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GNU is Not Unix Software Linux

Tridgell and Samba Recognized 93

Posted by michael from the pat-on-the-back dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It's official, Samba creator Andrew Tridgell is Australia's smartest man... in IT anyway. He's received Bulletin magazine's 'Smart 100' award for the IT sector. He's also written about how Samba came into being, which was basically because he was trying to avoid doing any real work on his PhD. He also tells us how he discovered Linux and why he believes Open Source Software is superior to proprietary code... He also talks about rsync and his plans for the future..."
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Tridgell and Samba Recognized More

Tridgell and Samba Recognized

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  • ...about Linus Torvalds:


    One of the most memorable parts of that evening was when my Linux NFS [Network File System] server died, to the point that the console seemed completely dead (the load of all those Doom WAD files obviously got to it). I was about to press reset when Linus stepped in and said he wanted to work out why it had crashed, so he could fix it. I then watched in complete amazement as Linus exploited a remote file truncation bug he knew about in the NFS server I was running which allowed him to peek into the proc filesystem on the apparently dead server and work out enough to find the bug. Up till then I had considered myself to be a pretty good programmer, and quite good at debugging system crashes, but that incident taught me that I would always be an also-ran who just isn't in the same league as
    people like Linus.

    This is from an interview here [linuxworld.com.au].
  • One of Austrailia's nicest guys.

    • ...and probably Canberra's nicest. Not that there's a lot of competition.

    • I'd tend to use slightly more objective words like patient, careful, wise, diplomatic, thoughtful, intelligent, hard-working and so on. In short, most of the useful characteristics I lack. (-:

      Like most of the FOSS superstars, if you met him on the street you probably wouldn't recognise him. With a handful of exceptions, FOSS people are recognised primarily for their utility and productivity rather than for dashing good looks or social dexterity.

      From what little I know of Tridge, he'd be hastening to point

  • RSYNC (Score:5, Informative)

    by bodin ( 2097 ) on Friday October 24, 2003 @10:07AM (#7300429) Homepage
    And the reason we should _LOVE_ Andrew is not only samba (I mean, this is just a thing needed to be interopable with *that* OS), but a totally different thing.

    RSYNC

    Those having read his papers about the rsync protocol or attending one of Andrews seminars in the subject will definitively agree.

    I hope a lot of you use rsync. It's a wonderful piece of software.

    • Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cperciva ( 102828 ) on Friday October 24, 2003 @10:36AM (#7300718) Homepage
      Rsync is overrated. It's useful for files with local edits (eg, text and source code), but performs poorly on files which tend to have global, sparse, changes (eg, most data files, and all executables). Changing one character will result in an entire block being transmitted -- put another way, the bandwidth usage is O(n/k+kD), where n is the file size, D is the edit distance, and k is a parameter (the block size).

      This is considerably worse than necessary; it is possible to cut the bandwidth down to O(n/k+kI+S), where n,k are as above, I is the number of inserts/deletes, and S is the number of substitutions. For executable files, this can easily result in a fivefold improvement.

      Rsync is certainly a useful tool, but it isn't the synchronization-tool-to-end- all-synchronization-tools which many people consider it to be.

      (Side note: I have the same DPhil supervisor as Andrew Tridgell, so I feel perfectly entitled to bash my fellow student's work.)
      • So if it's possible, has anyone done it? If so, and another file sync tool exists which has superior bandwidth utilisation, why not post a link to it? Why hasn't it already become more popular than rsync?

        You would really be "entitled" to bash rsync if you had come up with a superior implementation yourself, but I would hope you could at least point one out.

      • Re:Meh. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by EvilTwinSkippy ( 112490 )
        Gentoo users everywhere would beg to differ.

        A working implementation is far more useful than a perfect theory.

      • Rsync is overrated. It's useful for files with local edits (eg, text and source code), but performs poorly on files which tend to have global, sparse, changes (eg, most data files, and all executables). Changing one character will result in an entire block being transmitted -- put another way, the bandwidth usage is O(n/k+kD), where n is the file size, D is the edit distance, and k is a parameter (the block size).

        I found it cool that you busted out big-O, so I tried to make some sense of your argument but

        • Re:Meh. (Score:3, Insightful)

          by cperciva ( 102828 )
          Could you explain why 'kD=kI+S'?

          It isn't. The edit distance D is equal to I+S -- rsync uses a factor of k more bandwidth than necessary for dealing with isolated substitutions.

          You're saying that substitutions can be done in constant bandwith inpendent of the file size?!

          Well... there's actually a factor of log(n/S) which I omitted. And the n/k is actually n/k log(n) (for both algorithms). But keeping track of logarithmic factors gets a bit silly -- people like to assume that they can perform things
      • This is considerably worse than necessary; it is possible to cut the bandwidth down to O(n/k+kI+S), where n,k are as above, I is the number of inserts/deletes, and S is the number of substitutions.
        Got a source to back that up? (Eg a description of such an algorithm, source code that implements it, etc.)
        • Got a source to back that up? (Eg a description of such an algorithm

          Ok, here's a description of the algorithm:
          1. Chop the (old) file into pieces.
          2. Work out appoximately where those pieces go.
          3. Fill in any holes and correct any errors from step 2.

          Of course, that isn't incredibly useful -- but I can't explain any further without, well, writing a ten page paper about this. Be patient, wait for the paper, and all will become clear.
      • Someone is obviously bitter because he's not the smartest IT man of Australia.
    • Let's not forget he was also one of the first people to get to grips with TiVo hacking; see the TiVo ISA ethernet [samba.org] stuff for a start. Proper TiVo hardware & software hacking in the days before you could just buy a TurboNet from 9thTee...
    • unison is another excellent file synchronizer, someways better than rsync. It does true two way file synchornization.

      http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

  • SAMBA IS NOT QUITE FREE! (Score:5, Funny)

    by SharpFang ( 651121 ) on Friday October 24, 2003 @10:09AM (#7300450) Homepage Journal
    It's Pizzaware!

    1.9. Pizza supply details

    Those who have registered in the Samba survey as "Pizza Factory" will
    already know this, but the rest may need some help. Andrew doesn't ask
    for payment, but he does appreciate it when people give him pizza.
    This calls for a little organisation when the pizza donor is twenty
    thousand kilometres away, but it has been done.

    Method 1: Ring up your local branch of an international pizza chain
    and see if they honour their vouchers internationally. Pizza Hut do,
    which is how the entire Canberra Linux Users Group got to eat pizza
    one night, courtesy of someone in the US

    Method 2: Ring up a local pizza shop in Canberra and quote a credit
    card number for a certain amount, and tell them that Andrew will be
    collecting it (don't forget to tell him.) One kind soul from Germany
    did this.

    Method 3: Purchase a pizza voucher from your local pizza shop that has
    no international affiliations and send it to Andrew. It is completely
    useless but he can hang it on the wall next to the one he already has
    from Germany :-)

    Method 4: Air freight him a pizza with your favourite regional
    flavours. It will probably get stuck in customs or torn apart by
    hungry sniffer dogs but it will have been a noble gesture.

    -- Samba FAQ

  • A little Aussie ingenuity goes a long way.

  • more comments on rsynd (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stonebeat.org ( 562495 ) on Friday October 24, 2003 @10:16AM (#7300526) Homepage
    i would have been nice to have more details on the future of RSYNC.
    RSYNC works on unix/linux
    rsync worx on windows using cyygin.dll
    Novell ported RSYNC to Netware http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/show files.php?group_id=1148&release_id=276 [novell.com] and is using for synchronization.

    So RSYNCS is definitely the product of choice for syncrhonization. What lies in future for RSYNC????

    • Re:more comments on rsynd (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      What lies in future for RSYNC????

      Last I heard, Justin Timberlake was considering staying with his solo career, but there's always hope for a reunion sometime down the road.

      "Rock your boooooooody..."

    • The portage system for Gentoo uses RSYNC to keep up-to-date with all of the lastest recipies for packages. I also know of at least one large university department that uses RSYNC to patch and configure a few hundred workstations and servers.

  • avoiding thesis work (Score:4, Funny)

    by airuck ( 300354 ) on Friday October 24, 2003 @10:19AM (#7300551)
    He's also written about how Samba came into being, which was basically because he was trying to avoid doing any real work on his PhD.

    I think that is common. Our LUG [lugod.org] was founded and remains heavily influenced by this effect. Nice to know that so many are compelled to avoid their profs long enough to something useful

    • Nice to know that so many are compelled to avoid their profs long enough to something useful

      I don't see the connection. Samba isn't useful because Andrew didn't want to do any real work at the time -- Samba is useful because Andrew's a skilled programmer. Rsync (even with its flaws) is far more important than Samba.

      Likewise, I put together FreeBSD Update (see .sig) while I was avoiding doing any real work; but my real work is going to be far more important than FreeBSD Update in the end.

  • Samba tutorials (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24, 2003 @10:22AM (#7300593)
    Here's are a couple of Samba tutorials for ya'll to chew on: This tutorial [ibm.com] shows you how to configure Samba as the primary domain controller, and this tutorial [ibm.com] shows you how to turn a Unix or Linux system into a file and print server for Microsoft Windows network clients. Configure LDAP to serve as a user authentication source for Samba, and you've got a one-two punch.

  • Don't forget his work Hacking TiVos! (Score:5, Informative)

    by jkeegan ( 35099 ) on Friday October 24, 2003 @10:23AM (#7300603) Homepage Journal
    Of course from a hacking standpoint, many of us have Tridge to thank for his work on the TivoNet card. That brought ethernet access to the TiVo, and his later work on video extraction made great use of the bandwidth. :)

    Thanks, Tridge!

    Of course, he's given credit in the book Hacking TiVo [amazon.com]. :)
  • Don't forget Tridge was also the creator of the original TivoNET card. And the first to figure out how to remove the video from Tivo as well.
  • Admit it. With the exception of Apache, Samba is the number one reason that Linux (and BSD, too!) has been able to invade the datacenters of companies the world over.

    Without Samba, Linux et al would be in a much less pretty position.

    Perhaps we should call it Samba/GNU/Linux? :)

    Kudos to the Samba Team, Tridge, and all Samba developers/testers/users!
    • Admit it. With the exception of Apache, Samba is the number one reason that Linux (and BSD, too!) has been able to invade the datacenters of companies the world over .... Perhaps we should call it Samba/GNU/Linux? :)

      Well spoken!

      -kgj
    • I'd say samba was important, but sendmail was the camel's nose in the tent for my network.

      Email, the original reason to keep a linux box around.

    • I went to SGI's "Linux University" a few years ago (back when they were saying, "We're about to release XFS for Linux, and here's why it's the best filesystem in the known universe"), and Jeremy Allison was one of the speakers. I enjoyed the session, and even got to talk to him for a few minutes afterwards.

      One of the things that stuck with me was him expressing the hope that people would eventually stop using Samba because it would no longer be required. He regards SMB as an awful protocol, and isn't muc
    • "Without Samba, Linux et al would be in a much less pretty position."

      Actually I don't really believe that.

      "With the exception of Apache, Samba is the number one reason that Linux (and BSD, too!) has been able to invade the datacenters of companies the world over."

      Uh what about Bind and Sendmail? I love Samba as well but it comes at a waay distant 4th (if that) to those apps. Apache, Bind, and Sendmail are what got the free nix's in the door, Samba was just a nice bonus.
      • I somehow agree with the Apache/Samba argument. (I would perhaps even add the Gimp, although it obviously isn't too useful in a "data center") At least in my experience, these two have been more closely connected with Free Software/Linux in the mid/late 1990ies - stuff like Sendmail and Bind just happened to be Free as well, and run on Linux among other systems.

        This has not much to do with technical issues, licenses, or importance for the net infrastructure. It was a cultural thing, these projects were fl

      • IPTables (hi, Rusty!), PostFix, OpenOffice.org, OpenLDAP, OpenSSL, Mozilla, the KDE suite... all of these make Linux useful as well. SaMBa is "just" one more "pluggable" component on the most popular server application framework in existence. It happens to be a very good one (as in, robust, extensive, flexible, secure).

        Lest you think I'm only a one-eyed Penguinista, I've used and benefited from SaMBa running on Solaris, BSDi, *BSD, Irix, HP-UX and AIX too.

        One piece of MS-Windows software which always amus
  • I am not an OS zealot. I enjoy the sunshine too much to worry about media drivers and file systems. However, Mr. Tridgell makes several comments I find incongruous:

    First, he talks about his first attempt at Samba, "It really wasn't a very good piece of code, and it certainly wasn't very reliable, but the important thing is that I then decided to release it to the world for free.".

    So from this, it would seem he would be arguing that it was bad code, written sloppily; but that released into the "wild" so
    • Samba often needs rewrites because of the scope of changes that MS make to their protocols and authentication mechanisms. The samba team will ALWAYS be one step behind on this one because they have to wait and see what MS do and then respond.

    • Re:I find his argument somewhat strange. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 0123456 ( 636235 ) on Friday October 24, 2003 @10:51AM (#7300906)
      "So, it's the "proprietaries" as I will not call them that only write bad code? Didn't he just suggest that his first attempt was poorly written. Or maybe he's arguing that it's continually poor no matter how many times it's re-written."

      His argument, I think, is that with closed source, dozens of companies are all writing bad code to do the same thing, whereas with open source, that bad code only has to be written once... and then either the programmer soon gets so embarassed that they end up rewriting it properly, or someone else gets so disgusted that they do so.
    • Rewrites are not usually the result of bad code or bugs. The rewrites I've been privy to were typically to either (a) make the code more extensible/portable or (b) modularize the code to permit it's components to be reused. I've never been part of a rewrite that was driven by a primary goal of fixing bugs. Code tends to be an organic thing, it's essentially a detailed multi-million step plan. Sometimes people come up with a better plan that still contains most of the same steps. It doesn't mean the original
    • >Why would Samba need a major re-write if the code weren't properly written in the first place? Isn't this just like a rewrite of Windows?

      Softwares need routinely rewrite because the requirements are changed readiacally from time to time. New issues comes up often(major security requirement etc.)and some of the requirement becomes irrelevent as time passes(being able to run on very low hard ware also is not a requirement any more ). Above all samba is not a stand alone application. It is heavily depnede
    • One example - in Samba = 3 is packet "decoded" in various places. In Samba 4 there will be one single place where will be COMPLETE packet decoded (even things which are completely useless for Samba). For example - this enables you to assemble new packet and use Samba server as gateway to you Win2k server.

      Samba is really nice piece of software but as the evolution goes on and on there are things on the "todo" list which you couldn't think of when doing first design.
    • In reference to his first attempt, I think his view of 'the important thing' was that by releasing it, he was exposed to a group of developers and a software development paradigm, of which he previously wasn't aware. The software subsequently improved due to users' contributions and suggestions, but the important thing was that the public release opened his eyes and thinking to the open source community.
    • Why would Samba need a major re-write if the code weren't properly written in the first place?

      Because things evolve. If you ever write a program and can't think of ways to improve it when you're "done" then you've failed as a programmer -- you've learned nothing from the experience. There is no such thing as perfect code. There's always another feature, another bug, or a more elegant (easier to understand and extend -- if it happens to be more efficient then that's a bonus) way to do things.

      Eventually yo
  • "Samba and Tridgell Recognized", but I'll bet not recognized on the street. :-)
    • Strangely enough, I did recognize him on the street in NYC a few years back. Heard an Aussie accent, realized the man was talking about rsync... so I buttonholed him with a bunch of (probably inane) samba questions.

      Really nice guy, took it all in stride.

      Thanks, Tridge, and congratulations!
  • What's the new spam algorithm mentioned at the end of the article? Is he doing more work on spamsum? Could be interesting.

  • Fine time to post (Score:3, Funny)

    by inflex ( 123318 ) on Friday October 24, 2003 @12:25PM (#7302000) Homepage Journal
    What I find really amusing is that this story hits Slashdot at about 2am Australian time (EST) and most likely will be off the page by the time most Australians wake up.

    I'm only up because someone's machines in the US decided do some bungee jumping without the bungee.
  • John Terpstra [socallinuxexpo.org], co-founder of the Samba-Team [samba.org], will be speaking at the Southern California Linux Expo [socallinuxexpo.org] on November 22nd at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California. John will be giving an overview of Samba 3 including the ability to integrate into an Active Directory enviroment. Regular priced and student priced tickets giving full access to the event are still available. Free expo only tickets are also available using the "FREE" promotional code on the orders [socallinuxexpo.org] page. The Southern Californi

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