Linux reliability to six nines

[ed.reaves@xxxxxxxxxx (Ed Reaves)]

Guilluame,

I'm confused about what question you are seeking an answer to. I was
encouraged by the response from the Linux Foundation Kernel discussion
and Carrier Grade Linux Workgroup discussion during the Summit meeting.
Nortel has already released most of our CG patches to the Open Source
Community via Wind River PNE-LE Extended Carrier Grade Linux Layer. My
goal is to get Nortel resource allocated to working with the Linux
community to get these and other Nortel CG patches migrated to the Linux
Mainline. I know it will not be a quick process and many of the patches
will not  be accepted. If any are accepted to Lkmain, it will be a step
in the right direction for getting ongoing support and propagation of
these patches in new kernel releases.


Regards, 

Ed Reaves 
OS Platform PLM, Common Engineering 
CTO Office
*E-mail: ed.reaves at nortel.com
*  Phone: (919)905-3911 (ESN 355-3911)


-----Original Message-----
From: Guillaume FORTAINE [mailto:gui.fortaine@xxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 7:13 PM
To: Greg KH
Cc: lf_carrier at lists.linux-foundation.org; akpm at linux-foundation.org;
Theodore Tso; Troy Heber; tabmowzo at us.ibm.com; Reaves, Ed (NCRTP:8762);
corbet at lwn.net
Subject: Linux reliability to six nines

Misters,

FYI :

http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/linux/showArticle.jhtml?art
icleID=207100950

Part of the purpose of the summit, now in its second year, is to let
business users interact with Linux kernel developers. One IT pro glad to
have the opportunity was Ed Reaves, a Nortel technology platform manager
from Research Triangle Park, N.C.

End users and server admins are happy with Linux's current five-nines
uptime, Reaves said, but Nortel and other telecom companies would like
to move Linux reliability to six nines, or one outage of about 30
seconds a year. In response, Nortel's Linux developers produced a block
of code that restarts Linux in 20 seconds in the event of a glitch;
however, that patch doesn't appear to be moving into the kernel, to the
dismay of Nortel executives.

"How do you get a kernel patch released into the mainline?" Reaves
asked, referring to the development process that steers additions to the
kernel past reviewers and into a hierarchical code tree maintained by
Linus Torvalds. That led to a discussion of the difficulties inherent in
the code review process that must happen before a proposed patch makes
its way into the kernel.

"The limiting resource is not development of code but review of code," 
said Jonathan Corbet, a kernel developer. The Nortel patch, it turns
out, is a sizable block of code requiring reviewers with knowledge of a
particular part of the kernel.




I look forward to Your Answer,

Best Regards,

Guillaume FORTAINE
"I have root @ Google"