February 2008 Volume 33 Number 1

login_february08_covers.qxp:login covers 1/22/08 1:38 PM Page 1 FEBRUARY 2008 VOLUME 33 NUMBER 1 OPINION Musings 2 RIK FARROW SYSADMIN Fear and Loathing in the Routing System 5 JOE ABLEY THE USENIX MAGAZINE From x=1 to (setf x 1): What Does Configuration Management Mean? 12 ALVA COUCH http:BL: Taking DNSBL Beyond SMTP 19 ERIC LANGHEINRICH Centralized Package Management Using Stork 25 JUSTIN SAMUEL, JEREMY PLICHTA, AND JUSTIN CAPPOS Managing Distributed Applications with Plush 32 JEANNIE ALBRECHT, RYAN BRAUD, DARREN DAO, NIKOLAY TOPILSKI, CHRISTOPHER TUTTLE, ALEX C. SNOEREN, AND AMIN VAHDAT An Introduction to Logical Domains 39 OCTAVE ORGERON PROGRAMMING Insecurities in Designing XML Signatures 48 ADITYA K SOOD COLUMNS Practical Perl Tools: Why I Live at the P.O. 54 DAVID N. BLANK-EDELMAN Pete’s All Things Sun (PATS): The Future of Sun 61 PETER BAER GALVIN iVoyeur: Permission to Parse 65 DAVID JOSEPHSEN /dev/random 72 ROBERT G. FERRELL Toward Attributes 74 NICK STOUGHTON BOOK REVIEWS Book Reviews 78 ÆLEEN FRISCH, BRAD KNOWLES, AND SAM STOVER USENIX NOTES 2008 USENIX Nominating Committee Report 82 MICHAEL B. JONES AND DAN GEER Summary of USENIX Board of Directors Meetings and Actions 83 ELLIE YOUNG New on the USENIX Web Site: The Multimedia Page 83 ANNE DICKISON CONFERENCE LISA ’07: 21st Large Installation SUMMARIES System Administration Conference 84 The Advanced Computing Sytems Association login_february08_covers.qxp:login covers 1/17/08 12:11 PM Page 2 Upcoming Events 2008 ACM INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON 2ND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DISTRIBUTED VIRTUAL EXECUTION ENVIRONMENTS (VEE ’08) EVENT-BASED SYSTEMS (DEBS 2008) Sponsored by ACM SIGPLAN in cooperation with USENIX Organized in cooperation with USENIX, the IEEE and IEEE Com- MARCH 5–7, 2008, SEATTLE, WA, USA puter Society, and ACM (SIGSOFT) http://vee08.cs.tcd.ie JULY 2–4, 2008, ROME, ITALY http://debs08.dis.uniroma1.it/ Abstract submissions due: March 9, 2008 USABILITY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND SECURITY 2008 Co-located with NSDI ’08 2008 USENIX/ACCURATE ELECTRONIC APRIL 14, 2008, SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA VOTING TECHNOLOGY WORKSHOP (EVT ’08) http://www.usenix.org/upsec08 Co-located with USENIX Security ’08 JULY 28–29, 2008, SAN JOSE, CA, USA FIRST USENIX WORKSHOP ON LARGE-SCALE http://www.usenix.org/evt08 XPLOITS AND MERGENT HREATS E E T (LEET ’08) Paper submissions due: March 28, 2008 Botnets, Spyware, Worms, and More Co-located with NSDI ’08 2ND USENIX WORKSHOP ON OFFENSIVE APRIL 15, 2008, SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA TECHNOLOGIES (WOOT ’08) http://www.usenix.org/leet08 Co-located with USENIX Security ’08 JULY 28, 2008, SAN JOSE, CA, USA WORKSHOP ON ORGANIZING WORKSHOPS, CONFERENCES, AND SYMPOSIA FOR COMPUTER 17TH USENIX SECURITY SYM POSIUM YSTEMS S (WOWCS ’08) JULY 28–AUGUST 1, 2008, SAN JOSE, CA, USA Co-located with NSDI ’08 http://www.usenix.org/sec08 APRIL 15, 2008, SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA http://www.usenix.org/wowcs08 3RD USENIX WORKSHOP ON HOT TOPICS IN SECURITY (HOTSEC ’08) 5TH USENIX SYMPOSIUM ON NETWORKED Co-located with USENIX Security ’08 YSTEMS ESIGN AND MPLEMENTATION S D I JULY 29, 2008, SAN JOSE, CA, USA (NSDI ’08) http://www.usenix.org/hotsec08 Sponsored by USENIX in cooperation with ACM SIGCOMM Position paper submissions due: May 28, 2008 and ACM SIGOPS APRIL 16–18, 2008, SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA 22ND LARGE INSTALLATION SYSTEM http://www.usenix.org/nsdi08 ADMINISTRATION CONFERENCE (LISA ’08) Sponsored by USENIX and SAGE HE IXTH NTERNATIONAL ONFERENCE ON T S I C NOVEMBER 9–14, 2008, SAN DIEGO, CA, USA OBILE YSTEMS PPLICATIONS AND ERVICES M S , A , S http://www.usenix.org/lisa08 (MOBISYS 2008) Extended abstract and paper submissions due: May 8, 2008 Jointly sponsored by ACM SIGMOBILE and USENIX JUNE 10–13, 2008, BRECKENRIDGE, CO, USA 8TH USENIX SYMPOSIUM ON OPERATING SYSTEMS http://www.sigmobile.org/mobisys/2008/ DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION (OSDI ’08) Sponsored by USENIX in cooperation with ACM SIGOPS 2008 USENIX ANNUAL TECHNICAL CONFERENCE DECEMBER 8–10, 2008, SAN DIEGO, CA, USA JUNE 22–27, 2008, BOSTON, MA, USA http://www.usenix.org/osdi08 http://www.usenix.org/usenix08 Paper submissions due: May 8, 2008 For a complete list of all USENIX & USENIX co-sponsored events, see http://www.usenix.org/events. login_february08-articles:login June 06 Volume 31 1/17/08 11:03 AM Page 1 OPINION Musings 2 RIK FARROW SYSADMIN: Fear and Loathing in the Routing System 5 JOE ABLEY From x=1 to (setf x 1): What Does Configuration Management Mean? 12 ALVA COUCH http:BL: Taking DNSBL Beyond SMTP 19 ERIC LANGHENRICH contents Centralized Package Management Using Stork 25 JUSTIN SAMUEL, JEREMY PLICHTA, AND JUSTIN CAPPOS Managing Distributed Applications with Plush 32 JEANNIE ALBRECHT, RYAN BRAUD, DARREN DAO, NIKOLAY TOPILSKI, CHRISTOPHER TUTTLE, ALEX C. SNOEREN, AND AMIN VAHDAT An Introduction to Logical Domains 39 OCTAVE ORGERON PROGRAMMING: Insecurities in Designing XML Signatures 48 ADITYA K SOOD COLUMNS: Practical Perl Tools: Why I Live at the P.O. 54 DAVID N. BLANK-EDELMAN Pete’s All Things Sun (PATS): The Future of Sun 61 PETER BAER GALVIN VOL. 33, #1, FEBRUARY 2008 iVoyeur: Permission to Parse 65 EDITOR ;login: is the official DAVID JOSEPHSEN Rik Farrow magazine of the /dev/random 72 [email protected] USENIX Association. ROBERT G. FERRELL MANAGING EDITOR ;login: (ISSN 1044-6397) is Jane-Ellen Long published bi-monthly by the Toward Attributes 74 NICK STOUGHTON [email protected] USENIX Association, 2560 COPY EDITOR Ninth Street, Suite 215, David Couzens Berkeley, CA 94710. [email protected] $85 of each member’s annual BOOK REVIEWS Book Reviews 78 PRODUCTION dues is for an annual subscrip- ÆLEEN FRISCH, BRAD KNOWLES, AND SAM STOVER Casey Henderson tion to ;login:. Subscriptions for Michele Nelson nonmembers are $120 per year. TYPESETTER Periodicals postage paid at Star Type Berkeley, CA, and additional USENIX NOTES 2008 USENIX Nominating Committee [email protected] offices. Report 82 MICHAEL B. JONES AND DAN GEER USENIX ASSOCIATION POSTMASTER: Send address 2560 Ninth Street, changes to ;login:, Summary of USENIX Board of Directors Suite 215, Berkeley, USENIX Association, Meetings and Actions 83 California 94710 2560 Ninth Street, ELLIE YOUNG Phone: (510) 528-8649 FAX: Suite 215, Berkeley, (510) 548-5738 CA 94710. New on the USENIX Web Site: http://www.usenix.org The Multimedia Page 83 ©2008 USENIX Association ANNE DICKISON http://www.sage.org USENIX is a registered trademark of the USENIX Associa- tion. Many of the designations CONFERENCE : LISA ’07: 21st Large Installation used by manufacturers and sell- System Administration Conference 84 ers to distinguish their products REPORTS are claimed as trademarks. USENIX acknowledges all trademarks herein. Where those designations appear in this publica- tion and USENIX is aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps. login_february08-articles:login June 06 Volume 31 1/17/08 11:03 AM Page 2 THERE ARE TIMES WHEN WE JUST can’t wait for the future to arrive, such as RIK FARROW the coming of warmer weather. And some- times it seems that people pine for the poorly remembered past, as if it were some- how better than what we face today. Right now, I want to talk about sysadmins and musings ponder whether they are looking ahead while wishing for an imagined past. [email protected] In this issue you will find the summaries for LISA ’07, including the summary I wrote about John Strassner’s keynote. John spoke about experiences with a project at Motorola where researchers had created a functioning example of network autonomics. This is a complex system, with many different active components all contributing to deci- sions that result in changes in configuration. The FOCALE architecture (see slide 23 of his presenta- tion on the LISA ’07 page [1]) has a Context Man- ager, a Policy Manager, and an Autonomic Manag- er, as well as a machine learning component, all of which are involved in controlling the creation and modifications of device configurations. FOCALE is a working system. It actually helps to simplify a terribly complex control setup that in- cludes seven different groups of administrators (see slide 4). John carefully began his talk by ex- plaining the existing situation found in many telecommunications companies (think cell phone operators). He explained the limitations of the cur- rent network management, including the need for human involvement in analysis before anything can be done. And he described what he means by autonomics, going way behind the infamous four self-functions of self-configuration, self-protection, self-healing, and self-optimization made famous by IBM [2, 3]. John considers these benefits, seeing the way forward via knowledge about component systems, the context in which they operate, and an ability to learn and reason, to follow policy deter- mined from business rules, and to adapt offered services and resources as necessary. I thought John’s talk described groundbreaking re- search, where a real autonomic system was working to make a network function more smoothly. But others at the conference weren’t nearly as hap- py. The most common complaint, one that really stuck with me, was that there was “too much math” in his solution. I wondered whether the two equations found on slide 47 (shades of calculus!) were to blame. But then I read Alva Couch’s article 2 ;LOGIN: VOL. 33, NO. 1 login_february08-articles:login June 06 Volume 31 1/17/08 11:03 AM Page 3 (page 12) and realized that perhaps the real problem was something com- pletely different. The real problem has to do with two things: a mindset, and being stuck in the past. The Mindset Alva Couch explains something I have had difficulty understanding since I first encountered the concept, way back when I was a college student.

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