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January 26, 2012

Linux solutions provider Red Hat said earlier this morning that it has updated its core Enterprise Linux operating system stack to version 6.2 three weeks ago, and its Enterprise Virtualization commercial-grade KVM server hypervisor to version 3.0 Friday. So it consists of a new release of a special stack of Linux and systems software dubbed 'MRG' (Messaging, Real-time and Grid) targeted at business-intensive messaging services, MySQL database replication and high performance computing workloads where generic Linux simply isn't enough anymore.

The MRG project actually started back in December 2007 when a number of computer grids and high-speed financial trading customers convinced Red Hat that it needed a special version of its Enterprise Linux kernel that had a real-time system that could provide consistent and predictable performance at very low latencies. The kernel is a lot faster and is more robust than the standard Red Hat implementation, the vendor assures us.

Novell, which owned SUSE Linux at the time, had just put its SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time, or SLERT, variant of its Linux OS into the field, so Red Hat had didn't have any other choice than to join the party.

In addition to offering a real-time kernel, Red Hat's MRG weaved in the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP), an open source and standard message queuing stack similar to messaging server brokers such as IBM's WebSphere MQ, Microsoft's Message Queuing Middleware, Tibco's Rendez-Vous financial transaction messaging, and the Java Messaging Service.

Eventually, the Condor open source computer grid project from the University of Wisconsin was added to the platform, allowing it its 'G' at the end. In December 2009, Red Hat updated MRG to the Linux 5.4 code base, and has been tweaking it over the past two years.

MRG version 2.0 was launched in June 2011 and was based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux v. 6.1 which debuted back in May 2011 and which already supports most of the current and impending x86 implementations such as the new Opteron 4200 and 6200 processors from AMD, and the impending Xeon E5 processors from Intel, as well as other technologies such as PCI-Express 3.0 slots and USB 3.0 ports.

The critical modifications with Enterprise MRG 2.1 is that the underlying RHEL stack is sporting the Linux 3.0 kernel. It is based on the "Santiago" RHEL 6.1 Linux variant Red Hat available in December 2011 and hardened as the core of its RHEV 3.0 hypervisor.

Like previous MRG rollouts, the real-time Linux kernel and the updated Condor grid software is shipping now, but the AMQP messaging components for MRG 2.1 won't be shipping for another few months yet. It is expected they will ship sometime in May or June of this year.

The kinds of applications that use MRG would be high frequency stock, commodity and forex trading systems, and other kinds of mission-critical apps that depend on speed and reliability.

So Red Hat's engineers have cooked up some less-intrusive methods of doing this using event-based sampling that also cut down on some of the uncertainty in measuring using prior methods.

The main new features in Red Hat's new MRG 2.1 kernel are that the messaging broker can now maintain sequential order of messages across distributed receivers, so that you can maintain proper transaction orders in message-based systems, which is important in determining who made and who lost money in a trading system.

The Condor grid portion of the MRG stack now has SSL encryption through its Aviary API, but it isn't clear from the release notes what level of Condor is supported in the stack.

Overall, the grid scheduler can now be clustered for high availability using Red Hat's own cluster suite, and the AMQP messaging stack is now integrated with Red Hat's own JBoss Enterprise SOA and Application platforms as well as Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, and it also supports IPv6 as a transport protocol.

There is a whole slew of bug fixes for the messaging, real-time, and grid portions of the code, however, as you expect this in any new release.

Overall, Red Hat has never been clear about what Enterprise MRG costs, and that certainly hasn't changed with MRG 2.1. The idea back four years ago was for a MRG support contract to cost about twice as much as a RHEL support license of equivalent depth and speed.

In other Linux news

The technical detail of whether Secure Boot technology in UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) firmware could exclude Linux from computers running Windows 8 has been pushed up a few notches, and it looks like Microsoft is at its old tricks again.

Red Hat engineer Matthew Garrett, one of the first to warn about the UEFI issue, has blogged that Microsoft's rules for certified Windows 8 hardware do not make it easier to boot Linux despite what some at the software behemoth have claimed.

Redmond's hardware requirements for Windows 8 mention the existence of a boot option for PCs that can fire up a digitally signed Linux kernel. This custom boot-mode would allow the user to modify the contents of the computer's Secure Boot signature database and the platform key (PK) that verifies kernels during system start-up.

But this implies that users can install their own keys, including ones provided by Linux vendors, to run whatever operating system they want. While this sounds conceptually simple, Garret points there are lot of practical details missing, a fact that will make working with Microsoft's key infrastructure a lot more difficult.

Garrett wrote that this might dissuade users from bothering to install Linux on a Windows 8 PC. People have spent incredible amounts of time and effort making it easy to install Linux by doing little more than putting a CD in a drive. Asking them to go into the firmware and reconfigure things adds an extra barrier that restricts the ability to install Linux to more technically skilled users.

Garrett also warns that among the various details missing from Microsoft's technical documents is a description of a user interface to enable people to install and manage keys, meaning they must wander around by hand in the firmware settings. This lack of coherence also makes it possible for competing PC makers to confuse the situation even more by coming up with their own vendor-specific UIs.

Additionally, the key format itself hasn't been described yet, and there's no description on how to use custom mode for unattended remote or automated installs of Linux on a Windows 8 computer.

Garrett first blogged about Microsoft's Windows 8 Secure Boot in September last year. The normally non-communicative executive leading Windows 8, Steven Sinofsky, actually responded with a blog post claiming the customer would be in control of their PC with UEFI Secure Boot.

Garrett then shot back saying that by customer Microsoft must mean the PC manufacturer because there's no guarantee ordinary users would get the signing keys.

It's the keys that are critical to thwarting hackers by stopping them from installing unauthorized malware - such as rootkits - that start before the operating system and undermine a computer's security. It will be left to PC and device makers to follow Microsoft's UEFI requirements.

They have the power to decide whether to go with custom or standard boot-mode on their computers. That said, Microsoft's hardware certification requirements don't offer the option of custom mode to makers of ARM devices. On page 116 of the requirements, it says "On an ARM system, it is forbidden to enable Custom Mode. Only Standard Mode may be enabled."

On non-ARM systems, it is required to implement the ability to disable Secure Boot via firmware setup. A physically present user must be allowed to disable Secure Boot via firmware setup without possession of PKpriv.

Programmatically disabling of Secure Boot either during Boot Services or after exiting EFI Boot Services must not be possible. Disabling Secure MUST NOT be possible on ARM systems.

By targeting ARM, Microsoft hopes to place its Windows operating system onto tablets. Some have said this might mean Windows 8 will be locked to specific hardware, and therefore only OEMs can do the tweaking. And Microsoft isn't commenting on any of this.

It's a reasonable line of thought, and one that reinforces the thinking that Windows 8 on ARM will be for specific-use tablets such as readers – like the Kindle – that are typically deliberately and firmly locked down by the maker for various commercial and technical reasons.

Another possibility is this-- Microsoft is taking no chances on those first Windows-8-on-ARM machines falling over, thereby avoiding embarrassment and backlash.

Lockdown is a policy Microsoft has implemented elsewhere and for many years now, notably on the first Windows Phone 7 devices, which were then blocked to third-party apps on version 7.0 and only opened up with 7.5, codenamed Mango.

In other Linux news

CES 2012 officially opens this morning in Las Vegas and as usual, companies are in a rush to showcase their new products, and sometimes a new concept. Here's a new one for you-- a TV that runs on the Linux operating system!

Linux reseller and support firm Canonical is presenting CES visitors with a TV-of-the-future concept maximizing its touch-based Linux distribution and its Ubuntu Cloud Solution.

The new project has been percolating inside Canonical's offices when it received a bit of publicity late last year from Canonical's CEO, Mark Shuttleworth.

The idea behind Ubuntu TV, Canonical says, is to deliver television as it was intended-- with no cables, no boxes, and, most importantly, no hassles for the TV viewer. In other words, a 'no frills TV', but no frills doesn't mean no features.

Canonical director of communications Gerry Car says "The goal is to uncomplicate television for the average viewer while still delivering all the services and options that they are becoming used to."

From its modest beginnings, Ubuntu has always been closely associated with PCs and servers that run on Ubuntu, a Linux flavor that closely resembles Debian Linux, but that was developed by Canonical and then renamed Ubuntu. And in 2011, Canonical developed its Ubuntu Linux Cloud Solution.

The Ubuntu TV concept actually shadows and extends developments in the fusion of TV, computing and the web. It also creates the Ubuntu media cloud – with Ubuntu One as the "web hub" of everything. Think a bit of Steve Jobs' idea of a central hub for everything: computing, music, voice and now TV.

Canonical's cloud service is actually called Ubuntu One Service. Canonical's old pitch phrase had been "Linux for human beings". The motto for Ubuntu TV is "TV for human beings".

We're told that Ubuntu TV will offer its users the ability to pause and watch programs on different TVs and other devices, like smartphones. Ubuntu One is a data-synching service, which currently allows you to stream music and access content on different devices.

You can currently stream tunes in Ubuntu One to Apple's iPhone, the iPad and any Android mobile devices. Remember that Android 'does run' on Linux.

The goal is to go beyond music, and to integrate TV and film content providers to the Canonical hub, as Microsoft has achieved with the Xbox 360 and as Apple has done with its iTunes and Apple TV. Google, too, is pushing into TVs – running Android on TV sets that merge film and television with internet-based content and online surfing.

Through Ubuntu One, users will be able to view photos and other files stored online and will be able to download apps for their TV set via the Ubuntu Software Center.

Everything: TV, Blu-ray or web will be controlled via a single, Ubuntu-powered handset or device, according to Canonical. We are promised the device will also have the ability to search, record and play TV programs from different cable and satellite providers as well.

Overall, just about everything will be played and displayed using the Ubuntu Unity interface, while Ubuntu TV will support ARM and x86 chip sets.

Of course, concept is one thing, but there’s plenty of hard work ahead before any of this can be delivered to the typical television viewer. While Ubuntu talks of making TV better for humans, the TV site that it has built with Monday's news firmly reaches out to hardware and content partners and invites people to contact Canonical.

Source: Red Hat.

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