Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On 10/1/07, Markus Hitter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Am 01.10.2007 um 00:16 schrieb Anthony Yarusso: How would it work in the background after your drives are mounted? Did you ever use WinXP and run chkdsk from the command line? It warns you that it can't *correct* errors (a reboot is needed if errors are found), but it can at least *detect* errors on a mounted and active partition (even the boot partition, in case you wondered). Why should Linux not be able to copy this behavior? I'm not aware wether current fsck supports it, but nothing technical stops you to _check_ a drive while being mounted r/w. In the (hopefully rare) case you find some issue you'd have to ask the user to take action, i.e. reboot the machine. Exactly! Regards, Waldemar Kornewald -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On 10/1/07, Luke Yelavich [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So what happens when users install a distro that either doesn't check their filesystem regularly, or attempts to check in background, which can't be completed due to system activity etc, and they loose their data? I'd be thinking that having the filesystem periodically checked would be a good thing, to ensure my data stays in tact. Look, this check doesn't just take three seconds. Nobody would complain in that case. On some machines it's taking an awful 40min!!! I see this check twice a month. I lose an incredible amount of productivity because of this check. Actually, I'd lose less time by creating regular backups and restoring a backup in case of a problem. Millions of XP machines are running just fine without this check. Do you think any desktop user will try to understand why this check is needed? Would you accept your car needing a 20min self-check before you can drive, especially if you're late? Would you even care why this check is needed if you see that some other car doesn't do this check or has a more efficient checking method? Seriously, the solution that Ubuntu has chosen is just an ugly hack because nobody wanted to implement automatic checks in the background, but there are quite a few people (as you can also see in the bug reports) who don't like this situation. In any serious company that cares about its users and the user experience the solution would be very simple: Either it's implemented correctly or not at all. Regards, Waldemar Kornewald -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
Reordering this mail to put the important topic on top. On 9/28/07, Markus Hitter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: IIRC, in sleep-to-disk mode you can even pull the power plug without enforcing booting. Yep, sleep-to-disk is the best mode if you care about your environment, but if you want to suggest that we all use standby/sleep-to-disk to get around fsck checks then that's silly because it doesn't really solve the actual problem and it is no solution that works automatically for everyone. Also, both modes aren't stable enough, at least on laptops (but it would be great if sleep-to-disk were the default because it's much more comfortable for the end-user). If the HDD needs to be checked, regularly, then this needs to be done in background instead of at boot time. If it doesn't really need to be checked very frequently or at all then the check needs to be turned off, by default. What do the Ubuntu developers say (sorry, I don't know who of you is a dev)? Will this discussion lead to anything or are we discussing just for fun? Am 28.09.2007 um 00:40 schrieb Caroline Ford: We are strongly being advised NOT to leave things on standby here as it's bad for the environment. I'm pretty sure it takes less energy to have a modern computer in standby for a week or two than to boot the machine and to restore all the applications running (think about 30 documents open on my average desktop). Not to mention about an hour of work to do the latter. That's plain wrong. Permanent standby (e.g., 20h/day) needs many times more energy than booting your computer and opening your documents. You can easily calculate for yourself: 6W for standby when monitor turned off, 180W under medium load. FYI, in Germany, for example, we have multiple power plants running solely to keep electronic devices in standby mode! Regards, Waldemar Kornewald -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On 9/30/07, Thilo Six [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: umount the partition and *then* run: $ sudo tune2fs -c 0 -i 1m /dev/hdXY that will reduce fsck period to once a month, regarless of bootcount. But do that on your on. Distribution wide i can´t think off any good reason to disable fsck at all. If you want fsck then you should be able to turn it on, but please don't assume that anyone else wants to have fsck enabled, by default. As many people have reported, it takes awfully long to boot with fsck and that's incredibly annoying. From my own experience, the average person will react very negatively to fsck increasing their boot time by 10-40min, especially if XPVista (how about other Linux distros or OS X?) don't do this annoying check. Seriously, why should we accept being disturbed by fsck? It's not like we couldn't do anything about it. There are two solutions that work for everyone: turn fsck off by default or make it work in the background. Regards, Waldemar Kornewald -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On 9/27/07, Erik Andrén [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2007/9/27, Waldemar Kornewald [EMAIL PROTECTED]: ... -- Are there any alternatives? Here are two examples: Use SMART (AFAIK, Vista does that). SMART is hardware- and not filesystem dependent. Besides, the implementation of SMART differs wildly from each hard-drive manufacturer. Isn't a hardware defect the main reason a file system can be corrupted without a crash? There can be serious FS bugs, but aren't those very rare, anyway? What else could lead to FS corruption? Regards, Waldemar Kornewald -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Activate Desktop-Effects: Yes/No-Button?
Hi, (resending... why do mails not get to the ML, automatically?) On 9/27/07, Dominik Wagenfuehr [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: PS: And yes, I know that you can deactivate Compiz with a few clicks, but why do not let the user decide? Even without that question the user can still decide: Just deactivate Compiz. ;) But you already mentioned the main reason yourself: Most users are happy with Compiz being enabled. Do you want to annoy all of them with a question just to make a minority of users happy? With that reasoning we could easily expand this to 1000 questions, letting the user choose everything... Contrary to what some people make us belive, many consumers don't even want to have a lot of choice in *all* situations of their life (there have been studies on the negative psychological effects of too much choice in our modern world). The stereotypical view choice = good, no choice = bad is not as blackwhite as many people seem to believe. There is something between lots of choice and no choice and, as you said, most people prefer a shiny interface over a boring one. In some countries (esp. the USA) the ridiculous equation choice = freedom has emerged (and sometimes basically enslaved us), but it's too simple to capture the real meaning behind it which is something similar to: freedom+happyness means to have the *possibility* to choose and then get what you want. From a different point of view, freedom means the freedom to *NOT* have to choose and not be bothered with choice unless we choose to have choice (I hope this makes it clear that the issue is more complex than some might think ;). In this case, this is only guaranteed if you don't ask the user and let those who want to disable Compiz just do that. I hope this will some day become a philosophy in the open-source world (it's only a small, but important step towards better usability). Ideally, we'd only be presented with *essential* choice and then have something like a search interface for getting a list of options for *anything* when we want that choice. Regards, Waldemar Kornewald -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Activate Desktop-Effects: Yes/No-Button?
Was my mail cut in the middle? On 9/27/07, Waldemar Kornewald [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, (resending... why do mails not get to the ML, automatically?) On 9/27/07, Dominik Wagenfuehr [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: PS: And yes, I know that you can deactivate Compiz with a few clicks, but why do not let the user decide? Even without that question the user can still decide: Just deactivate Compiz. ;) But you already mentioned the main reason yourself: Most users are happy with Compiz being enabled. Do you want to annoy all of them with a question just to make a minority of users happy? With that reasoning we could easily expand this to 1000 questions, letting the user choose everything... Contrary to what some people make us belive, many consumers don't even want to have a lot of choice in *all* situations of their life (there have been studies on the negative psychological effects of too much choice in our modern world). The stereotypical view choice = good, no choice = bad is not as blackwhite as many people seem to believe. There is something between lots of choice and no choice and, as you said, most people prefer a shiny interface over a boring one. In some countries (esp. the USA) the ridiculous equation choice = freedom has emerged (and sometimes basically enslaved us), but it's too simple to capture the real meaning behind it which is something similar to: freedom+happyness means to have the *possibility* to choose and then get what you want. From a different point of view, freedom means the freedom to *NOT* have to choose and not be bothered with choice unless we choose to have choice (I hope this makes it clear that the issue is more complex than some might think ;). In this case, this is only guaranteed if you don't ask the user and let those who want to disable Compiz just do that. I hope this will some day become a philosophy in the open-source world (it's only a small, but important step towards better usability). Ideally, we'd only be presented with *essential* choice and then have something like a search interface for getting a list of options for *anything* when we want that choice. Regards, Waldemar Kornewald -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
On 9/27/07, Luke Yelavich [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Sep 27, 2007 at 06:03:32PM EST, Waldemar Kornewald wrote: Isn't a hardware defect the main reason a file system can be corrupted without a crash? There can be serious FS bugs, but aren't those very rare, anyway? What else could lead to FS corruption? The hardware can be in top knotch, and problems can still occurr with filesystems. Many a time, I've seen an fsck finish on a root filesystem, and have to reboot the system due to changes, even when there have been no crashes on the system since the filesystem was created. If you really want to turn them off, or at least reduce their freqquency, you can use the tune2fs command to do so, but I personally would leave things as they are. What about my alternative suggestion? It would still run fsck, but at the same time be less annoying or not disturbing at all. Regards, Waldemar Kornewald -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: regular fsck runs are too disturbing
Hi, On 9/27/07, Oliver Grawert [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Am Donnerstag, den 27.09.2007, 10:49 +0200 schrieb Waldemar Kornewald: What about my alternative suggestion? It would still run fsck, but at the same time be less annoying or not disturbing at all. not wsure if you ever ran fsck manually, but you have to unmount the partition you check or at least mount it readonly ... so no matter how far you will background it you wont be able to work while it runs ... I'm sure it is technically possible. It might mean changes to fsck or even the kernel, but, for example, under Windows I can run chkdsk read-only even on a read-write mounted FS. I can even defragment that FS while it's mounted read-write. IMHO, this is a highly desired improvement to the current behavior which draws users away (friends who saw fsck on my laptop called Linux stupid and asked me why I don't just use Windows). Regards, Waldemar Kornewald -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
