subject:"Filesystem recommendations"

Rob Owens put forth on 4/28/2010 8:26 PM:
 Many/most
 users don't run a UPS and sudden unexpected power loss is a real
 possibility for them.

Really?  I was under the impression that laptops and netbooks are now the
primary computer of well over 50% of users worldwide (not counting smart
phones).  Laptops have a built-in UPS.  In the U.S., given the numbers of
cheap APC, Triplite, and Belkin UPS on the shelves at $big_box_store I'd say
most U.S. desktop users have a UPS.  I know I do.  Pretty much every
computer user I know personally has a UPS.  In other parts of the world I'm
sure there are many people who can barely afford a PC let alone a UPS.  Used
laptops are a great fit for those users, assuming the batteries aren't shot.

Don't read me wrong.  I'm not advocating XFS on laptops, although I do know
of many folks who use it on laptops.  For the average user there would be
little performance benefit.  For power users it's a valid possible choice.

-- 
Stan


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Re: Filesystem recommendations

2010-04-29 Thread John Hasler

Stan Hoeppner
 I'd say most U.S. desktop users have a UPS.

I'd say most home desktop users and the majority of small businesses
don't.

 I know I do.

I don't.  I can't afford it (and I've never lost important data in a
power failure (but then I have little important data to lose)).

 Pretty much every computer user I know personally has a UPS.

No non-power-user I know has one.  Most don't know what one is.
-- 
John Hasler


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Re: Filesystem recommendations

2010-04-29 Thread Rob Owens

On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 07:36:39AM -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
 Rob Owens put forth on 4/28/2010 8:26 PM:
  Many/most
  users don't run a UPS and sudden unexpected power loss is a real
  possibility for them.
 
 Really?  I was under the impression that laptops and netbooks are now the
 primary computer of well over 50% of users worldwide (not counting smart
 phones).  Laptops have a built-in UPS.  In the U.S., given the numbers of
 cheap APC, Triplite, and Belkin UPS on the shelves at $big_box_store I'd say
 most U.S. desktop users have a UPS.  I know I do.  Pretty much every
 computer user I know personally has a UPS.  In other parts of the world I'm
 sure there are many people who can barely afford a PC let alone a UPS.  Used
 laptops are a great fit for those users, assuming the batteries aren't shot.
 
I only know for sure of one friend who has a UPS.  He's the sysadmin for
his company.  I don't even have one, and I know better!  Good point
about laptops and netbooks, though.

By the way, I use XFS on my MythTV storage drive and I haven't had any
problem w/ data loss due to power outages.  It has happened to me
several times, though, when I was using JFS.  That's why I switched to
XFS.  (I chose JFS and XFS over EXT3 in this case, due to their ability
to very quickly delete large files).

-Rob


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Re: Filesystem recommendations

2010-04-29 Thread Stephen Powell

On Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:07:00 -0400 (EDT), John Hasler wrote:
 Stan Hoeppner wrote:
 I'd say most U.S. desktop users have a UPS.
 
 I'd say most home desktop users and the majority of small
 businesses don't.

 I know I do.
 
 I don't.  I can't afford it (and I've never lost important data in a
 power failure (but then I have little important data to lose)).

 Pretty much every computer user I know personally has a UPS.
 
 No non-power-user I know has one.  Most don't know what one is.

I agree with John.  Stan must hobnob with an elite crowd.  I don't
have a UPS at home either, and I don't know anyone that does.
I do have one at work, but even there most desktop systems aren't
on it.  The only reason that my desktop system uses the UPS is that
my cubicle is on raised floor inside the computer room and I
connected it myself.  Most desktop users, even at the office, are not
so privileged.  And my employer is a very big entity, financially.
It's not a small business.

-- 
  .''`. Stephen Powell
 : :'  :
 `. `'`
   `-


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Re: Filesystem recommendations

On Wednesday 28 April 2010 20:26:46 Rob Owens wrote:
 On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 08:28:37AM -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
  Javier Barroso put forth on 4/26/2010 6:56 AM:
   Why Debian Installer doesn't change its default filesystem to xfs if
   it is better than ext3 / ext4? I think always is better stick to
   defaults if it is possible
 
  If one disk filesystem was better than all the others in all ways, then
  Linus would only allow one FS in the kernel tree.  As of 2.6.33 there are
  no less than 7 stable primary disk filesystems offered in the kernel. 
  Your question is a bit simplistic, and not really valid.  There is no
  single perfect filesystem.  IMO, for servers anyway, XFS is pretty
  close.
 
  Newbies _should_ always stick to defaults.  Experts install with expert
  mode, and choose exactly what they want/need.
 
  I didn't write the Debian installer so I can't tell you why EXT is the
  default.  I can only speculate.  Thankfully the installer offers us
  expert mode so we can do whatever we want.  In this regard, I guess the
  Debian team considers EXT the best choice for non-experts.
 
 If I'm right that EXT3 has superior resilience to power loss (see my
 othe post in this thread) , then that
 fact alone makes it a good choice for default filesystem.

Ext3 basically syncs to disk every 5 seconds or so.  Ext4 didn't, but it's 
possible that has been / will be put back.  XFS uses longer gaps between disk 
syncs by default, but it is tunable.

You could always use the sync file system option to avoid the whole issue.  
If that's no good enough, a simple shell script (while sleep 5; do sync; done) 
running as root (perhaps started from init) will fill basically the same role.

Both XFS and Ext3/4 recover through journal replay, and it is usually enough.  
Rarely, a manual filesystem check will be required, and xfs_check is usually 
much faster than fsck.ext3 or even fsck.ext4.
-- 
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b...@iguanasuicide.net  ((_/)o o(\_))
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Re: Filesystem recommendations

Stephen Powell put forth on 4/29/2010 8:50 AM:

I agree with John. Stan must hobnob with an elite crowd.

Not really. A computer educated crowd maybe, but by no means elite for most
definitions of elite.

I don't
have a UPS at home either, and I don't know anyone that does.

Be the first. Even something like this will get you through browns and sags
without a burb from the PC, and will give you 5-20 minutes to do a proper
shutdown with an average mini tower in the case of total outages due to the
occasional storm or line crew replacing a transformer, etc. Less than $50
at WorstBuy:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/CyberPower+-+425VA+SL-Series+Battery+Back-Up+System/6201585.p?id=1069297060711skuId=6201585

A better choice IMO would be something like this:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/APC+-+900VA+Battery+Back-Up+System/7842588.p?id=1142298456537skuId=7842588

Provides surge protection for PC, dsl modem, coax; long battery runtime for
a single home PC. Keeps the cordless phone base working during a storm
along with a desk lamp so you're not in total darkness. They're great for
the living room home theater system too. Allows you to watch the local
weather during a storm when the power is out.

I do have one at work, but even there most desktop systems aren't
on it. The only reason that my desktop system uses the UPS is that
my cubicle is on raised floor inside the computer room and I
connected it myself. Most desktop users, even at the office, are not
so privileged. And my employer is a very big entity, financially.
It's not a small business.

In the U.S. most business facilities have more stable power than residential
areas. Most offices have transformers inside the building and buried cable
to the building, unlike residential which, if not fairly new, has all above
ground cabling and multiple houses on one transformer up on a power pole.
The latter is a magnet for falling tree limbs due to wind in the summer and
ice in the winter. Most offices don't suffer from browns and sags due to
having dedicated transformers. Usually when office power goes out it's due
to a major component failure at a substation or an overhead line somewhere
in between that got clipped by a boom truck or the like. In short, office
desktops usually don't need a UPS, especially if user data is stored on
network shares on UPS backed servers. If power goes out it just garbles
local temp files--unless it's a Windows PC and the registry was held open,
as it usually is, even though it's not supposed to be...

Anyway, the way I've always looked at the residential side of the UPS debate
is to ask myself this question: Is it worth spending $100 to surge and
power backup protect my $1000 PC and printer? For me that answer is an
emphatic yes.

--
Stan

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[OT] Home UPS (was Filesystem recommendations)

2010-04-29 Thread Stephen Powell

On Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:26:52 -0400 (EDT), Stan Hoeppner wrote:
 
 Anyway, the way I've always looked at the residential side of the UPS debate
 is to ask myself this question:  Is it worth spending $100 to surge and
 power backup protect my $1000 PC and printer?  For me that answer is an
 emphatic yes.

You make a strong case.  But I come from a different perspective than
you do.  I don't have any new hardware at home.  The only piece of
equipment I bought new was a 4-port Ethernet router which cost me about
$20, I think.  Almost everything else was either given away or thrown
away or sold used for a low price.  The most expensive computer I own
cost me somewhere around $300, I think.  I bought it used 2 years ago,
and it's market value today is probably around $150-200.  All my monitors
(with the exception of those built-in to laptops) are thrown-away CRTs.
In other words, my home hardware collection consists almost exclusively
of dumpster-diver specials.  How much money am I willing to spend to
protect my hardware?  Probably not as much as you are.  Still, it would
be nice to have.  Maybe I'll put it on my Christmas list.  :-)

Oh, wait.  I did buy my powered speakers new -- about 15 years
ago.  ;-)

-- 
  .''`. Stephen Powell
 : :'  :
 `. `'`
   `-


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Re: Filesystem recommendations

2010-04-29 Thread Monique Y. Mudama

On Thu, Apr 29 at  9:50, Stephen Powell penned:
 
 I agree with John.  Stan must hobnob with an elite crowd.  I don't
 have a UPS at home either, and I don't know anyone that does.  I do
 have one at work, but even there most desktop systems aren't on it.
 The only reason that my desktop system uses the UPS is that my
 cubicle is on raised floor inside the computer room and I connected
 it myself.  Most desktop users, even at the office, are not so
 privileged.  And my employer is a very big entity, financially.
 It's not a small business.

I don't have one on my home workstation - I do on the server, and I keep
anything important on it.  I've also found that UPSes can fail
eventually, and you might not know until the brown-out from which it
doesn't protect you.  I use ext3 on the server, which has fine
erformance for my needs.  I use the OS Which Must Not Be Named on my
workstation.

(I don't have a good reason not to have a UPS on my workstation -
basically laziness.)

As far as I know, no one at my mid-sized company has a UPS on his or
her workstation.  The expectation, again, is that important data goes
on the fileserver, although for various reasons that expectation is
not always correct.  We do have the option of requesting backups for
particular directories on our workstations, but I think they're
nightly at best.  I've actually asked about getting a UPS here and
there, but given that no one else has one and that we rarely get
brownouts, let alone blackouts, I haven't pushed the question.

I do see a lot of non-techie people using laptops as their only
computer; none of those people run linux or would recognize the term
filesystem.  Among the techie people I know (in the US, so relatively
privileged), very few use a laptop as their primary computer; it's
usually a supplement to a beefier desktop machine.

But regardless, this is back to one of those eternal tradeoffs -
performance vs. data integrity.  I see no reason I shouldn't use a UPS
*and* a journalling filesystem when the performance of that filesystem
is adequate for my needs.

-- 
monique


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Re: Filesystem recommendations

2010-04-29 Thread Monique Y. Mudama

On Thu, Apr 29 at 10:26, Stan Hoeppner penned:
 
 In the U.S. most business facilities have more stable power than
 residential areas.  

Probably true, but I've been living in my house maybe two years longer
than I've been in this office, and I've had fewer power problems at home
than at work.  To be fair, there haven't been many in either case.  So
as always, YMMV.

-- 
monique


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Re: [OT] Home UPS (was Filesystem recommendations)

On Thursday 29 April 2010 10:54:47 Stephen Powell wrote:
 On Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:26:52 -0400 (EDT), Stan Hoeppner wrote:
  Is it worth spending $100 to
  surge and power backup protect my $1000 PC and printer?  For me that
  answer is an emphatic yes.
 
 You make a strong case.  But I come from a different perspective than
 you do.  I don't have any new hardware at home.  The only piece of
 equipment I bought new was a 4-port Ethernet router which cost me about
 $20, I think.  Almost everything else was either given away or thrown
 away or sold used for a low price.
 
 Oh, wait.  I did buy my powered speakers new -- about 15 years
 ago.  ;-)

A UPS probably won't last that long (the battery isn't designed for that 
AFAIK).  However it is something that isn't replaced often, since power has 
been fairly standard (V / Hz / Plug shape and polarity) for a while.

For those reasons and more, a working UPS is rather hard to find when 
dumpster-diving.

Also, clean power should make your existing hardware last longer.  That might 
be a big plus since you may be the type that never disposes of working 
hardware.
-- 
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b...@iguanasuicide.net  ((_/)o o(\_))
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Re: [OT] Home UPS (was Filesystem recommendations)

2010-04-29 Thread Kelly Clowers

On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 08:54, Stephen Powell zlinux...@wowway.com wrote:
 On Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:26:52 -0400 (EDT), Stan Hoeppner wrote:

 Anyway, the way I've always looked at the residential side of the UPS debate
 is to ask myself this question:  Is it worth spending $100 to surge and
 power backup protect my $1000 PC and printer?  For me that answer is an
 emphatic yes.

 You make a strong case.  But I come from a different perspective than
 you do.  I don't have any new hardware at home.  The only piece of
 equipment I bought new was a 4-port Ethernet router which cost me about
 $20, I think.  Almost everything else was either given away or thrown
 away or sold used for a low price.  The most expensive computer I own
 cost me somewhere around $300, I think.  I bought it used 2 years ago,
 and it's market value today is probably around $150-200.  All my monitors
 (with the exception of those built-in to laptops) are thrown-away CRTs.
 In other words, my home hardware collection consists almost exclusively
 of dumpster-diver specials.  How much money am I willing to spend to
 protect my hardware?  Probably not as much as you are.  Still, it would
 be nice to have.  Maybe I'll put it on my Christmas list.  :-)

 Oh, wait.  I did buy my powered speakers new -- about 15 years
 ago.  ;-)

For me, it is only partly about my hardware. It is also about my data.
I have backups, but I didn't used to, and I would just as soon not
have to go through a restore process. And even a simple power
outage that wouldn't harm hardware might at least produce the
need for a fsck (not as much of a problem with ext4, but again
I would rather avoid the situation entirely).

Furthermore most almost all power outages here are very brief,
and I end up not having to shutdown at all, which is just pure
convenience. For me, my Back-UPS XS 1000 was one of my
best computer-related purchases.


Cheers,
Kelly Clowers


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Re: [OT] Home UPS (was Filesystem recommendations)

Kelly Clowers put forth on 4/29/2010 12:07 PM:

 Furthermore most almost all power outages here are very brief,
 and I end up not having to shutdown at all, which is just pure
 convenience. For me, my Back-UPS XS 1000 was one of my
 best computer-related purchases.

I've got an old APC RM1400NET in the bottom of my home rack backing just one
server at the moment, a rarely used CRT, and my comms gear.  I get about an
hour out of it during a total outage.  I bought it used from a local off
lease equipment reseller/liquidator.  Gave just over $100 USD for it.  The
battery pack lasted 6 months.  Bought a replacement pack from batteries.com
for a little over $100 with shipping.  I've got over 4 years on the current
battery pack.  Average lifespan on the 1400 pack is 5-7 years depending on
the number and duration of inverter cycles.  As with you, this is one of the
smartest hardware purchases I ever made.  The electronics and electrical
parts in UPSes very rarely fail, so as long as you replace batteries every 5
years or so you'd got reliable power backup, and cheap--$20 per year
basically for batteries.  This level of power (and piece of mind) protection
costs less per year than one trip to the movie theater to see Avatar.

I've got an equally old MinuteMan 650 floor model backing my home
workstation.  Again I purchased this one used from a liquidator (different
one in this case) for around $40 back in 1998.  I've replaced the battery
once after 6 years and am about ready to replace it again.  The battery for
this one runs around $40.

Today you can buy a 700kva class consumer UPS for $100.  If the battery
lasts you 5 years, you've paid $20/year for power/surge and data protection.
 Not to mention convenience.

I can't imagine ever going without a UPS, whether server or workstation.
Laptops are great because, for all practical purposes, you get a free UPS
built in.

-- 
Stan


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Re: Filesystem recommendations

2010-04-29 Thread thib


Rob Owens wrote:

The resilience is due to the way the journal is written, if I
understand correctly.  Maybe somebody on this list who understands it
better can confirm or deny.  There is a journal_data_writeback option
for ext3 which will speed up writes to the filesystem, but reduce its
resilience to power loss.  With this option enabled, I recall reading
that the ext3 benchmarks are pretty similar to XFS.


Yep.  As always, LWN probably has the best word on it [1].

Short answer:  ext3 is outdated, ext4 is current and can still be configured 
to get the same better data resilience without losing all its benefits. 
XFS should also be able to do so.  Criticising ext4 for data resilience 
problems and praising XFS is a fallacy, both go in the same direction.


Now the debate is around the default configuration of modern filesystems 
(basically performance vs safety).  As YMMVVM (very much), one should 
probably just ignore the debate, take 30m to learn about the issue, and 
configure his filesystem properly.


Well, opinions.  ;-)

For stable users using ext3, writeback can theoretically offer better 
throughput, as it doesn't force data to be be pushed on the platters before 
the metadata has been committed to the journal.  It still keeps the 
filesystem consistent (the only thing a journal is supposed to do), but the 
risk of corrupting the data is greater.  I, personally, don't seek to 
minimize that risk, I want it to be zero -- no filesystem can help here, and 
no filesystem will ever do.  That's one reason why I don't like to see ext3 
recommended for its data resilience:  it gives the user the illusion of safety.


Of course, it still makes sense to minimize the risk in certain scenarios 
where it can't be eliminated;  but again, modern filesystems can be 
configured to do so.


-thib

[1] http://lwn.net/Articles/322823/


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RE: Filesystem recommendations

2010-04-29 Thread Kevin Ross

 From: Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. [mailto:b...@iguanasuicide.net]
 Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2010 7:20 AM
 
 Both XFS and Ext3/4 recover through journal replay, and it is usually
 enough. Rarely, a manual filesystem check will be required, and xfs_check
 is usually much faster than fsck.ext3 or even fsck.ext4.

They only journal filesystem metadata, not the file data iself.  If changes
to a file haven't been flushed to disk before the power goes out, you'll end
up with a perfectly consistent filesystem (thanks to the journal), but with
a file or two (or more) with garbage in it.  This is why at the beginning of
this thread I recommended a filesystem that uses copy-on-write and
preferably checksums your data.

However, I don't follow my own advice, probably because I've been using XFS
for so long (since 2.4 kernel when you had to download the patches from
SGI).

I personally haven't had a problem with data loss from power outage as a
result of XFS corrupting my files.  I believe this is because if a regular
file (not a database) is in the process of being written when the power goes
out, even if every write is synced to disk, unless whatever was writing to
it has finished writing, then the contents of the file are invalid anyway,
and no filesystem will protect you from that.  For example, if my MythTV
backend is recording a TV show and the power goes out in the middle of the
recording, I will delete it and let MythTV re-record at a later date.  It
makes no difference if every byte in that file is correct or not up to the
point of the power failure.

The window of failure is when the process doing the writing closes the file,
and if the power now goes out before everything is synced to disk, then you
will have a corrupted file that otherwise wouldn't have been.

BTW, regarding UPS's.  The number of times my computer was improperly shut
down as a result of a power outage is far less than the number of times
other problems have caused improper shutdowns: e.g. hardware failures such
as a power supply going bad, system overheating, kernel crashes, or other
system lockups that require you to hit the reset button.


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Re: Filesystem recommendations

2010-04-29 Thread Joe Brenner


Ron Johnson ron.l.john...@cox.net wrote:
 B. Alexander wrote:
  Ron Johnsonron.l.john...@cox.net  wrote:

 [snip]

  XFS is the canonical fs for when you have lots of Big Files.  I've
  also seen simple benchmarks on this list showing that it's faster
  than ext3/ext4.

  Thats cool. What about Lots of Little Files? That was another of the draws
  of reiser3. I have a space I mount on /media/archive, which has everything
  from mp3/oggs and movies, to books to a bunch of tiny files. This will
  probably be the first victim for the xfs test partition.

 That same unofficial benchmark showed surprising small-file speed by
 xfs.

Would you happen to have any links to such benchmarks, unofficial or
otherwise?

My experience has been that whenever I look at filesystem benchmarks,
they skip the many-small-files case.  I've always had the feeling that
most of the big filesystems cared a lot about scaling up in file-size,
but not too much about anything else.

I'm a Reiser3 user myself, and I've never had any problems with it.

(The trouble with it being long in the tooth is mostly hypothetical,
isn't it?)


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RE: [OT] Home UPS (was Filesystem recommendations)

2010-04-29 Thread owens

 Original Message 
From: zlinux...@wowway.com
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: RE: [OT] Home UPS (was  Filesystem recommendations)
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:54:47 -0400 (EDT)

On Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:26:52 -0400 (EDT), Stan Hoeppner wrote:

 Anyway, the way I've always looked at the residential side of the
UPS debate
 is to ask myself this question:  Is it worth spending $100 to
surge and
 power backup protect my $1000 PC and printer?  For me that answer
is an
 emphatic yes.

You make a strong case.  But I come from a different perspective
than
you do.  I don't have any new hardware at home.  The only piece of
equipment I bought new was a 4-port Ethernet router which cost me
about
$20, I think.  Almost everything else was either given away or
thrown
away or sold used for a low price.  The most expensive computer I
own
cost me somewhere around $300, I think.  I bought it used 2 years
ago,
and it's market value today is probably around $150-200.  All my
monitors
(with the exception of those built-in to laptops) are thrown-away
CRTs.
In other words, my home hardware collection consists almost
exclusively
of dumpster-diver specials.  How much money am I willing to spend to
protect my hardware?  Probably not as much as you are.  Still, it
would
be nice to have.  Maybe I'll put it on my Christmas list.  :-)

Oh, wait.  I did buy my powered speakers new -- about 15 years
ago.  ;-)

-- 
  .''`. Stephen Powell
 : :'  :
 `. `'`
   `-

Also I might have an issue with Stan's use of AND.  While surge
protection of printers is a good idea, most UPS vendors advise
against connecting the printer to the UPS for power protection
Larry

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Re: Filesystem recommendations

On Thursday 29 April 2010 14:17:28 Joe Brenner wrote:
 Ron Johnson ron.l.john...@cox.net wrote:
  B. Alexander wrote:
   Ron Johnsonron.l.john...@cox.net  wrote:
   XFS is the canonical fs for when you have lots of Big Files.  I've
   also seen simple benchmarks on this list showing that it's faster
   than ext3/ext4.
  
   Thats cool. What about Lots of Little Files? That was another of the
   draws of reiser3.
 
  That same unofficial benchmark showed surprising small-file speed by
  xfs.
 
 Would you happen to have any links to such benchmarks, unofficial or
 otherwise?
 
 My experience has been that whenever I look at filesystem benchmarks,
 they skip the many-small-files case.  I've always had the feeling that
 most of the big filesystems cared a lot about scaling up in file-size,
 but not too much about anything else.

NB: This is my best recollection; I'm not looking this up right now.  Please 
check my facts, I'd love to know if I'm wrong.

Some of that reiserfs performance came from directories-as-hash-tables, which 
I believe ext3/4 supports and is native for btrfs.  Some of that also came 
from tail-packing, which could come from the extents feature of ext4 and 
should be in btrfs.  The final edge reiserfs had was above-average 
flushing/caching algorithms, and the development pushes in ext4 and btrfs have 
likely reduced or eliminated that; I think the unified block-device caching 
system in the kernel able helped make that not such a big deal.

 I'm a Reiser3 user myself, and I've never had any problems with it.
 
 (The trouble with it being long in the tooth is mostly hypothetical,
 isn't it?)

Not really.  Reiserfs will probably be maintained in the kernel for a very 
long time, in that as any interfaces it uses are updated it will be updated to 
use the new interface.  However, ISTR there are open bugs on reiserfs that 
will not be fixed.  Similarly, I expect new bugs that can be blamed on the 
reiserfs code are less likely to be fixed than bugs than can be blamed on the 
ext2/3/4 or xfs code.

In addition, as file system technology advances, reiserfs will become less 
attractive for new installs and it will become more attractive to migrate away 
from it.  Unfortunately, migration tools are unlikely to be developed, outside 
of generic file system migration tools.  Compare with btrfs_convert which 
allows an ext2/3 file system to be converted to btrfs with no data copying; 
such tools have to be aware of the internal structure of the file system and 
fewer and fewer developers will even HAVE that knowledge of reiserfs.  The 
source will be available, sure, but even kernel maintainers interested in file 
systems are not interested in reiserfs.

There's no drop-dead date for reiserfs in the kernel (AFAIK), so there's no 
pressing need to migrate away from it, but there is a lot of work on file 
systems that should both perform better and be supported better than reiserfs.
-- 
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Re: [OT] Home UPS (was Filesystem recommendations)

2010-04-29 Thread Merciadri Luca

ow...@netptc.net wrote:

  Original Message 
 From: zlinux...@wowway.com
 To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
 Subject: RE: [OT] Home UPS (was  Filesystem recommendations)
 Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:54:47 -0400 (EDT)

 On Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:26:52 -0400 (EDT), Stan Hoeppner wrote:

 Anyway, the way I've always looked at the residential side of the

 UPS debate

 is to ask myself this question:  Is it worth spending $100 to

 surge and

 power backup protect my $1000 PC and printer?  For me that answer

 is an

 emphatic yes.

Same point of view here. Once upon a time, I had some pretty expensive
computer hardware, and an overvoltage botched the motherboard and the
CPU. I had no UPS. I have an UPS for 3 or 4 years now, and everything is
pretty fine. Even if thunder sounds, I stay in front of the computer
without any harm to the hardware. But it has a cost. Everything is a
compromise. If your hardware is cheap, and that it is quite unlikely to
thunder around your house, I would suggest you not to buy an UPS,
especially if your revenues are low-income. If, on the other hand, your
hardware is expensive ([inclusive] or that you have low-income
revenues), you'd better buy an UPS. It really worths it.

But there is not only the thunder. Here, in Belgium, it sometimes
happens to have power outages, without any information before.
Consequently, if you have no UPS, everything is directly powered off,
and it is not an interesting thing for both your hardware and what you
are currently working on. With the other computer which gave up the
gost, I also lost some part of a report I was working for. No doubt I
was angry.

-- 
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Re: [OT] Home UPS (was Filesystem recommendations)

On Thursday 29 April 2010 14:26:17 ow...@netptc.net wrote:
  Original Message 
 From: zlinux...@wowway.com
 To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
 Subject: RE: [OT] Home UPS (was  Filesystem recommendations)
 Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:54:47 -0400 (EDT)
 On Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:26:52 -0400 (EDT), Stan Hoeppner wrote:
  Is it worth spending $100 to
  power backup protect my $1000 PC and printer?

 Also I might have an issue with Stan's use of AND.  While surge
 protection of printers is a good idea, most UPS vendors advise
 against connecting the printer to the UPS for power protection

It's not because the printer makes the power unclean or otherwise interferes 
with the correct functioning of the UPS while mains is working.  They 
recommend against connecting printers because printers draw a large amount of 
power, dramatically reducing the time the UPS can maintain power to the system 
if the mains fails.  Also, (1) I've never actually needed my printer during an 
outage and (2) printers generally don't suffer the same ill effects from 
sudden power loss that file systems do.
-- 
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Re: [OT] Home UPS (was Filesystem recommendations)

2010-04-29 Thread Camaleón

On Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:48:03 -0500, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:

 On Thursday 29 April 2010 14:26:17 owens wrote:

 Also I might have an issue with Stan's use of AND.  While surge
 protection of printers is a good idea, most UPS vendors advise against
 connecting the printer to the UPS for power protection
 
 It's not because the printer makes the power unclean or otherwise
 interferes with the correct functioning of the UPS while mains is
 working.  They recommend against connecting printers because printers
 draw a large amount of power, dramatically reducing the time the UPS can
 maintain power to the system if the mains fails.  Also, (1) I've never
 actually needed my printer during an outage and (2) printers generally
 don't suffer the same ill effects from sudden power loss that file
 systems do.

He, he, he... Agree.

Someone tried to attach a mid-size laser printer to a UPS? (please, do 
not):-)

I remember the days when I (innocently) did so and as soon as the 
printer was powered on, the UPS unit (APC Smart 1000VA) was inmediatly 
shutdown... and also all of the devices attached to it (the printer 
loaded more power than the UPS could hold).

Greetings,

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Re: [OT] Home UPS (was Filesystem recommendations)

2010-04-29 Thread Merciadri Luca

Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
 It's not because the printer makes the power unclean or otherwise interferes 
 with the correct functioning of the UPS while mains is working.  They 
 recommend against connecting printers because printers draw a large amount of 
 power, dramatically reducing the time the UPS can maintain power to the 
 system 
 if the mains fails.
Correct.
   Also, (1) I've never actually needed my printer during an 
 outage
Generally, people don't. Only the minimum minimorum (strict minimum)
needs to be connected to the UPS' electrical outlets. Mine has two rows
of electrical outlets: one which is `only' secured, and the other which
is connected to the battery. The best idea is to not succumb to the
tentation of plugging every possible electrical device into the
battery-connected electrical outlets. But reasonable thoughts need to be
taken into account in this case. I saw people having the screen plugged
in the battery, but the main unit being plugged into the not-battery
row. This is complete nonsense, and a total lack of commonsense.
 and (2) printers generally don't suffer the same ill effects from 
 sudden power loss that file systems do.
   
Sure. But scanners do.

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RE: Filesystem recommendations

2010-04-29 Thread Kevin Ross

 From: Ron Johnson [mailto:ron.l.john...@cox.net]
 Sent: Saturday, April 24, 2010 3:49 PM
 
 On 04/24/2010 05:31 PM, B. Alexander wrote:
 
  Define hates sudden power outages...Is it recoverable?
 
 
 They got pretty corrupted.  Maybe it's been robustified in the
 intervening years.

Apparently, it has been robustified.

http://old.nabble.com/XFS-data-loss,-and-a-fix-td15876910.html

http://xfs.org/index.php/XFS_FAQ#Q:_Why_do_I_see_binary_NULLS_in_some_files_after_recovery_when_I_unplugged_the_power.3F




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Re: Filesystem recommendations

2010-04-29 Thread Clive McBarton

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Stan Hoeppner wrote:
 Rob Owens put forth on 4/28/2010 8:26 PM:
 Many/most
 users don't run a UPS and sudden unexpected power loss is a real
 possibility for them.
 
 Really?  I was under the impression that laptops and netbooks are now the
 primary computer of well over 50% of users worldwide (not counting smart
 phones).  Laptops have a built-in UPS.  

A battery is kinda like an UPS, but not really. Two reasons:

Some folks take it out when plugged in. This prolongs its lifetime.
Obviously reduces UPS functionality a bit.

The battery may not correcly predict running time, hence actually
causing the powerdown which the UPS is supposed to protect against.
This can happen even when the user plugged in their laptop but forgot
to connect one end of the cable and does not check the little
battery/plug icon on their screen.

 sure there are many people who can barely afford a PC let alone a UPS.  Used
 laptops are a great fit for those users, assuming the batteries aren't shot.

But the battery is usually the first thing to go. You can't even get a
decently long warranty on a new battery AFAIK.

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Re: Filesystem recommendations

Joe Brenner put forth on 4/29/2010 2:17 PM:

 Would you happen to have any links to such benchmarks, unofficial or
 otherwise?

Here's a somewhat old one from 2006 using Etch and rather old hardware (old
then and very old now).  The numbers are likely somewhat close to what you'd
get with a current kernel on the same hardware given that fs performance
typically doesn't make anything close to giant leaps within a major kernel
rev, in this case 2.6.x.

http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/388


Here's one from 2003 with some Bonnie++ testing:

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1479435

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Re: Filesystem recommendations

2010-04-29 Thread Joe Brenner


Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. b...@iguanasuicide.net wrote:
 Joe Brenner wrote:
  Ron Johnson ron.l.john...@cox.net wrote:
   B. Alexander wrote:
Ron Johnsonron.l.john...@cox.net  wrote:

XFS is the canonical fs for when you have lots of Big Files.  I've
also seen simple benchmarks on this list showing that it's faster
than ext3/ext4.
   
Thats cool. What about Lots of Little Files? That was another of the
draws of reiser3.
  
   That same unofficial benchmark showed surprising small-file speed by
   xfs.

  Would you happen to have any links to such benchmarks, unofficial or
  otherwise?

  My experience has been that whenever I look at filesystem benchmarks,
  they skip the many-small-files case.  I've always had the feeling that
  most of the big filesystems cared a lot about scaling up in file-size,
  but not too much about anything else.

 NB: This is my best recollection; I'm not looking this up right now.  Please
 check my facts, I'd love to know if I'm wrong.

Like I said, I *have* looked at filesystem comparisons a number of times.

It's my problem to check your assertions?  Why isn't it your problem to
check my assertions?

  I'm a Reiser3 user myself, and I've never had any problems with it.

  (The trouble with it being long in the tooth is mostly hypothetical,
  isn't it?)

 Not really.

Outside of one mention of bugs on reiserfs that will not be fixed,
you're pretty much just describing the theory.  I do understand that
using relatively unsupported software, even if it's pretty mature
software, can have it's problems.

Just doing a few quick websearches, I'm reading about ReiserFS bugs
fixed as recently as 2006, 2007... It's not like it's not getting any
attention from developers.

 In addition, as file system technology advances, reiserfs will become
 less attractive for new installs and it will become more attractive to
 migrate way from it.

I think you're better off if you rely on really well-tested migration
tools (e.g. tar).


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Re: [OT] Home UPS (was Filesystem recommendations)

ow...@netptc.net put forth on 4/29/2010 2:26 PM:

 Also I might have an issue with Stan's use of AND.  While surge
 protection of printers is a good idea, most UPS vendors advise
 against connecting the printer to the UPS for power protection
 Larry

Most inkjets on a UPS are fine (for small jobs), lasers no--too much current
draw heating up the fuser.  I've never printed during a power outage but I
could if I really needed to.  The odds of that are terribly low though.

Them main reason for plugging all my equipment into the UPS is that the MOVs
in UPSes are usually much larger and of better quality than those found in
surge protector power strips.  For those who do not know, an MOV or metal
oxide varistor, is the device that sucks up the excess voltage and current
that frequently enters lines during a lighting strike.

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Re: Filesystem recommendations

2010-04-28 Thread Rob Owens

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 01:56:21PM +0200, Javier Barroso wrote:
 On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 11:53 AM, Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com 
 wrote:
  Mark Allums put forth on 4/26/2010 3:22 AM:
  On 4/26/2010 2:14 AM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
  Mark Allums put forth on 4/25/2010 1:19 AM:
 
  Sorry Stan,  Your defense of XFS has put me into troll mode.  It's a
  reflex.  I don't buy it, but I shouldn't troll.
 
  I think you are confusing what is with what should be.
 
  A'ight, you forced me to pull out the big gun.  Choke on it.  The master
  penguin himself, kernel.org, has run on XFS since 2008.  Sorry for the body
  slam.  Is your back ok Mark? ;)  Pretty sure I just won this discussion.
  Err, actually, XFS wins. ;)  BTW, the main Debian mirror in the U.S. is
  actually housed in kernel.org last I checked.  Thus, the files on your
  system were very likely originally served from XFS.
 
   The Linux Kernel Archives
 
  A bit more than a year ago (as of October 2008) kernel.org, in an ever
  increasing need to squeeze more performance out of it's machines, made the
  leap of migrating the primary mirror machines (mirrors.kernel.org) to XFS.
  We site a number of reasons including fscking 5.5T of disk is long and
  painful, we were hitting various cache issues, and we were seeking better
  performance out of our file system.
 
  After initial tests looked positive we made the jump, and have been quite
  happy with the results. With an instant increase in performance and
  throughput, as well as the worst xfs_check we've ever seen taking 10
  minutes, we were quite happy. Subsequently we've moved all primary mirroring
  file-systems to XFS, including www.kernel.org , and mirrors.kernel.org. With
  an average constant movement of about 400mbps around the world, and with
  peaks into the 3.1gbps range serving thousands of users simultaneously it's
  been a file system that has taken the brunt we can throw at it and held up
  spectacularly.
 
  http://www.xfs.org/index.php/XFS_Companies#The_Linux_Kernel_Archives
 Hello Stan,
 
 Why Debian Installer doesn't change its default filesystem to xfs if
 it is better than ext3 / ext4? I think always is better stick to
 defaults if it is possible
 
I've read articles which state that ext3 has superior resilience to
sudden power loss.  That sentiment has been echoed in this thread, by
Stan I think, with statements like (paraphrasing):  XFS is good for
production servers which have uninterruptible power supplies.

The resilience is due to the way the journal is written, if I
understand correctly.  Maybe somebody on this list who understands it
better can confirm or deny.  There is a journal_data_writeback option
for ext3 which will speed up writes to the filesystem, but reduce its
resilience to power loss.  With this option enabled, I recall reading
that the ext3 benchmarks are pretty similar to XFS.

I'm not an expert, so don't take my word for it.  Do some research on it
yourself, or wait for the real experts to chime in and correct me :)

-Rob


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Re: Filesystem recommendations

2010-04-28 Thread Rob Owens

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 08:28:37AM -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
 Javier Barroso put forth on 4/26/2010 6:56 AM:
 
  Hello Stan,
  
  Why Debian Installer doesn't change its default filesystem to xfs if
  it is better than ext3 / ext4? I think always is better stick to
  defaults if it is possible
  
  Thanks for your explications !
 
 If one disk filesystem was better than all the others in all ways, then
 Linus would only allow one FS in the kernel tree.  As of 2.6.33 there are no
 less than 7 stable primary disk filesystems offered in the kernel.  Your
 question is a bit simplistic, and not really valid.  There is no single
 perfect filesystem.  IMO, for servers anyway, XFS is pretty close.
 
 Newbies _should_ always stick to defaults.  Experts install with expert
 mode, and choose exactly what they want/need.
 
 I didn't write the Debian installer so I can't tell you why EXT is the
 default.  I can only speculate.  Thankfully the installer offers us expert
 mode so we can do whatever we want.  In this regard, I guess the Debian team
 considers EXT the best choice for non-experts.
 
If I'm right that EXT3 has superior resilience to power loss (see my
othe post in this thread) , then that
fact alone makes it a good choice for default filesystem.  Many/most
users don't run a UPS and sudden unexpected power loss is a real
possibility for them.

-Rob


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Re: Filesystem recommendations

Kevin Ross put forth on 4/24/2010 9:46 PM:

 So if Btrfs were more mature, or if ZFS were included in the kernel, I'd
 recommend either of those.  But as it is, I think JFS is the way to go.

Except for the fact that JFS has almost zero development and/or bug fix
activity these days.  The project appears idle:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_name=jfs-commit

XFS on the other hand enjoys serious, sustained, active development:
http://xfs.org/index.php/XFS_Status_Updates

XFS has been very mature, stable, and performant for many years, and
continues to become even better little by little.  I'm on the mailing list
and I see dozens of patches submitted _per day_.

There's nothing inherently wrong with JFS, but if it's not being
maintained/developed why use it?  All the principals are IBM employees, and
they're doing no work on it.  On top of that, they aren't allowing outside
developers.  The JFS project is pretty much dying on the vine for all
practical purposes.  The stale code will linger on in the kernel until IBM
abandons it or the project allows in developers who really want to work on it.

I'm guessing that Linus will boot it from the tree after it lingers without
substantial changes for a few years.

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Re: Filesystem recommendations

Mark Allums put forth on 4/25/2010 1:19 AM:

 (Why? ext3 and 4 are exceptionally well supported by Linux and GNU.  XFS
 will be, too, probably.)

Are you kidding?  XFS already is all of the things you mention.  You
apparently need a history lesson.

XFS went into production systems starting in 1993 on SGI's Indy
workstations.  XFS was GPL'd by SGI in 2000, and was in Linux mainline just
before EXT3, since mid 2001 in kernel 2.4.  It was used almost exclusively
on the IA64 Altix machines.  It took a while before non SGI customers
starting trying out XFS on i386 hardware.

EXT3 arrived in mainline in Nov 2001, a few months _after_ XFS.  Both have
been in the mainline kernel for almost 9 years.  You talk as if XFS is
somehow new to Linux lol.  I'd guess that XFS has been in mainline longer
than many subscribers to this list have been using Linux.

I'd also guess that XFS seems new to a lot of people because it's never
been the default filesystem for any major Linux distro on i386/AMD64.  Lack
of exposure to something doesn't mean it's new.

XFS has had just as much development support in Linux as EXT3/4 have,
possibly more in some areas.  It predates all Linux filesystems with the
exception of the original EXT.  XFS has been in production systems since
1993, less than a year after Linus announced his very first Linux code was
available for download via ftp, when he was still in college.  That's 17
years ago!  EXT3 is young, and EXT4 is an infant compared to XFS.  XFS is
older than EXT2 and older than many Linux users.

Did I forget to mention that XFS is pretty old?  17 years old.  And that
it's fully supported by the kernel community?  I'm not sure what you mean by
supported by GNU.  XFS is compiled by the GNU tool chain just like
everything else in Linux is.  It's released under the GNU GPL.  It's
available and fully supported under Debian/GNU Linux.  I should know,
because that's what I run on my servers, with XFS.

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Re: Filesystem recommendations

2010-04-26 Thread Ron Johnson


On 04/26/2010 02:14 AM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

Mark Allums put forth on 4/25/2010 1:19 AM:


(Why? ext3 and 4 are exceptionally well supported by Linux and GNU.  XFS
will be, too, probably.)


Are you kidding?  XFS already is all of the things you mention.  You
apparently need a history lesson.

XFS went into production systems starting in 1993 on SGI's Indy
workstations.  XFS was GPL'd by SGI in 2000, and was in Linux mainline just
before EXT3, since mid 2001 in kernel 2.4.  It was used almost exclusively
on the IA64 Altix machines.  It took a while before non SGI customers
starting trying out XFS on i386 hardware.

[snip]

They couldn't have directly take the Irix code and brought it 
directly to Linux.  It just wouldn't work, and Linus wouldn't allow 
such shimmed code into the mainline.


So, while there's an XFS which is 17 years old, the Linux xfs code 
is only 9-10 years old.


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Re: Filesystem recommendations

Mike Castle put forth on 4/25/2010 10:29 AM:
 On Sat, Apr 24, 2010 at 10:53 AM, B. Alexander stor...@gmail.com wrote:
 Does anyone have suggestions and practical experience with the pros and cons
 of the various filesystems?
 
 Google is switching (has switched by now?) all of it's servers over to
 ext4.  A web search will turn up more details on the subject.  But
 they are mostly lots of big files.

If it weren't for the live migration requirement, I read this to say that
Google would be using XFS due to its superior performance:

In a mailing list post, Google engineer Michael Rubin provided more insight
into the decision-making process that led the company to adopt Ext4. The
filesystem offered significant performance advantages over Ext2 _and nearly
rivaled the high-performance XFS filesystem_ during the company's tests.
Ext4 was ultimately chosen over XFS because it would allow Google to do a
live in-place upgrade of its existing Ext2 filesystems.

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Re: Filesystem recommendations


On 4/26/2010 2:14 AM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

Mark Allums put forth on 4/25/2010 1:19 AM:


(Why? ext3 and 4 are exceptionally well supported by Linux and GNU.  XFS
will be, too, probably.)


Are you kidding?  XFS already is all of the things you mention.  You
apparently need a history lesson.



No, XFS is not well-supported.   Sorry, it's not.

If you need rescuing. you are up that famous creek without any means of 
propulsion.  A 40-year veteran would recover.  A Freshman would say 
screw it, and reformat.   To ext3.


MAA



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Re: Filesystem recommendations


On 4/26/2010 2:14 AM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:


I'd also guess that XFS seems new to a lot of people because it's never
been the default filesystem for any major Linux distro on i386/AMD64.


I wonder why.

_

Older is not better.

MAA


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Re: Filesystem recommendations


On 4/26/2010 2:14 AM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:


XFS has had just as much development support in Linux as EXT3/4 have,
possibly more in some areas.


What does this prove?  Development does not equal support.

MAA


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Re: Filesystem recommendations


On 4/26/2010 2:14 AM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:



Did I forget to mention that XFS is pretty old?  17 years old.


So what's your point?

MAA


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Re: Filesystem recommendations


On 4/26/2010 2:14 AM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

Mark Allums put forth on 4/25/2010 1:19 AM:


Sorry Stan,  Your defense of XFS has put me into troll mode.  It's a 
reflex.  I don't buy it, but I shouldn't troll.


I think you are confusing what is with what should be.

MAA


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Re: Filesystem recommendations

Ron Johnson put forth on 4/26/2010 2:37 AM:
 On 04/26/2010 02:14 AM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
 Mark Allums put forth on 4/25/2010 1:19 AM:

 (Why? ext3 and 4 are exceptionally well supported by Linux and GNU.  XFS
 will be, too, probably.)

 Are you kidding?  XFS already is all of the things you mention.  You
 apparently need a history lesson.

 XFS went into production systems starting in 1993 on SGI's Indy
 workstations.  XFS was GPL'd by SGI in 2000, and was in Linux mainline
 just
 before EXT3, since mid 2001 in kernel 2.4.  It was used almost
 exclusively
 on the IA64 Altix machines.  It took a while before non SGI customers
 starting trying out XFS on i386 hardware.
 [snip]
 
 They couldn't have directly take the Irix code and brought it directly
 to Linux.  It just wouldn't work, and Linus wouldn't allow such shimmed
 code into the mainline.
 
 So, while there's an XFS which is 17 years old, the Linux xfs code is
 only 9-10 years old.

Absolutely correct.  I wasn't trying to imply the same exact code has been
around for 17 years.  Hell if that was the case I wouldn't be using it.
Whilst the initial Linux porting effort was more than a simple recompile, I
don't believe it was a herculanean effort.  Far more changes to the XFS code
have been made since inclusion in mainline than the changes required to get
from IRIX to Linux.

I actually saw a brief video interview of one of the SGI IRIX devs quite
some time ago in which he described the initial Linux port effort to get it
running on SGI's big Origin 3000 MIPS machines.  They had to do this to
start validating how everything would run under Linux because they didn't
have the first Itanium Altix systems manufactured yet.

IIRC their testbed was a 32 processor Origin 3000 running MIPS R14K
processors.  This was back before the Linux MIPS port project existed so
they were in essence creating the first Linux MIPS port as part of their
effort.  He clearly stated that developing/maintaining a Linux MIPS port was
not in the cards for SGI, that this effort was strictly a validation effort.
 He said it took about a week to get Linux booting on the Origin system, and
another week to get it stable.  The first XFS port to Linux was part of this
effort.  If it took only 2 weeks for the bulk of this effort, I can't
imagine they had to modify a ton of XFS code.  IRIX was written in C as is
Linux, so the changes in XFS were probably fairly minor.

I'd venture to guess that the most significant Linux XFS changes were those
for the 32bit X86 code base.  IRIX and thus XFS were born on 64bit MIPS RISC
CPUs.  Moving that to a Linux 64bit Itanium environment was probably
relatively straight forward.  Moving down to a 32bit platform probably
required a lot of code changes, as did the initial Linux 64bit ports up to
Alpha, HPPA, Itanium, and eventually MIPS64.

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Re: Filesystem recommendations

Mark Allums put forth on 4/26/2010 3:10 AM:
 On 4/26/2010 2:14 AM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
 
 XFS has had just as much development support in Linux as EXT3/4 have,
 possibly more in some areas.
 
 What does this prove?  Development does not equal support.

I thought you were talking about developer support, as in XFS devs getting
support from other kernel devs and/or support directly from Linus and/or
Alan.  I've seen posts on the xfs mailing list from both Linus and Alan.
XFS is very much a mainline supported filessytem.  Don't forget there are a
few companies who _require_ XFS to work well on Linux.

If you're talking about end user support, the XFS mailing list members,
whilst mostly engaged in dev stuff, are very gracious with helping XFS end
users who are having problems.

As far as getting help with an XFS problem here on debian-user, of course
you're possibly SOL.  From what I've seen, most of the OPs on debian-user
are desktop or mobile users, not server OPs.  Of the server OPs on here,
most aren't dealing with multi-hundred terabyte filesystems on big FC SAN
storage that need the massive throughput and the backup, restore, freeze to
snapshot, and other features of XFS.

I'd venture to guess that most of the systems using XFS around the world are
running SLES just because of the vendor support deals.  SLES ships on SGI's
machines which use XFS by default.  IBM bundles SLES on many of its X86 and
Power machines, as well as on zSeries as a VM.  There's plenty of hardware
vendor and OS vendor support for XFS if you buy one of these machines and
use SLES.

I freely admit that XFS penetration in the Debian world, or any other
non-big-vendor backed Linux, is going to be sparse.  The need that would
drive XFS adoption just doesn't exist for the hobbyist or average Debian
server OP.  The other available filesystems mostly meet their needs.  XFS
does have many features/advantages that could benefit many Debian systems.
But, yes, the OP wouldn't likely get help for it here.  That said, I can't
recall too many emergency cries here for help with any filesystem problem.

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Re: Filesystem recommendations

Mark Allums put forth on 4/26/2010 3:22 AM:
 On 4/26/2010 2:14 AM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
 Mark Allums put forth on 4/25/2010 1:19 AM:
 
 Sorry Stan,  Your defense of XFS has put me into troll mode.  It's a
 reflex.  I don't buy it, but I shouldn't troll.
 
 I think you are confusing what is with what should be.

A'ight, you forced me to pull out the big gun.  Choke on it.  The master
penguin himself, kernel.org, has run on XFS since 2008.  Sorry for the body
slam.  Is your back ok Mark? ;)  Pretty sure I just won this discussion.
Err, actually, XFS wins. ;)  BTW, the main Debian mirror in the U.S. is
actually housed in kernel.org last I checked.  Thus, the files on your
system were very likely originally served from XFS.

 The Linux Kernel Archives

A bit more than a year ago (as of October 2008) kernel.org, in an ever
increasing need to squeeze more performance out of it's machines, made the
leap of migrating the primary mirror machines (mirrors.kernel.org) to XFS.
We site a number of reasons including fscking 5.5T of disk is long and
painful, we were hitting various cache issues, and we were seeking better
performance out of our file system.

After initial tests looked positive we made the jump, and have been quite
happy with the results. With an instant increase in performance and
throughput, as well as the worst xfs_check we've ever seen taking 10
minutes, we were quite happy. Subsequently we've moved all primary mirroring
file-systems to XFS, including www.kernel.org , and mirrors.kernel.org. With
an average constant movement of about 400mbps around the world, and with
peaks into the 3.1gbps range serving thousands of users simultaneously it's
been a file system that has taken the brunt we can throw at it and held up
spectacularly.

http://www.xfs.org/index.php/XFS_Companies#The_Linux_Kernel_Archives

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Re: Filesystem recommendations


On 4/26/2010 4:53 AM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

Mark Allums put forth on 4/26/2010 3:22 AM:

On 4/26/2010 2:14 AM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:

Mark Allums put forth on 4/25/2010 1:19 AM:


Sorry Stan,  Your defense of XFS has put me into troll mode.  It's a
reflex.  I don't buy it, but I shouldn't troll.

I think you are confusing what is with what should be.


A'ight, you forced me to pull out the big gun.  Choke on it.



I was trying to apologize.

This is the user list.  Of Debian.  Not the SA list of IRIX.

I am holding my opinion as a *user*.  Other people come here, ask 
questions, I assume they are asking from the POV of a desktop user, 
unless they say otherwise.  Sometimes I miss the introductions, or 
otherwise miss the point.  Then I give bad advice.  Hold silly opinions.


From the POV of Joe Hobbyist, XFS is not suitable.  From the POV of a 
Server Administrator, it might well be very suitable.  YMMV.


MAA


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Re: Filesystem recommendations

2010-04-26 Thread Javier Barroso

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 11:53 AM, Stan Hoeppner s...@hardwarefreak.com wrote:
 Mark Allums put forth on 4/26/2010 3:22 AM:
 On 4/26/2010 2:14 AM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
 Mark Allums put forth on 4/25/2010 1:19 AM:

 Sorry Stan,  Your defense of XFS has put me into troll mode.  It's a
 reflex.  I don't buy it, but I shouldn't troll.

 I think you are confusing what is with what should be.

 A'ight, you forced me to pull out the big gun.  Choke on it.  The master
 penguin himself, kernel.org, has run on XFS since 2008.  Sorry for the body
 slam.  Is your back ok Mark? ;)  Pretty sure I just won this discussion.
 Err, actually, XFS wins. ;)  BTW, the main Debian mirror in the U.S. is
 actually housed in kernel.org last I checked.  Thus, the files on your
 system were very likely originally served from XFS.

  The Linux Kernel Archives

 A bit more than a year ago (as of October 2008) kernel.org, in an ever
 increasing need to squeeze more performance out of it's machines, made the
 leap of migrating the primary mirror machines (mirrors.kernel.org) to XFS.
 We site a number of reasons including fscking 5.5T of disk is long and
 painful, we were hitting various cache issues, and we were seeking better
 performance out of our file system.

 After initial tests looked positive we made the jump, and have been quite
 happy with the results. With an instant increase in performance and
 throughput, as well as the worst xfs_check we've ever seen taking 10
 minutes, we were quite happy. Subsequently we've moved all primary mirroring
 file-systems to XFS, including www.kernel.org , and mirrors.kernel.org. With
 an average constant movement of about 400mbps around the world, and with
 peaks into the 3.1gbps range serving thousands of users simultaneously it's
 been a file system that has taken the brunt we can throw at it and held up
 spectacularly.

 http://www.xfs.org/index.php/XFS_Companies#The_Linux_Kernel_Archives
Hello Stan,

Why Debian Installer doesn't change its default filesystem to xfs if
it is better than ext3 / ext4? I think always is better stick to
defaults if it is possible

Thanks for your explications !


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Re: Filesystem recommendations

2010-04-26 Thread Camaleón

On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 13:56:21 +0200, Javier Barroso wrote:

 Why Debian Installer doesn't change its default filesystem to xfs if it
 is better than ext3 / ext4? I think always is better stick to defaults
 if it is possible

XFS (and ReiserFS) were having (still have?) problems with GRUB legacy 
bootloader so defaulting the filsesystem to any of them could be a bit 
risky.

I mean, not only performance is a key factor to determine a default 
filesystem :-)

Greetings,

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Re: Filesystem recommendations

Javier Barroso put forth on 4/26/2010 6:56 AM:

 Hello Stan,
 
 Why Debian Installer doesn't change its default filesystem to xfs if
 it is better than ext3 / ext4? I think always is better stick to
 defaults if it is possible
 
 Thanks for your explications !

If one disk filesystem was better than all the others in all ways, then
Linus would only allow one FS in the kernel tree.  As of 2.6.33 there are no
less than 7 stable primary disk filesystems offered in the kernel.  Your
question is a bit simplistic, and not really valid.  There is no single
perfect filesystem.  IMO, for servers anyway, XFS is pretty close.

Newbies _should_ always stick to defaults.  Experts install with expert
mode, and choose exactly what they want/need.

I didn't write the Debian installer so I can't tell you why EXT is the
default.  I can only speculate.  Thankfully the installer offers us expert
mode so we can do whatever we want.  In this regard, I guess the Debian team
considers EXT the best choice for non-experts.

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Re: Filesystem recommendations

On Saturday 24 April 2010 12:53:25 B. Alexander wrote:
 I have a question on filesystems. Back in the day, I started using reiser3.
 It was faster than ext3, and it could be extended without umounting the
 filesystem (which has since been fixed in ext3), plus, unlike any
  filesystem I have encountered, it could be reduced in size.

I'm also a current reiser3 user.  I find the ability to shrink the filesystem 
to be something I am not willing to do without.

I have not read the rest of the thread, but my off-the-cuff recommendation 
would be to start migration to btrfs.  Now that the on-disk format has 
stabilized, I am going to start testing it for filesystems other than 
/usr/local, /var, and /home.  Assuming I can keep those running well for 6-12 
months, I will migrate /usr/local, /var, and then /home, in that order, with a 
1-3 month gap in between migrations.

It's an aggressive migration plan, but reiser3 is just barely maintained in 
the kernel, and btrfs is the only filesystem I have heard of that even 
advertises all the features I need.

I've already encountered an issue related to btrfs in my very isolated 
deployments.  The initramfs created by update-initramfs does not appear to 
mount it properly.  Instead I am given an '(initramfs)' prompt and I have to 
mount the filesystem manually (a simple two-argument mount command suffices) 
and continue the boot process.  This is fine for my laptop, but servers (and 
even my desktop) need to be able to boot unattended; I am still investigating 
the issue, which may just be due to my configuration.
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Re: Filesystem recommendations

On Monday 26 April 2010 13:22:19 Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
 On Saturday 24 April 2010 12:53:25 B. Alexander wrote:
  I have a question on filesystems.
 
 [M]y off-the-cuff recommendation
 would be to start migration to btrfs.

Btrfs may not be right for you.  The on-disk format has stabilized, but it is 
still very much in development.

If it isn't, I recommend moving to ext3 (NOT ext4) as a temporary measure.  
Once btrfs matures to your comfort level, you can use btrfs_convert to change 
from ext3 to btrfs in place.  The conversion process even creates a snapshot 
which can use used to roll back to the original ext3 filesystem.
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Re: Filesystem recommendations

2010-04-26 Thread thib


Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:

[snip] I recommend moving to ext3 (NOT ext4) [snip]


Here we go again?  :-)

-thib


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Re: Filesystem recommendations

2010-04-26 Thread B. Alexander

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 2:22 PM, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. 
b...@iguanasuicide.net wrote:

 I'm also a current reiser3 user.  I find the ability to shrink the
 filesystem
 to be something I am not willing to do without.


You know, I said the same thing, but then as the kernel and GRUB and the
like advanced, I noticed that my reiserfs partitions would have to replay
the journal every time I rebooted, even after a clean shutdown. I started
calculating how many times I shrunk any of my partitions in the last 8
years, and I can only recall twice. And since I have several terabytes
around the house, I figure I can migrate data and delete/recreate partitions
if I really need to reduce it.


 I have not read the rest of the thread, but my off-the-cuff recommendation
 would be to start migration to btrfs.  Now that the on-disk format has
 stabilized, I am going to start testing it for filesystems other than
 /usr/local, /var, and /home.  Assuming I can keep those running well for
 6-12
 months, I will migrate /usr/local, /var, and then /home, in that order,
 with a
 1-3 month gap in between migrations.


I might play with it for some non-critical partitions, or ones that I can
mirror on an established filesystem, even if it is only to use in an
Archive Island scenario, where I have a LV that I can mount, sync and
umount. However, btrfs is not included in the kernel, is it? As I recall,
nilfs2 has kernel support, but that was the only one of the new filesystems,
at the time when I started looking at this.


 It's an aggressive migration plan, but reiser3 is just barely

maintained in
 the kernel, and btrfs is the only filesystem I have heard of that even
 advertises all the features I need.

 I've already encountered an issue related to btrfs in my very isolated
 deployments.  The initramfs created by update-initramfs does not appear to
 mount it properly.  Instead I am given an '(initramfs)' prompt and I have
 to
 mount the filesystem manually (a simple two-argument mount command
 suffices)
 and continue the boot process.  This is fine for my laptop, but servers
 (and
 even my desktop) need to be able to boot unattended; I am still
 investigating
 the issue, which may just be due to my configuration.


That is enough to give me pause...

--b

Re: Filesystem recommendations

On Monday 26 April 2010 16:05:31 B. Alexander wrote:
 On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 2:22 PM, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. 
 b...@iguanasuicide.net wrote:
  I'm also a current reiser3 user.  I find the ability to shrink the
  filesystem
  to be something I am not willing to do without.
 
 You know, I said the same thing, but then as the kernel and GRUB and the
 like advanced, I noticed that my reiserfs partitions would have to replay
 the journal every time I rebooted, even after a clean shutdown. I started
 calculating how many times I shrunk any of my partitions in the last 8
 years, and I can only recall twice. And since I have several terabytes
 around the house, I figure I can migrate data and delete/recreate
  partitions if I really need to reduce it.

That doesn't seem right.  I have been using reiser3 since 2005, and my system 
does not require a journal replay if I do a clean shutdown/reboot.  A forced 
reboot through Alt+SysRq+B does trigger a journal replay (as it should).

I also have 4+ tebibytes but most of them are allocated to filesystems.  I've 
had to shrink filesystems dozens of times since 2005, during or after a data 
move.

I don't use partitions (much), having been using LVM happily for everything 
except /boot.  I'm hoping to be able to move that onto LVM once I move to 
GRUB2 and GPT.

  I have not read the rest of the thread, but my off-the-cuff
  recommendation would be to start migration to btrfs.  Now that the
  on-disk format has stabilized, I am going to start testing it for
  filesystems other than /usr/local, /var, and /home.  Assuming I can keep
  those running well for 6-12
  months, I will migrate /usr/local, /var, and then /home, in that order,
  with a
  1-3 month gap in between migrations.
 
 I might play with it for some non-critical partitions, or ones that I can
 mirror on an established filesystem, even if it is only to use in an
 Archive Island scenario, where I have a LV that I can mount, sync and
 umount. However, btrfs is not included in the kernel, is it? As I recall,
 nilfs2 has kernel support, but that was the only one of the new
  filesystems, at the time when I started looking at this.

btrfs is included in 2.6.31.12-0.2-default in openSUSE 11.2.  It is also 
included in linux-image-2.6-686 and linux-image-2.6-amd64 for lenny-backports, 
testing, and sid.  I don't normally deal with other 
architectures/distributions, so it might also be available there.

  I've already encountered an issue related to btrfs in my very isolated
  deployments.  The initramfs created by update-initramfs does not appear
  to mount it properly.  Instead I am given an '(initramfs)' prompt and I
  have to
  mount the filesystem manually (a simple two-argument mount command
  suffices)
  and continue the boot process.  This is fine for my laptop, but servers
  (and
  even my desktop) need to be able to boot unattended; I am still
  investigating
  the issue, which may just be due to my configuration.
 
 That is enough to give me pause...

It doesn't appear to be a file system issue, but rather a problem with the 
initramfs scripts.  It could also be rooted in my configuration.  I know that 
my root= kernel parameter has to differ from the device name in my 
/etc/fstab in order to get the initramfs to correctly initialize LVM.

I don't mind being a first adopter for this in particular; I hope to be able 
to report good things about btrfs by this time next year.
-- 
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Re: Filesystem recommendations

2010-04-26 Thread B. Alexander

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 5:34 PM, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. 
b...@iguanasuicide.net wrote:

 On Monday 26 April 2010 16:05:31 B. Alexander wrote:
  On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 2:22 PM, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. 
  b...@iguanasuicide.net wrote:
   I'm also a current reiser3 user.  I find the ability to shrink the
   filesystem
   to be something I am not willing to do without.
 
  You know, I said the same thing, but then as the kernel and GRUB and the
  like advanced, I noticed that my reiserfs partitions would have to replay
  the journal every time I rebooted, even after a clean shutdown. I started
  calculating how many times I shrunk any of my partitions in the last 8
  years, and I can only recall twice. And since I have several terabytes
  around the house, I figure I can migrate data and delete/recreate
   partitions if I really need to reduce it.

 That doesn't seem right.  I have been using reiser3 since 2005, and my
 system
 does not require a journal replay if I do a clean shutdown/reboot.  A
 forced
 reboot through Alt+SysRq+B does trigger a journal replay (as it should).


No, this is a result of sync;sync;shutdown -r now.


 I also have 4+ tebibytes but most of them are allocated to filesystems.
  I've
 had to shrink filesystems dozens of times since 2005, during or after a
 data
 move.


I've had to extend on the fly many more times than I have had to reduce.


 I don't use partitions (much), having been using LVM happily for everything
 except /boot.


As am I. In fact, I even recreated a several of the reiser partitions on my
workstation to see if it was something legacy that may have crept into the
works. The next step is to rebuild, but there are a number of dependencies
before I do that (I want to build 64-bit now that it seems ready for prime
time, but I want to get a higher-end multicore chip, etc etc.)


  I'm hoping to be able to move that onto LVM once I move to
 GRUB2 and GPT.


You know, /boot on bare drive has never bothered me, especially since I use
encrypted filesystems on everything but VMs. On laptops, I had it set up so
/boot lived on a thumb drive...So I'm cool with it.


I have not read the rest of the thread, but my off-the-cuff
   recommendation would be to start migration to btrfs.  Now that the
   on-disk format has stabilized, I am going to start testing it for
   filesystems other than /usr/local, /var, and /home.  Assuming I can
 keep
   those running well for 6-12
   months, I will migrate /usr/local, /var, and then /home, in that order,
   with a
   1-3 month gap in between migrations.
 
  I might play with it for some non-critical partitions, or ones that I can
  mirror on an established filesystem, even if it is only to use in an
  Archive Island scenario, where I have a LV that I can mount, sync and
  umount. However, btrfs is not included in the kernel, is it? As I recall,
  nilfs2 has kernel support, but that was the only one of the new
   filesystems, at the time when I started looking at this.

 btrfs is included in 2.6.31.12-0.2-default in openSUSE 11.2.  It is also
 included in linux-image-2.6-686 and linux-image-2.6-amd64 for
 lenny-backports,
 testing, and sid.  I don't normally deal with other
 architectures/distributions, so it might also be available there.



It's not going to live anywhere that I am going to be experimenting on it
other than 686 or amd64 (e.g. my firewall (SPARC), my N810 (ARM) or my WAP
(MIPS)).


   I've already encountered an issue related to btrfs in my very isolated
   deployments.  The initramfs created by update-initramfs does not appear
   to mount it properly.  Instead I am given an '(initramfs)' prompt and I
   have to
   mount the filesystem manually (a simple two-argument mount command
   suffices)
   and continue the boot process.  This is fine for my laptop, but servers
   (and
   even my desktop) need to be able to boot unattended; I am still
   investigating
   the issue, which may just be due to my configuration.
 
  That is enough to give me pause...

 It doesn't appear to be a file system issue, but rather a problem with the
 initramfs scripts.  It could also be rooted in my configuration.  I know
 that
 my root= kernel parameter has to differ from the device name in my
 /etc/fstab in order to get the initramfs to correctly initialize LVM.

 I don't mind being a first adopter for this in particular; I hope to be
 able
 to report good things about btrfs by this time next year.
 --
 Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.   ,= ,-_-. =.
 b...@iguanasuicide.net   ((_/)o o(\_))
 ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-'
 http://iguanasuicide.net/\_/

Re: Filesystem recommendations