Linux Contributors Mark Year-End With Major Serviceability Improvements

BEAVERTON, Ore., Dec. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and other Linux kernel contributors today announced the availability of major Linux serviceability improvements including new kdump and SystemTap features. These enhancements are available in the latest releases of the leading Linux distributions.

The kdump enhancements are expected to improve the ability to reliably and quickly create crash dumps that can be analyzed offline, while new SystemTap features will improve debugging and performance analysis of production systems. These tool enhancements will decrease system down time, boosting efficiency in IT departments.

"Improvements likes these really are a result of the kernel development community's focus and commitment," said Andrew Morton, Linux kernel maintainer. "kdump is especially significant since it represents the first crash dump tool accepted into the mainline kernel and we expect it to be really valuable for the kernel development team, permitting us to gather detailed information regarding kernel bugs from our worldwide testing team."

Although system crashes are rare in large production systems, when one occurs it is critical that a crash dump is created reliably and that it can be debugged after the fact. The new Linux kernel kdump enhancements provide administrators with much higher reliability than previous crash dump tools by using a different methodology (which has been endorsed by kernel maintainers) than previous crash dump tools.

The SystemTap improvements give IT managers, system administrators and developers the ability to debug a running system in a real-time environment. With the latest improvements, SystemTap's features have surpassed similar tools by adding the capability to debug production systems without performance degradation or recompiling. Other new features include easy to understand rich scripting language, safety built in for production systems, and system level performance analysis and debugging.

The improvements are the result of a community effort facilitated by OSDL with contributions from Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Intel, NEC, Novell, NTT, Red Hat, and VA Linux.

"By continuing to drive technology innovation into the Linux kernel, the open community is making it the world's fastest growing operating system," said Kathy Bennett, director of IBM's Linux Technology Center, home to some 600 IBM engineers working in 40 locations worldwide, of whom more than 300 work full-time making Linux better. "With today's improvements to Kdump and System Tap, Linux customers can look forward to enjoying enterprise level serviceability, world class performance and greater efficiency than ever before."

"The inclusion of kdump and systemtap in SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 further enhances the capability to deliver support for mission-critical data center environments," said Holger Dyroff, Novell vice president of Linux product management. "Thanks to the community for this work."

"NTT considers kdump to be a major milestone in Linux serviceability, which by fulfilling the growing demand for a reliable kernel crash dumping mechanism will further boost the presence of Linux in the enterprise," said Masayuki Hatanaka, General Manager of the NTT Open Source Software Center. "Being an active member of kdump's development community through NTT Data and NTT Data Intellilink has been a very rewarding experience that will only reinforce our commitment to open source in general and Linux in particular."

"The Linux and open source market is evolving at a rapid pace but one thing will never change -- the power of collaboration and community to constantly improve technology," said Ron Pettit, initiative manager at OSDL. "Because of the efforts of many individuals and companies from the Linux development community, users will gain important improvements to serviceability tools as they enter a new year."

About Open Source Development Labs (OSDL)

OSDL -- sponsor of Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel and other key Linux developers -- is dedicated to accelerating the growth and adoption of Linux-based operating systems in the enterprise. Founded in 2000 and supported by a global consortium of major Linux customers and IT industry leaders, OSDL is a nonprofit organization that provides state-of-the-art computing and test facilities available to developers around the world. With offices in China, Japan and the United States, OSDL sponsors legal and development projects to advance open source software as well as initiatives for Linux systems in telecommunications, in the data center and on enterprise desktops. Visit OSDL on the Web at http://www.osdl.org .

NOTE: OSDL is a trademark of Open Source Development Labs, Inc. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. Third party marks and brands are the property of their respective holders.