NBD Maintainer

NBD Maintainer

[Paul Clements]

All,

I've maintained the NBD driver since 2003, but alas, I no longer have
the time and energy to continue maintaining it. If someone would like
to take over, let me know.

Thanks,
Paul

Re: NBD Maintainer

[Andrey Utkin]

2015-01-13 16:45 GMT+02:00 Paul Clements <paul.clements@steeleye.com>:
> All,
>
> I've maintained the NBD driver since 2003, but alas, I no longer have
> the time and energy to continue maintaining it. If someone would like
> to take over, let me know.

Hi Paul,
could you please describe
- how wide is NBD usage today (any estimation is ok),
- what is in a TODO list,
- what are critical bugs or important issues requiring work, if there are any.

Thanks.

-- 
Andrey Utkin

Re: NBD Maintainer

[Paul Clements]

On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 11:14 AM, Andrey Utkin
<andrey.krieger.utkin@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Paul,
> could you please describe

> - how wide is NBD usage today (any estimation is ok),

It depends somewhat on who you consider to be users. There are two
groups of NBD "users":

1) integrators and admins (who work directly with nbd)
2) users of the systems and software that the first group creates

My guess is that the first group is in the hundreds. The second in the
thousands. NBD usage tends to fall into one the following classes:

- support of diskless thin clients (mainly at universities and such)
- replication (used in conjunction with some form of mirroring scheme,
this becomes a network-raid device of sorts)
- block device emulation/user-level block device (e.g., qemu-nbd)
(because NBD has a fairly flexible design, including a fully
user-level server component, it has been used by quite a few people as
a user-level block device for various different purposes)

> - what is in a TODO list,

Nothing specific, other than merging in pending patches, of which
there are a few (check the nbd-general archives).

> - what are critical bugs or important issues requiring work, if there are any.

There is a network timeout issue, which is probably one of the more
important fixes to get in:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=770479

Re: [Nbd] NBD Maintainer

[Tuomas Räsänen]

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Hi

On Tue Jan 13 21:26:01 2015 GMT+0200, Paul Clements wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 11:14 AM, Andrey Utkin
> <andrey.krieger.utkin@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi Paul,
> > could you please describe
> 
> > - how wide is NBD usage today (any estimation is ok),
> 
> It depends somewhat on who you consider to be users. There are two
> groups of NBD "users":
> 
> 1) integrators and admins (who work directly with nbd)
> 2) users of the systems and software that the first group creates
> 
> My guess is that the first group is in the hundreds. The second in the
> thousands. NBD usage tends to fall into one the following classes:
>

We (Opinsys) alone have approx. 45k end-users (teachers and students). So at least the second group is a lot bigger.

-- 
Tuomas
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Re: [Nbd] NBD Maintainer

[Juan Antonio Martinez]

El mié, 14-01-2015 a las 07:33 +0000, Tuomas Räsänen escribió:
> Hi
> 
> On Tue Jan 13 21:26:01 2015 GMT+0200, Paul Clements wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 11:14 AM, Andrey Utkin
> > <andrey.krieger.utkin@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hi Paul,
> > > could you please describe
> > > - how wide is NBD usage today (any estimation is ok),

We at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain) have 7 clustered NBD
servers, 200+ nbd clients and about 3500 users ( teachers & students )

AFAIK NBD based LTSP installations are very common in educational
environments

Juan Antonio

Re: NBD Maintainer

[Ming Lei]

On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 3:26 AM, Paul Clements
<paul.clements@us.sios.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 11:14 AM, Andrey Utkin
> <andrey.krieger.utkin@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Paul,
>> could you please describe
>
>> - how wide is NBD usage today (any estimation is ok),
>
> It depends somewhat on who you consider to be users. There are two
> groups of NBD "users":
>
> 1) integrators and admins (who work directly with nbd)
> 2) users of the systems and software that the first group creates
>
> My guess is that the first group is in the hundreds. The second in the
> thousands. NBD usage tends to fall into one the following classes:
>
> - support of diskless thin clients (mainly at universities and such)
> - replication (used in conjunction with some form of mirroring scheme,
> this becomes a network-raid device of sorts)
> - block device emulation/user-level block device (e.g., qemu-nbd)
> (because NBD has a fairly flexible design, including a fully
> user-level server component, it has been used by quite a few people as
> a user-level block device for various different purposes)

The 3rd one should have huge users since qemu-nbd is used
to access VM image and Openstack(nova) uses it to launch VM
instance.

>
>> - what is in a TODO list,
>
> Nothing specific, other than merging in pending patches, of which
> there are a few (check the nbd-general archives).
>
>> - what are critical bugs or important issues requiring work, if there are any.
>
> There is a network timeout issue, which is probably one of the more
> important fixes to get in:
>
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=770479

Last time I studied nbd driver a while to see if socket aio can be
used to improve performance, but looks not get some fruits.


Thanks,
Ming Lei

Re: NBD Maintainer

[Sudip Mukherjee]

On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 02:26:01PM -0500, Paul Clements wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 11:14 AM, Andrey Utkin
> <andrey.krieger.utkin@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi Paul,
> > could you please describe
> 
> > - how wide is NBD usage today (any estimation is ok),
> 
> It depends somewhat on who you consider to be users. There are two
> groups of NBD "users":
> 
> 1) integrators and admins (who work directly with nbd)
> 2) users of the systems and software that the first group creates

Hi Paul,
studied the driver code. looks like the driver is simple and the main work is being done by the nbd-client and nbd-server.
i was thinking of putting in my name for consideration, but being a newbie in lkml (have worked with drivers and server-client codes in my dayjob)
and seeing the vast user base i am not sure anymore. But will like to try if you are there for guidance.

sudip

> 
> My guess is that the first group is in the hundreds. The second in the
> thousands. NBD usage tends to fall into one the following classes:
> 

Re: NBD Maintainer

[Andrey Utkin]

2015-01-14 18:44 GMT+02:00 Sudip Mukherjee <sudipm.mukherjee@gmail.com>:
> studied the driver code. looks like the driver is simple and the main work is being done by the nbd-client and nbd-server.
> i was thinking of putting in my name for consideration, but being a newbie in lkml (have worked with drivers and server-client codes in my dayjob)
> and seeing the vast user base i am not sure anymore. But will like to try if you are there for guidance.
>
> sudip

Nearly the same for me, however, I have even less commits accepted
upstream than Sudip.
Willing to help despite being very limited in free time.

-- 
Andrey Utkin

Re: NBD Maintainer

[Andrey Utkin]

2015-01-13 21:26 GMT+02:00 Paul Clements <paul.clements@us.sios.com>:
>> - what are critical bugs or important issues requiring work, if there are any.
>
> There is a network timeout issue, which is probably one of the more
> important fixes to get in:
>
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=770479

Looking at the proposed patch, it looks quite smart, and looking good
as long as it is tested. Going to test that ASAP.

-- 
Andrey Utkin

Re: NBD Maintainer

[Markus Pargmann]

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Hi Paul,

On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 09:45:27AM -0500, Paul Clements wrote:
> All,
> 
> I've maintained the NBD driver since 2003, but alas, I no longer have
> the time and energy to continue maintaining it. If someone would like
> to take over, let me know.

Quite a long time of maintaining the driver, thanks for that. I sent the
RFC series for nbd root device support yesterday. I am normally working
on ARM SoC kernel code and started to use nbd for a project recently
(the reason for the patch series). So I am not the 'normal' user of nbd,
but I would like to help.

Best Regards,

Markus

-- 
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Re: [Nbd] NBD Maintainer

[Wouter Verhelst]

On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 07:33:43AM +0000, Tuomas Räsänen wrote:
> Hi
> 
> On Tue Jan 13 21:26:01 2015 GMT+0200, Paul Clements wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 11:14 AM, Andrey Utkin
> > <andrey.krieger.utkin@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hi Paul,
> > > could you please describe
> > 
> > > - how wide is NBD usage today (any estimation is ok),
> > 
> > It depends somewhat on who you consider to be users. There are two
> > groups of NBD "users":
> > 
> > 1) integrators and admins (who work directly with nbd)
> > 2) users of the systems and software that the first group creates
> > 
> > My guess is that the first group is in the hundreds. The second in the
> > thousands. NBD usage tends to fall into one the following classes:
> >
> 
> We (Opinsys) alone have approx. 45k end-users (teachers and students). So at least the second group is a lot bigger.

LTSP defaults to doing root-on-NBD, so there's a load of people there too.
E.g., the spanish Extramadura regional government used to have their own
Linux distribution that was used in local schools and which was based on
LTSP, for about 80K installations.

-- 
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  -- Barack Obama, speaking in Brussels, Belgium, 2014-03-26