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Re: What i would like to see in upcoming kernel releases...

On Thu, Jan 28, 1999 at 11:37:46PM -0500, Albert D. Cahalan wrote:
> > 2. Kernel dumps:
> >    Same applies for this one: kernel dumps have been proven to be
> >    a very helpful debugging tool.
> 
> NetBSD is known for dumping onto the WRONG partition.

Ahh, but AIX, DEC-Unix, HP-UX, Solaris, Unixware, ... are known not to do
this.  Are they wrong in implementing it?  Simply because somebody has
gotten it wrong is no reason to drop this immensely helpful feature.

> 
> > 3. Log-structuered and/or journaled filesystem:
> >    There has been lots of talk about those two as well.  They are
> >    a definite must for HA systems.  Despite all the talk about
> >    reiser-fs and such, the best would be to simply port the BSD stuff
> >    to Linux (same goes for Berkeley FFS as a replacement of EXT2FS).
> 
> Compared to Reiserfs, the BSD stuff sucks. BSD doesn't have a working
> log-structuered or journaled filesystem, and FFS isn't fast at all.
> Our ext2 works quite well, though Stephen Tweedie is adding new stuff
> like journaling, fast B-tree directories, and fast B-tree allocation.

But the BSD stuff is de-facto standard  and anybody coming from a
Unix background expect to find some sort of working UFS/FFS on a Unix-like
system.  Why? Because they know how to work with it.

> Only AdvFS (in Digital UNIX) and XFS (in Irix) stand a chance
> against Reiserfs. Both FFS/UFS and Ext2 are obsolete now.
> FreeBSD can kiss its ass goodbye.

IMHO AdvFS is a load of shit:  Our University has been using AdvFS together
with AFS and you would not believe how often the servers have crashed due
to AdvFS errors.  Only reaction by DEC:  "Well, AdvFS together with AFS
is not stable on SMP systems."  No wonder they were bought by COMPAQ!

Lets face it folks:  LFS/JFS and online compression are two very important
features to beat the marketing guys telling our bosses to use NT for
mission critical servers!  No wonder IBM ported AIX' JFS over to Warp 4...

And if ReiserFS is too different from the LFS/JFS implemetations currently
in use in the Unix world, the same applies what i said about UFS/FFS and
EXT2FS...

> > 4. A comprehensive set of kernel development tools:
> >    Drop the stuff in scripts and create a stable set of tools (not
> >    unlike the stuff found on BSD, DEC-Unix or Solaris) which would
> >    be distributed seperately from the kernel sources (after all this
> >    stuff does not change very often!).

After thougth a lot about it, the only thing truly missing is a kernel
debugger capable of inspecting the running kernel.  As far as i know
gdb vmlinux /proc/kcore  will no quite do this.  Or am i wrong?
And what about kernel profiling?  There are tools for this but they
are hard to find and tend to get lost...

Another idea i was toying with (since back when i met Eric Youngdale in
Würzburg) is to have every driver compiled as module/monolithic kernel
driver in one object file.  Using ELF sections that could be done.  All
we need then is an insmod and a kernel linking script for GNU ld to strip
the unneeded section.  This way distributions (and third partys) could
provide a set of drivers which could either be loaded at run-time or
linked to a generic kernel to provide a monolithic kernel for those who
need (eg embedded systems) or simply prefer it.

> 
> > 5. A complete and bug-free console terminal emulation (not the "linux"
> >    crap, but rather a complete VT220 emulation). Again BSD shows us how
> >    it is done.
> 
> We have one serious scrolling bug that vttest exposes, we don't bother
> with the obsolete vt52 mode, and we don't implement features that can't
> be done on VGA hardware. Other than that "linux" is great. BSD sucks.

Ah, but those features can be done using the framebuffer every Linux port,
except the one for the x86, uses.  And having to explain every newcomer
why the terminal type of Linux is "linux", even so it is more or less
just a "vt102" is simply annoying. Not to mention that you either have
to distribute a "linux" termcap/terminfo entry or rewrite the login
scripts for root on every system if you are in a heterogenous environment.

All in all, in my experience: "linux" is causing more trouble than it's
worth.

> > 2. PNP:
> >    Is that stuff still being developed? Last time i checked it was quite
> >    out-of-date...
> 
> Someone needs to convince Linus.

Amen to that!

Yours,
  Dominik Kubla
-
Linux-future: thinking about the future of the Linux kernel
http://humbolt.nl.linux.org/lists/