Re: Depreciate and remove gbde

[Anton Shterenlikht]

I use gbde.
Can switch to geli, if required,
but please provide detailed instructions
for switching before removing gbde.

Anton
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Re: Depreciate and remove gbde

[O. Hartmann]

On Mon, 19 Oct 2015 01:29:36 +0200
"Julian H. Stacey"  wrote:

> 
> Yonas Yanfa wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > It seems geli is the standard way of encrypting disks. It's extremely 
> > flexible and usually recommended by the community over gbde. Moreover, 
> > geli is mentioned a lot more in the mailing lists and forums.
> 
> & global community uses DOS-FS more, & mentions MS more than BSD. ;-)
> Popularity is not sole index of what everyone should be constrained to use.
> 
> 
> > gbde's man page explicitly says that gbde is experimental and should be 
> > considered suspect.
> 
> Just an old cautious initial description, that I recall long predates geli.

An indicator for the fact that the documentation is not well maintained and
probably the source for many confusion! Descriptions and concepts seem to have
a state as when the developer issued its code/project - and then never came
back maintaining documentation as the service/system/package evolves ... 

The main question here is: do I need to dip deeply into system's development
and poke from the "nerds" informations for the usage of FreeBSD - or should
someone new or more superficial consult documentation?

> 
> 
> > That seems reason enough to finally depreciate and 
> > remove it in favour of geli.
> 
> No, very naieve.  No need to remove gbde & disrupt existing users.
> Perhaps a reason to re-balance cautious description in both.

Well, for avoiding disruptions and having progress there is the invention of
releases and associated numbers. Sometimes it is innovative to cut of stuff in
favour of progression. That is my overall opionion. Legacy releases can also be
maintained.

Back to the subject: The documentation of both GELI and GBDE lack in explaining
why the one is better/more suitable than the other! I have just sneaked into
Luca's book and he drowns  both encrypting systems in a sea of words without a
clear workout of the benefits.

When I looked for FreeBSD's encryption, I stopped by GELI. Because of it's
easy-to-use AND the 'experimental' tag in the handbook! 

For me, I'd like to know what is the benefit/performance of each technique and
a clear preparation of each ones advantages over the other. That would make the
decission process much easier and hopefully would not scare people away and
announce "FreeBSD does not have a, b, c, ..." ...


> 
> 
> > The Encrypting Disk Partitions page in the Handbook discusses gbde 
> > first, and describes geli as an alternative. This seems odd, shouldn't 
> > this be the other way around?
> 
> It was written in historical order.

My suggestion would be: Set atop a small section describing the benefits of
each system and then dip into deeper waters later for each one. 

> 
> 
> > Is there any objection to removing gbde?
> 
> Yes.  Daft to disrupt users.
> 
> 
> > How many people use gbde?
> 
> Not so useful to ask on Current@ which tends to use the latest tools
> eg geli; try hackers@ or questions@ etc, realise usage of BSD does
> not require registration or membership of Any BSD mail list or
> forum. Usage of GBDE more so.  Gbde could well be essential on
> production servers, but unless admins are also programmers on
> current@, they won't even see your idea to remove gdbe.
> 
> 
> > When 
> > have you used gbde over geli, and why?
> 
> Gbde came first, some won't have needed more or wasted time to learn an
> alternate they did not need.  Others may have reasons they may not publish.
> 
> Without analysis, deprecating gbde is not sensible, & removal worse.
> Please research & contribute a handbook section, with URLs & text
> comparing gbde & geli (& other crypt FS in ports/ ?), including eg:
> 
> - Processor & IO load of both, 
> - Crack testing of both if any, 
> - History of code review & quality of both. etc
> - Patent liabilities of either ? licensing ?
> - Compatability of both with other OSs if any,
> - Any possiblities for standards approvals of either by any bodies (that
>   usually requires funding, so with 2 maybe more chance of 1 being funded ?)
> 
> Cheers,
> Julian
> --
> Julian Stacey,  BSD Linux Unix Sys. Eng. Consultant Munich http://berklix.com
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Re: Depreciate and remove gbde

[Julian H. Stacey]

Yonas Yanfa wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> It seems geli is the standard way of encrypting disks. It's extremely 
> flexible and usually recommended by the community over gbde. Moreover, 
> geli is mentioned a lot more in the mailing lists and forums.

& global community uses DOS-FS more, & mentions MS more than BSD. ;-)
Popularity is not sole index of what everyone should be constrained to use.


> gbde's man page explicitly says that gbde is experimental and should be 
> considered suspect.

Just an old cautious initial description, that I recall long predates geli.


> That seems reason enough to finally depreciate and 
> remove it in favour of geli.

No, very naieve.  No need to remove gbde & disrupt existing users.
Perhaps a reason to re-balance cautious description in both.


> The Encrypting Disk Partitions page in the Handbook discusses gbde 
> first, and describes geli as an alternative. This seems odd, shouldn't 
> this be the other way around?

It was written in historical order.


> Is there any objection to removing gbde?

Yes.  Daft to disrupt users.


> How many people use gbde?

Not so useful to ask on Current@ which tends to use the latest tools
eg geli; try hackers@ or questions@ etc, realise usage of BSD does
not require registration or membership of Any BSD mail list or
forum. Usage of GBDE more so.  Gbde could well be essential on
production servers, but unless admins are also programmers on
current@, they won't even see your idea to remove gdbe.


> When 
> have you used gbde over geli, and why?

Gbde came first, some won't have needed more or wasted time to learn an
alternate they did not need.  Others may have reasons they may not publish.

Without analysis, deprecating gbde is not sensible, & removal worse.
Please research & contribute a handbook section, with URLs & text
comparing gbde & geli (& other crypt FS in ports/ ?), including eg:

- Processor & IO load of both, 
- Crack testing of both if any, 
- History of code review & quality of both. etc
- Patent liabilities of either ? licensing ?
- Compatability of both with other OSs if any,
- Any possiblities for standards approvals of either by any bodies (that
  usually requires funding, so with 2 maybe more chance of 1 being funded ?)

Cheers,
Julian
--
Julian Stacey,  BSD Linux Unix Sys. Eng. Consultant Munich http://berklix.com
 Reply After previous text to preserve context, as in a play script.
 Indent previous text with >Insert new lines before 80 chars.
 Use plain text, Not quoted-printable, Not HTML, Not base64, Not MS.doc.
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Re: AHC - 29160 interrupts not functioning?

[Patrick Hess]

Michael Butler wrote:
> Has anyone tested the ahc driver on v10 or later?

There are a few older boxes (still good enough for doing e-mail,
light web browsing, basic office stuff etc.) sitting around here
that have their local file systems on disks connected to 19160
or 29160 cards:

FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE-p16 #0: Tue Jul 28 11:41:12 UTC 2015
r...@amd64-builder.daemonology.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC i386
FreeBSD clang version 3.4.1 (tags/RELEASE_34/dot1-final 208032) 20140512
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz (2800.16-MHz 686-class CPU)
[...]
ahc0:  port 0x4400-0x44ff mem 
0xd310-0xd3100fff irq 18 at device 9.0 on pci3
aic7892: Ultra160 Wide Channel A, SCSI Id=7, 32/253 SCBs
[...]
da0 at ahc0 bus 0 scbus0 target 0 lun 0
da0:  Fixed Direct Access SCSI-3 device 
da0: Serial Number DNL0P770439J
da0: 160.000MB/s transfers (80.000MHz DT, offset 127, 16bit)
da0: Command Queueing enabled
da0: 35068MB (71819496 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 4470C)
SMP: AP CPU #1 Launched!
Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/da0s1a [rw]...

I can send you a full verbose dmesg if that's of any help to you.

> "Timedout SCBs already complete. Interrupts may not be functioning."
> when given any significant load :-(

Just extracted an entire ports tree on that machine with no issues.
Can you give an example of a workload that causes these problems?

Patrick
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Re: Depreciate and remove gbde

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <5623846b.6000...@freebsd.org>, Allan Jude writes:

>While I think it isn't a bad idea to put GELI first in the handbook, I
>don't see any reason to remove gdbe.

I don't see any reason to remove gbde, and would consider any such
suggestion somewhat suspect, given the set of users I know about.


-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp   | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
p...@freebsd.org | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer   | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
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AHC - 29160 interrupts not functioning?

[Michael Butler]

Has anyone tested the ahc driver on v10 or later?

The last version I can successfully run is 9.x as anything later,
presumably because of the changes in the timer code, causes disk
transactions to be seen as "Timedout SCBs already complete. Interrupts
may not be functioning." when given any significant load :-(

imb
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Re: Depreciate and remove gbde

[Allan Jude]

On 2015-10-18 06:36, Yonas Yanfa wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> It seems geli is the standard way of encrypting disks. It's extremely
> flexible and usually recommended by the community over gbde. Moreover,
> geli is mentioned a lot more in the mailing lists and forums.
> 
> gbde's man page explicitly says that gbde is experimental and should be
> considered suspect. That seems reason enough to finally depreciate and
> remove it in favour of geli.
> 
> The Encrypting Disk Partitions page in the Handbook discusses gbde
> first, and describes geli as an alternative. This seems odd, shouldn't
> this be the other way around?
> 
> Is there any objection to removing gbde? How many people use gbde? When
> have you used gbde over geli, and why?
> 
> Cheers,
> Yonas
> 

It is my understanding that GDBE has some different goals, and works in
different circumstances. I know Michael W. Lucas has written about it in
his books.

While I think it isn't a bad idea to put GELI first in the handbook, I
don't see any reason to remove gdbe.

-- 
Allan Jude



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Depreciate and remove gbde

[Yonas Yanfa]

Hi,

It seems geli is the standard way of encrypting disks. It's extremely 
flexible and usually recommended by the community over gbde. Moreover, 
geli is mentioned a lot more in the mailing lists and forums.


gbde's man page explicitly says that gbde is experimental and should be 
considered suspect. That seems reason enough to finally depreciate and 
remove it in favour of geli.


The Encrypting Disk Partitions page in the Handbook discusses gbde 
first, and describes geli as an alternative. This seems odd, shouldn't 
this be the other way around?


Is there any objection to removing gbde? How many people use gbde? When 
have you used gbde over geli, and why?


Cheers,
Yonas

--

Yonas Yanfa
In Love With Open Source
Drupal  :: GitHub 
 :: Mozilla 
 :: iPhone 


fizk.net | yo...@fizk.net

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