Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Is it still advisable to partition a big hard drive?

2016-09-04 Thread Mick 
On Monday 05 Sep 2016 10:42:34 Hans wrote:
> On 01/09/16 16:04, gevisz wrote:
> > I have bought an external 5TB Western Digital hard drive
> > that I am going to use mainly for backing up some files
> > in my home directory and carrying a very big files, for
> > example a virtual machine image file, from one computer
> > to another. This hard drive is preformatted with NTFS.
> > Now, I am going to format it with ext4 which probably
> > will take a lot of time taking into account that it is
> > going to be done via USB connection. So, before formatting
> > this hard drive I would like to know if it is still
> > advisable to partition big hard drives into smaller
> > logical ones.
> > 
> > For about 20 last years, following an advice of my older
> > colleague, I always partitioned all my hard drives into
> > the smaller logical ones and do very well know all
> > disadvantages of doing so. :)
> > 
> > But what are disadvantages of not partitioning a big
> > hard drive into smaller logical ones?
> > 
> > Is it still advisable to partition a big hard drive
> > into smaller logical ones and why?
> 
> I use 2TB USB drive with one EXT4 partition. Took about 30 seconds to
> format connected to a USB2 port. Testing the drive with dd and copying
> files to the drive is very slow. Don't touch "Green Drives". They die
> like flies.

Did you get the logical and physical sector aligned when you partitioned them? 
(if not sure, google for 4k sector drives).  All recent versions of 
fdisk/gdisk/parted and friends will align them by default.

How did you test it with dd and how are you copying files?

How slow is slow in this case?

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Is it still advisable to partition a big hard drive?

2016-09-04 Thread Hans 

On 01/09/16 16:04, gevisz wrote:

I have bought an external 5TB Western Digital hard drive
that I am going to use mainly for backing up some files
in my home directory and carrying a very big files, for
example a virtual machine image file, from one computer
to another. This hard drive is preformatted with NTFS.
Now, I am going to format it with ext4 which probably
will take a lot of time taking into account that it is
going to be done via USB connection. So, before formatting
this hard drive I would like to know if it is still
advisable to partition big hard drives into smaller
logical ones.

For about 20 last years, following an advice of my older
colleague, I always partitioned all my hard drives into
the smaller logical ones and do very well know all
disadvantages of doing so. :)

But what are disadvantages of not partitioning a big
hard drive into smaller logical ones?

Is it still advisable to partition a big hard drive
into smaller logical ones and why?


I use 2TB USB drive with one EXT4 partition. Took about 30 seconds to 
format connected to a USB2 port. Testing the drive with dd and copying 
files to the drive is very slow. Don't touch "Green Drives". They die 
like flies.

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Is it still advisable to partition a big hard drive?

2016-09-04 Thread Mick 
On Sunday 04 Sep 2016 17:48:14 Stroller wrote:
> > On 3 Sep 2016, at 17:50, Mick  wrote:

> > Yes, flash drives (unlike spinning drivers) are completely digital.  In
> > addition, wear levelling algorithms invariably kick in and bits and bytes
> > are sprayed all over the pages/modules of the memory chips.  So you could
> > say they are fragmented by design.
> 
> That would seem to dismiss the problem, "oh, they're fragmented by design,
> thus it's unimportant".

I'm far from an expert on NOR/NAND flash drives and therefore I didn't mean to 
sound dismissive.  I was merely highlighting the fact that the memory 
controller on these cards interferes with whatever our OS is trying to write 
on them, as the card's chip controller implements various wear levelling 
algorithms.


> My understanding is that defragmenting a flash device (although I think,
> personally, I would only do this by deleting all the files on the drive,
> and copying them back) can make for faster access.
> 
> • http://www.lagom.nl/misc/flash_fragmentation.html
> •
> http://www.wizcode.com/articles/comments/flash_memory_fragmentation_myths_a
> nd_facts/
> 
> Stroller.

Some of these tests assume that flushing the OS cache *also* flushes the cache 
on the flash drive.  This is not so, especially on more modern flush drives.  
I've been watching the behaviour of a Verbatim 32G USB stick I use more or 
less daily and I am convinced that running sync following a copy operation on 
my PC, in no way means the cache on the flash controller is also flushed.

What these tests prove is that when the card is full it takes longer to write 
content on it, because blocks will have to be erased before they can be 
written on.  The cluster size is quite important for this performance, as is 
the size of the file(s) being copied.

What I am saying is that the write operation performance is determined by the 
cluster size, the file size, the flash drive's cache size and most importantly 
by the flash drive controller's wear levelling algorithms.  There is no 
guarantee that data will be written contiguously, although they will be 
written in one-block-at-a-time.  The blocks themselves almost certainly will 
not be contiguous on a used drive.  Formatting it with unsuitable logical 
block sizes for its physical block size will almost certainly incur a write 
penalty (always depending on the size of the file being written).

This is what I meant when I said USB flash drives are fragmented by design.
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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[gentoo-user] Former gcc "-march=atom" flag is now "-march=bonnell"

2016-09-04 Thread waltdnes 
  https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.9/changes.html states...

> Optimizing for other Intel microarchitectures have been renamed to
> -march=nehalem, westmere, sandybridge, ivybridge, haswell, bonnell.

  My ancient Atom netbook identifies as "bonnell".

[aa1][waltdnes][~] gcc -c -Q -march=native --help=target | grep -i march=
  -march=   bonnell

  According to a post on the Arch forum gcc ignores "-march=atom"...
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1423395#p1423395  This is
very important if you're trying to optimize for an Atom netbook.

-- 
Walter Dnes 
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Is it still advisable to partition a big hard drive?

2016-09-04 Thread Stroller 

> On 3 Sep 2016, at 17:50, Mick  wrote:
>> 
>> I understood that fragmentation can also occur on flash-based disks.
>> 
>> Although the effect of it is not so noticeable, I understood that it still
>> has one.
> 
> Yes, flash drives (unlike spinning drivers) are completely digital.  In 
> addition, wear levelling algorithms invariably kick in and bits and bytes are 
> sprayed all over the pages/modules of the memory chips.  So you could say 
> they 
> are fragmented by design.

That would seem to dismiss the problem, "oh, they're fragmented by design, thus 
it's unimportant".

My understanding is that defragmenting a flash device (although I think, 
personally, I would only do this by deleting all the files on the drive, and 
copying them back) can make for faster access.

• http://www.lagom.nl/misc/flash_fragmentation.html
• 
http://www.wizcode.com/articles/comments/flash_memory_fragmentation_myths_and_facts/

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] Suggestion for freenode

2016-09-04 Thread Andreas K. Hüttel 
Am Sonntag, 4. September 2016, 06:37:36 schrieb Raymond Jennings:
> I think #gentoo-mentors should be filled by people willing to serve as
> mentors, and cater to devs in training who need a mentor ^^
> 
> What do you guys think?

There's
* #gentoo-dev-help for asking ebuild questions and getting help
* #gentoo-proxy-maint for getting your ebuilds reviewed for inclusion into the 
gentoo tree

-- 
Andreas K. Hüttel
Gentoo Linux developer (council, perl, libreoffice)
dilfri...@gentoo.org
http://www.akhuettel.de/

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Suggestion for freenode

2016-09-04 Thread Raymond Jennings 
That channel is also on the good list, but I'm more talking about using
#gentoo-mentors as a specific spot where mentors can hangout and new devs
in training can find them.

On Sat, Sep 3, 2016 at 11:27 PM, Hans de Graaff  wrote:

> On Sat, 03 Sep 2016 21:41:51 -0700, Jigme Datse Yli-RAsku wrote:
>
> > I like that.  Haven't got to even reaching the "dev in training" stage,
> > but I'd like to have some place where I can ask general gentoo-dev
> > questions.  I have a couple of projects which I'd like to get working
> > with a simple "emerge".
>
> #gentoo-dev-help is an existing channel specifically for getting help
> with writing ebuilds.
>
> Hans
>
>
>

[gentoo-user] Re: Suggestion for freenode

2016-09-04 Thread Hans de Graaff 
On Sat, 03 Sep 2016 21:41:51 -0700, Jigme Datse Yli-RAsku wrote:

> I like that.  Haven't got to even reaching the "dev in training" stage,
> but I'd like to have some place where I can ask general gentoo-dev
> questions.  I have a couple of projects which I'd like to get working
> with a simple "emerge".

#gentoo-dev-help is an existing channel specifically for getting help 
with writing ebuilds.

Hans