filesystem (besides zfs because its a given)

[enk]

Doesn't sound so bad.

So who actually uses zfs?

[d3adf001]

you dont need a raid card for software raid in linux at least. i could recommend spending the extra money and get a hardware raid card tho 3WARE!

[Pobega]

I use Ext3. Not because it's the default option but because it's my filesystem of choice; I find it's journal abilities fast and useful, and it's r/w speed isn't so bad either; It's a jack of all trades but a master of none. And that's precisely how I like my filesystems.

Although, I will admit, I've been tempted to try ReiserFS, but looking at all the benchmarks it just seems slower to me than Ext3.

[Washer]

WinFS >>> ZFS *ducks*

[zenten]

WinFS >>> ZFS *ducks*

ZFS actually exists though.

[wing]

I use Ext3. Not because it's the default option but because it's my filesystem of choice; I find it's journal abilities fast and useful, and it's r/w speed isn't so bad either; It's a jack of all trades but a master of none. And that's precisely how I like my filesystems.

Although, I will admit, I've been tempted to try ReiserFS, but looking at all the benchmarks it just seems slower to me than Ext3.

Not quite jack of all trades. It needs ACL's.

[spelunker]

ext3, because I'm lazy and I like it's journaling.

There's also this operating system from Bell that has a file system full of awesomeness, apparently.

I don't know where I found out about that OS, btw, if you're asking.

[magnum_opus]

plan 9's file system was alright, i think you're confusing it's use of the file system through 9P with the file system though. 9P has been ported to linux now, and possibly is part of the kernel these days, you can try WMII and ii if you want to see what it was like.

that said Dragon Fly BSD is essentially trying to do something similar, cluster-oriented OS, and thus Dillon is writing a new file system (Hammer?) which is pretty cool.

[spelunker]

plan 9's file system was alright, i think you're confusing it's use of the file system through 9P with the file system though. 9P has been ported to linux now, and possibly is part of the kernel these days, you can try WMII and ii if you want to see what it was like.

Yeah, looks like I'm confusing the two. I would like to try it, see what it's like, though; I'll have to try a linux port.

[Axman]

Speaking of Plan 9, I really, really want to see WinFS live.

[davean]

ZFS does a lot of stuff at the filesystem level that most existing filesystems require hardware to do (RAID, some nifty volume utilities) and also has features that make it very easy to do backups with.

All it really does is merge the volume management with the filesystem. Others use a proper, sane separation of concerns.

Define "proper journaling support". Do you require data journaling?

If you all want journaling, why don't you use a log based filesystem?

Because there aren't any stable ones for Linux?

But linux it's self is hardly stable.

Define "proper journaling support". Do you require data journaling?

Well, yeah, otherwise what's the point?

I want to have it so if my computer crashes mid-write the file is still fully intact.

There are plenty of other methods like soft updates.

[Washer]

What do you guys use in your USB drives? I'm seriously about to reformat from NTFS cuz i'm tired of having to re-boot windows to re-check it everytime I don't "safely remove." It's also a big drive (120gb) so fat32 is very inconvenient.

[Washer]

Speaking of Plan 9, I really, really want to see WinFS live.

gl with that. Microsoft's problem was never about the ideas. Anyone can think up cool features. This particular idea has been around since the early 90s.

[davean]

What do you guys use in your USB drives? I'm seriously about to reformat from NTFS cuz i'm tired of having to re-boot windows to re-check it everytime I don't "safely remove." It's also a big drive (120gb) so fat32 is very inconvenient.

Can't you just run check disk manually or something?

[Anpheus]

And why are you unplugging stuff without doing the safely remove hardware thing? There's a very important reason you should do that. It's so you don't have to check your disk every time you reboot.

But I average several hundred hours of uptime per boot, so maybe you should try utilizing sleep mode?

[Washer]

What do you guys use in your USB drives? I'm seriously about to reformat from NTFS cuz i'm tired of having to re-boot windows to re-check it everytime I don't "safely remove." It's also a big drive (120gb) so fat32 is very inconvenient.

Can't you just run check disk manually or something?

On linux? I was under the impression that wasn't possible.

And why are you unplugging stuff without doing the safely remove hardware thing? There's a very important reason you should do that. It's so you don't have to check your disk every time you reboot.

Mostly because i'm lazy. I don't mind the check much - it's the having to reboot into windows that annoys me.

[Anpheus]

Am I crazy or am I seeing a user account named Washer, whose avatar is a washing machine, and whose post count is locked at zero?

[Axman]

Uh, you should start safely removing your devices. NTFS under windows does stuff, like tending to files, shifting them, indexing, meta-data stuff. If you yank it while it's working on a file, you've just corrupted it.

Huh. Washer. Weird.

[Hammer]

Am I crazy or am I seeing a user account named Washer, whose avatar is a washing machine, and whose post count is locked at zero?

You are seeing a user called Washer. Post count is zero because xhe has only posted in Religious Wars so far. As opposed to posting in the INTRO thread. * taps foot and points to the INTRO thread and the Rules threads *

I do not believe that Washer's existence is mutually exclusive with your sanity, so I am unable to answer your question.

[EvanED]

Uh, you should start safely removing your devices. NTFS under windows does stuff, like tending to files, shifting them, indexing, meta-data stuff. If you yank it while it's working on a file, you've just corrupted it.

The problem is that if a program is holding a handle open to something on the drive and thus preventing you from ejecting it, Windows will helpfully not tell you who it is. It then becomes a contest between (1) closing programs one-by-one until the handle is released, (2) using ProcessExplorer or an NT-version of LSOF or something similar to determine which program it is, and (3) just yanking it. Option (3) often wins out, at least for me. If it corrupts something, oh well, I don't have anything just on my USB drive anyway. (And in cases where that isn't true and it's something I care about, option (3) loses.)

(In fairness, Unix's umount is no more helpful.)

[Anpheus]

Actually, if you disconnect a USB hard drive or a network share on Windows and then shut down, even if you fail to do the safely remove, most of the time it'll not want a FS check. The problem is shutting down with the device -still connected-.

That said, it's generally not a good idea to yank an external hard drive while it's running. That'd be bad.

[enk]

@ EvanED: If you're used to it, option 2 only takes a few seconds. I use Unlocker...

@ Anpheus: I've never had a problem shutting down while an external HDD was connected.

[LoopQuantumGravity]

Where's the "File systems are for wimps, I can manage my own sectors, thank you" option?

[Axman]

@ EvanED: If you're used to it, option 2 only takes a few seconds. I use Unlocker...

Oh, cool, I'll have to remember that. (Bookmarks are useless...)

[Washer]

oh i remember. The computers at school have that "safely remove" thing disabled so it's not like there's a choice then I come home & fire up linux as usual then when I'm just about to settle down .. Intro thread what where? I gotta make one?

[EvanED]

oh i remember. The computers at school have that "safely remove" thing disabled so it's not like there's a choice then I come home & fire up linux as usual then when I'm just about to settle down .. Intro thread what where? I gotta make one?

Nope, here. (It's at the top of every forum in the "announcements" section.)

[Washer]

/scratches beard

That thread's vaguely reminiscent of early 20th century germany. If, say, I were to decline, would there be any repercussions? :p

[LoopQuantumGravity]

/scratches beard

That thread's vaguely reminiscent of early 20th century germany. If, say, I were to decline, would there be any repercussions? :p

Only for some of us...

(If you use windows, you have to wear a big windows flag around your arm... Some windows users are taken off to "linux reeducation camps" and never seen again... But you didn't hear anything from me... I'm a good little Linux user, yes I am...)

[EvanED]

(If you use windows, you have to wear a big windows flag around your arm... Some windows users are taken off to "linux reeducation camps" and never seen again... But you didn't hear anything from me... I'm a good little Linux user, yes I am...)

I've been here for almost a year and a half, and I have never been ...%#@* NO CARRIER

[Washer]

Well i'm more of the younger generation ubuntu + beryl user... but I did try to emerge world once so I think I can fake it.

[Axman]

oh i remember. The computers at school have that "safely remove" thing disabled so it's not like there's a choice then I come home & fire up linux as usual then when I'm just about to settle down .. Intro thread what where? I gotta make one?

Left-click it. Not right-click. Disabling left-click is pretty fucking hard in XP on a domain level.

[Hammer]

That thread's vaguely reminiscent of early 20th century germany. If, say, I were to decline, would there be any repercussions? :p

* blink * Well, OK... There is no requirement that you post personal information, but if you have some moral objection to "Hi, and I'm not a spambot," nothing terrible will happen to you.

[Xbehave]

(In fairness, Unix's umount is no more helpful.)

correcty me if im wrong but wouldnt umount -l stop writes to the disk meaning youd unmount fine but might corrupt any file being written (no risk of anything though)

i lost an install when my system went down using xfs, apparently its because desktops go crazy on a crash, so i always keep my home and root ext3 now, im guessing file systems are designed for server usage where this sort of thing doesn't happen.
is my laptop safer tho?

for /tmp im planning on using reiser4 as soon as its easy for a noob.
also i use ext2 on my truecrypt encrypted home (windows compatibility says it has to be ext2/3)

does anybody else wish theyre where rouge kernel devs that patches the kernel to do all the non GPL stuff? i mean aslong as nobody is going to sue you (e.g incompatible free licenses)

[EvanED]

(In fairness, Unix's umount is no more helpful.)

correcty me if im wrong but wouldnt umount -l stop writes to the disk meaning youd unmount fine but might corrupt any file being written (no risk of anything though)

So I didn't know about umount -l. That does give you some flexibility that Windows doesn't give you. However, it still won't tell you who is using the drive (you still need to turn to lsof), and from my reading of the man page doesn't close their handles and doesn't flush cached data to disk. So if you do "umount -l" and then pull the drive, you're not in that much better shape then if you just didn't do the umount in the first place.

(I'm not sure how to reconcile you admitting you "might corrupt any file being written" and your statement that there is "no risk of anything though"...)

[enk]

So I didn't know about umount -l. That does give you some flexibility that Windows doesn't give you. However, it still won't tell you who is using the drive (you still need to turn to lsof), and from my reading of the man page doesn't close their handles and doesn't flush cached data to disk. So if you do "umount -l" and then pull the drive, you're not in that much better shape then if you just didn't do the umount in the first place.

If I may redirect your attention to my previous post in this thread, you have lsof and handle closing built into Unlocker (which is not a built-in, but not much is in Windows anyway). I don't know about cache flushing though.

(I'm not sure how to reconcile you admitting you "might corrupt any file being written" and your statement that there is "no risk of anything though"...)

Yeah, I wondered about that one too...

[EvanED]

So I didn't know about umount -l. That does give you some flexibility that Windows doesn't give you. However, it still won't tell you who is using the drive (you still need to turn to lsof), and from my reading of the man page doesn't close their handles and doesn't flush cached data to disk. So if you do "umount -l" and then pull the drive, you're not in that much better shape then if you just didn't do the umount in the first place.

If I may redirect your attention to my previous post in this thread, you have lsof and handle closing built into Unlocker (which is not a built-in, but not much is in Windows anyway). I don't know about cache flushing though.

Yeah, I saw. That's a neat little utility, thanks for the link.

[Washer]

Ok first of all you guys are no fun. When I saw there were no arguments re posting an intro thread & nobody got my chocolate thread (hint: It had nothing to do with chocolate), I decided to go recompile my kernel for reiser4.

Actually, we decided instead to change the rule about the Intro thread. We are having much less spambot trouble so, it is no longer required.

They weren't kidding. This thing really is 50-100% faster than ext3.