6 ms·

Oracle Buys Ksplice

67 points by Erwin 15y ago

Erwin 15y ago
Due to some strange kernel driver for an attached storage device requiring multiple reboots and whatnot, kernel updates have always been a pain for me requiring an hour of downtime -- until I found Ksplice. From the text of the email I got however, it seems like they do not intend to make the service available outside of Oracle's own Linux variant: > The Ksplice Uptrack service is planned to be included > as a standard part of Oracle Linux Premier Support, > and we will no longer be selling the service > separately to new customers moving forward. > As an existing Ksplice customer, > you may continue to renew your subscriptions > and add additional systems to your account as before Same can be implied from http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/Acquisitions/ksplice/general-presentation-430138.pdf http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/Acquisitions/ksplice/gene... which says: > Oracle is expected to be the only enterprise > Linux vendor that can offer zero downtime update
rwmj 15y ago
If your servers can't ever be rebooted, I think you have problems.
- soult 15y ago
  From what I have heard, ksplice is pretty popular with VPS (virtual private server) providers. When there is an exploitable bug, they have to announce the planned upgrade to their customers and wait for a few days until they can run the upgrade. Even worse, they basically announce that there is a hole in their system to the very people that already have elevated access to that system. (Even non-remotly-exploitable bugs are a problem here.) Ksplice allows for an upgrade as soon as the bug is found/fixed in source code without tipping off potential attackers that could exploit the bug.
  - rwmj 15y ago
    They should be able to migrate the VMs off to another box, allowing the first one to be upgraded and rebooted. The additional benefit is that this tests a migration path that ought to exist in case of hardware failures.
- niczar 15y ago
  There are situations where rebooting always has an impact, even if you're in a cluster. For instance take a database cluster in active/passive configuration. Switching over may be fast, but it will always take some time. Now you could design the app to be able to handle this, but this increases the complexity tremendously, esp. when dealing with transactions (in the DB sense of the word). Using ksplice removes this loss of service, however small, in most cases.
cpeterso 15y ago
Ksplice Inc. must have some unique patents. I wonder if Oracle will merge this technology into Solaris.
- koenigdavidmj 15y ago
  I wonder whether Microsoft thinks it falls under http://www.google.com/patents?id=cVyWAAAAEBAJ&dq=hotpatching http://www.google.com/patents?id=cVyWAAAAEBAJ&dq=hotpatc... .
mother 15y ago
I love this service. And now, Oracle has immediately dropped support for RHEL. For shame, Oracle.
- jamespo 15y ago
  How ironic considering Oracle's Linux is a Red Hat rip off
KonradKlause 15y ago
Time to fork it! http://knoppix.mirrors.tds.net/pub/linux/frugalware/frugalware-1.4/source/apps-extra/ksplice/ksplice-0.9.9-src.tar.gz http://knoppix.mirrors.tds.net/pub/linux/frugalware/frugalwa...
- Erwin 15y ago
  The big value of Ksplice for me is that I'm paying a few $/server/month for a service that writes, tests and distributes those live binary kernel patches when the exploits come out. So it can't be just some volunteer OS work, there also needs to be a support organization.
tzs 15y ago
The old Unix hacker in me likes Ksplice, from a hacker point of view. However, I wouldn't use it, except in exceptional circumstances (e.g., there is a patch we have to apply now but we can't do scheduled down time). I want to reboot after an update--even an update that does not technically require it--because I want to know my system is in a state that can boot. It is very annoying to do some update, not reboot, and then a couple of months later a power failure takes down your systems and when power is restored you get some kind of boot error and you are wondering what in the last several months you did that broke it. A few minutes planned downtime now in much better than hours of unplanned downtime at some indeterminate future time.
- Dobbs 15y ago
  This is why I can't stand Gentoo. We had a dude who was the Sysadmin before me who loved it. He upgraded the kernel deleted the old one and didn't reboot. Several months later the server had to be shutdown and didn't come backup. I spent several hours fighting to get the machine to a point where I could rebuild a working kernel. Within a week I prepared and migrated the system to something more reasonable.
  - blhack 15y ago
    What does this have to do with gentoo?
  - mjdwitt 15y ago
    It seems to me that your kernel issues are more related to your predecessor's failures as an admin than to Gentoo. Nothing you can do on Gentoo can't be done on most distributions, including poorly-done kernel upgrades.
    - prolepunk 15y ago
      Nah, it's gentoo that sucks. I don't see anything like that happening in binary distributions, or assembling anything from ports in FreeBSD. I've administered a few gentoo machines a few years ago and can attest that it's a major PIA. Or let me elaborate a bit, system failures that happened on gentoo didn't seem to happen on other systems, system failures that also happened on other system took significantly more time to resolve and required much deeper knowledge of system internals than debian, centos or whatnot. When I finally moved everything to debian and my time spent on system administration tasks went down dramatically.
VanL 15y ago
Given Oracle's recent activities, I would guess that Ksplice's patent applications are the real prize. There are two that are published: The first is "Method of finding a safe time to modify code of a running computer program": http://bit.ly/ksplice-1 http://bit.ly/ksplice-1 The second is "Method of determining which computer program functions are changed by an arbitrary source code modification": http://bit.ly/ksplice-2 http://bit.ly/ksplice-2 These are just applications for now, so there is no telling exactly what the claims will look like when they finally leave the patent office. Nevertheless, you can assume that Oracle will keep these alive so that they can address every possible way in which these can be applied to patching running programs.
- 6ren 15y ago
  > Given Oracle's recent activities What do you mean? Sure, Oracle is an aggressive company, but they are clearly doing business, and not a non-practicing patent troll. Even in suing Google over Java in Android, they not only use Java but are the center of its development. Sun itself sued [Microsoft] over Java. This acquisition makes sense to them, since linux is a key part of their vertical offering. If no one else can offer it (because patented), it makes even more sense. I agree that their IP department would analyze the patent for value in other areas - but how could that be the "real prize", when its final form and very existence is unknown? That said, hot swapping code has been around for a while e.g. a PhD supervisor of mine had another student working in it around 2005, and these are dated 2009. They might very well have a new technique, applied in a specific area, but would be necessarily limited by prior art. --- QUESTION: how much value would this patent application be worth as part of this acquisition? Clearly, it depends on the base value of the company; the contribution of the technology (e.g. acquisitions also acquire customers and talent); the competitive advantage of blocking it (e.g. do customers care about this - is it an important factor in purchasing decisions?); how well this patent blocks it; and how likely it is to be granted in a useful form.
  - VanL 15y ago
    Oracle is extremely aggressive about IP enforcement - and just because you haven't heard about it in court, doesn't mean that it isn't happening. Ninety-nine percent of these issues are settled quietly. I have been on the other side of licensing discussions twice this year alone. It is not just patents - they are actively trying to monetize their IP, including changing license terms (see the evolution of the license for the JDK/JRE download, particularly the "Definitions" and "Commercial Features" sections), modifying support structures (see the modification of MySQL or OpenSolaris support prices and terms) to drive more revenue from what they bought from Sun. I understand why they are doing this - Larry Ellison being a billionaire and all - and I am not calling them a troll (unlike, say, Intellectual Ventures). Nevertheless, I would not shake Larry Ellison's hand without checking my pockets afterward to see if I had just incurred a licensing fee. As to your question: There is a substantial difference in value between a patent family that is closed and a patent family that is open. An open family can have continuations that contain claims specifically modified to read on work-arounds, whereas a closed family can only be interpreted to read on work-arounds through broader claim interpretation or the doctrine of equivalents.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
davidbalbert 15y ago
Looks like their blog is down too (http://blog.ksplice.com http://blog.ksplice.com). This was by far one of my favorite blogs. Good, long, articles about kernel hacking. I hope it comes back up soon and isn't gone for good.
- signa11 15y ago
  http://web.archive.org/web/20101213212354/http://blog.ksplice.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20101213212354/http://blog.ksplic... this is the last snap-shot (i think) from internet-archive of the above set of pages. not sure how large the delta is. but anyways.
seanp2k 15y ago
We use KSplice in production deployed to ~1400 servers. It works great. Never had any trouble with it, although they did have to roll back a patch a while back. Unfortunately for us, we're a CentOS shop (which KSplice supports). The "unfortunate" part comes from Oracle (who only supports Oracle "Unbreakable" Linux [which is 99% RHEL, BTW]). TL;DR KSplice is about to lose us as a client once they drop support for CentOS (which will happen when the Oracle takeover is done).
LiroXIV 15y ago
Apparently, the Ascendos guys are planning on forking it for their own free EL distribution. This may be fun
DEinspanjer 15y ago
Yeah, this pretty much sucks for their existing customers. Even if they aren't immediately shutting down everything, I don't feel very safe trusting them to do the same thorough job preparing patches for Ubuntu and RHEL when the press release makes it rather clear that Oracle is only interested in servicing their own distro. :/ I have to say that I am considering terminating my service with them.
postfuturist 15y ago
Your server configuration should tolerate nodes going down, so patching a kernel and rebooting your servers one at a time should be no big deal.
- dave1010uk 15y ago
  If you have many servers (whether physical or virtual), yes, but if you only have 1 or 2 then downtime is a big deal.

67 points by Erwin 15y ago

Erwin 15y ago

Due to some strange kernel driver for an attached storage device requiring multiple reboots and whatnot, kernel updates have always been a pain for me requiring an hour of downtime -- until I found Ksplice. From the text of the email I got however, it seems like they do not intend to make the service available outside of Oracle's own Linux variant: > The Ksplice Uptrack service is planned to be included > as a standard part of Oracle Linux Premier Support, > and we will no longer be selling the service > separately to new customers moving forward. > As an existing Ksplice customer, > you may continue to renew your subscriptions > and add additional systems to your account as before Same can be implied from http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/Acquisitions/ksplice/general-presentation-430138.pdf http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/Acquisitions/ksplice/gene... which says: > Oracle is expected to be the only enterprise > Linux vendor that can offer zero downtime update

rwmj 15y ago

If your servers can't ever be rebooted, I think you have problems.

soult 15y ago
From what I have heard, ksplice is pretty popular with VPS (virtual private server) providers. When there is an exploitable bug, they have to announce the planned upgrade to their customers and wait for a few days until they can run the upgrade. Even worse, they basically announce that there is a hole in their system to the very people that already have elevated access to that system. (Even non-remotly-exploitable bugs are a problem here.) Ksplice allows for an upgrade as soon as the bug is found/fixed in source code without tipping off potential attackers that could exploit the bug.
- rwmj 15y ago
  They should be able to migrate the VMs off to another box, allowing the first one to be upgraded and rebooted. The additional benefit is that this tests a migration path that ought to exist in case of hardware failures.
niczar 15y ago
There are situations where rebooting always has an impact, even if you're in a cluster. For instance take a database cluster in active/passive configuration. Switching over may be fast, but it will always take some time. Now you could design the app to be able to handle this, but this increases the complexity tremendously, esp. when dealing with transactions (in the DB sense of the word). Using ksplice removes this loss of service, however small, in most cases.

cpeterso 15y ago

Ksplice Inc. must have some unique patents. I wonder if Oracle will merge this technology into Solaris.

koenigdavidmj 15y ago
I wonder whether Microsoft thinks it falls under http://www.google.com/patents?id=cVyWAAAAEBAJ&dq=hotpatching http://www.google.com/patents?id=cVyWAAAAEBAJ&dq=hotpatc... .

mother 15y ago

I love this service. And now, Oracle has immediately dropped support for RHEL. For shame, Oracle.

jamespo 15y ago
How ironic considering Oracle's Linux is a Red Hat rip off

KonradKlause 15y ago

Time to fork it! http://knoppix.mirrors.tds.net/pub/linux/frugalware/frugalware-1.4/source/apps-extra/ksplice/ksplice-0.9.9-src.tar.gz http://knoppix.mirrors.tds.net/pub/linux/frugalware/frugalwa...

Erwin 15y ago
The big value of Ksplice for me is that I'm paying a few $/server/month for a service that writes, tests and distributes those live binary kernel patches when the exploits come out. So it can't be just some volunteer OS work, there also needs to be a support organization.

tzs 15y ago

The old Unix hacker in me likes Ksplice, from a hacker point of view. However, I wouldn't use it, except in exceptional circumstances (e.g., there is a patch we have to apply now but we can't do scheduled down time). I want to reboot after an update--even an update that does not technically require it--because I want to know my system is in a state that can boot. It is very annoying to do some update, not reboot, and then a couple of months later a power failure takes down your systems and when power is restored you get some kind of boot error and you are wondering what in the last several months you did that broke it. A few minutes planned downtime now in much better than hours of unplanned downtime at some indeterminate future time.

Dobbs 15y ago
This is why I can't stand Gentoo. We had a dude who was the Sysadmin before me who loved it. He upgraded the kernel deleted the old one and didn't reboot. Several months later the server had to be shutdown and didn't come backup. I spent several hours fighting to get the machine to a point where I could rebuild a working kernel. Within a week I prepared and migrated the system to something more reasonable.
- blhack 15y ago
  What does this have to do with gentoo?
- mjdwitt 15y ago
  It seems to me that your kernel issues are more related to your predecessor's failures as an admin than to Gentoo. Nothing you can do on Gentoo can't be done on most distributions, including poorly-done kernel upgrades.
  - prolepunk 15y ago
    Nah, it's gentoo that sucks. I don't see anything like that happening in binary distributions, or assembling anything from ports in FreeBSD. I've administered a few gentoo machines a few years ago and can attest that it's a major PIA. Or let me elaborate a bit, system failures that happened on gentoo didn't seem to happen on other systems, system failures that also happened on other system took significantly more time to resolve and required much deeper knowledge of system internals than debian, centos or whatnot. When I finally moved everything to debian and my time spent on system administration tasks went down dramatically.

VanL 15y ago

Given Oracle's recent activities, I would guess that Ksplice's patent applications are the real prize. There are two that are published: The first is "Method of finding a safe time to modify code of a running computer program": http://bit.ly/ksplice-1 http://bit.ly/ksplice-1 The second is "Method of determining which computer program functions are changed by an arbitrary source code modification": http://bit.ly/ksplice-2 http://bit.ly/ksplice-2 These are just applications for now, so there is no telling exactly what the claims will look like when they finally leave the patent office. Nevertheless, you can assume that Oracle will keep these alive so that they can address every possible way in which these can be applied to patching running programs.

6ren 15y ago
> Given Oracle's recent activities What do you mean? Sure, Oracle is an aggressive company, but they are clearly doing business, and not a non-practicing patent troll. Even in suing Google over Java in Android, they not only use Java but are the center of its development. Sun itself sued [Microsoft] over Java. This acquisition makes sense to them, since linux is a key part of their vertical offering. If no one else can offer it (because patented), it makes even more sense. I agree that their IP department would analyze the patent for value in other areas - but how could that be the "real prize", when its final form and very existence is unknown? That said, hot swapping code has been around for a while e.g. a PhD supervisor of mine had another student working in it around 2005, and these are dated 2009. They might very well have a new technique, applied in a specific area, but would be necessarily limited by prior art. --- QUESTION: how much value would this patent application be worth as part of this acquisition? Clearly, it depends on the base value of the company; the contribution of the technology (e.g. acquisitions also acquire customers and talent); the competitive advantage of blocking it (e.g. do customers care about this - is it an important factor in purchasing decisions?); how well this patent blocks it; and how likely it is to be granted in a useful form.
- VanL 15y ago
  Oracle is extremely aggressive about IP enforcement - and just because you haven't heard about it in court, doesn't mean that it isn't happening. Ninety-nine percent of these issues are settled quietly. I have been on the other side of licensing discussions twice this year alone. It is not just patents - they are actively trying to monetize their IP, including changing license terms (see the evolution of the license for the JDK/JRE download, particularly the "Definitions" and "Commercial Features" sections), modifying support structures (see the modification of MySQL or OpenSolaris support prices and terms) to drive more revenue from what they bought from Sun. I understand why they are doing this - Larry Ellison being a billionaire and all - and I am not calling them a troll (unlike, say, Intellectual Ventures). Nevertheless, I would not shake Larry Ellison's hand without checking my pockets afterward to see if I had just incurred a licensing fee. As to your question: There is a substantial difference in value between a patent family that is closed and a patent family that is open. An open family can have continuations that contain claims specifically modified to read on work-arounds, whereas a closed family can only be interpreted to read on work-arounds through broader claim interpretation or the doctrine of equivalents.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

davidbalbert 15y ago

Looks like their blog is down too (http://blog.ksplice.com http://blog.ksplice.com). This was by far one of my favorite blogs. Good, long, articles about kernel hacking. I hope it comes back up soon and isn't gone for good.

signa11 15y ago
http://web.archive.org/web/20101213212354/http://blog.ksplice.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20101213212354/http://blog.ksplic... this is the last snap-shot (i think) from internet-archive of the above set of pages. not sure how large the delta is. but anyways.

seanp2k 15y ago

We use KSplice in production deployed to ~1400 servers. It works great. Never had any trouble with it, although they did have to roll back a patch a while back. Unfortunately for us, we're a CentOS shop (which KSplice supports). The "unfortunate" part comes from Oracle (who only supports Oracle "Unbreakable" Linux [which is 99% RHEL, BTW]). TL;DR KSplice is about to lose us as a client once they drop support for CentOS (which will happen when the Oracle takeover is done).

LiroXIV 15y ago

Apparently, the Ascendos guys are planning on forking it for their own free EL distribution. This may be fun

DEinspanjer 15y ago

Yeah, this pretty much sucks for their existing customers. Even if they aren't immediately shutting down everything, I don't feel very safe trusting them to do the same thorough job preparing patches for Ubuntu and RHEL when the press release makes it rather clear that Oracle is only interested in servicing their own distro. :/ I have to say that I am considering terminating my service with them.

postfuturist 15y ago

Your server configuration should tolerate nodes going down, so patching a kernel and rebooting your servers one at a time should be no big deal.

dave1010uk 15y ago
If you have many servers (whether physical or virtual), yes, but if you only have 1 or 2 then downtime is a big deal.