The Obsoletion of theOS

EuroBSDcon 2011, Maarssen

infofarmer@FreeBSD.org

the Unix OS▪ 1970s — comprehensive platform complete with

apps

▪ 1990s — nice platform to run third-party apps

▪ 2010s — thin sub-middleware layer

operating system▪ meeting point

▪ implementation repo

▪ academic vehicle

good ol' times▪ data

▪ server OS (Unix)

▪ user

wasted effort ...▪ server OS (FreeBSD, etc)

▪ server middleware (hadoop, etc)

▪ server app (Facebook PHP, etc)

... wasted effort▪ client OS (PC-BSD, etc)

▪ client middleware (browsers, etc)

▪ client app (Facebook JS, etc)

Chrome OS▪ consolidating client side

▪ only in concept

large systems▪ Google, Facebook, Twitter, ...

▪ a small company cluster

▪ any two machines, e.g. client-server

TCP/IP is evil▪ never meant for intrasystem comms

▪ utterly tenacious

▪ preempted real distributed systems engineering

the cloud▪ does not tolerate inconveniences in the OS

▪ happy to move any piece of logic up

▪ happy to forget about the OS altogether (baremetal Java!)

should BSD care?▪ wasted effort

▪ highly fragmented distributed engineering effort

▪ extremely poor quality of net result

a way forward▪ look for obvious things to move down into the OS

▪ provide useful conveniences

▪ set the trend and define guidelines

the usual impediment▪ the larger the system —

▪ — the more the experience and ideas

▪ — the less time to speak and contribute

complexitymanagement

real life

role aware rc▪ one /etc for all machines

▪ infectious boot: pxe, hdd, usb

▪ / in git

rc.conf.dcase `hostname -s` inz[0-9]*|h22|nemea|h4|lw[1-2])

nginx_enable="YES"nginx_profiles="default zdata";;

esac

machine generateddata

▪ don't try to print human readable

▪ don't try to parse human readable

▪ expect multiple hosts

▪ cron(8), periodic(8)

▪ apache-style logs, logs in SQL

task contracts▪ access to data

▪ resource allocation

▪ real-life metrics

task baby-sitting▪ launchd, fcs

▪ crontab: pgrep || start

▪ monitd, etc

AAA▪ LDAP/GSS

▪ master.passwd(5), group(5) in git(1)

SW fault tolerance▪ watchdogd(8)

▪ timelimit(1)

▪ custom wrappers

▪ rctl(8), capsicum

HW fault tolerance▪ ipmitool

▪ disk error counters

▪ memory testing

massive execution▪ zz -grole1,role2 -Xrole3,role4 uptime

▪ distributed uptime, df, w, top, ...

storage▪ RAID, HAST hard to justify on a scale

▪ ZFS limited to one node

▪ no useful distributed fs

▪ UFS2 + nginx + custom dispatcher

the good bits▪ ssh hpn

▪ rctl

▪ pkgng

▪ SU+J

▪ bsnmpd

questions?we're funding! (and

hiring)andrew@di.vc