Linux kernel compatability

Zachary Loafman zml at FreeBSD.org
Thu Jan 6 19:52:31 UTC 2011


On Tue, Jan 04, 2011 at 10:53:30AM -1000, Jeff Roberson wrote:
> >The considerations are simple enough. First, we do not have many IB
> >users of FreeBSD in the wild and those that we have (Isilon) seem to be
> >perfectly capable of managing the IB stack out of the tree, without
> >dumping the thousands of lines of the code into the base. If they had
> >the stack before, but were not willing/capable to provide adequate care
> >for it in the past, there is no reason to expect things to change with
> >second stack, which now will rot in our tree instead of theirs.
> 
> They provided adequate care for it to keep their product running on
> old versions of FreeBSD.  Unfortunately it is a large stack and
> there are a great number of people and organizations working on
> improving and advancing it on Linux via OFED and having a private
> stack does not give you the benefit of their work.  The motivation
> for making the wrapper layer was entirely to keep pace with this
> development and make it less likely that what is in the tree will
> rot.

Allow me to speak for a moment on Isilon's behalf and make a public
commitment: We intend to maintain the OFED port in the tree and any
necessary shim layer that interacts with it.

I understand your concerns about our past performance .. yes, we had a
very ancient stack, and we let it fall into disrepair, basically only
modifying it enough to be sufficient for our product. It wasn't even a
complete port - it was missing many of the diagnostic tools, the verbs
layer and various libraries that make up the complete OFED stack.

This contract was largely undetaken to "catch up" on OFED, so we could
get back in a position where we could actively maintain it. There was
almost no way to use the original port to do this. It was our first
car, and we ran it into the ground. Now Jeff has given us a shiny new
car, and we intend to maintain it.

Unlike 4 years ago, we now have staffed IB personnel that will be
working with the code in the FreeBSD tree. We have every incentive to
make sure IB stays working in head - it saves us so much time when we
merge. And, for those who heard of our recent acquisition by EMC, we
have a nod from our parent company to keep doing what we're doing.

I hope this mitigates most of the non-technical concerns.

-- 
Zach Loafman | Staff Engineer | Isilon Systems


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