Re: Slaves taking up 100% cpu

[Buchan Milne <bgmilne@obsidian.co.za>]

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Tony Earnshaw wrote:
> tir, 20.01.2004 kl. 11.53 skrev Buchan Milne:
>
> RedHat is also shipping 2.1.22 as the alternative to 2.0.27. As far as
> Openldap and RedHat go, RedHat verges on the conservative. Catch 22:
>

So that makes 3 large distros the OpenLDAP team has failed to
communicate the severity of the problems with 2.1.22 to?

> There is *no* stable release of Openldap software. As soon as a release
> has been proved as being stable, it is then judged (Quanah ;) as being
> no longer supported (me, I'm an experimental person, so what the heck?
> There's money to be earned on it).

<sarcasm>OK, so we should ditch openldap, and find an alternative which
will support stable releases???</sarcasm>

Sorry, but if there are *known* stability problems (yes, I saw problems
on a 2.1.22 slave, but no longer have access to it and couldn't debug it
at the time) it is only reasonable for them to be clearly visible.

>
> Be that as is may, what the Openldap site *actually* (at the moment)
> says is:
>
>         The OpenLDAP Software Stable release is the last release which
>         has proven through general use to be the most stable release
>         available. OpenLDAP-2.1.25, as of 20031217, is considered
>         stable.
>

And 2 months ago it said the same of 2.1.22, but that statement has not
been retracted, so are we to assume (without any other information) that
2.1.22 is stable, or not?

> Howard Chu has posted on this list, that 2.1.26 is on the boil,
> presumably because of bugs in 2.1.25.

So?

> The Openldap project seems to render a product in constant development.
> No single Internet service seems to have as many IETF rfcs devoted to
> it, of which the number is constantly increasing, other than smtp
> e-mail. Witness the constant stream of Postfix and Exim releases (forget
> Qmail and Sendmail).

But postfix 2.0.x is still stable ...

>
>
>> At present, 2.1.22 is still
>>linked into ftp://ftp.openldap.org/pub/OpenLDAP/openldap-stable/ , and
>>no patches are recommended.
>
>
> See the above.

Which hasn't addressed my concerns.

>>For people who don't have the luxury of subscribing to *all* the mailing
>>lists (which, for instance, may include the maintainers of the packages
>>in Linux distributions), it is at present not very obvious that 2.1.22
>>should not have been shipped (and whether it would be wise for
>>distributors to ship an update to 2.1.25).
>
>
> Let's take a ridiculous example, for comparison. Microsoft is said to
> have an almost unlimited *paid* developers working for her, with a
> staggering 7 billion US dollars budgeted for research and development.

So?

> When did you ever see a stable Microsoft release of *anything*? That's
> how Microsoft earns its money. Why should Openldap be different?

Because we need to be more stable, if we're to get anywhere while the
useability gap is so large.

Are you saying open-source projects should not aim to provide a better
solution than proprietary software?

I don't mean that vast resources should be dedicated to it, but a simple
note that "Users have reported stability problems with openldap-2.1.22,
and distributors are encouraged to provide updates, with the following
patches or the latest stable release, to users" would fix this ...

The announcement
(http://www.openldap.org/lists/openldap-announce/200312/msg00003.html)
doesn't indicate that there *were* stability problems with 2.1.22 BTW ...

> Apart
> from paying an unlimited number of developers any staggering salary
> thanks to an almost unlimited R&D budget, that is.
>
>
>>It's all fine and well to criticise people distributing your software,
>>but then it would be polite to ensure that it's easy for them to do the
>>right thing in the limited time they have to maintain each package they
>>work on.
>
>
> How on earth is Openldap.org supposed to know who you are?

So is everyone who runs openldap on production machines supposed to
subscribe to all the mailing lists? I run a lot of other software in
production, for which I don't need to subscribe to the lists to have a
stable system ...

> Have you let
> her know? If so, has she blown you a raspberry, given you the old
> heave-ho, het gesê dit jy 'n verdraaide rooinek is?

Wat maak dit saak wie ek is? Openldap behoort vir almal 'n toegangklike,
stabiele oplossing te kan voorsien, sonder om te veel tyd te spandeer
aan "version-hopping". As kommunikasie beter was, so dit beteken mense
sou beter dink van OpenLDAP as tans, waar die groot meerderheid van
huidige Linux distribusies (verskoon die anglisisme) nou met 'n
onstabiele weergawe sit ...

It's in OpenLDAP's best interests to ensure that distro's provide the
latest stable release, and provide updates where applicable, and thus it
is worthwhile expending a small effort to allow that.

>>P.S. I am an occasional contributor to the Mandrake openldap packages
>>and maintainer of a number of Mandrake packages.
>
> So?

I've never had to find these issues out with samba ... they have always
been announced on a low-traffic list. Plus, the samba team accepts
respobsibilty for *all* bugs, including those in binary packages
provided by third parties ... and goes to some effort to cooperate with
packagers. I am not saying that is necessary, but sufficient information
to be able to maintain a package in under 10 hours a month would be nice ...

BTW, I still have yet to see sufficient official communication that I
would be able to give the security/updates manager which would convince
him an update of openldap-2.1.22 is necessary.

Regards,
Buchan

- --
Buchan Milne
Senior Support Technician
Obsidian Systems
http://www.obsidian.co.za
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