but that of a corporation and that corporation can do other things to strangle Rocky. As good intentions as Rocky may have, it isn't Debian in this regard. > [Singularity] Singularity and container technology in general have many benefits but on the scale of decades, I don't see that it solves "sustainability". It does have at least two things to offer in that direction: A container can provide an important ingredient in a "data preservation" effort to archive the run time environment associated with some past data/results. Post-2024, one may consider to run SL7 guest on a, say, CentOS 8 Stream host. This would give app-level stability while (maybe) still satisfying host-level security requirements. As time goes by, this "solution" gets more and more insecure. Of course, Singularity also has many other benefits and the lack of addressing sustainability doesn't stop me from making good use of it for other purposes. > [Kubernetes] I still fail to grok kubernetes so have no comment. -Brett. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Update from Rocky EL
This whole discussion brings to mind Eric Raymond's three essays; later an iconic 1999 book: "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". They discuss software development, culture and control, and business models between open-source and closed-source models. A decent synopsis of them can be found here: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__informatics.bmj.com_content_23_2_488=DwID-g=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A=kTytgzKkdHhIqdndyIcBX0DwNa_qVjjolf67ZOV5G10=oyQdXE2psOUlCUbuAYDOan3V_Lie-oK7KsICGigaoDo= They bear revisiting, I think. Teh, Kenneth M. wrote on 12/17/20 10:14 AM: Hear hear! *From:* owner-scientific-linux-us...@listserv.fnal.gov on behalf of Lamar Owen *Sent:* Thursday, December 17, 2020 10:04 AM *To:* scientific-linux-users *Subject:* Re: Update from Rocky EL On 12/16/20 9:55 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: ... The question I raised still needs to be addressed: will Rocky EL be done by paid professionals (as with SL or Springdale Princeton EL) or will it be done by volunteers, some (many) of whom are "amateurs"? I am very concerned about the use in a production professional environment of an "amateur" port of RHEL. ... Conflating "amateur" with a lack of quality and "professional" with high quality and guaranteed support is provably fallacious. One of the very first RHEL rebuilds, White Box Enterprise Linux, was, to use your notation, a "professional" production, sponsored by and for the Beauregard Parish Public Library in DeRidder, Louisiana (read "County" where they write "Parish," it's a Louisiana thing); see https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__distrowatch.com_-3Fnewsid-3D01205=DwIFAw=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A=JTBeF2QPN2-NB4l7sB0VdZhNuE_mxophQaMcRPYwn5E=se-D6Q6pwAPkByDwIbTumyo9JAE46Eo5L8V6yTTzYvY= But being "professional" didn't guarantee success; the last release was in 2007. The "amateur" CentOS ended up with far better support with mostly volunteers. I have liked and respected the Scientific Linux developers and their attitude for quite some time, but it honestly wasn't a surprise to me when it was announced that there would be no SL8. The SL community seems to expect long-term support for any arbitrary point release; that is really unsustainable with a small staff and budget. "Amateurs" can afford to dedicate more time in some cases than "professionals;" in my own field at $dayjob the whole science of radio astronomy owes its very existence to a talented and persistent amateur by the name of Grote Reber. Sure, Jansky made the initial discovery while on Bell Labs' payroll (as a "professional" he had to follow his employer's money and go to the next project); Reber did the legwork and got others interested, paving the way for "professional" radio astronomers. In another major area of physics, thermodynamics, medical doctor Julius von Mayer was overshadowed by James Joule; it didn't help that von Mayer was a medical doctor, not a "professional" physicist. (a good overview of that history: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Mechanical-5Fequivalent-5Fof-5Fheat-23Priority=DwIFAw=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A=JTBeF2QPN2-NB4l7sB0VdZhNuE_mxophQaMcRPYwn5E=p0ZIGrcPxwlbndK4YUIC_ynHLup-BPnuyhqss6Ez9pY= ). In computer science (using the non-ACM generalized definition of that term), well, all I need to say is "Linus Torvalds." The very kernel you run was an "amateur" creation, and for a number of years had no "professional" support. Likewise, the Debian distribution was started by "amateurs" and still has many "amateur" contributors; Ubuntu, a supposedly "professionally"-supported distribution bases its work on the "amateur" Debian; a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and if any part of even a "professional" distribution is supported by "amateurs" ... "professional" Linux distribution support is a house of cards built on an "amateur" foundation. It reminds me of the reasoning in Ken Thompson's Turing Award acceptance lecture "Reflections on Trusting Trust" ( https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.cs.cmu.edu_-7Erdriley_487_papers_Thompson-5F1984-5FReflectionsonTrustingTrust.pdf=DwIFAw=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A=JTBeF2QPN2-NB4l7sB0VdZhNuE_mxophQaMcRPYwn5E=-rEo5cSVS2fhIGxF42uFd_CWmc6DGwZNL3uLrDtYeL4= ). One problem with relying on "professional" staff is that the entity paying that staff has direct oversight into how much time they spend on those problems; the funding entity's goals and any particular end user's goals may differ dramatically, and the goals of the funder will trump the goals of the user. A second problem is that the same "professional" staff can be hired
Re: Joint Fermilab/CERN statement on recent CentOS Changes
> On 2020/12/18 0:17, James F Amundson wrote: > > CERN and Fermilab acknowledge the recent decision to shift focus from > > CentOS Linux to CentOS Stream, and the sudden change of the end of life of > > the CentOS 8 release. This may entail significant consequences for the > > worldwide particle physics community. We are currently investigating > > together the best path forward. We will keep you informed about any > > developments in this area during Q1 2021. > > > > James Amundson, Fermilab Scientific Computing Division Head > > > > Elizabeth Sexton-Kennedy, Fermilab Chief Information Officer Great. I hope it means there is a change to upgrade Scientific Linux 7 to 8.
Re: Update from Rocky EL
Hear hear! From: owner-scientific-linux-us...@listserv.fnal.gov on behalf of Lamar Owen Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2020 10:04 AM To: scientific-linux-users Subject: Re: Update from Rocky EL On 12/16/20 9:55 PM, Yasha Karant wrote: > ... The question I raised still needs to be addressed: will Rocky EL > be done by paid professionals (as with SL or Springdale Princeton EL) > or will it be done by volunteers, some (many) of whom are "amateurs"? > I am very concerned about the use in a production professional > environment of an "amateur" port of RHEL. ... Conflating "amateur" with a lack of quality and "professional" with high quality and guaranteed support is provably fallacious. One of the very first RHEL rebuilds, White Box Enterprise Linux, was, to use your notation, a "professional" production, sponsored by and for the Beauregard Parish Public Library in DeRidder, Louisiana (read "County" where they write "Parish," it's a Louisiana thing); see https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__distrowatch.com_-3Fnewsid-3D01205=DwIFAw=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A=JTBeF2QPN2-NB4l7sB0VdZhNuE_mxophQaMcRPYwn5E=se-D6Q6pwAPkByDwIbTumyo9JAE46Eo5L8V6yTTzYvY= But being "professional" didn't guarantee success; the last release was in 2007. The "amateur" CentOS ended up with far better support with mostly volunteers. I have liked and respected the Scientific Linux developers and their attitude for quite some time, but it honestly wasn't a surprise to me when it was announced that there would be no SL8. The SL community seems to expect long-term support for any arbitrary point release; that is really unsustainable with a small staff and budget. "Amateurs" can afford to dedicate more time in some cases than "professionals;" in my own field at $dayjob the whole science of radio astronomy owes its very existence to a talented and persistent amateur by the name of Grote Reber. Sure, Jansky made the initial discovery while on Bell Labs' payroll (as a "professional" he had to follow his employer's money and go to the next project); Reber did the legwork and got others interested, paving the way for "professional" radio astronomers. In another major area of physics, thermodynamics, medical doctor Julius von Mayer was overshadowed by James Joule; it didn't help that von Mayer was a medical doctor, not a "professional" physicist. (a good overview of that history: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Mechanical-5Fequivalent-5Fof-5Fheat-23Priority=DwIFAw=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A=JTBeF2QPN2-NB4l7sB0VdZhNuE_mxophQaMcRPYwn5E=p0ZIGrcPxwlbndK4YUIC_ynHLup-BPnuyhqss6Ez9pY= ). In computer science (using the non-ACM generalized definition of that term), well, all I need to say is "Linus Torvalds." The very kernel you run was an "amateur" creation, and for a number of years had no "professional" support. Likewise, the Debian distribution was started by "amateurs" and still has many "amateur" contributors; Ubuntu, a supposedly "professionally"-supported distribution bases its work on the "amateur" Debian; a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and if any part of even a "professional" distribution is supported by "amateurs" ... "professional" Linux distribution support is a house of cards built on an "amateur" foundation. It reminds me of the reasoning in Ken Thompson's Turing Award acceptance lecture "Reflections on Trusting Trust" ( https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.cs.cmu.edu_-7Erdriley_487_papers_Thompson-5F1984-5FReflectionsonTrustingTrust.pdf=DwIFAw=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A=JTBeF2QPN2-NB4l7sB0VdZhNuE_mxophQaMcRPYwn5E=-rEo5cSVS2fhIGxF42uFd_CWmc6DGwZNL3uLrDtYeL4= ). One problem with relying on "professional" staff is that the entity paying that staff has direct oversight into how much time they spend on those problems; the funding entity's goals and any particular end user's goals may differ dramatically, and the goals of the funder will trump the goals of the user. A second problem is that the same "professional" staff can be hired away by another company. A third problem is that "professionals" expect to be paid; where does the salary come from? The fourth problem is since there is very likely to be fewer "professional" staff supporting a revenue-negative project, each "professional" becomes extremely important or maybe even indispensible, and the project might have a hard time surviving a "bus incident" or even a major hurricane. I've witnessed all four of these issues first-hand RIP Seth. The problem with "amateurs" is that they can quite literally walk away without it negatively impacting their livelihood, and they're going to work on what interests them, whether it interests the end-user or not. I've witnessed
Re: Joint Fermilab/CERN statement on recent CentOS Changes
URL: CentOS 8 Linux@CERN https://linux.web.cern.ch/centos8/ Regrds, Takashi On 2020/12/18 0:17, James F Amundson wrote: CERN and Fermilab acknowledge the recent decision to shift focus from CentOS Linux to CentOS Stream, and the sudden change of the end of life of the CentOS 8 release. This may entail significant consequences for the worldwide particle physics community. We are currently investigating together the best path forward. We will keep you informed about any developments in this area during Q1 2021. James Amundson, Fermilab Scientific Computing Division Head Elizabeth Sexton-Kennedy, Fermilab Chief Information Officer *-- James Amundson* /Head, Scientific Computing Division/ Office of the CIO Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory +1 (630) 840-2430 office +1 (630) 488-6910 mobile
Joint Fermilab/CERN statement on recent CentOS Changes
CERN and Fermilab acknowledge the recent decision to shift focus from CentOS Linux to CentOS Stream, and the sudden change of the end of life of the CentOS 8 release. This may entail significant consequences for the worldwide particle physics community. We are currently investigating together the best path forward. We will keep you informed about any developments in this area during Q1 2021. James Amundson, Fermilab Scientific Computing Division Head Elizabeth Sexton-Kennedy, Fermilab Chief Information Officer -- James Amundson Head, Scientific Computing Division Office of the CIO Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory +1 (630) 840-2430 office +1 (630) 488-6910 mobile
Re: Update from Rocky EL
It is also linked now here: https://wiki.rockylinux.org/contributing Dave On Wed, Dec 16, 2020 at 06:55:15PM -0800, Yasha Karant wrote: > I "subscribed" to the Slack Rocky EL "list" after the information on how-to > subscribe was posted. It is possible that the public link in the URL bar of > Firefox is not the "real" URL. I did provide a full quote of the relevant > posting to the Rocky EL list; one needs the URL to verify that I had not > mis-quoted. The question I raised still needs to be addressed: will Rocky > EL be done by paid professionals (as with SL or Springdale Princeton EL) or > will it be done by volunteers, some (many) of whom are "amateurs"? I am > very concerned about the use in a production professional environment of an > "amateur" port of RHEL. I am not interested in "cradle-to-grave" outsourced > support, as under a RH or Oracle support contract, but access to the > necessary information from a "professional" list such as this SL list, and a > compensated professional staff behind the distro (as observed many times on > this SL list). > > On 12/16/20 6:17 PM, Vinícius Ferrão wrote: > > Hi Yasha, link seems to be broken. > > > > It points to a Google Docs document that???s unavailable. > > > > > On 16 Dec 2020, at 20:27, Yasha Karant wrote: > > > > > > I do not know how many on the SL list have subscribed to the quite > > > different Slack list for Rocky EL. Appended below is a very recent post. > > > Note: > > > > > > We have about 70 people in total all working through the following tasks: > > > ??? Management > > > ??? Web and branding > > > ??? Infrastructure > > > ??? Security and compliance > > > ??? Packaging > > > ??? Autobuilder research: will be moved to secure automated infrastructure > > > ??? Installer development > > > Now we are putting out a call for action. We want to hear from everyone > > > who wants to contribute and be part of Rocky Linux, so we assembled a > > > Google form which will allow us to to start organizing the team at large. > > > > > > End excerpt. > > > > > > Both Princeton EL (Springdale) and SL are supported by paid professionals > > > (as is Oracle EL -- unlike Princeton or Fermilab/CERN, Oracle is highly a > > > for-profit operation with the overall goal of profiteering by whatever > > > "legal" means possible -- evidently Oracle EL is not a viable alternative > > > because of what comes after deployment of the "no-fee" version -- the HEP > > > community does not seem to be adopting Oracle EL). I see no real > > > personnel selection criteria or other personnel mechanisms in what I am > > > reading about Rocky EL. Does anyone have further insight into this? An > > > unreliable "bug for bug" port (distro) of RHEL 8 (and follow-on major > > > releases) done by volunteers (some of whom may be professionals, some of > > > whom may not be) seems risky for real production use. > > > > > > Is the HEP community considering Rocky EL executables as supplied? Or > > > will the HEP community do internal evaluation and testing before > > > deployment, keeping a working distro separate from the vagaries of what > > > may (NOTE: *MAY*, not will) be an amateur volunteer distro? > > > > > > Take care. Stay safe. > > > > > > Yasha Karant > > > > > > gmk December 16th at 1:55 PM > > > @channel This last week has been a rollercoaster, starting with the bad > > > news from RedHat/CentOS about it no longer being a ???community??? or > > > ???enterprise??? operating system, to seeing a community grow from > > > nothing to something massive. Again, in just a week, here are some of the > > > notable accomplishments from this amazing team:??? Literally thousands of > > > people wanting to help overnight. This is the most engaging and motivated > > > community I???ve seen ever over my more than 20 year career with open > > > source. > > > ??? The first week was very hard because there were more people asking to > > > help and be part of this initiative than we could organize. Literally at > > > some point, it took me about an hour to go from one side of my Slack > > > messages to another. But now, we???ve built a structure and groups to > > > properly direct the people who want to help to where they can start > > > working. > > > We have about 70 people in total all working through the following tasks: > > > ??? Management > > > ??? Web and branding > > > ??? Infrastructure > > > ??? Security and compliance > > > ??? Packaging > > > ??? Autobuilder research: will be moved to secure automated infrastructure > > > ??? Installer development > > > Now we are putting out a call for action. We want to hear from everyone > > > who wants to contribute and be part of Rocky Linux, so we assembled a > > > Google form which will allow us to to start organizing the team at large. > > > Please add yourself to the form > > >
