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Comment rebooting (Score 1) 863

Processes need to be restarted when libraries and sundry components underneath them are patched.

When you patch openssl, you need to restart Apache, otherwise the running httpd will be using the old, unpatched libcrypto.

When you patch glibc, any processes that you do not restart will not bring the glibc patch into the memory of a running process, and will continue to express any vulnerability that you patched.

Ksplice seems like a really nifty thing, but as patches pile on, more and more of the running userland is out of date. Going for a long uptime means less trust over running processes.

Comment If Oracle wins, Bell Labs owns the world. (Score 5, Interesting) 146

The full source code of the UNIX v6 kernel, as published in the Lions commentary, bore prominent copyright notices from AT&T Bell Labs.

If the system call and C library API interface is thus still owned by Bell Labs, then that covers Oracle Linux, the POSIX standard, commercial UNIX, as well as all the phones (including QNX), routers, UNIX/Linux/BSD servers/workstations, and likely much more.

Oracle had better pray that they lose.

Comment Nobody deserves death threats. (Score 5, Insightful) 774

systemd managed to replace init, inetd, and some of cron in what appears to be a stable environment. This allowed systemd to work in docker and drastically improve Linux virtualization to leapfrog Solaris zones.

What systemd did not do was provide reasonable documentation. RedHat's v7 inittab has a website for a blog post that sucks. There is no general intro for users attempting to create crontabs executed by systemd, inetd entries for common services, and runlevels that control groups of processes.

systemd fell down hard on documentation, and the first blush with the unix admin crowd has not been kind.

These developers delivered working code in a radically new environment, but without documentation the architecture appears to discriminate against people who have been doing things the same way for 30 years. The authors, and their software, appeared cliquish and discriminatory. Had the software and the documentation enabled a gradual migration into a more powerful architecture, things would have been quite different.

In any case, this is no justification for people to be vile. The old crowd needs help into the new environment. This help needs to happen, and the insults and threats need to stop. Both sides need to work together to get us where we need to be.

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