Practical Technology

for practical people.

September 22, 2007
by sjvn01
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Coming soon: automatic Linux driver upgrades

Linux users want two things for their hardware: drivers; and easy access to those drivers. The first is finally happening; and now, thanks to a Dell Linux project called DKMS (Dynamic Kernel Module Support), the other is on its way.

Dell and Linux distributors have been working on DKMS for about five years now. Its purpose is to create a framework where kernel-dependent module source can reside, so that it is very easy to rebuild modules. In turn, this enables Linux distributors and driver developers to create driver drops without having to wait for new kernel releases. For users, all this makes it easier to get up-to-the-minute drivers without hand compiling device drivers.

According to Dell, this separate framework for delivering drivers will remove kernel releases as a blocking mechanism for distributing code. The net effect, Dell hopes, is to speed up driver development by enabling quicker testing cycles. This also means that better tested code can be pushed back into the kernel at a more rapid pace. It’s also nice for developers and maintainers, as DKMS only requires a source tarball in conjunction with a small configuration file in order to function correctly.

What makes this project more interesting for all Linux users is that another project related to the DKMS project, mkrpm (make RPM), now adds automatic lines with modalias information. Modalias, for those of you who aren’t Linux device driver developers, is a data structure that’s used to hold the information that a device presents to the kernel.

Why is this important? Because, as Matt Domsch, Dell’s Linux technology strategist, explains, “This will eventually be used to automatically download drivers that match the hardware you have in your system but which aren’t presently in your $distro’s kernel.”

This isn’t pie in the sky technology. Dell already uses it. “Dell uses DKMS to distribute updated device drivers for RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server), and Ubuntu built against those products’ gold kernels. “This lets us fix and replace individual device drivers to support new hardware without having to respin the whole CD like we wound up doing for Ubuntu,” said Domsch.

DKMS also has other advantages. While it currently works with Red Hat, SUSE, and Ubuntu, DKMS was always designed (PDF link) to be both Linux distribution and hardware architecture agnostic. It was also built to be used by a variety of software distribution tools such as RHN (Red Hat Network), Kickstart and PXE (Pre-Execution Environment), and YUM (Yellow Dog Updater).

The current source code can be downloaded from the DKMS file site. Alternatively, it’s also available at this time on several distribution repositories, including Ubuntu Universe for Gutsy, Fedora Rawhide, and Fedora 7 testing.

Basic information on the project is in a paper from the Proceedings of the Linux Symposium, Dynamic Kernel Module Support: From Theory to Practice (PDF Link) by Matt Domsch and Gary Lerhaupt. If you’re interesting in working on the project, you can join the dkms-devel mailing list.

September 18, 2007
by sjvn01
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Mozilla spins off Thunderbird

In July, Mozilla executives admitted that they weren’t quite sure what to do with Thunderbird, the open-source e-mail client, since Firefox, the popular open-source Web browser, demanded most of the company’s attention. On Sept. 17, Mozilla announced that it had decided to spin Thunderbird off into a company of its own: MailCo.

The plan is for Mozilla to establish a new company to develop Internet communications software based on the Thunderbird program, code and brand. The new initiative also aims to nurture a robust developer ecosystem in order to drive improvements through open source and community innovation. This was the same path that Mozilla took with Firefox.

Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker had admitted that the popular e-mail client had taken second place in July, and the company was looking beyond Mozilla to find another way to advance Thunderbird.

Both the Mozilla company and the Mozilla Foundation considered several options for Thunderbird. These included creating a new non-profit organization like the Mozilla Foundation, making Thunderbird a new subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, or release Thunderbird as a community project supported by a small independent services and consulting company being “formed by the Thunderbird developers to continue development and care for Thunderbird users,” said Baker.

In a more recent blog, Baker described what Mozilla plans for MailCo. The goals for the new company are:

* Take care of Thunderbird users
* Move Thunderbird forward to provide better, deeper e-mail solutions
* Create a better user experience for a range of Internet communications — how does/should e-mail work with IM, RSS, VOIP, SMS, site-specific e-mail, etc?
* Spark the types of community involvement and innovation that we’ve seen around Web “browsing” and Firefox.

To make this happen, David Ascher, currently CTO and vice president of engineering at ActiveState, an open-source development tools company, will join Mozilla to establish MailCo. Ascher has been an active member of the Mozilla community since 2000, initially as the lead of Komodo, a Mozilla-based IDE (integrated development environment). He is also an established leader in the open-source community, including his role as a director of the Python Software Foundation.

Mozilla will provide $3 million seed funding to establish this new company. According to Baker, “We’ll be setting up MailCo in the coming weeks. Part of this is forming the team of people, part is developing a transition plan to move Thunderbird into MailCo gracefully while supporting the Thunderbird users. That will take some time. We’re on the path now, though, and that’s a great thing.”

A version of this story first appeared in DesktopLinux.

September 14, 2007
by sjvn01
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SCO goes belly-up

Years after it was first predicted, The SCO Group, a Unix and mobile software distributor better known for its Linux litigation, has filed a voluntary petition for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code.

SCO’s Board of Directors unanimously decided that Chapter 11 reorganization is in the best long-term interest of SCO and its subsidiaries, as well as its customers, shareholders and employees. At the same time, SCO’s subsidiary, SCO Operations, has also filed a petition for reorganization.

In the U.S. court system, a case filed under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code is often called a “reorganization” bankruptcy. In the case of a corporation going Chapter 11, its funds exist separately and apart from its owners, the stockholders. Therefore, a Chapter 11 doesn’t put the personal assets of the stockholders at risk aside from the value of their investment in the company’s stock.

When SCO filed for Chapter 11 it was also given an automatic stay of time during which all judgments, collection activities, foreclosures and repossessions of property are suspended and may not be pursued by the creditors on any debt or claim that arose before the bankruptcy petition filing.

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September 7, 2007
by sjvn01
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AMD partners with Novell to open source ATI graphic drivers

AMD announced on Sept. 7 a major strategic change in open-source graphic processors support.

The company announced it would provide open-source information and a development package supporting the ATI RadeonHD 2000 series ATI Radeon X1000 series of graphics processing units on Linux desktops.

Beginning the week of Sept. 10, AMD and Novell‘s SUSE Linux engineering team will join forces to release the needed source code and hardware specifications to create open-source 2D graphics drivers for the Radeon chip family. Over the following months, AMD will continue to work with the open-source community to enable 2D, 3D and video playback acceleration to provide the best possible experience on the Linux desktop.

At the same time, AMD will continue to work on ATI’s proprietary, high-performance Catalyst drivers. With the forthcoming Catalyst 7.9 software release in September, AMD will add Linux support for the ATI Radeon HD 2000 series of graphics processors. In addition to expanded GPU support, Catalyst 7.9 is designed to improve performance across the board. In Q4 2007, AMD’s Catalyst software package for Linux will add support for AIGLX (Accelerated Indirect GLX). AIGLX is an enabling technology that allows Linux users to enjoy a rich visual 3D user interface with the 3D Compiz Linux desktop.

An early preview of this driver by the reviews site Phoronix showed that even in beta the AMD fglrx 8.41 driver gives Linux users “truly a new experience on the ATI Linux front. The new driver delivers massive performance improvements.”

“AMD has a proven track record of collaboration with the software ecosystem to support the needs of the open-source community,” said Phil Hester, AMD’s senior vice president and CTO at AMD, in a statement. “With this announcement we’re demonstrating our commitment to respond to the needs of the open-source community and adopt a consistent approach across CPU and GPU technologies. By supporting open-source drivers on our industry-leading ATI Radeon graphics processors, we accelerate innovation across the entire AMD platform.”

Ever since AMD, an open-source supporter, bought ATI in July 2006, there has been speculation that AMD would open source ATI’s proprietary graphics drivers.

As John Cherry, the Linux Foundation’s global initiative manager, blogged recently, “During the state of the Linux round-table discussion on the first day of the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, James Bottomley [Linux kernel developer] had asked the panelists what are the top two things each panelist would like from the Linux community. Among the panelists was Google’s Chris DiBona, who is the open-source program manager at Google. His response was interesting when he had said the following: ‘I would love to get either NVIDIA and ATI to actually give us the specs on the drivers we want or let’s just reverse engineer everything and do it ourselves.'”

AMD, with these moves, seems to be actually delivering more than the minimum that DiBona had requested. Novell and AMD have worked closely together for a number of years to bring technology to the open-source market.

“The lack of open-source drivers for graphics hardware has long been a major obstacle for Linux developers and Linux desktop users,” said Nat Friedman, chief technology and strategy officer for open source at Novell. “Our ultimate goal is complete, high-quality, open-source drivers for all video hardware. Today’s announcement brings us one major step closer. Novell is pleased to have extended our collaboration with AMD to deliver the initial drivers that will allow open-source developers to make the Linux experience even better on desktops, laptops and workstations, and we look forward to contributing this initial code to X.Org.”

As part of opening up the ATI drivers, AMD consulted with leading members of the open-source community and the X.Org community to ensure that the driver addressed the needs of both open-source developers and Linux users. AMD hopes that the release of these specifications will allow the development community to partner with AMD to drive new innovations for the Linux desktop.

AMD will provide on-going support for this project with an in-house development team.

“AMD announced its intention to extend support of open source ATI drivers at Red Hat’s Summit conference in May of this year, so we are delighted that the work necessary to achieve this has come to fruition,” said Brian Stevens, Red Hat’s CTO, in a statement. “This action affirms AMD’s commitment to Linux and the open-source community and will greatly improve the ‘out-of-box’ experience for users. AMD’s decision has a strong supporting business case, demonstrating that Linux clients represent a significant market opportunity. It is a bold
decision for AMD, and they deserve full credit.”

Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu’s founder, added, “The combination of AMD’s graphics hardware and open-source innovation will accelerate the emergence of new desktop computing technologies. AMD’s timing is excellent, given the surge in Linux desktop adoption and the focus now in the open-source community on next-generation visualization and desktop interaction models.”

A version of this story first appeared in DesktopLinux.

September 6, 2007
by sjvn01
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Samba 4 Moves Closer to Active Directory Server Compatibility

For years, if you wanted an inexpensive, but Windows-compatible file and print server, you turned to Samba running on Linux. Now, with the first alpha release of Samba 4, this open-source project is moving closer to becoming a complete Windows 2003/Longhorn replacement.

Since Samba 3 arrived in 2003, Windows network administrators have been able to use Samba and Linux as a drop-in replacement for an NT file/print server. You could, and many have, used Samba in place of an NT PDC (primary domain controller).

This enables LAN managers to run small networks’ several dozen Samba and Windows servers and several hundred Windows clients using Samba alone.

With Samba 3, you could also use Samba servers in a Microsoft AD (Active Directory) in both native and mixed mode. What you could not do, however, is run Samba as an AD domain controller or run it in a Windows Server 2003 level Forest or Domain.

For practical purposes since many Windows LANs run in mixed mode to allow the use of older versions of Windows 2000 or 2003 even if Samba isn’t present this means that Samba couldn’t be used in enterprise-level WANs. Typically, it’s only in these most complex of corporate networks that companies deploy a Windows Server 2003 Forest.

Now, Samba is getting closer to being able to replace Server 2003 even in corporate WANs. As Andrew Barlett described in his 2005 paper, Samba 4 – Active Directory (PDF Link), “Samba version 4 is … a massive leap forward in the way Samba is designed and built. This thesis attempts to take that further, but examining the protocol basis and implementation details adding support for hosting the Kerberos network authentication system into Samba4’s partial implementation of an Active Directory Domain controller. Active Directory forms the heart of Microsoft’s modern network architecture, and is the heart of many corporate networks. Producing a compatible product is important, if the Samba project is to remain relevant into the future.”

The problem that Samba faced in particular, was dealing with AD authentication protocols. Microsoft’s proprietary NTLM2 (NT LAN Manager) and Kerberos extensions make creating an open-source, white room compatible AD replacement a difficult task.

Nevertheless, the Samba developers have moved closer to supporting the Active Directory logon protocols in this release. According to the programmers, “Samba4 alpha1 is the culmination of four and a half years of development under our belt since Tridge [prominent Samba developer Andrew Tridgel] first proposed a new Virtual File System layer for Samba 3–a project which eventually led to our Active Directory efforts–and one and a half years since we first released a Technology Preview. We wish to allow users, managers and developers to see how we have progressed, and to invite feedback and support.

However, the Samba Group warns would-be users that, “Samba 4 is currently not yet in a state where it is usable in production environments. Note the WARNINGS in WHATSNEW.txt in the source and the STATUS file which aims to document what should and should not work.”

A version of this story first appeared in Linux-Watch.

August 31, 2007
by sjvn01
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Adobe adds H.264 to Flash Player 9

n what promises to boost video quality in desktop, mobile, and embedded devices, Adobe announced that it has added H.264 support to its popular Flash Player software. “Flash Player 9, Update 3 beta,” available for download from Adobe’s Labs website, supports Linux, OS X, and Windows.

H.264, also known as MPEG-4 Part 10 (ISO/IEC 14496-10), is already widely used on the Internet, and is also the mandatory format for the HD-DVD and Blu-ray video disc formats. (An IEEE overview of the standard can be downloaded in PDF format here.)

In a statement on its website, Adobe Labs said, “H.264 delivers excellent video quality across the entire bandwidth spectrum, from 3G (mobile phones) to HD (broadcast) and everything in between.” The broadest distribution of H.264 has been via Apple’s QuickTime, included in that company’s iTunes, iPods, and Windows/Macintosh QuickTime Player, Adobe notes.

Now, says Adobe, H.264 has been added to a new beta version of its Flash Player. According to the Adobe Labs wiki, the software will now support high-definition 480p, 720p, and 1080p content, encoded with either On2 or H.264.

The company says H.264 will give users higher-quality, at lower bit rates. However, for backward compatibility, Flash Player will also support its previous video formats, such as the Sorenson Spark video codec (based on H.263) and On2 VP6.

With this update, Adobe Flash Player also branches out from its native .FLV file format. The company says it will now support MP4, M4A, MOV, and other files derived from the standard MPEG-4 container format, as long as they contain either H.264 video and/or HE-AAC encoded audio.

Other new features in Flash Player 9, Update 3 (code-named “Moviestar”) are said to include:

* Multi-core support for vector rendering
* Full screen mode with hardware scaling.
* Flash Player cache for common platform components, such as the Flex framework
* Support for Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) in the Windows plug-in

Playing HD video will require a relatively new PC, Adobe concedes. Stated hardware requirements are a Pentium-class processor clocked at 2 GHz or better, 32 MB of RAM.

For an “optimal experience” and full-screen video, Adobe recommends a 3 GHz PC or better, or a 2 GHz Macintosh. The above unretouched image was captured from Adobe’s demo video using a 2 GHz Core Duo system with integrated graphics.

The Flash Player 9, Update 3 beta is available from the Adobe Labs website, here. Linux versions are available for download in gzipped tar and rpm formats. Mac OS X and Windows versions are also available.

A version of this story first appeared in DesktopLinux.