| riel | I've now made this channel moderated, so there won't be huge |
|---|---|
| amounts of text in the middle of my talk | |
| riel | if you have questions, remarks or just want to chat, you can do so at |
| any time in the #qc channel | |
| riel | I'd like to welcome everybody to this year's Umeet |
| riel | I think this is the 4th time I have participated in Umeet, and I like this |
| conference because the audience is from all over the world - and I can participate | |
| without having to travel ;) | |
| riel | like the internet, anybody can participate (and do ask questions on |
| #qc) | |
| riel | this year I'm giving the opening talk of Uninet |
| riel | usually I talk about something I have been working on, but this year I |
| am going to give a different talk | |
| riel | not because I haven't been working on cool stuff (I have), but because I |
| would like the audience to have something to do after Umeet is over | |
| riel | I am going to present to you some of the technologies I want to play |
| with during the christmas holidays | |
| riel | because, lets face it, engineers stay children for their whole life! |
| riel | I like toys, and chances are that you do too |
| riel | the toys I present here are all free software projects in search of beta |
| testers and developers | |
| riel | I really want to play with: |
| riel | - Xen |
| riel | - Smart |
| riel | - Stateless Linux |
| riel | you probably do not know what all of them are, so I will present them |
| one by one, explaining why I want to play with them and what you could use them | |
| for | |
| riel | the first technology I want to play with - and am already playing with |
| during work hours - is Xen | |
| riel | Xen is a project that implements paravirtualisation for Linux and other |
| OSes | |
| riel | it is available under the GPL and has very good performance |
| riel | I assume most of you are familiar with VMware, and some of you will |
| also know User Mode Linux | |
| riel | VMware emulates a whole PC in software, so you can run Linux or |
| Windows inside Linux or Windows | |
| riel | however, emulating hardware is not very efficient |
| riel | the advantage is that you can run multiple unmodified operating |
| systems on your computer | |
| riel | User Mode Linux takes the opposite approach, it emulates a Linux |
| environment for applications, and runs on an unmodified Linux kernel | |
| riel | so you get emulation in the "guest", with no emulation needed in the |
| "host" | |
| off) | |
| riel | like VMware, UML is not very efficient |
| riel | Xen is taking an interesting compromise between the two |
| approaches | |
| riel | Xen has a lightweight hypervisor, that does not emulate hardware, |
| but it can only run modified operating system kernels | |
| riel | this is called paravirtualisation |
| riel | luckily the only thing that needs to be modified for Xen is the OS |
| kernel, so there is no compatibility problem for the rest of the OS | |
| riel | I have seen benchmarks showing that Linux running inside Xen |
| (xenolinux) has 95% of the performance of Linux running on bare hardware, for | |
| some server benchmarks | |
| riel | User Mode Linux and VMware only have half of that performance for |
| some benchmarks! | |
| riel | == a quick notice: there is a spanish translation of this talk in #redes == |
| riel | now, since you need a special kernel, not every OS can run inside Xen |
| riel | but I know that Xen 2.0 has ports available for Linux, NetBSD and Plan |
| 9, with a FreeBSD port underway | |
| riel | there is even a special version of Windows XP to run under Xen, but |
| unfortunately this software is not available ... | |
| riel | now, what could you use Xen for ? |
| riel | I want to use Xen to: |
| riel | - try out multiple distributions or free OSes |
| riel | - build & test programs on multiple distributions |
| riel | - security separation, for various reasons |
| riel | for example, I could want to try out a root kit |
| riel | or a suspected root kit, like posted in the fake security |
| announcement last month | |
| riel | I could run such software on a virtual machine with no network access |
| riel | and later inspect the virtual machine to see what the suspicious |
| software did | |
| riel | speaking of untrusted software - I could run Fedora Rawhide, or |
| Mandrake Cooker, or Conectiva Snapshot in a virtual machine - if something | |
| breaks, the computer still works so I can file a bugzilla and fix things ;) | |
| riel | I am creating Fedora RPMs of Xen and Xen Linux kernels for exactly |
| this reason - I want people to be able to test rawhide, or build and test their own | |
| software on Fedora Core 3, Fedora Core 2 and other distributions | |
| riel | now, Xen is still in development and not well integrated with Linux |
| distributions | |
| riel | this means you have to do a lot of things "by hand" to try it out |
| riel | even booting requires you to do a non-standard trick to your grub.conf |
| riel | title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.1021_FC4xen0) |
| riel | root (hd0,0) |
| riel | kernel /xen.gz dom0_mem=180000 |
| riel | module /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.1021_FC4xen0 ro root=LABEL=/ debug 3 |
| riel | module /initrd-2.6.9-1.1021_FC4xen0.img |
| riel | this would be a good moment to explain a bit about Xen ;) |
| riel | a Xen system is controlled by the Xen hypervisor, which is the "main |
| kernel" | |
| riel | one of the Xen guest OSes, domain 0, has all the device drivers, eg the |
| ones that can read from and write to the hard disk | |
| riel | so the domain 0 kernel needs to be loaded at boot time, just like an |
| initrd is preloaded by the boot loader | |
| riel | Xen and domain 0 together are a complete system |
| riel | you can log into that and do whatever you do on a full Linux system, |
| but you can also use the remaining memory in the system to load up additional | |
| virtual machines | |
| riel | those extra virtual machines do not have access to the hardware, so |
| they are called "unprivileged guests" | |
| riel | if an unprivileged guest needs something from disk, it will ask the Linux |
| kernel in domain 0 to get the data | |
| riel | domain 0 provides device services to the unprivileged domains, this is |
| also called a "service VM" | |
| riel | now, Xen has a number of additional things you can control |
| riel | for example, you can resize the memory each virtual host gets |
| riel | or change the cpu priority |
| riel | all thsi is done by the Xen daemon, or xend |
| riel | and you can control this with the commandline tool "xm" |
| riel | for example, I could ask for a list of virtual machines: |
| riel | # xm list |
| riel | Name Id Mem(MB) CPU State Time(s) Console |
| riel | Domain-0 0 171 0 r---- 97.9 |
| riel | TestDomain 2 31 0 -b--- 5.6 9602 |
| riel | or I can resize the amount of memory one of the virtual machines has |
| riel | # xm balloon 2 25 |
| riel | # xm list |
| riel | Name Id Mem(MB) CPU State Time(s) Console |
| riel | Domain-0 0 171 0 r---- 98.6 |
| riel | TestDomain 2 24 0 -b--- 5.6 9602 |
| peer) | |
| riel | Xen also has good documentation available online, so this should be |
| the perfect christmas gift for a computer nerd who isn't afraid of trying out new | |
| technology | |
| riel | you can find more information on the Xen web site: |
| riel | http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/ |
| riel | ---------------------------------------- |
| riel | now, time to talk a bit about the next technology I want to play with |
| riel | oh wait, a remark on #qc ;) |
| riel | alejandro riel: Xen seems like the sun e10k, with multiple domains |
| used. :) | |
| riel | alejandro, yes, this is one of the ways in which you could use Xen |
| riel | I want to try things like putting untrusted services, like named and |
| httpd, in their own virtual machines | |
| riel | so if somebody breaks into named, they cannot do anything bad to the |
| rest of my system | |
| riel | ok, now I will really move on to the next item ;) |
| riel | today every distribution has a piece of software to automatically |
| upgrade software, or make it easier to install new software and all the libraries and | |
| tools that software needs | |
| riel | the most popular two examples are apt-get and yum |
| riel | however, both of these have their problems |
| riel | and nobody seems to be completely happy with either |
| riel | luckily one of my friends at Conectiva, Gustavo Niemeyer, is |
| developing a new package manager to solve some of the issues with yum and | |
| apt-get | |
| riel | his project is called "smart", and the home page is at |
| http://smartpm.org/ | |
| riel | I have not had time to play with it yet, but it has a number of features |
| that I like a lot | |
| riel | for example, it can download packages from multiple mirror sites |
| simultaneously | |
| riel | it understands apt-deb, apt-rpm, yum, slackware, urpmi, red carpet and |
| other repositories | |
| riel | I will probably only use apt-rpm and yum repositories myself, but it is |
| very useful that I can use both | |
| riel | smart also works with RPM, debian and Slackware packages - so you |
| can probably try it out on your distribution | |
| riel | another big reason why I want to try smart, is that it is smarter in |
| calculating which packages need to be upgraded (or downgraded!) in order to be | |
| able to install a certain package | |
| riel | I have often run into trouble when a Fedora repository has one version |
| of an RPM, and a 3rd party repository has another version of the same RPM | |
| riel | when I install that RPM, the newest gets installed |
| riel | but then I try to install a second RPM, that wanted the older version |
| instead | |
| riel | neither apt-get or yum are able to downgrade the package to the older |
| one | |
| riel | I hope smart will do this for me ;) |
| riel | mmmm, some questions in #qc |
| riel | I have not used smart though, so I cannot answer those questions |
| myself | |
| riel | luckily the author of smart, Gustavo Niemeyer, is in the channel |
| niemeyer | Hello everyone! |
| niemeyer | Thanks for these nice comments Rik! |
| riel | niemeyer, I have used your software before - it has always worked for |
| me, so I trust smart will work too ;) | |
| niemeyer | <E0x> riel: what about source tarball ? can smart in a near |
| feature do the same that do distro like , gentoo , sourcemage or freebsd , | |
| optimization of the software using gcc flag ? | |
| niemeyer | E0x: In the current implementation, there's no support for |
| installing source tarballs nor src.rpm packages. On the other hand, | |
| niemeyer | Smart has a very nice abstraction of the package concept. A |
| good example of that, for instance, is that Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo (acme), | |
| niemeyer | was able to build a backend for installing kernel modules |
| directly, since they already provide the dependency information which is needed. | |
| niemeyer | This was an experiment, and is not yet available in the Smart |
| source. | |
| #linux | |
| niemeyer | With that in mind, building something like a src.rpm/source |
| tarball installer is just a matter of building a new backend which | |
| niemeyer | implements the concept of "package" and "package manager" |
| for installing these on the system. | |
| niemeyer | I hope this answers your question. |
| off) | |
| niemeyer | <xtingray> how "smart" deal with libraries versions? |
| niemeyer | xtingray: Smart works with package relations, and do its best to |
| keep the system in good shape respecting these relations. | |
| niemeyer | If library packages have correct relations, Smart will do whatever |
| necessary to install these libraries once requested. | |
| #linux | |
| niemeyer | <xtingray> niemeyer: even if one library is coming from a .deb |
| package and other from an .rpm? | |
| niemeyer | Currently, no. Smart currently have these system in independent |
| graphs, on purpose. | |
| niemeyer | Mixing them would be very easy (indeed, easier than not mixing), |
| niemeyer | but the real problem is about distribution policy, in that case. |
| USA) : "New technologies for the christmas holidays" || #qc -->questions&comentar | |
| y; #redes --> traducen a español ' | |
| USA) : "New technologies for the christmas holidays" || #qc -->questions&comentar | |
| y; #redes --> traducen a español ' | |
| niemeyer | <offray> niemeyer: I think that Linux package installation is too |
| much oriented toward filesystem/administrator instead of oriented toward | |
| applications-directories/end-user. What do you think about some alternative | |
| aproaches that try to solve the problem of package managment using a distro | |
| neutral packaging format and empower the user to install software (without | |
| crashing all the system) | |
| niemeyer | offray: That's one common misconception, in my opinion. |
| niemeyer | The real problem is not the packaging system. The real problem |
| is policy. We need standards, like LSB, which tell us how to build software | |
| packages that are able to work in every distribution. | |
| niemeyer | Conectiva, RedHat, Mandrake and others all use rpm as their |
| package management software. Even then, we're mostly unable to cross-install | |
| softwares in these distributions, even when they use the same basic system. | |
| niemeyer | riel: I'm ashamed for talking so much in your presentation. |
| Please, help me. :) | |
| riel | I have found Conectiva and Red Hat to be mostly compatible at the |
| .src.rpm level though ;) | |
| riel | niemeyer, thank you for helping me out answering questions on Smart |
| riel | I think I'll talk for a few minutes about the third technology I want to |
| play with this christmas | |
| riel | after that we can do some more questions and answers |
| riel | -------------------------------- |
| riel | ok, the last technology I am going to talk about today is Stateless Linux |
| riel | I will try to keep it short, since we're already an hour into the |
| presentation ;) | |
| riel | Stateless Linux is a project with the goal of making it easier to deploy a |
| number of similar Linux configurations | |
| riel | for example, a network of workstations |
| riel | or a compute farm, with many compute nodes |
| riel | or even virtual machines |
| riel | everybody is familiar with things like kickstart, where you can specify |
| a configuration file and the installer will install 30 identical systems for you | |
| riel | that only solves a small part of the problem - the installation |
| riel | after the installation is complete, the sysadmin has 30 identical |
| systems to manage | |
| riel | and needs to do common sysadmin tasks 30 times |
| riel | also, there will inevitably be data on those 30 systems that need to be |
| backed up, data spread out all over the filesystem | |
| riel | Stateless Linux aims to fix these problems |
| riel | the idea is that a system boots into an unconfigured Linux OS |
| riel | with no local data that needs to be remembered past a reboot |
| riel | for example, a workstation would have no configuration locally and all |
| of the user's data would be stored on an NFS home directory | |
| riel | so if a user's CPU fan gets stuck and the computer catches fire, all the |
| sysadmin has to do is give the user a new system | |
| riel | there is no data on the old system that needs to be rescued |
| riel | the new system needs no configuration - the user switches it on, logs |
| in and goes to work | |
| riel | similar things could be done for a supercomputer cluster, where each |
| node of the cluster simply gets its configuration at boot time | |
| riel | systems could boot from the network, or copy over a newer version of |
| the distribution for upgrades - you want to avoid things that can go wrong, like | |
| upgrading individual packages | |
| riel | or at least, if upgrading individual packages goes wrong, you just want |
| to automatically boot into a newer version of the distribution on the next reboot | |
| riel | the Stateless Linux project also has some script changes that make it |
| possible to run with the root filesystem readonly | |
| riel | I want to use this in my Xen experiments, so I can run multiple virtual |
| machines off the same disk image | |
| riel | Stateless Linux is a Fedora project, mostly run by David Malcolm |
| reset by peer) | |
| riel | I am sure other people have other ideas on how to use it, your |
| participation in the project is welcome ;) | |
| riel | I guess my time is almost up, so I'll give you the URLs of the projects I |
| want to play with over christmas | |
| riel | if you think any of them are interested - you've got a christmas holiday |
| too and it is free software, so download your christmas presents now ;) | |
| riel | Xen - virtualisation |
| riel | http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/ |
| riel | Smart - package management |
| riel | http://smartpm.org/ |
| riel | Stateless Linux |
| riel | http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/stateless/ |
| smart | |
| riel | if you have any questions, about any of the subjects discussed, |
| please ask them in #qc | |
| riel | I will try to answer them here |
| riel | <_libra_> Is it possible or Would it be possible to use virtual machines |
| in other host's inside a intranet? | |
| riel | _libra_, yes, you can use virtual machines in another physical system |
| riel | in fact, Xen has the ability to move virtual hosts from one physical |
| system to another, without shutting down the virtual host | |
| riel | if the virtual host can access its disk from both physical systems, you |
| can do a "live migration" | |
| riel | the Xen developers have moved a quake server (in a virtual machine) |
| from one physical machine to another | |
| riel | the migration is live, except for the final push |
| riel | if I remember correctly, the total downtime was something on the order |
| of 45 milliseconds | |
| riel | none of the quake players even noticed that their server was moved to |
| another computer while they were playing | |
| riel | if anybody else has a question, please ask it in #qc |
| riel | <LKM> riel: Xen is loaded as a new kernel in grub, but that |
| happens(passes) with the portability with lilo? | |
| riel | LKM, currently lilo is unable to boot Xen - if you really want lilo, you will |
| have to create a patch to lilo so it can boot Xen | |
| #linux | |
| riel | ok, I guess this is it |
| riel | thanks to Gustavo Niemeyer for helping me out |
| riel | here are the URLs again: |
| riel | Xen - virtualisation |
| riel | http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/ |
| riel | Smart - package management |
| riel | http://smartpm.org/ |
| riel | Stateless Linux |
| riel | http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/stateless/ |
| riel | oh - and you can download your christmas presents before december |
| 25th, don't feel bad | |
| riel | <moya> does xen need any special kernel support ? |
| riel | moya, yes, in order to run Xen you need a special kernel |
| riel | these special kernels are available for Linux, NetBSD and Plan 9 |
| riel | FreeBSD is underway |
| riel | <niemeyer> riel: Have you seen any numbers regarding the overhead |
| of Xen, if compared to a "raw" system? | |
| riel | niemeyer, I have seen benchmarks where Xen has only a 3% |
| performance overhead | |
| riel | the Xen website has some benchmark results |
| riel | http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/performance.html |
| riel | ok, I guess these were all the questions |
| riel | thank you for your time, and I hope you will enjoy this year's umeet |
| error: EOF from client) | |
| riel | don't forget to be here again tomorrow, there are more presentations |
| coming up | |
| riel | http://umeet.uninet.edu/umeet2004/english/prog.html |
| riel | there is this year's Umeet program |
| moya | riel: is this presentation the last one of today ? |
| riel | moya, yes, but tomorrow at the same time there will be another talk |
| riel | in fact, tomorrow has 2 talks |
| riel | December 10 Friday, 18 GMT. Horacio Peña, Felix Cuello, Cristian |
| Knoblauch. Universidad Palermo. Buenos Aires. Argentina. "Experiencias de la | |
| competición ACM" | |
| riel | December 10 Friday, 21 GMT. Offray Luna. Pontificia Universidad |
| Javeriana. Colombia. "Deconstrutivist approach to building custom made distros" | |
| the channel #redes | |
| RaD|Tz | clap clap clap clap clap clap |
| Ferre | clapclapclapclapclapclapclap |
| toomany | @riel like ever, is a pleasure... Thank you!! |
| xtingray | clap clap clap clap clap clap |
| smith | clap clap |
| LKM | ea |
| mario | clpa clap clap |
| hCirtsain | clap clap clap clap clap |
| krocz | CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP |
| rexlee_ | clap clap clap CLAP |
| LKM | clpa clap clap |
| krlos | clap clap clap clap clap clap |
| mario | saludos a todos desde CHILE!!! |
| LKM | :D |
| riel | I hope you will have fun this christmas, playing with new free software |
| xtingray | yehaaaaaaaaaaa!!! |
| BatusaiX | xD |
| Ciberosa | CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP |
| bigjocker | greetings |
| > clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap | |
| > clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap | |
| > clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap | |
| > clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap | |
| > clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap | |
| RaD|Tz | nos vemos ma?ana! |
| > thanks riel, | |
| toomany | pooo zi |
| Ferre | Ciao Hasta mañana |
| mario | see you!! |
| toomany | byez |
| satu | gracias a los ponentes, thanks |
| mario | lastima q no pude sacar fotos ; ) (jejej) |
| > in #redes are working fjjimenez, _libra_ and PCM | |
| LKM | jejeje |
| > riel, muchas gracias ! | |
| feistel | cuanto duro mas o menos la conferencias? |
| krlos | Muchas gracias, hasta mañana gente |
| krocz | agradecimentos para a conferência |
| krlos | 1 hora diez minutos |
| toomany | saludos cordialesssssss a todosss y todasssss... aaaadios |
| mario | nos vemos mañana si Dios quiere. Adios!!!! |
| feistel | gente, yo expongo la semana q viene podria chatear con algunos |
| de los organizadores, no es nada grave solo un detalle | |
| Ernesto | alguien me puede comentar qué le parece webmin? |
| Ernesto | os parece seguro? |
| feistel | Ernesto: no para nada |
| Ernesto | es que lo he descubierto esta mañana y me parece interesante |
| Luis0 | se va a publicar la confercia en algún sitio? |
| Ernesto | feistel para = pasa? |
| feistel | Ernesto: no, para=para |
| panasync)) | |
| > jeje | |
| > in the mailing list umeet2004 we write the program every day. For | |
| subscribe please, go to registration pages linked to http://umeet.uninet.edu | |
| feistel | hola gente, yo soy de argentina, de donde son uds? |
| > aroun the world ! (I'm at Spain) | |
| feistel | hay argentinos por aqui? |
| Ernesto | Ernesto de Spain, Madrid |
| feistel | se puede hablar de negocios, ahora q la conferencia a finalizado :-) |
| Luis0 | yo de Valencia (Spain) |
| error: EOF from client) | |
| feistel | soy argentino y quiero hacer negocios en españa |
| > sobre qe cosa ? | |
| feistel | o solo intercambiar ideas y opiniones al respecto, alguien aqui |
| tiene una empresa de desarrollo, Linux o seguridad en españa ? | |
| SchizO | p0pifty, =) |
| fjjimenez | congratulations, riel |
| > tener empresa es mucho ! | |
| fjjimenez | feistel: de que tipo? nosotros trabajamos con servicios sociales |
| y accesibilidad, redes y telemedicina | |
| riel | Xen - virtualisation |
| riel | http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/ |
| riel | Smart - package management |
| riel | http://smartpm.org/ |
| riel | Stateless Linux |
| riel | http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/stateless/ |
| niemeyer | riel: Thanks for the presentation! |
| > clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap | |
| niemeyer | Bye everyone! |
| > clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap | |
| > clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap | |
| > clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap | |
| > clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap | |
| End of #linux buffer Thu Dec 09 20:36:15 2004 | |
The Organizing Comittee
