Josef “Jeff” Sipek

This is a continuation of the lguest: The New Kid on the Block post I made the other day.

In responses to Rusty’s patches, Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox attempt poetry.

First, Linus…

There’s a reason for [not having enough poetry in the kernel].

There once was a lad from Braidwood
With a wife and a hatred for FUD
He hacked kernels for fun,
couldn’t get them to run.
But he always felt that he should.

See?

So when you say "there’s not enough poetry", next time you’ll know why. You *really* don’t want want poetry.

Then Alan Cox replied with modified lyrics to Eleanor Rigby:

Ah look at all the laundered pages
Ah look at all the laundered pages

Handling Pages
Pick up the list and the link where kswap has been
A paging scheme
Runs down the I/O
Watching the queues that now keep me a list of the store
Who is it for

All the laundered pages
Where do they all come from
All the laundered pages
Where do they all belong

Meeting bdflush
Writing the pages of a disk file that no one will clear
No task comes near
Look at it working
Sleeping a lot in the night when there’s no pressure there
What does it care

All the laundered pages
Where do they all come from
All the laundered pages
Where do they all belong

Ah look at all the laundered pages
Ah look at all the laundered pages

Oracle DB
Died under load and was freed along with its name
No admin came
Good old bdflush
Wiping the dirt from the pages as it walks down the chain
Nothing was aged

All the laundered pages
(Ah look at all the laundered pages)
Where do they all come from
All the laundered pages
(Ah look at all the laundered pages)
Where do they all belong

Then, there was an exchange of limerics between Rusty and Alan…

Rusty:

There once was a virtualization coder,
Whose patches kept getting older,
Each time upstream would drop,
His documentation would slightly rot,
SO APPLY MY FUCKING PATCHES OR I’LL KEEP WRITING LIMERICKS.

Alan:

There once was a man they called rusty
Who patches were terribly crusty
Though his patches were right
And Linus was bright
They sat on the list getting dusty.

Rusty:

There was a poetic infection
Which distorted the kernel’s direction,
The code got no time
As they all tried to rhyme
And it shipped needing lots of correction.

And finally, Alan:

Dear Rusty I think that we know
Your code has good things to show
But an unreliable guide
To the poetic aside
Would probably steal the show

Either way, these are the people that write your operating system. :)

It’s been a while since I posted something about my social life, so here it goes…

Last weekend (July 14) I went to the LILUG Picnic (called Open Sauce 2007) at Bethpage state park. It was fun. The day after the picnic (July 15), I went with a friend to see the new Harry Potter movie. Since I’m no Harry Potter fanatic, I’m sure most of the goodness escaped me - oh well.

Yeah, my social life is pretty boring, eh? :) Anyhow, time to go back to coding ;)

So, which one am I, and why? :)

As most of you know, virtuallization doesn’t really interest me, so me writing about lguest is rather unusual. For those who don’t know, lguest is Rusty Russell’s way of saying virtualization sucks and I can make it better (don’t quote me on that).

Yesterday, Rusty sent out 7 patch series ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) that contains most of the documentation for lguest. This is not the normal style of documentation you’ll find in the kernel. Here’s Rusty’s description…

Lguest is an adventure, with you, the reader, as Hero. I can’t think of many 5000-line projects which offer both such capability and glimpses of future potential; it is an exciting time to be delving into the source!

But be warned; this is an arduous journey of several hours or more! And as we know, all true Heroes are driven by a Noble Goal. Thus I offer a Beer (or equivalent) to anyone I meet who has completed this documentation.

So get comfortable and keep your wits about you (both quick and humorous). Along your way to the Noble Goal, you will also gain masterly insight into lguest, and hypervisors and x86 virtualization in general.

There is a very large number of totally hillarious comments. It looks like one doesn’t have to be an x86 expert to get a laugh out of them, but knowing a thing or two about the architecture makes it all the more enjoyable.

I can’t help but include few excerpts here…

Intel provided a special instruction to clear the TS bit for people too cool to use write_cr0() to do it. This "clts" instruction is faster, because all the vowels have been optimized out.

I’m told there are only two stories in the world worth telling: love and hate. So there used to be a love scene here like this:

Launcher: We could make beautiful I/O together, you and I.
Guest: My, that’s a big disk!

Unfortunately, it was just too raunchy for our otherwise-gentle tale.

Just read the patches. They are really amusing :)

So, about a week ago, I noticed that one of my hubcaps was missing. I found the fact somewhat disheartening, as it makes the car look older and more beaten up than it really is. Anyway, I had an item on my todo list to if I am somewhere near a junkyard of some sort, I’d pick up a hubcap. Well, today, I get out of work, I go to my car, and I approach it from the other side than I usually do. And what do I see? Well…rather…what don’t I see? Second hubcap gone. This if far too odd…losing one makes some sense…but losing 2, on the same axle? Very very odd…anyway, so if you happen to see two hubcaps hanging out somewhere not doing what they should be (e.g., covering my hubs!) tell them where to go. And don’t take a no for an answer.