VA Linux offers kernel debugging services

VA Linux Announces 'VA Quest' Failure Analysis Solution Service for Linux
Kernel

Tokyo, Japan, Apr. 05, 2005 - (JCN Newswire) - VA Linux Systems Japan K.K.
(VA Linux), a leading provider of Linux solutions for the
telecommunications and enterprise systems markets, today announced that it
is ready to offer a brand-new professional service called 'VA Quest'.  VA
Quest is a Failure Analysis Solution Service for the Linux Kernel, which
makes full use of the power of VA Linux's Linux kernel experts. VA Quest
is an ideal solution for the SI vendors or enterprise customers who need
to handle mission-critical systems for enterprise or telecommunications
flawlessly.

Along with the acceptance GNU/Linux enjoys in the realm of
mission-critical key systems, the robustness of Linux-based system becomes
increasingly critical for a company's business performances. VA Quest
provides a reliable, from-the-source professional support to the SI
vendors or enterprise customers.  VA Linux has been already delivering
similar solution services to several major solution providers in Japan, on
a customized basis.  However, this time VA Linux expanded and sorted out
the service plans and pricing policy, and formed a team of skillful
engineers dedicated solely for VA Quest. VA Quest is available from April,
2005.

VA Quest offers consultation services by VA Linux's accomplished Linux
kernel experts.  They can thoroughly analyze failure on customers'
GNU/Linux systems by reading the source code of the Linux kernel and
memory dump, and then track the reason down, offer the way to fix or avoid
the problem, provide patches, etc.  System auditing before the problem
actually happens is also available by request.

VA Quest offers three plans: Silver, Gold and Platinum.  The Silver plan
(250k Japanese Yen /month) supports up to 10 servers, Gold (700k Japanese
Yen /month) supports up to 40 servers, and Platinum (1500k Japanese Yen
/month) supports unlimited number of servers.

To start VA Quest, VA Linux newly established the Kernel Analysis Unit in
the Enterprise OS Business Unit, whose original mission is to develop the
Linux kernel and provide consulting services.  The Kernel Analysis Unit is
composed of 5 Linux kernel experts, and headed by Itsuro Oda, who also
serves concurrently the vice president of the Enterprise OS Business Unit.
In addition, other 10 kernel specialists from the Enterprise OS Business
Unit will support the Kernel Analysis Unit if necessary.  This solid
organization enables us to provide complete, one-stop service for our
customers.

"VA Linux has many experienced engineers who know every inch of the latest
Linux kernel.  Because of that, VA Linux is one of the few companies which
actually able to contribute the Linux kernel development directly" said
Tetsuya Ueda, President and CEO of VA Linux in Tokyo.  "We have been
concentrating on providing our services only to selected customers.
However, with the introduction of VA Quest, we will be able to serve more
broad range of customers.  We hope this move helps to accelerate the
acceptance of GNU/Linux in the world of enterprise systems."

Reference:  VA Linux History with Linux Kernel Development

VA Linux contributes to the Linux kernel development in many fields. The
most notable three are: Zerocopy NFS, Memory hotplug and Mini Kernel Dump.
Zerocopy NFS has already been incorporated into the latest Linux kernel
(2.6 series).  Memory hotplug is under active discussion in the
international community of Linux kernel developers, and will be
incorporated into the next stable release.  Mini Kernel Dump has been
developed by VA Linux with NTT Data, and released as an open source
software on October 13, 2004.

- Zerocopy NFS

Under Linux kernel 2.4, when the NFS server processes Read requests,
memory is copied from the page cache to the NFS send buffer. This is then
copied to the out a send process.

This issue has been improved Under Linux kernel 2.6 so that the page used
in the page cache is sent directly to the layered protocol and, when
possible, is also sent as is to the network driver as well. Through this,
obviously, overhead created by wasteful copy processes is eliminated and
the amount of useful data that is purged from the processor's internal
memory cache is eliminated.

Hirokazu Takahashi, head technology officer of VA Linux, was responsible
for this implementation under the Linux kernel.

- Linux memory hotplug

The Memory hotplug is a function that actively adds and removes memory
modules while the target system is running. This is particularly needed in
enterprise systems, where a high degree of open availability is needed.

The Memory hotplug function differs from device-based hotplugs and there
are still many issues being faced before its implementation is fully
realized.

Architecturally speaking, one point to pay specific attention to is for
creating conditions in which it is possible to continue to use important
data that has been allocated to memory modules even after removal of a
given memory module has transpired.

See also:
http://people.valinux.co.jp/~iwamoto/mh.html
http://people.valinux.co.jp/~taka/hpageremap.html

- Mini Kernel Dump

Mini Kernel Dump is a crash dump function which automatically sends all
internal information to an external recording device at the moment a
failure occurs on Linux-based systems. When compared with Unix-based
enterprise systems, determining the cause of a failure on Linux systems
has been considered a major weakness. This tool aims to rectify this weak
point.

Current Linux systems offer such failure analysis features as LKCD,
netdump, and diskdump. However, all of those existing solutions have a
major drawback -- they need some Linux device drivers to put their
information out, thus they actually rely on the very Linux kernel they are
running on and monitoring. This makes it extremely hard to get needed
information under tough situations when even the Linux kernel itself is
unstable and unreliable. Mini Kernel Dump overcomes this difficulty by
using another small Linux kernel dedicated only to get dumped information.
Therefore, Mini Kernel Dump does not depend on the target Linux Kernel.
Besides, Mini Kernel Dump does not require too much modification on the
target Linux kernel, thus the expected cost for introducing Mini Kernel
Dump solution is very low. Also, Mini Kernel Dump should work under any
hardware configuration since no modification for device drivers is needed.

See also:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mkdump/
http://mkdump.sourceforge.net/

About VA Linux Systems Japan K.K.
Founded in September 2000, VA Linux Systems Japan K.K. (VA Linux), which
has based its operations on the development of Linux and Open Source, has
become one of the premier providers of Linux kernel, technological, and
software solutions in the Japanese domestic market. From March 2004
onward, VA Linux has been the recipient of funding from NTT Comware and
NTT Data. VA Linux is currently at the forefront of implementing Linux
solutions for telecommunication and enterprise system markets. For more
information, please visit www.valinux.co.jp/en/<BR />

Contact

Takako Iizuka
Public Relations
VA Linux Systems Japan K.K.
phone: +81-3-3293-5151
fax: +81-3-3293-5152
Email: mktg at valinux.co.jp

Apr. 05, 2005, 15:01 (JST)
Source: VA Linux Systems Japan K.K.
VA Linux Systems Japan K.K.
http://www.valinux.co.jp/en/index.html
>From the Japan Corporate News Network

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