Linux 6.2 的 Btrfs 改進

Hacker News 上看到 Btrfs 的改善消息:「Btrfs With Linux 6.2 Bringing Performance Improvements, Better RAID 5/6 Reliability」,對應的討論在「 Btrfs in Linux 6.2 brings performance improvements, better RAID 5/6 reliability (phoronix.com)」這邊。

因為 ext4 本身很成熟了,加上特殊的需求反而會去用 OpenZFS,就很久沒關注 Btrfs 了,這次看到 Btrfs 在 Linux 6.2 上的改進剛好可以重顧一下情況。

看起來是針對 RAID 模式下的改善,包括穩定性與效能,不過看起來是針對 RAID5 的部份多一點。

就目前的「情勢」看起來,Btrfs 之所以還是有繼續被發展,主要還是因為 OpenZFS 的授權條款是 CDDL,與 Linux kernel 用的 GPLv2 不相容,所以得分開維護。

但 OpenZFS 這邊的功能性與成熟度還是比 Btrfs 好不少,以現階段來說,如果架構上可以設計放 OpenZFS 的話應該還是會放 OpenZFS...

Brendan Gregg 遇到的 An Unbelievable Demo

Hacker News Daily 上看到的熱門話題,Brendan Gregg 是效能分析領域的大老,現在在 Netflix 工作,在維基百科的條目「Brendan Gregg」上也有提到他的一些知名發明,像是 Flame Graphs:

He has also created visualization types to aid performance analysis, including latency heat maps, utilization heat maps, subsecond offset heat maps, and flame graphs.

昨天他發了一篇文章在講之間他遇到的事情,原文把過程寫的很有戲劇性,值得去看一看:「An Unbelievable Demo」,而 Hacker News 上的討論也很精彩:「An Unbelievable Demo (brendangregg.com)」,還引出了 Colin Percival 也分享他的經驗。

快速講 Brendan Gregg 遇到的事情,2005 年時 Brendan Gregg 因為業務上的需要 (他當年是效能分析的顧問),幫 Sun 推出的 DTrace 寫了一包工具,叫做 DTraceToolkit,用 GPLv2 或是 CDDL 釋出。

這包工具被 Sun 的人拿去用,並且拔掉作者與授權資訊,然後還被拿去「世界巡迴」介紹這個工具,最後在雪梨的時候居然是拿來介紹給 Brendan Gregg,然後被原作者打臉。

不過他後來還是加入了 Sun... XDDD

Colin Percival 的故事則沒有牽扯到 copyright issue,不過也很有趣,這邊提到的是 bsdiff,也是個經典的工具:

Reminds me of when Apple started providing "smaller size updates" to OS X. I was curious about the details since my doctorate had touched on the topic, so I worked my contacts (I had a few in Apple engineering from the FreeBSD / OS X relationship) and after a few months I got back as answer: "We're using a tool called bsdiff, are you familiar with it?" I was indeed, since I was the author of said tool.

(Just to be clear, there was no license violation involved in this case; just a lack of awareness of the provenance of the open source software they were using.)

另外在其他的 thread 裡面,可以看到 Brendan Gregg 也有浮上來回應 (可以直接字串搜尋 brendangregg),裡面也提到了有趣的故事,像是他另外一個發明 latency heat map 在一些會場上的交流,以及自己也有遇到其他工具的作者:

Thanks. There was a time when many observability products were adding latency heat maps, and at one conference expo floor there were three companies with latency heat maps on their screen at the same time, pitching them as a flagship feature. If I walked near them they'd start trying to explain them to me, and I never figured out an appropriate response. If I said "hey, great to see you added them, I invented these back at Sun" I'd get funny looks.

I think it's a small world, and everything is software, so the chance you'll bump into someone who wrote software you are using I think is pretty high. I was once trying to get my head around Andi Kleen's pmu-tools, and I had the github repo open in my browser on my laptop I was carrying, when the guy sitting next to me on a bus says he's Andi Kleen. (Ok, it was a bus taking Linux conference attendees to an event, not a random bus, but I still found it remarkable timing -- I was studying pmu-tools at that exact time!)

拿來配啤酒的文章 XD

將 Ubuntu 安裝在 ZFS 上...

看到 Ubuntu 在安裝時支援 ZFS 的消息:「A detailed look at Ubuntu’s new experimental ZFS installer」。另外 Twitter 上也有截圖了:

看了一下授權問題,看起來是 Ubuntu 認定這樣做不會有問題,但目前還沒被 Oracle 出手,所以也不曉得真的出手後會發生什麼事情...

DTrace 用 GPL 授權釋出了...

在「dtrace for linux; Oracle does the right thing」這邊看到 DTraceGPL 釋出的消息 (本來是 CDDL,與 Linux Kernel 用的 GPLv2 不相容)。

這次不僅是釋出,還提供了整合到 Linux Kernel 的 commit。

不過我記得在 DTrace 出來後,Linux 社群發展不少類似的工具... 不知道這次的釋出會有什麼樣的交互影響。

Software Freedom Conservancy 對 Ubuntu 認定 ZFS 相容性的反對意見

在「Ubuntu 搞定 ZFS 授權問題,將直接納入系統中使用」這邊提到了 Canonical 的律師們認為搞定 ZFS 的授權問題。

Software Freedom Conservancy 則是提出反對意見:「GPL Violations Related to Combining ZFS and Linux」。

主要是討論 GPLv2CDDLv1 的感染性相容問題。

我是覺得 Ubuntu 的說法比較合理,但這種事情沒上法院前誰都不知道... (而且第一仗的結果會特別重要)

Ubuntu 搞定 ZFS 授權問題,將直接納入系統中使用

Canonical 的人 (Ubuntu 背後的公司) 跟律師研究後決定採用 .ko 的方式 (就像 nvidia.ko 的方式) 納入 ZFS,讓 Ubuntu 的人可以更方便使用,而不是像現在要另外手動做不少步驟:「ZFS Licensing and Linux」。

依照 Canonical 的研究,CDDL (ZFS) 與 GPLv2 (Linux) 的授權方式不同,所以可以找到方法交叉避開衝突:

While the CDDL and GPLv2 are both "copyleft" licenses, they have different scope. The CDDL applies to all files under the CDDL, while the GPLv2 applies to derivative works.

The CDDL cannot apply to the Linux kernel because zfs.ko is a self-contained file system module -- the kernel itself is quite obviously not a derivative work of this new file system.

And zfs.ko, as a self-contained file system module, is clearly not a derivative work of the Linux kernel but rather quite obviously a derivative work of OpenZFS and OpenSolaris. Equivalent exceptions have existed for many years, for various other stand alone, self-contained, non-GPL kernel modules.

至於這種說法是不是成立,至少在還沒上法院認證前也還不知道... 不過看起來 Canonical 是頗有自信,打算將 ZFS 弄進 Ubuntu,上面有不少好用的東西...