Talk to the IBM Linux Hackers 245
We've all heard plenty about IBM's investment in Linux, but we don't hear much from -- or about -- the actual Linux developers at IBM. This interview is not with one person, but with a number of IBM Linux people spearheaded by Dave Hansen, who volunteered to help us with this interview. Of the group responding to your questions, Dave says, "There are more people, but the majority of the group's skills are represented. No surprise that we'll have our responses reviewed before we send them back to you, but we'll try to expedite that.
"A little background:
The group's experience is pretty broad. Most members were Sequent employees who worked on Dynix/PTX before IBM acquired Sequent (we are still mostly based in Beaverton, OR). Not everyone was with Sequent; Matt Dobson and Dave Hansen came into the group last summer, right out of college. A few of our Austin colleagues are long time IBM employees who worked on the AIX kernel before moving to Linux. Ask about anything from the rmap VM, to PTX's crashdump facilities, to life in Portland :)
- Martin Bligh - Large IA32 system VM scalability, Specweb, NUMA
- Dave Hansen - Big Kernel Lock, SMP locking, Specweb99
- Matt Dobson - NUMA API/ Documentation
- Rick Lindsley - SMP/NUMA Locking, Performance Tuning
- Patricia Gaughen - Discontiguous Memory for NUMA
- Bill Irwin - VM/rmap hacker
- Hanna Linder - dcache_lock scalability
- Janet Morgan - I/O Scalability
- Ruth Forrester - database/performance/scalability"
Multi-CPU Scalability (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Multi-CPU Scalability (Score:1, Informative)
That says nothing about the main point of the question of 64-128 processor multi-processors.
Re:Multi-CPU Scalability (Score:2)
Re:Multi-CPU Scalability (Score:2)
OS Blending (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:OS Blending (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:OS Blending (Score:3, Informative)
There's a pretty large (virtual) fence between the AIX and Linux hackers. That doesn't stop IBM from trying to get AIXisms into Linux (read JFS and powerpc optimizations).
If the economy wasn't so damn bad I'd have transferred over to the LTC long ago...
(posting anonymously to keep my job...)
Re:OS Blending (Score:2)
Re:OS Blending (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:OS Blending (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:OS Blending (Score:2)
gnome? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:gnome? (Score:1)
Re:gnome? (Score:2)
Features! (Score:5, Interesting)
compiler (Score:3, Interesting)
from AIX to Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Women in computing (Score:2, Interesting)
What are your opinions regarding the shrinking number of women in the industry? (actually I believe the numbers are rising again in schools)
Re:Women in computing (Score:2)
I haven't heard any statistics about any recent changes, but I think if the number of women in this industry is shrinking, it's good evidence that women are smarter than men. They're seeing that engineering is a crappy, under-paid, overly stressful, and exceedingly unstable profession, and are heading for greener pastures. It took me five years of college and a few years in the workforce to figure this out for myself; my hat's off to others who see this sooner.
Now if the number of women in school for engineering is rising, that's a sign of two possible things: 1) younger women are stupider (and judging from what I see of high-school kids these days, I'm starting to think just this of all kids), or 2) they're getting an engineering degree for its prestige or value in going into some other type of profession later, and have no plans to become corporate drones for EE companies.
Will Linux be free over the long run? (Score:3, Interesting)
The licenses are still open, but as a practical matter, most of the core development is being done by corporate people that are concentrated in a few companies like RedHat, and to a lesser extent, IBM.
Do we low end users have cause to worry about this? Does IBM worry about the control that a company like RedHat has over IBM's Linux initiative? And is it really possible, as a pratical matter, for technology as complex as GCC to be forked by volunteers?
Re:Will Linux be free over the long run? (Score:1)
Large companies can create their own distributions, in fact even other large organizations can create their own distributions (NSA for example is working on a high security distribution.) IBM or RedHat have market for their distributions and it does not mean that there is no market for Debian.
Re:Will Linux be free over the long run? (Score:2)
What's the problem here? I've "forked" a number of C compilers in the past. I found myself working on projects that needed a cross-compiler, so I got one
and recompiled it for the new machine. In the process, I invariably had to make a number of changes. Thus, to aid in debugging, I added a builtin caller() function to several compilers that acted pretty much like perl's function of that name. I've also added in a number of hooks to make the code interoperate with debuggers. This should all qualify as a "fork", since my code was never folded back into the original compiler. And yes, I did such things all by myself.
Granted, GNU makes things that are bigger and more complex than most others. But I don't think that forking it would be much of a job for one person who knows a bit about compilers. If GNU didn't want something useful folded back in, the result could well be a fork.
I love this kind of publicity (Score:1, Troll)
Re:I love this kind of publicity (Score:1)
Filesystems (Score:4, Interesting)
My work is particularly interested in filesystems > 64 TB and RAID with > 20 devices.
Re:JFS and LVM further integration a la AIX (Score:2)
here [ibm.com].
Extending is apparently going to be implemented RSN, and ACL:s seem to be a longer term project.
The Open Source model (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Open Source model (Score:2)
IBM's model is only partly to use Linux to sell their hardware. Today's IBM is more of a service company than a hardware company. Their move towards Linux is more because they think (and rightfully so) that they can make money with *service* for Linux, not because Linux will sell a ton of hardware boxes. IBM knows that hardware (except for the highest-end stuff) becomes a commodity over time with little to no margin. Service, however, allows the company to leverage its brand and experience to charge a premium over the local VAR, and thus create a reasonable margin.
As for IBM's opinion of Open Source business models and their validity, I certainly hope they have a lot of belief in the business model of giving away the software and charging for service... otherwise, they're one confused company.
Cheers
-b
Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Linux? (Score:2)
No offense, but I'd rather see questions that the interviewees are well suited to answer.
Cheers
-b
Getting your changes accepted? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is Linus accepting your changes well? How directly do you submit patches, and what are your experiences on the overall Linux kernel development style?
Marketing? (Score:1, Flamebait)
linux on thinkpads (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:linux on thinkpads (Score:2, Informative)
This new a31p has a built in wireless card, that was the only thing that needed work, and once I put 2.5.13 on it, even that card worked fine. I used the stock redhat 7.3 CD to install everything. Even X.
The video card on this laptop is an ATI Mobility Fire GL 7800 (64MB video card), it's supposed to be bad-ass, only Dell ships with a 64MB nvidia to compete with this a31 model btw.
Apart from the modem, I think IBM's laptops are the greatest mobile machines to install Linux on.
But aside from that, I agree with the final question. About this time last year, you could find Linux pre-installed on the ibm.com website, hell it was even advertised
Re:linux on thinkpads (Score:2, Informative)
Oh, sound was an issue, but IBM's website tells you how to make it work. It uses the cs4232 driver. The device does not init correctly on boot for some reason, so if you remove then remodprobe the module it works fine.
I'm unable to suspend to disk, but I didn't set up a partition for that. Haven't seen if Windows will still do it after I repartitioned.
I'm looking forward to the suspend to RAM functionality of the 2.5 kernel.
I've been trying to get the serial port to work today without much success. I believe I have the tools required.
The MWave soft modem driver was released just a bit ago (source and all I believe), I have downloaded the driver, but haven't tried it yet.
I've gotten DVD working great with mplayer (be sure to use the FFmpeg library). On a P2-400MHz!
All in all I'm very pleased! I got mine for a song on Ebay.
Re:linux on thinkpads (Score:2)
What I'd like to know is exactly who in IBM is pushing Linux and what divisions they oversee. The whole s390 Linux thing took me completely by surprise as I had no idea the big iron IBM folks had any interest in Linux; from what I understand, this started as a bunch of s390 engineers messing about with a VM during their lunch hour, but now it seems like it's getting attention from above (which is very cool, but somewhat unexpected for those of us who've been in Corporate America for too long).
I can't imagine an ebullience of Linux enthusiasm overtaking all ranks of IBM, so I'm guessing there's someone higher-up who's pushing Linux. I'd like to know who these people are and what parts of IBM this affects and does not affect.
Anyway, it'd be better if someone on slashdot with inside info could answer this question. I don't want to bore these engineers with politics (I'm looking forward to a hardcore technical interview, not some fluff that I can find on cnet or salon).
Linux On The Desktop (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Linux On The Desktop (Score:1, Interesting)
Best way into the Professional Linux world? (Score:5, Interesting)
As many people here, I am a huge Linux fan, but I am so much so that I am trying to figure out how to get into the professional Linux world when I graduate.
I attend Clemson University [clemson.edu] and am in the Computer Information System (CS + business) program [clemson.edu] (and doubled in Political Science [clemson.edu]). My goal is to become a Linux sys admin, or perhaps some other Linux guru type job. The work that IBM is doing with Linux is also very appealing to me.
So, how did you get your job, and what would you recommend as the path to follow for us geeks just getting started in the professional world as to how to get into Linux? How can I become as entrenched with Linux as the professionals at IBM? I have had two internships (not with IBM, nor with Linux, but with other CS stuff), but how can I get an entry-level job in a Linux intensive environment like IBM? How can said job lead me into a career where I can be deeply involved in the Linux world?
Extreme Blue (Score:2)
Re:Best way into the Professional Linux world? (Score:2)
Aim higher. You don't typically come to IBM to become a sysadmin. I strongly suggest making yourself known to the e-Business Infrastructure group [ibm.com]. Come here if you want to always be at the forefront of "professional grade Linux".
but how can I get an entry-level job in a Linux intensive environment like IBM?
I was not a college hire, but we get a fresh new batch every year. I had 7 years of varied IT experience (6 of Linux; most of it personal). Even then it took 3 years to get hired. In '97, e-biz was not ready to embrace Linux, but by 2000 they knew it was the future and were grabbing up as many practitioners as they could find. Now the market is coming at us full bore and it feels a lot like the moments leading up to the first time Jodie Foster heard the transmissions in Contact.
In e-Business we use the most appropriate tool for the job, so it helps to understand [ibm.com] the 3-tier application infrastructure model, and why IBM releases Linux versions of nearly all of its software on all hardware platforms.
distros? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also explaining why you chose that distrobution would be great.
Thanks
Re:distros? (Score:2, Informative)
I personally use SuSE 8.0 Professional on my workstation (I'm typing on it right now, in fact). We have our own internal mirrors that have the latest Linux distributions on them - that's where I got my copy from.
Most people use the Client for eBusiness, but I'm more comfortable with SuSE.
Issues with middle management (Score:5, Interesting)
What is Linux Missing? (Score:5, Interesting)
What features do you find linux most lacking in?
(If we don't examine our weaknesses, we will be crippled)not laid off? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:not laid off? (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, the layoffs did not completely miss the Linux folks in Beaverton (or elsewhere) but I think IBM's commitment to Linux is underscored by how it was minimized.
When do you estimate Linux can surpass Solaris? (Score:5, Interesting)
___
More about *nixs as a whole, and your view. (Score:3, Interesting)
Most everyone in the world would say that Linux/Unix is not as user friendly as say OSX and Windows/add suffix here.
With that in mind do you guys see this complexity as a bonus or a henderance to all *nixs moving forward, and please let us know why you feel this way.
FreeBSD (Score:1, Interesting)
IBM's Linux engagement (Score:2)
IBM was so kind to support this Linux event, and therefore they present really cool stuff, namely two Linux-based 1024-node clusters.
Corporate oversight .vs. free flow of information (Score:3, Insightful)
OS/2 Developers (Score:5, Interesting)
Specifically, the user interface and accessability people - OS/2 was very polished - does IBM see a benefit by offering this expertise to the GNOME/KDE projects?
If so, how does this tie into IBM's vision of Linux of the desktop, if you have one?
Older IBM Machines (Score:3, Interesting)
My question is this, along with bringing linux to the newer machines, are there plans to support the older machines?
Linux development tied to IBM hardware? (Score:2)
Linux on AS/400 (Score:4, Interesting)
ViaVoice and Linux -- what's happening? (Score:5, Interesting)
What can IBM tell us about the company's future plans for voice recognition under Linux, and in particular, if IBM found supporting the ViaVoice SDK economically unviable, is there any chance that they could open source the code so that volunteers could continue to maintain/develop it?
As evidence of the open source community's interest in the SDK, check out the projects in Sourceforge that rely on it. I just hope that IBM doesn't let the Linux ViaVoice SDK go the way of Blender !!!
Re:ViaVoice and Linux -- what's happening? (Score:1)
I would think with staroffice/openoffice now out, it would be a good time for IBM to release an update to this desktop-productivity product (ViaVoice). Any offices that convert to openoffice/staroffice will need to have a dictation product for its disabled employees (guaranteed sales).
pSeries Support (Score:1)
Thanks!
Martin McGreal
St Louis, MO
Does IBM view OSS as better, or just different? (Score:2)
C++ compiler for Linux? (Score:4, Interesting)
IBM's the good guy now? (Score:2, Interesting)
Lin Vs Win (Score:2, Interesting)
Linux Distribution Flavors (Score:2, Interesting)
Ruger
Which came first? (Score:2, Insightful)
Or are the two entirely unrelated?
Is IBM's commitment to Linux political hype? (Score:3, Interesting)
CAN YOU SAY "C A T I A" (Score:2, Interesting)
The only shops that i know of that are going to V5 are changing to NT from AIX.
NUMA and AMD Opteron (Score:2)
AMD's Opteron (Hammer) will integrate Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) features. IBM has had significant NUMA design experience through its own products and acquisitions.
Does IBM plan any major NUMA efforts for Linux? Is there any synergy with NUMA-Q? How will any NUMA efforts impact IBM's Itanium commitments? Any possibility that we might see an Opteron port of AIX 5L?
And, perhaps most importantly, if AMD's NUMA efforts prove fruitful, might IBM be forced to de-emphasize it to protect its competing product lines? After all, AIX only recently became "partitionable", while Solaris has had this feature for some time...
Linux within IBM's Profesionnal Services (Score:2, Interesting)
Evangelizing Linux on PowerPC (Score:3, Interesting)
Portland the beautiful (Score:1)
All I have to say is keep up the good work, and make Robbins an offer for chrissssss Sake.
IA64 (Score:5, Interesting)
In general, the Itanium has seen quite poor adoption rates and even Intel/HP admit that their initial public silicon is really only fit for software developers and platform work (due to low performance, and altready established players in the 64-bit field).
Do you think that IPF64 line will see any kind of broad industry adoption? Will it become just like rest of the (non-embedded) processor architectures designed since the x86 -- constantly fighting for 5% of the market? Do you think the AMD Hammer architecture will be a meaningful player in the field?
Since your group is a key player in the Linux on IA64 and GCC for IA64 projects, can you give us any status information about recent developments in the project since the IA-64 Summit [linuxia64.org]?
Thanks,
-Chris [nondot.org]
The Linux Perception... (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux needs positive marketing. So my question is, what can you do to champion Linux with IBM's giant huge marketing machine? Not every IT person in the world reads Slashdot (I'd venture to say less than 1%), but a large number of IT people read MS marketing. So the perception most IT people have about Linux is through a Microsoft lens.
390 code (Score:5, Interesting)
IBM support for Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
IBM never release any desktop tools for Linux. The Lotus SmartSuite never hit the Linux Desktop, nor Notes. By doing this, IBM it's the only company with Microsoft do not port they office suite to Linux.
The IBM's Lexmark company never provide any driver for the home
IBM also dicontinue the support for ViaVoice under Linux!
IBM also doesn't support they desktop and notebook hardware under Linux or other free OS! IBM even take the FreeBSD partition number to use it for it's "suppend to disk" on the bios of ThinkPad making them unusable for FreeBSD !
I really think that's IBM only take the Linux part they need now, and don't look at the future.
The grid computing it's right there at our door, and already desktop begin to replace mainframe in batch processing. We are now using lost cpu cycle do process job under the Windows and Linux desktop. If IBM doesn't investigate this oppurtunity (and the Linux Desktop) in the neer future, IBM will just don't get the next wave and will begin to clash !
Re:IBM support for Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
My question is
To you think IBM will support Linux in an broad manner instead of only on there aging Mainframe ?
Linux it's not only the kernel, it also the GNU movement and it's also a lot of individual who program it, and program application for it and use it.
When a company claim to support Linux and in fact they only use it to promote they older and desuet platform, it's a really bad move for my opinion.
IBM Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:IBM Linux? (Score:2)
IBM Lindows would make my day
Any future outside of Mainframe shops? (Score:2, Interesting)
A example, widely sited, states that great cost savings can be achieved by consolidating 100's if not 1000's of pc servers. This only works, if the servers being replaced are under extremely low work loads. Many argue that a much greater savings could be achieved in consolidating serives on existing x86 systems.
The only example that've heard that makes any sense, is using linux to extend the cabilities of Mainframe OS's (i.e. using linux, to run apache to create on-line reports, replacing printouts).
Outstanding Linux Kernel Issues (Score:5, Interesting)
[1] Rik van Riel VM (RMAP) or Andrea Arcangeli VM?
[2] Is a new kernel build system needed for the linux kernel?
[3] Modules/InitRAMFS or regular ol' monolithic kernel?
[4] Which journaling file system does IBM see becoming the de facto journaling file system for Linux? In other words, what's so cool about JFS
I apologize for sneaking in a few too many questions.
Re:Outstanding Linux Kernel Issues (Score:2)
Not so recently it was shown that BOTH [linuxdevices.com] are better.
Inter-Company Cooperation (Score:5, Interesting)
Other commercial organizations, notably SGI, are also putting forth effort in those areas. There is actually quite a bit of overlap.
Since these are "open source" projects, do you collaborate with your traditional "enemies" such as SGI and Sun on Linux? What is your management's attitude towards that type of collaboration? If not, do you "look" at the work the others are doing in comparison to what you are doing?
Layoffs (Score:3, Interesting)
Benefits from your work to the x86 architecture (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words, what are the areas of the Kernel where IBM invested resources that x86-based machines will benefit from, in terms of performance, scalability, robustness, etc.?
Attitude, Experience and Environment (Score:2, Interesting)
IBM, Employment, and the Linux community. (Score:3, Interesting)
Why isn't IBM making more of an effort to recruit developers directly from the Linux community, as opposed to hiring people who have very little if any working familliarity with the platform?
Speaking from experience (I worked at Big Blue for about 2 years), the typical new-hire at IBM knows very little about Unix and other core technologies that form the foundation of your company, and its products...I can name several that didn't even know what a network card was, who gained full-time positions as regulars within the company while top-level engineers and other knowledgable employees were getting pink slipped for cost reductions.
There are employees at IBM who are just now learning what a network card is, while thousands of seasoned Linux developers go unemployed.
What does IBM plan to do about the experience gap within the company?
Re:IBM, Employment, and the Linux community. (Score:2)
I don't think your question is very fair. IBM has been very active in recruiting people from the Linux community including the Extreme Blue [ibm.com] program which recruits college students who are very active in the Open Source community and gives them a chance to work on Open Source software at IBM. I also know of a number of top open source developers who were hired by IBM to work on important technologies.
There's always a need for entry level people and I don't think it's fair to ask IBM not to hire these folks. If they didn't, you would simply complain that they don't hire entry level people and therefore, aren't given anyone a chance to develop marketable skills.
Porting AIX tools to Linux? (Score:3)
There are two reasons for this, sysback and the lvm.
Sysback makes it braindead-simple for a technician in a remote site to restore a server. Pop a tape into the drive, turn the machine on and walk away.
Combined with the great logical volume manager and smit, AIX is probaly the easiest os to deploy.
Are there any plans to deploy these tools to the linux platform. This would make it alot easier to move large customers, particularly government to IBM/Linux solutions.
history of linux? (Score:2, Interesting)
Leveraging IBM's weight in the desktop struggle (Score:2, Interesting)
IBMer question (Score:4, Interesting)
As an IBMer with a thinkpad, I'd like to ask a very straightforward, down to business question.
When will I have Linux running on my Thinkpad, supporting my internal IBM needs?
Seems to me that there will be some initial development cost, perhaps a bit of training, but in the end, a Linux machine would be more easily maintianed. Between exporting xterms, allowing support to telnet or ssh in and needing to be root to really screw stuff up, I think there's a great deal of leverage there. I've looked into the C4EB (Client for E-Business, for those not in IBM speak) stuff, but I can't find out how to run my Lotus 1-2-3, Wordpro, Freelance, etc. (including secure tunneling aka working from home) without kludging it. Certainly, it's fit for some needs, but my job places me in a less flexible position.
My background: I'm a hardware engineer, been playing with Linux since Slackware 96 (in 1996) as a user and admin. I won't allow an unsupported distribution, like Debian or Slackware, to touch my machine, as so many IBM specific things make assumptions.
How about a CD (or 4) that I could boot to that could 1) shrink my Win2k partition 2) set aside my hibernate partition so hibernating will stop blowing away my Linux partition 3) install Linux, Gnome or KDE, Wine and integrate Lotus 1-2-3, Wordpro and Freelance. Sure, I could do this on my own, investing the weeks or months that I had when I was a student, but I'm married now and my management won't support a hardware engineer playing with software on that level.
I think it'd be sweet to be able to hit a shortcut that would export to a bot, signal a telnet or whatever, so an automated script could diagnose simple problems and queue for human review if necessary.
Hiring? (Score:2)
Linux Security Certification (Score:3, Interesting)
groups, does IBM have any plans to work with Red Hat
for A NIAP Common Criteria evaluation (making it hunky-dory, from a security perspective to use Linux.) How about FIPS 140-2 for the IBM-Linux crypto cards?
Working on top of a VM (Score:2, Interesting)
Loved the Linux basketball commercial (Score:3)
One guy says to the other, "You know, that guy Linux doesn't get paid a cent for this"
and the other guy says "No! Why does he do it then?"
And the first guy says "Loves the game..."
Well, that just about says it all. Thanks IBM.
thad
Cross-platform applications with Java, Mono etc. (Score:3, Insightful)
DotNET will add a major cross-platform capability to Windows apps - there is a risk that this could leave Linux high and dry.
Is there a specific IBM strategy addressing this problem, e.g.
User Groups (Score:2)
-bill!
pr@lugod.org
http://www.lugod.org/
Re:An IBM Business OS? (Score:2)
OS/2 in it's current form pretty much does all that, or is very close. The big advantage OS/2 has, is it was made for 486's, so it screams on current hardware, if you have supported hardware. For example, you have to grab a newer IDE driver, and create a new install disk just to install Warp 4 on a >4GB HD. See Odin [netlabs.org] for Win32 support, and see EcomStation [ecomstation.com] for the latest version of OS/2
Re:Thanksgiving (Score:2)
Re:Thanksgiving (Score:2)