Linux Journal

cfg2html:members.tripod.com/rose_swe/cfg/cfg.html

This utility will go over your system and extract a lot ofinformation, enough information that you should be able to rebuildthe system almost exactly as it was. That's probably a little moredetail than I'd be comfortable with putting on a web site, butgreat to print out and put in your system's notebook (your systemsdo have notebooks, right?). Requires: BASH and standard UNIXtools.

—David A. Bandel

Shortly after the kernel's Halloween feature-freeze,Guillaume Boissiere decided to puttogether some statistics on the incorporation of features into the2.5 tree. He examined almost the entire history of the 2.5development cycle, starting in early 2002. He created sevenpossible status categories for any given feature: planning,started, alpha, beta, ready for inclusion, pending inclusion andfully merged. His first progress chart (Figure 1) shows thepercentage of features in each category. The second progress chart(Figure 2) shows the actual number of features in each category,changing over time. Without making any claim to complete accuracy,the graphs are interesting, if for no other reason than to observehow seriously most developers took the drive toward feature-freeze.Note also the hump of work done over the summer, followed by acomplete end to new feature planning. That hump of activitycorresponds roughly to the time when the decision was made tofreeze by November.

Figure 1. The Percentage of Features in Each Category

Figure 2. The Actual Number of Features in Each Category

To facilitate the movement from feature-freeze to actual 2.6(or 3.0) release, theOpen Source DevelopmentLab (OSDL) donated labor and equipment to maintain aBugzilla bug-tracking database for the Linux kernel atbugzilla.kernel.org.Support for this was initially strong among developers, but ittapered off a bit when big guns, likeDavidS. Miller, found duplicate entries and frivolous reportsmade the system, at least in its original form, more trouble thanit was worth. No one wanted to give up on it, however, and aconcerted effort seems to be underway to bring the bug database toa usable state.

In more debugging news,LinusTorvalds indicated for the first time he might bewilling to accept patches into the kernel to support akernel-based debugger.Traditionally, Linus' stance has been that real programmers debugfrom source files. While not actually explaining the reason for hischange of policy, he now seems to think that a kernel debuggerrunning across a network would be a good feature to let into thekernel. Don't look for it in the next stable series, however, as hewas careful to make this statement after the feature-freeze hadpassed.

A new read-only compressed filesystem, along the lines ofcramFS, emerged in late October and targets the 2.4 kernel.SquashFS claims to be faster andto produce tighter compression than either zisoFS or cramFS. Theauthor,Phillip Lougher, wanted toaddress some of the limitations of other compressed filesystems,particularly in the areas of maximum file size, maximum filesystemsize and maximum block size.

And speaking of filesystems, does anyone rememberxiaFS? In 1993 it was regarded,along with ext2fs, as a serious contender for world domination. Infact, the two filesystems leapt into public use within a few weeksof one another. For a while it even looked as though xiaFS hadtaken the lead. By 1994, however, it had essentially dropped offthe map, and a few years later it was actually dropped from theofficial kernel tree. In 2000, Linus remarked that it would be funto have it back. Finally, just after the Halloween freezeCarl-Daniel Hailfinger asked ifthis offer was still good. Linus said sure, and even offered tomake an exception to the feature-freeze, if Carl could deliver thepatches.

—Zack Brown

Setting the mood for this month's issue is our coverphotograph of Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin'sListeningPost, currently featured at the Whitney Museum ofAmerican Art in New York(www.whitney.org). Thisremarkable installation runs on four computers and as manyoperating systems (including Linux, of course) and expresses thecollective voice of the Internet, transforming on-linecommunication into a multimedia installation.

According to theListening Post website, “statistical analysis organizes the messages into topicclusters based on their content, tracking the ebb and flow ofcommunication on the Web. A tonal soundscape underlies the spokentext, its pitches and timbres responding to changes in the flow andcontent of the messages.”

I was lucky enough to “view” theListeningPost when it was in Seattle in November 2002, and myfirst impression was an almost eerie sense of humanness the pieceunveils—a poetry not typically associated with computertechnology. In a dark room complete with pillows on the floor, awall of tiny screens depict glowing green text gathered in realtime from thousands of public on-line communication channels. Thesebits of text are accompanied by a computer-generated voice with aBritish accent, randomly speaking different messages as they flashby. I was particularly struck by the “I am” series; real-timemessages beginning with the string “I am” spoken into thedarkness: “I am tired.” “I am happy.” “I am Norwegian.”Hundreds of people communicating the most basic aspects ofthemselves at that precise moment from who knows where to who knowswho, while my imagination worked double time wanting to fill in therest of their stories.

Capturing the ephemeral nature of theListeningPost is difficult; however, Ben Rubin, one of thecreators of theListening Post, best describesthe piece in his artist's statement:

Visit theListening Post web site(www.earstudio.com/projects/ListeningPost.html)for exhibition dates and further information.

—Jill Franklin

The Linux NetworX Evolocity super cluster built for LawrenceLivermore National Laboratory is the number five supercomputer inthe world, according to the Top500 Supercomputing List, and it'stops among Linux-based supercomputers.

Here are some facts about it:

(Source: Linux NetworX)

—Doc Searls

Note:www.0x49.org

I had a tough time choosing between a couple of extremelygood utilities I reviewed three years ago. These includedDownloader for X, which I use regularly, gnotepad+ and xglobe. ButI had to go with Note. There's nothing incredibly special aboutNote other than it does exactly what it says—keeps notes for you.It works by keeping your notes in a binary, DBM or about anyPerl-supported SQL back end. Notes can be edited, deleted or movedinto subfolders (topics). Your notes database also can be either inplain text or encrypted form. This makes it ideal for storingpasswords or other sensitive information. Requires: Perl, Perlmodules: IO::Seekable, DBI::mysql (or other DBI-specfic module,optional), DB_File (optional), MD5 (optional), Crypt::IDEA(optional), Crypt::DES (optional), Crypt::CBC (optional).

—David A. Bandel

N-View:www.n-view.de/index_en.html

For those of you who've used tkined, the network monitorN-View will not be a stranger. However, N-View is quite a bitfaster and easier to use. You can have multiple tabs with differentsubnets. Its biggest drawback, requiring JRE, can be overcome bysimply using the package with JRE included. N-View will also mailyou if a particular system is suddenly unreachable, though that'snot much good if that system is your e-mail server. Requires:Java.

—David A. Bandel

I've visited a whole lot of government organizations.Virtually every government agency I've visited has Linux somewherein the enterprise....The question is: Does anyone know aboutit?...I suspect at least half of those who say they don't use ithave it in their enterprise but don't know about it.

—Robert Hibbard of Red Hat

We haven't developed the vocabulary to credit the open-sourcedynamic for what it is rather than a puzzling aberration ofhackerdom. Once we have the vocabulary—a way of measuring qualityvs. cost—we'll elevate open source to the pinnacle it deserves:the most productive process in an economy obsessed withproductivity.

—Britt Blaser

Tower Toppler:toppler.sourceforge.net

Here's a great little game, especially for your preteens. Theobject: get to the top of the tower. The problem: all kinds ofthings are trying to knock you down. Some of the things you candestroy, and some you simply have to avoid. The game has excellentgraphics, and play is extremely smooth. A number of levels andtowers are available, but at the rate I get knocked off, I'll be onthe beginner tower for a while. Requires: libSDL, libpthread, libz,libstdc++, libm, libX11, libXext, libdl, glibc.

—David A. Bandel