From Zero to SPECfp2000...
Porting Debian to IA-64

Bdale Garbee

HP Linux CTO

Tell an interesting story... how the Debian IA-64 port happened.

Lessons learned porting Debian to five architectures

How HP works with Debian and the larger Open Source development community

How HP uses Linux internally today

Solving portability problems improves software quality

Objectives

What is Debian?

'The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system.'

More specifically, Debian:

is one of the most popular GNU/Linux distributions

runs on the most architectures

is a completely open volunteer organization

is quite international

is the largest GNU/Linux distribution

works with companies to develop and maintain software

is Focused on Freedom

is well represented in the Free Software world

A Few Debian Statistics

Debian is a project of Software in the Public Interest

Debian runs on everything from handhelds to mainframes...

11 released architectures

alpha arm hppa i386 ia64 m68k mips[el] powerpc s390 sparc

ports in progress to Hitachi SuperH and AMD Opteron

also working with HURD and BSD kernels

1262 people

8012 source packages

13456 binary packages

Map of Debian Developers

Map of Debian Users

Recent Reader's Choice Awards

Linux Journal 2003 Readers' Choice Awards

Debian won the category of “Favourite Distribution”

Linux Enterpirse Reader's Choice 2003

Debian won the category “Best Enterprise Distribution”

Linux New Media Award 2003

Debian won the category “Best Distribution”

Along with Knoppix, which is derived from Debian, they received more than 60% of the votes.

Background – Debian Port to PARISC

PARISC architecture was not supported by Linux...

Various internal discussions at HP

The Puffin Group announces a port, October 1998

HP agrees to participate, March 1999

Linuxcare acquired the Puffins

No longer just a “fun” project

Contract to continue porting efforts

HP wanted a complete distribution...

Why Debian for PARISC?

Commercial distributions wanted “real money”

The Debian project acts like a “commons”, where individuals and companies can contribute as their needs dictate without legal or contractual complications.

Debian developers often have credibility with upstream maintainers, can help get new developments adopted.

Zero external cost for deployment.

Some engineers at HP and Linuxcare were already registered Debian developers...

But... successfully working with Debian means accepting the community development model... commercial distributions or support partners may be required to meet needs for traditional software support elements?

How HP Engaged Debian

No Forks!

Must be a “real” Debian port

Merge all code upstream immediately

Continue contract with Linuxcare for toolchain support

Hire existing Debian developers, and encourage HP engineers to join the Debian project

PARISC hardware made available to Debian

Provide hosting and bandwidth of some Debian servers

The IA-64 Port

Very different from PARISC port...

Large industry investment in and focus on IA-64

Kernel and toolchain in reasonable shape

Commercial distributions had a head-start, which helped when starting the Debian port

HP already a significant contributor to IA-64 Linux

HP Labs hosting key contributors

David Mosberger

Stephane Eranian

Joint developers of the architecture with Intel

Getting Started

Before Debian acquired hardware, some packages were built on systems hosted by SourceForge

HP unknowingly provides Debian a machine...

Evaluation systems provided to Agilent Technologies

One ends up on Bdale's desk...

Installed an early TurboLinux pre-release

CPU stepping and firmware issues

Compiled in chroot until self-hosting

Debian autobuilder activated

Intention to release with “woody” announced

HP hires Bdale...

Percent Built for Each Debian Architecture

How Up-to-Date Each Architecture Is

Lessons Learned from Porting

In my experience, most portability problems come from programmer laziness, expressed as ambiguity.

Bad assumptions about objects all being 32 bits!

IA-64 is “LP64” Integers 32 bits, Long and Pointers 64

Compiler “implicit declaration” warnings are really errors

Mixing PIC and non-PIC at linker time is a bad idea...

Not all platforms have all features

Serial consoles on servers

No sound hardware on mainframes

New architectures MUST track development kernel and toolchain revisions, or upstream maintainers ignore them

How HP Uses Debian

Development Platform

HP develops on Debian, contributes developments to the Open Source community, then works with commercial distributors to help them incorporate the new features.

Hardware Enablement

Most Itanium 2 systems ran Debian as their first OS boot!

Early shipment of carrier-grade and blade servers

Benchmarks – HP Itanium2 SPECfp2000 a new record!

HP Enablement Kit for Linux on Itanium Systems

iPAQ distributions are Debian derived

familiar – minimal Linux environment

intimate – full Debian for the iPAQ

HP’s Linux commitment

“The question for us isn’t, ‘Will Linux dominate the world? ‘, but ‘What part
of the world will Linux dominate? ‘”

Carly Fiorina
CEO, Hewlett Packard Company
Linuxworld 2002

HP’s Internal Use of Linux

Over 4000 systems and growing …

All external email is routed through Linux rim servers on HP's firewalls - to the tune of >3TB/year

DNS infrastructure is rolling out on Linux (~100 systems)

Enterprise Directory service hosted on Linux clusters.

Client DHCP service delivery hosted on Linux

Network time is provided by Linux rim servers - NTP is a critical element to keeping our routers and network in sync

HP's internal and secure instant messaging network (Jabber) is implemented on Linux servers

Linux clients and servers in use for electronic design automation [Synopsys]

Oracle 9iRAC application testing and validation for production deployment

Utility Data Center with 36 Itanium Linux nodes used for HP Labs compute needs - growing to 144 nodes

To Learn More

Debian project web site is www.debian.org, each port has a page like www.debian.org/ports/ia64 with more information on the port.

HP

Linux product information at www.hp.com/linux

HP supported Open Source projects (Debian, Samba, etc) opensource.hp.com

Linux for iPAQ - handhelds.org

IA-64 Linux Kernel: Design and Implementation

Bdale's talks are online at www.gag.com/~bdale/talks

hp’s Linux Strategy: “Strategic investments, which facilitate enterprise success …”

Now that you have a feel for the “where” and “why” of Linux market adoption, allow me to shift gears and share with you the “what” hp is doing.

hp’s Linux strategy is founded on the seven precepts depicted and, for us, it’s all about making the right set of strategic investments that will facilitate enterprise success with Linux. Within hp, we call these our proof points because each one of these represent areas demanding significant business focus and corresponding resource investment aimed at creating and delivering Linux-specific value to the Enterprise.

UNIX® is a registered trademark of The Open Group.

Slide 1

Martin Fink

2003-01-15T08:05:02