Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
On 7/18/06, James <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: My question now is which file system would be best to use? I have used reiserfs with great success, but reiser4 or xfs look appealing. I would stay far away from reiser4. From what I can tell, reiser4 may never make it into the mainline kernel. Xfs and ext3 are both very good choices. Personally I have a /very slight/ preference for xfs, because of xfs_fsr and the tuning options available in /proc. Recommendations for a file system that is mostly going to be challenged by streaming video (mpeg, h.264 dirac, ogg theora) is of keen interest. Any benchmarks available? Partitioning is probably the most important thing you could do for the performance of this system.Make a separate filesystem for the video work, so it doesn't have to compete for block/extent allocations with the rest of your system. -Richard -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
On Tue, 18 Jul 2006 22:12:37 + (UTC), James wrote: > > I would stay far away from reiser4. From what I can tell, reiser4 may > > never make it into the mainline kernel. Xfs and ext3 are both very > > good choices. Personally I have a /very slight/ preference for xfs, > > because of xfs_fsr and the tuning options available in /proc. > > I understand the comments about reiser4, although folks claim the > performance is wonderful. But do you think that xfs will outperform > reiserfs (3 series?). It certainly does when working with large files. However, I've switched some of my filesystems back to reiser because of the lack of any way of safely shrinking XFS filesystems (although enlarging them is easier than with reiser). -- Neil Bothwick New Intel opcode #007 PUKE: Put unmeaningful keywords everywhere signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
On 7/18/06, James <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I understand the comments about reiser4, although folks claim the performance is wonderful. But do you think that xfs will outperform reiserfs (3 series?). For large files, I think xfs has a slight edge over reiserfs. _Nothing_ beats reiserfs (except maybe reiser4) at handling lots of small files though. So I think reiserfs is great for /var and /usr/portage, /usr/src, maybe even /. I have a problem I thought I had solved. I have tried Partition Magic 7.0, repartitioning on the experimental livecd for amd64 and now the livecd from Gparted. All allow resizing of the 85 Gig ntfs partition, but, when I go to commit(run). All three fail. No matter what I do, I cannot reduce the 85Gig down to 30gig. If you look at the filesystem in a tool that will show you what files occupy which extents (like O&ODefrag), you can take a look at what (locked) files exist near the end of the filesystem. Things like c:\hiberfil.sys and c:\$log are nearly impossible to move, so they could be the source of the problem. If this is the case, you might have no choice but to reformat and reinstall XP if you want a smaller NTFS volume. -Richard -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
Howdy, I did a install of Mandriva recently and found out this bit of info. If you have frequent power failures and no UPS, do NOT use XFS. It was a nightmare to get back up because of things not getting started again and I just reinstalled Mandriva with reiserfs. It worked very well with Reiserfs but XFS was not something I want to try on that machine again for sure. If I had a UPS, it would have been fine. Maybe someone can explain this one to me a bit better. Dale :-) :-) :-) -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
On 7/18/06, Donnie Berkholz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Yes, it's well known that XFS sucks with unexpected power loss, Reiser and JFS less so. ext3 remains the most reliable filesystem. Yeah, I can't deny that. Fortunately for my laptop, "unexpected power loss" is never an issue. Lockups still are though, so I make sure to build with SysRq support. I would guess that in 99% of cases where a hard reset is necessary, Alt-SysRq-s (emergency sync) and Alt-SysRq-u (remount read-only) still work. I just have to remember to wait until the disk light goes out before Alt-SysRq-b (reboot). I forgot once, and my running VMWare session lost its config file and corrupted its disk image! It also helps to fiddle with the vm and xfs sysctl settings so that XFS doesn't sit there with unsync'd data that is 10-20 minutes old! -Richard -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 17:33 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote: > Dale wrote: > > Howdy, > > > > I did a install of Mandriva recently and found out this bit of info. If > > you have frequent power failures and no UPS, do NOT use XFS. It was a > > nightmare to get back up because of things not getting started again and > > I just reinstalled Mandriva with reiserfs. It worked very well with > > Reiserfs but XFS was not something I want to try on that machine again > > for sure. > > Yes, it's well known that XFS sucks with unexpected power loss, Reiser > and JFS less so. ext3 remains the most reliable filesystem. I'd be curious who this is well-know to. The only XFS filesystem I've ever lost (having used XFS exclusively since SGI started offering it on RH 7.?) was due to bad RAM. There *have* been a couple of issues that I'm aware of, but I'd hardly call it "sucking". Regards, Cliff -- -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
Donnie Berkholz wrote: > Dale wrote: > >> Howdy, >> >> I did a install of Mandriva recently and found out this bit of info. If >> you have frequent power failures and no UPS, do NOT use XFS. It was a >> nightmare to get back up because of things not getting started again and >> I just reinstalled Mandriva with reiserfs. It worked very well with >> Reiserfs but XFS was not something I want to try on that machine again >> for sure. >> > > Yes, it's well known that XFS sucks with unexpected power loss, Reiser > and JFS less so. ext3 remains the most reliable filesystem. > > Thanks, > Donnie > > It was fast though. It seemed to do well on that but no power failures is a must to be sure. At least now I know it was not just picking on me. Things usually do that. Dale :-) :-) -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
Cliff Wells wrote: > I'd be curious who this is well-know to. The only XFS filesystem I've > ever lost (having used XFS exclusively since SGI started offering it on > RH 7.?) was due to bad RAM. There *have* been a couple of issues that > I'm aware of, but I'd hardly call it "sucking". I'm too lazy to search all over the net for xfs "power outage" or "power loss", here's a couple of examples: http://lwn.net/Articles/181355/ http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=4#doc_chap4 Thanks, Donnie signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
PREFACE: I don't know what I'm talking about, but Seriously, I can't even tread water with these guys, but I installed GNU/Linux on a gateway laptop with a recover partition. I believe I did a defrag, but it's been a long time, but for sure, I was left with the impression at one point that there were some files in the NTFS, nearer to the end of the partition than I'd have liked. I tried qtparted/gparted from several different live cds, knoppix and ubuntu, I believe. I think my first install was Ubuntu, but I had to use knoppix to repartition. This has been an issue a couple of times. Various *parteds gave different results. I was able to shrink the NTFS partition far more than I thought would be possible, and I bit the bullet and just did it, thinking it would fail, but who cares, I'm only keeping NTFS/XP because the school district gave me the machine, and they might require me to run a gradebook. Again, I've shrunk the NTFS a couple more times, since I don't use it much, and no problems in any of the FEW times I've run Windoze. If you are thinking of hosing your partitions, I'd suggest trying other, more up to date, maybe, LiveCDs, and one of them might work. Just don't quote me on this. Alan Davis On 7/19/06, Donnie Berkholz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Cliff Wells wrote: > I'd be curious who this is well-know to. The only XFS filesystem I've > ever lost (having used XFS exclusively since SGI started offering it on > RH 7.?) was due to bad RAM. There *have* been a couple of issues that > I'm aware of, but I'd hardly call it "sucking". I'm too lazy to search all over the net for xfs "power outage" or "power loss", here's a couple of examples: http://lwn.net/Articles/181355/ http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=4#doc_chap4 Thanks, Donnie -- Alan Davis, Kagman High School, Saipan [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1-670-256-2043 I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. Richard Stallman -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
On 7/18/06, James <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Well I did not get a XP-pro installation disk with this portable.
The portable has a second partition with XP on it, used for recovery.
[Way OT] I know some manufacturers do this, and it is one of the
dumbest things I've ever heard of. Why do consumers accept this? You
save $0.05c on the cost of a CD, at the risk of having *no* recovery
option at all if the HD fails. It's just stupid.
If these are new systems, I would give HP support a call and demand
they send you the WinXP OEM installation CD.
XP from the the XP installation/recovery partition to a smaller
partition. say 30 Gig.Sound like a viable option?
My XP system under VMWare is on a 10Gb virtual disk, although I use
NTFS compression there. It depends on what you want to use it for,
but my guess is that 30Gb should be more than enough for basic XP
tasks.
Is there any free download software (even if it's a binary) to
defrag this ntfs partition, for an amd64 ? Googling for
{O&ODefrag +amd64 } does not produce anything useful.
Under windows, I use O&ODefrag from http://www.oo-software.com. It
isn't free, but there is a 30-day trial available. It is also windows
only (they had a Linux beta, but not for NTFS, and it sucked big-time.
Corrupted filesystems, no response from their support line, etc etc.
Seems to have been withdrawn).
-Richard
--
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
On Wednesday 19 July 2006 05:31, James wrote:
> Yes HP is one of them. Purchased the system through Office Depot.
> Will not make this mistake again.
In the UK at least HP sell refurbished and slightly obsolete components with
one year warranty on ebay. If you bid when the footy, Wimbledon, etc., is on
the telly you can get a pretty descent box for a relatively low price. Of
course, there's morons who keep outbidding themselves and push up prices for
everyone else . . . but even so it's worth looking into it. Buying HP_Compaq
from a shop is an absolute no-no, unless they're throwing the darn things
out. It occasionally happens, but not that often. Unfortunately, with a low
price comes the 'compaqified' installation image. The best solution that I
have found is to shrink the partition with gparted *before* the machine is
ever booted up and image this smaller partition onto a DVD - should you ever
want to resell the computer.
>
> > If these are new systems, I would give HP support a call and demand
> > they send you the WinXP OEM installation CD.
They will. But at a price (not much) and guess what, it is an image of the
original installation which as far as I recall requires the whole of the disk
for it to be installed again! Can you believe them!
> After blowing away the NTFS (XP) stuff via reformatting. I'm going to
> see if I can install/restore XP from the backup partition to
> the newly reduced 30Meg partition.
Surprise me if this works
> If HP forces me to choose between gentoo and XP, by_by XP.
>
> Yes I know the 10.6 gig of XP will fit, what I was looking for
> is an opinion on blowing away the orginal XP on the 85 gig partition,
> reformatting with several new partitions for Gentoo and XP and using
> the XP restore from the 9 gig partition as the end of the drive, where
> the HP-XP restore software is located.
Surprise me again for the reasons mentioned above. I believe that it will
either overwrite the partitions you've created or bomb out with an error.
> If nobody posts a better idea by tomorrow morning, it's by by XP.
I have been successful with a number of 32bit HP-Compaq machines by doing the
following:
Boot into WinXP and uninstall all system software and applications (e.g.
Windoze IM, Outlook Express, etc.) that you do not need. Refrag the machine
using the native defrag application from the Administrative Tools. Reboot
<--> defrag. Repeat the cycle of rebooting and defragging a couple more
times until there is no discernible fragmentation. Use gparted to resize the
partition and create new as required. So far I had no failures, although on
some older machines with low memory the shrinking can take absolute ages (it
doesn't fail, just takes forever).
> > > Is there any free download software (even if it's a binary) to
> > > defrag this ntfs partition, for an amd64 ? Googling for
> > > {O&ODefrag +amd64 } does not produce anything useful.
Please forgive me if I have missed a critical point in this thread - why does
it have to be 64bit? Won't the WinXP 32bit defrag tool do the job?
--
Regards,
Mick
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
On Wednesday 19 July 2006 01:57, Richard Fish wrote: > Fortunately for my laptop, "unexpected power loss" is never an issue. > Lockups still are though, so I make sure to build with SysRq support. Other than xorg.conf where else do you need to specify this? If my xorg locks up I lose the keyboard/mouse and have to pull the plug no matter what. :-( -- Regards, Mick pgpzwHGi1viJd.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
On 7/19/06, Mick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Other than xorg.conf where else do you need to specify this? If my xorg locks up I lose the keyboard/mouse and have to pull the plug no matter what. :-( Not in xorg.conf at all. It is a kernel option CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ, enabled by "Magic SysRq key" under Kernel Hacking. The nice thing is that it usually works even if X is completely hosed, to the point where even the CapsLock key & light doesn't work. The hard part is to remember what the shortcuts are at the point you need them! -Richard -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
On Wednesday 19 July 2006 09:23, Richard Fish wrote: > On 7/19/06, Mick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Other than xorg.conf where else do you need to specify this? If my xorg > > locks up I lose the keyboard/mouse and have to pull the plug no matter > > what. :-( > > Not in xorg.conf at all. It is a kernel option CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ, > enabled by "Magic SysRq key" under Kernel Hacking. Doh! That's what I was doing wrong. :-P > The hard part is to remember what the shortcuts are at the point you need > them! I've hit those buttons so many times I know the sequence by heart. LOL Thanks! -- Regards, Mick pgpEp05M9u0vr.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
On Tue, 18 Jul 2006 18:32:17 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote: > I'm too lazy to search all over the net for xfs "power outage" or "power > loss", here's a couple of examples: > > http://lwn.net/Articles/181355/ > http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=4#doc_chap4 It seems the latest releases are more forgiving, less prone to overwriting open files with random data when power fails. but it is still risky to run on a system without some form of battery. -- Neil Bothwick Save energy: Drive a smaller shell. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
On Tue, 2006-07-18 at 18:32 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote: > Cliff Wells wrote: > > I'd be curious who this is well-know to. The only XFS filesystem I've > > ever lost (having used XFS exclusively since SGI started offering it on > > RH 7.?) was due to bad RAM. There *have* been a couple of issues that > > I'm aware of, but I'd hardly call it "sucking". > > I'm too lazy to search all over the net for xfs "power outage" or "power > loss", here's a couple of examples: > > http://lwn.net/Articles/181355/ > http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=4#doc_chap4 Sorry, not convinced. The first is some second-hand quote of Ted T'so who just *happens* to have a bone to pick with other filesystems. All the gentoo article states is some info from the XFS docs about XFS' "aggressive" caching and potential *data* loss (not FS corruption). While it's not well-known that XFS sucks in a power outage, it is well-known that it writes journal before data. This is a design choice that helps ensure that while you may lose data in a power outage, you won't lose your filesystem. I know no one here seriously thinks that they won't lose data in a power outage no matter what FS they use so I'm still unsure how that makes XFS suck. Bottom line is after 5 years of almost nothing but XFS on many, many computers (most of them not on UPS), I've had nothing but good fortune with XFS. OTOH, I've got a corrupted EXT3 system sitting here I'm trying to repair for a customer after someone turned it off, and my one attempt with JFS (when I got my first 64-bit PC) led to almost immediate disaster. Bottom line is that if you lose power you risk losing data. My experience has been that not only does XFS not fair worse than the other filesystems, it appears to fair better. Regards, Cliff -- -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
As a more useful bit of info than anecdotes and scaremongering, here's a decent article that covers XFS in fair detail and compares a few of its major differences from the other journaled filesystems: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-fs9.html The section on "Journaling" is especially enlightening as it both shows why people fear data loss on XFS and also why it tends not to happen so much in real-life usage. Regards, Cliff -- -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
On 7/20/06, Cliff Wells <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: As a more useful bit of info than anecdotes and scaremongering, here's a decent article that covers XFS in fair detail and compares a few of its major differences from the other journaled filesystems: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-fs9.html Posting links to articles written by Gentoo's founder is cheating! :-) But in fact, Daniel didn't really address the real-world reliability of the filesystems. He addressed it theoretically, and only in relation to reiserfs, not ext3. But in fact I disagree with one assertion that Daniel makes: "but writing metadata more frequently does encourage data to be written more frequently as well" In it's default configuration, XFS avoids writing data out to disk until it absolutely has to, or a *significant* amount of time has elapsed. Only by tweaking /proc settings have I gotten it to flush out data in a reasonable amount of time. Are you seriously telling me that in all the years you have run XFS filesystems, you have never seen /var/log/messages get padded with nuls? That is the kind of "corruption" that XFS is well known for. (BTW, I _know_ this is a security feature. But the fact is that ext3 users pretty much _never_ see this kind of data, um, "security"). It may be great at maintaining it's own consistency, but it seems particularly predatory to the files contained within it. I've already mentioned a recent corruption I had with XFS on one of my systems... Besides, every time this discussion has come up here, the majority of particpants have agreed that ext3 is the least likely to corrupt data. Don't get me wrong. I like XFS, and I am running it on my laptop and desktop systems. However I have tweaked the settings so that it behaves like I want, and am very cautious about just hitting the reset/power button when I get a lockup. I have learned that the hard way. And my "bottom line" is: if someone came here and asked "what is the most reliable filesystem", my answer would be ext3. Hands down. -Richard -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
On 7/20/06, Cliff Wells <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Well, the other "well-known" bit of info is that ext3 gets much of its "reliability" from syncing every 5 seconds. If you want to use XFS and get that sort of data reliability, here's a bash script to add to rc.local: ( while true; do sync; sleep 5; done )& Well, you laugh, but my /etc/sysctl.conf contains: vm.laptop_mode = 0 fs.xfs.xfssyncd_centisecs = 500 You can also mount XFS in sync mode if you are paranoid, but be warned that it keeps your disks *very* busy. Yeah. I would rather use ext3 with data=journal! So I guess the real question is this: what qualifies as "FS reliability". Right. "Sucks" is imprecise in most circles. But consider this...the entire value of a filesystem is the files it contains. A filesystem that fixes itself by doing the equivalent of "mkfs" on reboot from a crash will be both completely consistent, and completely useless. By anyone's definition, it would "suck". cross-linked files and bad inode counts). Also, having to fsck a large disk array is going to be quite painful. Yes, ext3 maintainers are well aware of this. Have you seen: http://infohost.nmt.edu/~val/fs_workshop/ And the lwn article: http://lwn.net/Articles/189547/ -Richard -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
On Wednesday 19 July 2006 01:38, Richard Fish wrote: > Things like > c:\hiberfil.sys and c:\$log are nearly impossible to move, so they > could be the source of the problem. hiberfil is easily movable (Well, it's Windows... requires you to go to the power settings in the control panel and disable hibernation, then defrag and finally reenable...). pagefile is a bit harder as it requires you to reboot ones or twice The approach, however, would be the same... -- Bo Andresen pgpdrXGOTDZGd.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: amd64 installation: which file system?
On Wednesday 19 July 2006 09:14, Mick wrote: > > > If these are new systems, I would give HP support a call and demand > > > they send you the WinXP OEM installation CD. > > They will. But at a price (not much) and guess what, it is an image of the > original installation which as far as I recall requires the whole of the > disk for it to be installed again! Can you believe them! Then it's not the OEM Installation CD. I would accept no less as consider this kind of recover approach completely useless. I would never accept to have a useless 9 GB partition sitting around just for reinstalls. I would rather by Windows directly from Microsoft than accept that kind of crap. So what I would do is reconsider if I really needed Windows or demand an OEM Installation CD from Toshiba or buy directly from Microsoft or buy a computer from another vendor... And scrap all partitions and start from scratch. -- Bo Andresen pgpYoEskXBsAY.pgp Description: PGP signature
