Linux stability

In the coming age, there’s really only going to be 2 big UNIX players out there in the IT space in my opinion: Solaris and Linux. I’ve always been a big FreeBSD fan and think there will continue to be a place for FreeBSD in the hosting/web/internet business, and I’ve spent quite a bit of time with AIX as well (sorry, I’ve always hated HP/UX), but I know that at least in the average IT Manager’s eyes there will be Windows in one camp and Linux or Solaris in the other. The one big thing that Solaris and FreeBSD fans (including myself) have always preached is that Linux systems just aren’t as rock solid as their Solaris counterparts. Of course, what we were really saying is that cheap Intel hardware isn’t as reliable as expensive Sun hardware. Because at this point, Linux *is* rock solid. Case in point is “rs1.nsmb.com”. It powers a bunch of websites under the NSMB.com brand, including a very busy forum system. This box gets pounded to hell all day long, every day. Check this out:

[root@rs1 log]# w
  2:27pm  up 720 days, 15:15,  2 users,  load average: 7.29, 4.92, 4.28

[root@rs1 log]# vmstat 2
   procs                      memory    swap          io     system         cpu
 r  b  w   swpd   free   buff  cache  si  so    bi    bo   in    cs  us  sy  id
 6  0  0  89464   9508   4112 338948   6   8     0     8    2     2   8  10   9
 6  0  0  89464   9508   4112 338948   0   0     0     0  653    74  89  11   0
 6  0  0  89464   9508   4112 339972   0   0   510     0  774   183  81  19   0
 6  0  0  89464   9516   4108 339980   0   0     0    64  740   130  87  12   0

[root@rs1 log]# ps -ef |grep httpd |wc -l
    122

Up for 720 days. 720 days of getting the crap kicked out of it on the open Internet. MySQL, Apache+PHP, thttpd for some static content. It’s running a 2.4 era kernel with iptables. And guess what? This is a piece of shit 1.3GHz Celeron box with 1GB of RAM and a big IDE disk. It’s probably the cheapest system that EV1 could possibly build for their dedicated server business.

Astounding.

What does this mean for a vendor like Sun? I’m not sure. Certainly Solaris can be this stable on Sun sparc hardware. Can it be this stable on Sun x86 hardware? Or non-Sun x86 hardware? Even if it is, does it matter?

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You’re currently reading “Linux stability,” an entry on VMUNIX Blues

Published:: Wednesday, October 13th, 2004 at 11:44 am

Author:: mark

Category:: solaris, tech

Dug

October 15th, 2004
7:35 GMT

Yeah, Linux can be stable, the problem I have seen is too may things people don’t need all installed on a system. To me, custom/definable/supportable configs are the key in any OS for high up times. The “hey, this is cool, it animates my prompt on console, lets install it compnay wide” type attitude is what gets you into trouble. The push to cluster and make HPC’s may set this thinking back a bit… “hey, if we have 6 machines in the cluster, if 1 goes down, who cares”

The one thing I do have to thank you for is showing me the value of a good solid jumpstart. stripped down, just what you need, hard as hell.

Mark Mayo

October 15th, 2004
11:27 GMT

I’d argue that default Solaris installs are significantly worse than default Linux installs for installing and turning on everything but the kitchen sink. For example, when I installed our 280R NetBackup server last January, I was shocked to see 53 TCP ports open. Linux installs have actually gotten really good at locking down network services until you specifically turn them on. There is still, as you say, a god-awful amount of software installed on the system..

I’d also totally agree that Solaris Jumpstart is fantastic. Much better than RedHat Kickstart, and the other distros don’t even really have anything that compares. The generic SystemImager I suppose is the answer, but it feels fairly clumsy and hacky compared to Jumpstart.

In the PC/Linux world picking the right hardware is critical if you want stability. Unfortunately it’s easier said than done with hardware coming and going so quickly. What you get with Sun is a gauranteed stable “package”. That’s always going to be worth a lot, and it’s fundamentally the same reason that Macs are stable machines. One vendor provides the hardware and the operating system.

Which is why I’ll be interested to see how stable Solaris 10 will be on Opteron systems, and in particular Sun’s Opteron systems — can they make a “package” as stable as the Sparc/Solaris offering?

RoadRunner

July 5th, 2006
22:00 GMT

You can make either Solaris or Linux rock solid…if you put the time and effort into a good jumpstart image, and if your hardware is of reasonable quality. So that’s not very contentious.

But commercial systems are rarely static for long. OSes change, patches come out, your vendor says you need version X.Y, and you have to upgrade. This is the point where Sun/Solaris shines and Linux, regrettably, trails miserably.

Sun are really good at Not Breaking Things That Work across releases. So they ship a 64-bit kernel with a different thread library and memory allocator. Got a 32-bit app from your SunOS 4 days? It’ll run out of the box (though you should be spanked for trying, you pervert). Need a 32-bit kernel? All there. Need transitional support as you move from one system to the other? Done for you. This makes Solaris a dream for enterprise system software developers.

Contrast Linux. Taking RH as an example, we’ve had the glibc5->6 upgrade, the infamous where’s-the-@#$%!ing-compiler-gone kgcc fiasco, the what’s-the-firewall-called-this-week ipchains/iptables/netfilter business. Take a look at any vendor of enterprise software for Linux (Oracle, say). It’s astounding how much time and money they have to pour into documenting little hacks to work with Linux.

Sigh. A terrible shame, cos Linux on nice hardware screams, but there’s more to running business IT than “make it go really fast”.

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Linux stability

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