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Mac OS X to Get Journaling FS
overunderunderdone writes "According to eWeek, Apple Computer is planning to introduce a new journaling file system code-named 'Elvis' with the 10.2.2 release. Supposedly it will run on top of HFS+ and will be turned off by default. Though it will cost you 10% to 15% performance penalty the article says it is more extensive than NTFS and is on par with BeOS's 64-bit journaling file system. Not surprising since it is being developed by the same person - Dominic Giampaolo." I've been super impressed by OS X having used it as my primary laptop for the last couple weeks. It really is a great unix box- and this is one of the important missing puzzle pieces.
Though it will cost you 10% to 15% performance penalty
This refers to hard disk access time penalties, not an overall 10-15% reduction in the performance of your computer. You wouldn't notice the difference.
A beautiful interface with great professional products available (photoshop, office, etc.) while keeping the ability to run nix software.
At least this shows Apple's serious with courting the tech-savvy audience. Before, the reason to go with Apple was out of preference for the UI... and that was it. OS9 was ungainly and unstable. With OSX there're now true geeky reasons to want a Mac. No more being ashamed of coveting the rainbow apple! I want protected memory/journalling fs/unix multiuser/process stability/gnu tools/etc ... and an interface that looks like i can eat it for dessert!
I predict that it will become faster with time.
Just looking at how OS X itself has progressed in speed from Public Beta (slug with brick tied to it), to 10.0 (slug), to 10.1 (average lazy human), to 10.2 (average lazy human drinking strong coffee), I expect that by 10.3 this technology will not give nearly such a performance hit.
And heck. Don't like the speed hit? Turn it off.
But what do I know. I'm just looking for anonymous gay sex.
Since about 90% of mac users won't ever put a second disk in, and there isn't even room in an iMac for a second disk that I know of, I'd imagine they are only talking about on a single disk.
Although I will say that I've only had it happen once and it was pretty much my fault (and it wasn't in OS X, either.). More than I can say for FAT16/FAT32.
SIGFEH
Won't notice a difference? You must be crazy. The hard drive is the bottleneck of modern PCs. Making them slower slows the computer down noticeably, or at least to anyone who actually would *use* their computer.
That being said, it's been pretty well known that Apple seems to be taking a shining to corporate America more in recent months. A journaling file system would go a long way. Not as long as RAID 5 support in the Xserve would, but it would help. Yes, I know of the XRaid, but that's not here yet (or even officially announced, as far as I can tell). One wonders what Sun thinks of all of this...
Apple seems to "get" the corporate world now. I've heard nothing but positive comments about Apple's Server support from clients. Under AppleShareIP, it was all but useless, but they seem to have a good mix of Unix and Mac folks manning the lines.
If only Open Directory and AD integration were not such a chore. If I wasn't working on MSCE material, I think I'd be lost with Apple's Open Directory. High-level training of any kind still seems to be difficult to come by, though I think the certifications are on the right track. Hopefully, MacOS X's appeal to the alpha geeks and *nix cross-over will help there.
CC
And that is why on *BSD will never be deployed in the enterprise.
I would disagree, as most Mac users I know have at least 3 disks in their towers and I have an external (firewire) drive on my iMac. This is only my experience and may be abnormal, but given the heavy use of Macs in multimedia (with the accompanying monstrously large files) I seriously doubt it.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
The critical differences for me are that Apple stuff Just Works, Really Really Well, OS X is a Unix, and Apple seems to be philosophically opposed to Digital Rights Restrictions.
Whether or not they'd be like this if they were in a monopoly position is up to debate, but Apple is currently a far less evil company than Microsoft. Instead of putting roadblocks up for me, the Mac makes most things I want to do far easier.
As for why Journaling matters, I recomend going to Google and asking it for the tutorial on ext3. The tutorial has links to even more depth on the issue. As a quick overview, when you edit files in most applications, the process of saving involves two steps, write data to disk, update whatever form of table is in use on the disk with what updates have been made. For example, a file now uses sectors 5200,5201, and 5209 rather than just 5200 and 5201 as it was originally written.
If the power goes out between when the data was written, and when the tables were updated, the data is effectively lost, as the system will only know about the fact that data was written to 5200 and 5201.
Journaling has several implementations, however one of the most common is to log what data is being written to the hard disk, then when all the tables are updated, flushing that information out of the journal.
If the power fails, the system opens the journal file, and starts the process of writing the data in the journal file to the hard disk again.
Why might this be worth a 10-15%? This will be different for different users, but a fairly simple (if contrived) example is if you are running a commercial web site. If I decide to purchase 1000 units of roduct XXZ from your web site, without knowing that a thunder storm is moving through your community, I place my order, get a confirmation number back, and think all is well. Unbeknownst to me, your web server dies after generating the confirmation, while writing the record to the hard disk.
If my purchase is important to your business, say for example the money has been handled as part of the confirmation, and I would not be happy about you not shipping the product I paid for, you might think it worth a 10-15% performance penalty to insure that my purchase gets recorded properly when your power comes back up.
At the same time, if you spend your time on the computer reading slashdot, playing Everquest, and crunching DES keys, perhaps journaling isn't worth the 10-15% hit.
I may be wrong here as well, but I believe the 10-15% hit being reported is for disk intensive transactions, not for processor performance.
Then again, I could be wrong.
-Rusty
You never know...
I don't think beige boxes are the target market for this. I'm imagining this running on a RAID 5 setup with Xraid later this year. I wouldn't use this on just one little drive at home...
As for disabling it, read the article. It's not even on until you get into Terminal and turn it on.
Giving up my change to use my 2 remaining mod points in this
thread by posting...
> If it takes a 10-15% performace hit that is significant on
> older hardware.
That explains why it's switched off by default, I expect. Some
people in some situations will be glad to take a 15% performance
hit for the benefits of journaling, _if_ the journaling is of the
level of quality that is claimed (i.e., as good as in BFS). The
article says (at the end) that Apple wouldn't comment, so they
may still be weighing that, as well as the performance issue.
IMO, it's good for them to give people the option. If nobody
turns it on, there's no real downside. If some people _do_ see
fit to turn it on, presumably that's because they value it.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
ive never used osX but if it's like linux swap space has it's own partition. the swap space also doenst reside on the same type of file system as the rest of the computer. i dont know what file system is used for linux swap, but i doubt it is ext3.
/home partition but not for swap if it was hfs+.
also you can enable journaling on a per partition basis, at least in linux, so you could enable it for your
now if your acer notbook was running windows, then sure the swap space was on a fatxx or ntfs file system. it would then fall victim the the 10-15% preformace loss. i seriously doubt osx is designed in the same way.
-- john
He already did. Looks like he likes it, for the most part.
The kjournald process is flushing the journal. This doesn't mean (AFAIK) that your filesystem is only up-to-date as of the 5s interval that kjournald last ran. When the system reboots without unmounting properly, it replays the journal to get it as up-to-date as possible (up to the last transaction that was fully written to the journal). The point of flushing the journal every 5s is to limit the size of the journal and therefore the time it takes to replay it on reboot. And quick reboots are the point of journalling.
If you are so attached to your computer that the software it runs *really* dictates how "free" or "enslaved" you are, then I think you have much bigger problems.
Computers, and the information they hold and route, that we are all so addicted to, are just toys. Computers are the ultimate distraction by which we, as a culture, impress ourselves with how clever we are. All the while, the quality of our lives becomes increasingly dominated by ones and zeros that don't really exist.
Think about it and tell me, how many hours of your life are spent in front of a computer that runs Free Software or not (it does not matter), *really* making the world a better place? How much of your self-worth is invested in the software you use or write, the games you play, the mp3 collection you build?
If your computer blew up today, how much of a life would you have?
Now tell me who is enslaved and who is free.
Tyler's words coming out of my mouth.
Gimmie a break. There's another kind of freedom: the freedom to get shit done without having to wrestle with the operating system. Remember that when you think about OSX. No slaves here, just someone getting the job done.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Don't know what moron modded you flamebait but...
On top of being able to run *most* of the software that Linux will run, OS X also gives you Photoshop, M$ Office and other commercial apps, a bunch of non commercial apps (www.macosxapps.com, most of the old classic apps and Virtual PC which will get just about any Windows app other than games working on the mac.
If there is some linux program that you just can't live without that wont run under OS X, you also have the option to install Linux on your laptop as well.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
BSD doesn't need no stinking journaling.
So then there's no need for it to have, oh, a log-structured filesystem?
They've already got Jordan H of FreeBSD fame working on the guts of the thing, why not use Kirk Mccusick's soft updates on top of their ufs implimentation?
In it's current implimentation it vastly outperforms journaling filesystems and has great data integrity.
Sitting Walrus Blog
The high-end TiBook is well over $5K. $6,059.00 to be exact, and that's without any extra options.
The high-end TiBook is $3,799.00 without any extras. The middle-of-the-road one is $3,199.00.
If you had mentioned the fact that you were quoting prices in Canadian dollars, you could have avoided this correction. Of course, if your purpose was to artificially inflate prices, you should have looked at the Australian store, where a top-end PowerBook goes for a whopping $8,745.00.
I write in my journal
Wow dude, that kicks ass! The worst I've seen is the error where the file size is being reported incorrectly. A file showed up as some 37TB or something. Of course the OS had no idea what to do with the file, and the only way to get rid of it is to format/reinstall.
... errr ... old.
One of the nice things about Macs (old school at least) is that I could just boot from a CD and copy everything on the HDD (minus the bad file) to the server, format the drive, and copy it all back. Good as new
HFS and HFS+ have serious file corruption issues that most people don't ever see because they don't use their computer for more than web serfing and email. When you get into a business environment and really go at it full speed, the file system chokes. It's slow, resource heavy, and prone to file damage. It's a regular occurance on my 20+ PowerMacs to have to boot from a Norton CD and "Disk Doctor" the file system just to get them to boot from their hard drive.
~LoudMusic
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
What I want is a filesystem that supports 1)Long File Names 2)Large Files (over 4GB) 3)Journaling and 4) can be used between Linux, Mac OS X and whatever else. Unfortuantely there are currently no filesystems that mett all of these criteria. The closest one unfortunately is FAT32, only even it falls way short. Until then it is very difficult for me to share my firewire drive between multiple platforms. -peel
just my carrot for the button soup.
No, "OSX is leveraging OpenSource via Fink
is exactly what I meant.
Fink, is being used by OSX users to leverage the value in OpenSource.
If they don't like it they can always develop GPLed code. Personally, I'd be torqued to have my developments used by a few tens of millions of new people. And some of those developers are quite well paid by Apple BTW.
Yes, some are paid by Apple - big deal. As to the 'marketshare' increase, and the ego-jollies by coders who get a hardon by knowing many people use their code, again, who cares? OSX users are still beholden to Apple. And Im talking about Freedom here. OSX users are as unfree as MS users.
Stay with your GPLed half-baked crap. Me? I've got work to do and OS X actually does it
Wow, How long have you been a Mac User? It looks like the "It just Works" mantra has gotten your head completely shoved up your butt.
Please, come back to reality..
Furthermore, yes, software does rely on it. Even just untarring a UNIX archive on OS X can break it, like if it contains "Makefile" and "makefile".
Is it possable that they know this. But can't be fucked spending hours on the web looking for good advice and trying to decide who's right, downloading/buying different software to see which on is the best package, discovering that the new video editing card they bought conficts with their motherboard?
This person is a fucking moron because they didn't want possability of having to go through this?
BTW. Saying that someone who isn't good with the internet would also have no clue with video editing, is just plain ignorant and false.
Funny. You scath another poster for not pointing out that he was using Canadian dollars, but you never once said you were quoting USD.
Not everything is US-centric you know. And yes, I *am* an American.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Look, maybe you have lots of time on your hands to sit in front of google typing queries, then read pdf manuals to figure out how to use the latest Pinnacle DV Studio, then buy additional Firewire card, proceed to open your case, install it, configure settings, fetch the DV stream, make sure you fully understand VIVO interface, etc...
But, most of the people don't have time to clown around on the PC doing all that shit. Most of my friends spend less than 30 minutes on a computer per day on average. You think they give a shit? No.
Truth of the matter is, the average Desktop Joe wants everything simplified, fast, badabing - badaboom. And then return to his regularly scheduled life. Stop measuring eveyone with your ruler. Vast majority of people have higher priorities than to read technical manuals on how to edit a small clip on their computers. It's 2002. The average consumer should not fuck around with idiotic schemes just to put couple of scenes together and burn in on a CD. That's what you get with Windows.
Mac is different. They have their finger on the pulse of the population. Simplicity is what matters. And when iMovie outputs the same or better results than Pinnacle or Ulead applications, then the choice is clear. Mac is the answer.
In case you missed the common denominator in the whole Apple advertising campaign, it's the simplicity and hassle-free computing. Everyone percieves the commercials differently. You just have to consider your own computer usage patterns and make the decision whether speed and simplicity is your requirement. Furthermore, the commericals are NOT targetting AOL users, or low-income individuals for that matter. No person with 12k/year salary could ever afford to buy an iPod or have a DV camera.
"I've been super impressed by OS X having used it as my primary laptop for the last couple weeks. It really is a great unix box- and this is one of the important missing puzzle pieces."
h tml
For the n'th time, OS X != UNIX!!!
Tell Apple that.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/jaguar/unix.html
While you're at it, tell ESR too. BSD = "a family of Unix versions".
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/BSD.
Lame.
So with a journaling file system, file metadata will be stored at the filesystem level, not as a component of the files themselves, right? If my understanding is correct, this kinda makes John Siracusa's whining rant about Apple's metadata in OS X being all wrong kind of...pointless. And dumb.
Could it be that maybe, just maybe, Apple had an eye to the future when developing it's file metadata structure? That it's entirely possible that Apple has had this in development for some time and there is a reason they changed their metadata structure? Siracusa seems convinced that it's inconceivable that Macs would ever support a filesystem like the proposed Elvis system and therefore everything they've done to OS X (metadata-wise) is wrong.
I love this new development simply for the reason that it spits in Siracusa's face. He's generally a pretty knowledgable guy, but his metadata article has rubbed me the wrong way for a while and it's good to see that, while accusing Apple of not being forward thinking, he was the one not using the old gray matter.
Actually, I'd guess that the memory bus is the bottleneck of modern PC's, but regardless of whether or not I'm right there, journaled filesystems tend to slow down writes more than reads (since reads don't require as many, if any, journal entries). So as far as performance goes, it probably won't slow down the performance of just reads (ie, applications loading) by 10%. The majority of the time, you are doing reads and not writes to the disk.
Go Badgers! -- #include "std/disclaimer.h"
It turns out that what people really want is a non-MS desktop that actually works. Most people over the age of 14 don't give a rat's ass about the ideological aspects at all.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
This is quite misguided, and is symptomatic of somebody who is obsessed with numbers.
First of all, it's crucial to note that the article is quite vague: "enabling the journaled file system will slow current system performance by 10 percent to 15 percent." What is a "system performance"? Editing a 100 KB document in Word is going to generate a very different load on the file system than streaming a 6 GB video.
Secondly, disk caches anticipate common usage patterns, so that most accesses (especially CPU instruction fetches) are satisfied from the cache in RAM. This means that the access that brought the data in from the disk counts for a much smaller percentage. Compression can also reduce the need for raw bandwidth.
Thirdly, journalling typically does not affect read performance, only write performance. Many applications don't require a great deal of write bandwidth, and those that do typically require a constant minimum bandwidth (capturing video) rather than a high peak bandwidth.
Fourthly, 10% or 15% is quite difficult to detect. Try to see if a friend can tell the difference between 10 seconds or 11 seconds. Try other durations if you wish. Then try to do it without counting ticks.
Finally, users can be distracted by appropriate eye candy. This is not a joke - it's a serious (and cheap) engineering solution.
In conclusion, no, the hard disk is not necessarily a bottleneck, and no, the computer may or may not slow down noticeably. The benefits of journalling, on the other hand, are well known.
Unless she is yanking the cord out of the wall, that will not happen. The power switch on the front of the iMac will prompt her on the screen if she wants to shutdown, restart or cancel. That's the nice part of owning a machine where the OS and the hardware come from the same company. Little things like that are thought of and integrated. If you are really worried about Grandma's iMac, just put a note on the bottom of the 15" LCD screen that says, "Grandma, don't yank out the power plug or I won't come over to Thanksgiving!!!" and she'll be set.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Yeah, damn that "lockin nastyness."
Stupid OS X.
Basing there graphics system off such properietary API as *gasp* OpenGL. And having native support for running that un-portable proprietary Java language, whatever the hell that is.
And using that damned open-source Mach microkernel.
And that stupid open-sourced Darwin unix core.
And that acursed POSIX API (still a work in progress).
And CUPS.
And OpenFirmware.
How dare they rely on such proprietary things as firewire and usb for peripherals. And 802.11b for networking. And optional LDAP authentication. And how dare they invent new, cool, peer-to-peer automatic network configuration protocols (Rendevouz) and then open up the spec and source.
They are practically the devil.
And I love how on every point OS X wins. You agreed that it was easier to use, had better hardware integration, and better software. Plus, I think most of us agree that it's really cool tech and is prettier.
And then you say "Linux is free. Nuff said." as if this clinches it and Linux has won despite losing in every category other than price.
So, hard to use, poorly-integrated OSs with bad software-support beat easy to use, well integrated OSs with good software-support as long as they are free?
Damn that apple and their embracing of open standards.
Justin Dubs