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Bpftune uses BPF to auto-tune Linux systems

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Re: Bpftune uses BPF to auto-tune Linux systems

#71

Post by xorcist »

mrbluecoat wrote: post #17

> bpftune is designed to be zero configuration; there are no options On behalf of every junior administrator, overworked IT admin, and security-concerned "cattle" wrangler, thank you. Having to learn a thousand+ knobs & dials means most will never be touched. I for one welcome automated assistance in this area, even if the results are imperfect.

Knobs exist for a reason. If there was no reason for it it shouldn't exist. Turning knobs automatically is one of two things: It's either an awfully bad idea, or should be turned into an upstream patch. Speaking from practice, it's usually the former.

Re: Bpftune uses BPF to auto-tune Linux systems

#72

Post by xorcist »

gerdesj wrote: post #54
gausswho wrote: post #18

With this tool I am wary that I'll encounter system issues that are dramatically more difficult to diagnose and troubleshoot because I'll have drifted from a standard distro configuration. And in ways I'm unaware of. Is this a reasonable hesitation?

"because I'll have drifted from a standard distro configuration" You will obviously have a change management system which describes all the changes you have made to your putative standard distro configs. You will also be monitoring those changes. This tool logs all the changes it makes via the standard logging system, which can be easily captured, shipped and aggregated and then queried and reported on. This is not a…

> change management system

That's an unusual way to spell "git". But that's not the point. The point is that change management is useless unless you know why you are doing it. That's why all commit messages should contain the "why".

> You will also be monitoring those changes

What you should do is monitor and evaluate the findings, then on taking the decision this is actually what you want, commit it and stage it through the testing environments.

Automatically tuning parameters means diagnosing problems will be even harder than today. There is also the risk of diverging test and prod unless you are being careful. You really have to know what you are doing when deploying these tools.

The worst catastrophes I've seen involves automatically scaling ram/disk/pods. A problem that should have been trivial in the first place can quickly set off feedback loops.

Re: Bpftune uses BPF to auto-tune Linux systems

#74

Post by efitz »

tw04 wrote: post #68
gerdesj wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (in IT security) are expected to abrogate responsibility to funky AI or whatevs anti virus and other stuff. Buy and install a security package from ... whoever ... and all will be well. This is an expert system/advice run by real people (at a reasonably well respected firm) not an AI wankery thingie. It is literally expert advice and it is being given away and in code form which you can read. What on earth is wron…

Well two points: Oracle isn’t really and hasn’t really been respected in several decades. Oracle exists for one sole purpose, which is to make Larry money. Anything they “give away for free” almost always includes a non-obvious catch which you only discover during some future audit. In this case it appears to be gpl and thus most likely harmless. But I’d expect either the license to change once people are hooked, or…

Anything that Oracle gives away for free today should be assumed will be converted to be monetized as soon as there is sufficient uptake in usage.

Anything that Oracle makes available for community contributions should be assumed will be dramatically restricted via license when Oracle figures out how to monetize it.

Re: Bpftune uses BPF to auto-tune Linux systems

#75

Post by notpushkin »

xorcist wrote: post #72
gerdesj wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"because I'll have drifted from a standard distro configuration" You will obviously have a change management system which describes all the changes you have made to your putative standard distro configs. You will also be monitoring those changes. This tool logs all the changes it makes via the standard logging system, which can be easily captured, shipped and aggregated and then queried and reported on. This is not a…

> change management system That's an unusual way to spell "git". But that's not the point. The point is that change management is useless unless you know why you are doing it. That's why all commit messages should contain the "why". > You will also be monitoring those changes What you should do is monitor and evaluate the findings, then on taking the decision this is actually what you want, commit it and stage it thr…

This could be a nice starting point for such a system though. Is there a logging-only mode?

Re: Bpftune uses BPF to auto-tune Linux systems

#76

Post by westurner »

westurner wrote: post #46
nine_k wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's developed in the open; we can create Github issue. Actually https://github.com/oracle/bpftune/issues/99

In the existing issue, we can link to the code and docs that would need to be understood and changed: usage, main() https://github.com/oracle/bpftune/blob/6a50f5ff619caeea6f04d... - [ ] CLI opts: --pretend-allow or --log-only-allow or [...] Probably relevant function headers in libbpftune.c: bpftune_sysctl_write( bpftuner_tunable_sysctl_write( bpftune_module_load( static void bpftuner_scenario_log(struct bpftuner *tu…

Here's that, though this is dnvted to -1? https://github.com/oracle/bpftune/issues/99#issuecomment-248...

Ideally this tool could passively monitor and recommend instead of changing settings in production which could lead to loss of availability by feedback failure; -R / --rollback actively changes settings, which could be queued or logged as idk json or json-ld messages.

Re: Bpftune uses BPF to auto-tune Linux systems

#77

Post by ranger_danger »

efitz wrote: post #74
tw04 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well two points: Oracle isn’t really and hasn’t really been respected in several decades. Oracle exists for one sole purpose, which is to make Larry money. Anything they “give away for free” almost always includes a non-obvious catch which you only discover during some future audit. In this case it appears to be gpl and thus most likely harmless. But I’d expect either the license to change once people are hooked, or…

Anything that Oracle gives away for free today should be assumed will be converted to be monetized as soon as there is sufficient uptake in usage. Anything that Oracle makes available for community contributions should be assumed will be dramatically restricted via license when Oracle figures out how to monetize it.

FOSS can always be forked and progressed from there; see MariaDB.

I think most times when a project from a big company goes closed, the features added afterwards usually only benefit other big companies anyways.

Right now I prefer to be happy they ever bothered at all (to make open source things), rather than prematurely discount it entirely.

Maybe you weren't implying that it should be discounted entirely, but I bet a lot of people were thinking that.

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