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Stali: A new static Linux distribution

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Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#211

Post by saynsedit »

Touche wrote: post #202
saynsedit wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. I don't buy the "moderate valuing of philosophy is a philosophy" argument. If everything is a philosophy then nothing is a philosophy. My point is, suckless products can actually suck despite following their "philosophy." It's not only the UI, although strictly adhering to the "UNIX" philosophy has its flaws. No, it's the suckiness of the source code that I'm talking about, e.g. dwm is composed of ad-hoc interna…

> Meh. I don't buy the "moderate valuing of philosophy is a philosophy" argument. If everything is a philosophy then nothing is a philosophy. Nope, all ideas are philosophy. Just as all matter is made up of atoms. You can't escape philosophy no matter how hard you try.

Except "all matter is made of atoms" has been empirically shown and is scientifically consistent, whereas "all ideas are philosophy" is just meaningless abstract gibberish. It's not the same.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#213

Post by Touche »

saynsedit wrote: post #211
Touche wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meh. I don't buy the "moderate valuing of philosophy is a philosophy" argument. If everything is a philosophy then nothing is a philosophy. Nope, all ideas are philosophy. Just as all matter is made up of atoms. You can't escape philosophy no matter how hard you try.

Except "all matter is made of atoms" has been empirically shown and is scientifically consistent, whereas "all ideas are philosophy" is just meaningless abstract gibberish. It's not the same.

Luckily pragmatism really is a philosophy, with an actual documented history. Is that scientific enough for you?

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#214

Post by justin66 »

4ad wrote: post #209
justin66 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bryan would have to elaborate an awful lot on the evilness of using system calls to make that a more general argument. (we're not supposed to use the kernel now for some reason?) It looks like it was just kind of a pain in the ass for the Joyent guys because of what they were doing specifically, which was pretty specialized. (there's a mean and almost clinically insane blog post about Go by one of the other Joyent gu…

Yeah, on Linux, the system call interface is the supported interface for interacting with the kernel. Of course we are going to use it since 1) it's supported, 2) it's stable, more stable than e.g. glibc has ever been, not to mention we're not locked to a particular libc vendor, it just works on embedded systems which don't use glibc, 3) it allows us to make system calls without going through all the cgo machinery an…

> On Solaris, the system call interface is not a supported public interface

To be honest, I did not know that, I guess it's never been an issue for me. That sheds a little light. Thanks.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#215

Post by ngrilly »

cheiVia0 wrote: post #150
smegel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would thing a distro like this would be more like gentoo...you recompile stuff as needed (which for openssl means almost everything).

Gentoo is dynamically linked, so you only recompile if there's an ABI break - a major version - not a patch/minor release. And, you only recompile the stuff that directly links to it. With static linking, you literally need to recompile everything that uses the library in any form, for every single change. So of there's a security fix in openssl and LibreOffice uses openssl, you need to recompile LibreOffice. If QEMU…

You don't have to recompile everything. If your system keeps a cache of object files, you only have to relink everything, which is quicker.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#216

Post by justinsaccount »

clarry wrote: post #68
justinsaccount wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people like to complain more than they like to actually build a usable alternative. Edit: here's a great example from one of the links in the other comment: suckless complaining about "sysv removed" in systemd. Link takes you to this changelog entry: "The support for SysV and LSB init scripts has been removed from the systemd daemon itself. Instead, it is now implemented as a generator that creates native sys…

> Because people like to complain more than they like to actually build a usable alternative. More like people have had perfectly usable alternatives but now the hivemind is more or less forcing something else onto them. I don't need to build a new init system, I have one that works, thank you. Please don't give me systemd.

The one I had did not work so I am happy to have systemd now.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#217

Post by loup-vaillant »

mbel wrote: post #186
loup-vaillant wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely, they're saying mainstream distros are so bloated even dynamic linking can't save them: dynamic linking does reduce memory footprint, but that only mitigates bloat.

I think that "dynamic linking and all its problems" imply that some of the bloat comes from the dynamic linking itself. At least that's how I read it. I believe argument here goes beyond the sole fact of introducing dynamic linker and includes the fact that dynamic linking may encourage duplication of functionality in applications ending up in bloated system (on the other hand static linking doesn't seem to do anythi…

I've read around here that static linking allow compilers to remove dead code (unused symbols) from the relevant libraries. The same cannot be done for shared libraries, because you never know which symbols are unused —if any.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#218

Post by notalaser »

hollerith wrote: post #181
notalaser wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot -- maybe not a majority, but a sizeable number of people -- think dynamic linking is potentially exploitable due to its complexity, has real-life deployment problems (e.g. due to applications depending on a specific version of a library, or simply due to complacency in building and distribution) and that the advantages it offered twenty years ago are offset by larger hard drives, better and faster network conne…

>offset by larger hard drives, better and faster network connectivity, and better updating systems. Static linking puts more pressure on RAM and on each level of cache (because if 2 running programs share the same library, there are now 2 copies of the library contending for those resources) than dynamic linking does. That strikes me as more important than increased use of the resources you list.

That's not always true, you don't need to have two full copies of the library at all times. See Geoff Collyer's explanation here: http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/dynamic-linking/ (but note that the memory use that he cites may not be that relevant).

I am also not convinced that this is a significant impediment for all workloads. For a lot of applications, the time wasted due to inefficient cache use is a fraction of the time spent waiting for stuff to be delivered over the network.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#219

Post by saynsedit »

Touche wrote: post #213
saynsedit wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except "all matter is made of atoms" has been empirically shown and is scientifically consistent, whereas "all ideas are philosophy" is just meaningless abstract gibberish. It's not the same.

Luckily pragmatism really is a philosophy, with an actual documented history. Is that scientific enough for you?

It doesn't matter. Engineering disciplines don't need a philosophy. Imagine if bridge builders had bridge building philosophies. It's nonsense.

Re: Stali: A new static Linux distribution

#220

Post by signa11 »

Crespyl wrote: post #157
signa11 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Installation uses HTTP to fetch a boot volume image. > This is a problem with all of the suckless software and it, well, sucks. may you please elaborate on why you think fetching boot images over http is a bad idea ? fwiw, a large number of networking gear boot their line-cards with image fetched over http e.g. csco's asr-5000 etc.

> networking gear As someone unfamiliar with that domain, this just raises more questions for me. Is there some secondary layer of code-signing/validation that happens? Is the image host always within the local network and the connection assumed trustworthy?

> Is there some secondary layer of code-signing/validation that happens? Is the image host always within the local network and the connection assumed trustworthy?

some more information: basically most of the these routers etc. are 'chassis' based e.g. asr-5k is a 14u (iirc) device. depending on architecture, these generally have a bunch cards which end up doing most of the work e.g. session processing, forwarding traffic, running your routing protocols etc. etc. most of the session-processing cards don't really have any non-volatile storage media.

ok, now, two of these (for redundancy purposes) are management cards. these cards are not involved in any session processing, and provide 'shell' access to the device. these are generally used to configure the device, run diagnostics etc. etc. management cards have non-volatile storage media, which end up storing various boot images.

now, when a chassis is powered on, management cards are booted up first, using one of the stored images (depending on configuration). other cards (non-management) get their boot images over an internal network via http (e.g. in case of asr-5k).

tldr-mode: yes, the 'network' is trustworthy, and images are present locally (in most of the cases). though it is possible to boot management cards (if your read the above longish explanation) via images over tftp/scp etc. which can be as secure / insecure as you want :)

edit-001: lemme know if you need some more information, and i can see how i can make things clearer.

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