
Linux md maintainer, Shaohua Li, has died - cmurf
https://www.spinics.net/lists/raid/msg61993.html
======
sowbug
The post where he offered to step up as md maintainer:
[https://lkml.org/lkml/2016/1/4/455](https://lkml.org/lkml/2016/1/4/455) and
discussion about the change: [http://www.linux-
magazine.com/Issues/2016/186/Kernel-News](http://www.linux-
magazine.com/Issues/2016/186/Kernel-News)

A very brief bio:
[https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/User:Shaohua_Li](https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/User:Shaohua_Li)

Patches to Linux kernel while at Facebook:
[https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/log/?qt=author&q=shli%40fb.com)

~~~
l1k
Only 232 patches were submitted under the Facebook e-mail address (since
2015). He worked at Fusion I/O and Intel before that, encompassing a total of
576 commits:

[https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/log/?qt=author&q=Shaohua+Li)

Additionally there were 47 commits with his involvement in the pre-git era
(starting Sep 2003):

[https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tglx/history...](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tglx/history.git/log/?qt=grep&q=Shaohua+Li)

Sad to see a prolific longtime contributor pass away.

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jensv
md is multiple devices. It's a RAID implementation in Linux kernel available
since kernel release 2.0. It allows you to create RAID level 0, 10, 4, 5 and
6. It has various optimizations like utilizing SSE and MMX instructions. It's
a standard software RAID in Linux.

~~~
babuskov
> It allows you to create RAID level 0, 10, 4, 5 and 6.

I'm pretty sure it supports RAID level 1 as well:

[https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/RAID_setup#RAID-1](https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/RAID_setup#RAID-1)

Or am I misunderstanding something?

~~~
dspillett
It does. Also the less standard RAID10-over-three-devices (similar to the
scheme called RAID1E by some hardware RAID controllers, though with more
layout options than they usually supply).

~~~
rincebrain
At first I thought you were describing a 3-way mirror, then I looked into it,
and that's a cleverly kinky idea.

------
ivoras
Condolences to Mr. Li's family.

Because it's a huge project with so many eyes on it, Linux's transition to the
next generation of developers will probably be The textbook case on the
viability of large human endeavours in general.

~~~
orsenthil
Condolences to Mr. Li's Family.

Mr. Li has had a good impact in this world, and his work will live on for a
long time.

> Because it's a huge project with so many eyes on it, Linux's transition to
> the next generation of developers will probably be The textbook case on the
> viability of large human endeavours in general.

True. I agree with this statement.

------
smolsky
Not trying to be a sarcastic jerk... any death is tragic and sad. Yet the
Linux maintainers' average age is probably going up every year... so the
community will have figure out a way to bring new blood in /and/ pass the
reins.

The sub-systems will fall into obsolescence otherwise...

~~~
FractalParadigm
I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of software and sub-systems re-written,
rather than maintained. systemd largely comes to mind; everyone seemed to be
perfectly okay with init until systemd came along and vastly simplified the
boot process. Now it's standard across virtually every mainstream distro. It's
a similar story with Wayland vs. Xorg. How many network managers do we have
now, too?

As new technologies arise, it's almost always easier to write something new,
from scratch, than to muck about in legacy code (that you probably didn't even
write in the first place). md is great and works exceptionally well, but it's
only a matter of time before a newer, better, more well-supported software
RAID is born and md goes the way of init and Xorg

~~~
Uberphallus
> systemd

> simplified

I like systemd, but it never simplified anything, especially with the huge
amount of dependencies. At most, it made things relatively uniform across
Linux distros, but in the end of the day each distro has to maintain their own
.service files anyway.

Lightweight and embedded Linux distros won't use systemd by default in the
foreseeable future because it's anything but simple.

~~~
avar
> it never simplified anything, especially with the huge amount of
> dependencies[...]

That's an odd way of looking at things. Ultimately it's software accomplishing
task X. How are things simpler if instead of depending on other projects
they'd have implemented those things on their own? Then you'd be carrying
duplicate work.

> [...]but in the end of the day each distro has to maintain their own
> .service files anyway.

Sure, but e.g. on Debian /etc/systemd/system/sshd.service is 22 lines. The
still-carried shellscript version is 162 lines, and that's before counting any
of the per-distro shellscript libraries systemd removed the need for. That's a
big reduction in complexity even if systemd didn't have any advantages over
shellscript init, which it does.

~~~
null_content
> Sure, but e.g. on Debian /etc/systemd/system/sshd.service is 22 lines. The
> still-carried shellscript version is 162 lines, and that's before counting
> any of the per-distro shellscript libraries systemd removed the need for.
> That's a big reduction in complexity even if systemd didn't have any
> advantages over shellscript init, which it does.

And for that "simplicity" all you need is a daemon that depends on dbus, glibc
and cgroups (IIRC), just to name a few - which makes it non-portable for
anything that isn't Linux and non-usable for anything that doesn't want to
depend on, say, glibc.

And if they got their way, dbus would have been shoved into the kernel (kdbus,
bus1, or whatever they called it) - adding a bloated mess of an IPC mechanism
into the kernel.

Simplicity. Right.

~~~
avar
I think it's legitimate to complain about systemd not being portable, but it's
odd to do so in terms of the non-portability not being "simple".

Imagine how much more complex systemd would be for even common things like
"start this daemon and make sure neither it or any of its sub-processes
collectively use more than 1GB of memory" would be if it had to run on z/OS,
AIX, Solaris, OpenBSD, HP/UX, Windows, Mac OS X etc.

And let's be clear, systemd is perfectly usable for things that don't want to
depend on glibc, for example it works just fine for starting Go programs, or
your random C program you've linked to uClibc. What you can't do is not have a
glibc on your system at all. Given how tiny glibc is in terms of modern
hardware resources, if you can't have it on your system you probably weren't
the target audience for systemd in the first place.

------
joecool1029
Although I never had a chance to interact with Shaohua Li, I'm glad there was
someone else that could step in to maintain for awhile. It always sucks losing
someone in the community and cancer sucks...

Most of the years I was a heavy user of md it seemed like Neil Brown was the
only person working on it, so for every weird use case or if documentation was
lacking I'd shoot him an email and he'd get back. I can only imagine how many
other people were doing the same!

------
staunch
Giving open source software to the world is a great contribution to humanity.
Thank you Shaohua Li.

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datumy
I guess coding can kill pain, sometimes. Thank you Shaohua Li.

------
terrywang
Here is another good article written by Shaohua's close friend Coly Li (who is
the main bcache maintainer), a lot more details on the contributions (elegant
code, performance patches, etc.) he has made to the Linux kernel, as well as
how he helped many new contributors to step up and become core contributors
for difference subsystems. Amazing.

R.I.P.

[https://media.weibo.cn/article?id=2309404323330038621366](https://media.weibo.cn/article?id=2309404323330038621366)

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finnjohnsen2
Rest in peace.

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AtlasBarfed
Software RAID for the masses was not an insignificant advance to society. I
was always amazed at how easy and consistent it was.

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equalunique
Sad to hear the news. md was the first "RAID" I ever got experience using,
back in 2011.

