Posted by
Hemos
on from the upgrades-continue dept.
stoffel writes "According to this article on spymac retailers just received the 10.2.2 update to Mac OS X, which features an updated file system and improvements to FTP, NFS, and Print Services ... too bad you can't set the software update utility to check every minute."
Terminal my ass
by
Mikey-San
·
· Score: 2, Informative
From SpyMac:
"The most anticipated addition to 10.2.2 is File Journaling, which is off by default and can only be turned on via the Terminal."
Um, no. The journaled file system will not be enabled by default, true, but partially because it requires you to change from "HFS+" to "HFS+ (Journaled)" in Disk Utility.
In other words, no formatty, no journaly.
I, of course, could be wrong, but I remember seeing a screenshot of the updated Disk Utility window a few weeks ago, and "HFS+ (Journaled)" was a new option for formatting.
Never mind the fact that 10.2.2 getting closer and closer--/really/ close at this point--is essentially common knowledge, anyway. SpyMac has nothing new here.
Yes, you are wrong
by
daveschroeder
·
· Score: 5, Informative
The GUI to enable journaling in Disk Utility will only be exposed on Mac OS X Server 10.2.2. The option will NOT be present in Disk Utility on Mac OS X 10.2.2 (non-Server). Thus, the only way to enable it on non-Server is to use:
sudo diskutil enableJournal [volume]
And you don't have to format to enable it.
Re:Yes, you are wrong
by
Draoi
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I just ran it;
[dhcp1i174:build] pcassidy# diskutil enableJournal/ Allocated 8192K for journal file. Journaling has been enabled on/
File System: HFS+ (Journaled) Partition Type: Apple_HFS Media Type: Generic Protocol: ATA
Total Size: 18.6 GB Free Space: 8.2 GB
Read Only: No Ejectable: No
Cool!
-- Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Re:Yes, you are wrong
by
Draoi
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Let's see....
[dhcp1i174:build] pcassidy# diskutil disableJournal/ Journaling disabled on/ Journaling has been disabled on/
That's all. Exciting stuff....;-)
-- Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong
by
Ranger+Rick
·
· Score: 3, Informative
ext2 and ext3 are identical on-disk, except ext3 has a journal file.
Apple's HFS+ journaling is apparently similar, in that all you need to do is run a command to enable journaling on a disk, without reformatting.
--
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong
by
heliocentric
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I don't know about MAC-land, but I do know linux land. You can boot a cleanly unmounted ext3 under ext2 (if it's not clean, do e2fsck).
To mount something as ext3 you need to run:
tune2fs -j/dev/hdaX
on it first. This can be done on an unmounted or on a mounted filesystem. If you create the journal on a mounted filesystem you will see a.journal file. Don't try to delete this and don't back this up or restore it from backup! If you run tune2fs -j on an unmounted partition an unvisible journal file will be created. Now you can mount the filesystem as ext3 using:
Raid 5, the missing feature
by
goombah99
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Journalling will be great. especially on the disk servers with 480GB worth of storage. But what the Xserves are missing is raid 5. I was pretty upset when I discovered that they only came with raid1 and raid0.
the missing raid mode is worse than it seems. The mac xserves come with 4 big IDE disks. If you want to you want the Xserve to play nice in a unix environment then its a good idea to format the disks UFS. (you dont have to, NFS works fine with HFS+, but you risk screwing yourself with the file name case insensitivity of the mac. A rare event since most people dont have important files that differ in name only in their case but it's lurking.
But wait! you cant format the whole thing UFS becausesome of the mac apps break unless they are on HFS+. So this means you need to format atleast one of the disks HFS for the OS and apps. that leaves three disks. But in RAID 1, you cant use an odd number of disks. So that leaves two disks for raid 1 UFS.
Thus the best you can do is 120GB HFS+ Raid 1 and 120GB UFS Raid 1. So out of four disks the most you can get is 120GB UFS redundant storage. Ah you say, why not just make a small HFS+ partition and let the rest be UFS. Well apple does not yet support partitioning a disk with different File systems. Thus you cant split the disk into UFS and HFS+ partitions.
Two companies are promised a partionalble raid 5 system (Xraid and NXraid) but both suddenly announced delayed shippments. My guess is they are trying to incoporate this new journaling system.
I spoke to apple about this several times. It was hinted to me to keep watching because big things were coming. I suspect these are the Journalling FS and and an outboard mass storage disk sytem. but that's a conjecture.
That's the bad news. The good news is that these Xserves are otherwise a very good deal. The throughput is better than comparably priced linux systems. Also they occupy only 1U but hold 480GB of hot swapable storage. Yes there are some NAS systems that are 1U but they are about 10 X slower in throughput, not to mention that they dont support as many services as the macs (LDAP, NFS, SAMBA, SSH, SCP, FTP, MAIL server, RSYNC,NET info, Net boot...). The macs have dual Gig-E too. ANd in a very nice move Apple will sell you a spare parts kit with everyhing you are likely to need to fix a deadXSERVE in the field.
Plus 24hour tech support.
the other nice thing about the Xserve is the construction. In addition to tool-free hot swap drives, the entire chasis slides out to the front revealing everything with no screws to undo or panels to remove. It's a clever design lacking the usual add-on slider rails of your gneric linux boxes. There's even a firewire port on the front for quick access. Another nice feature is that you dont need a terminal to set them up, they will auotmatically find the administration computer on any DNS system. And if you need to have a terminal attached, you can buy a UPS based KVM switch rather then the usual clumsy Video/mouse/keyboard KVMs.
Anyhow the bottom line is this as soon as a partionalble journaled raid 5 system is avaliable the Xserves will be one of the least expensivie full featured HIGH QUALITY 1U half terrabyte disk servers you can own. (note I said High quality). I just wish they would hurry up since I have two of these cooling their heels waiting for raid 5.
-- Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Re:Raid 5, the missing feature
by
susehat
·
· Score: 3, Informative
um, dude, you can have HFS+ and UFS partitions on disk. I've done it. I had my iBook running HFS+ and two UFS partitions for months before I decided I didn't need the HFS+ and went full UFS with Jaguar. I don't know if maybe the software RAID screws up with mixed partitions, but hey, I don't have an Xserve to play with:-( [though 10.1 server is good for a lot on the iBook]
Re:Raid 5, the missing feature
by
Into+The+White
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Sounds like you might want to look into the XRaid when it's finally released. It will have 14 ATA drives, each on an independent bus, and it will support hardware RAID of the sort you're interested in, if I remember correctly. Sorry I can't find much info on it right now, but when the XServe was introduced, Jobs specifically stated that the XRAID would be available late 2002.
-- "If you're half-evil, nothing soothes you more than to think the person you are opposed to is totally evil." N. Mailer
Re:Raid 5, the missing feature
by
Matty_
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The only Dell 1U server which does not support RAID5 is the PowerEdge 350. The 1650 and up support RAID5, if you pay for it.
Re:Exactly how much space does journaling take up.
by
Doktor+Memory
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Breathe easy. Filesystem commit logs (aka journals) are generally tiny things: 15-30mb at worst. NetApp, for instance, keeps the filesystem journal for their Filer NAS servers in 32mb of mirrored NVRAM. You'll never notice the lost space.
Software update once a minute...
by
brianosaurus
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Remember, its UNIX underneath:
#!/bin/bash
while true; do/usr/sbin/softwareupdate
sleep 60 done;)
A perl wrapper to parse the output of "softwareupdate" is probably more useful, as it could email you that there's new updates, or maybe do the installation itself.
Actually, that's not a bad idea for a server... set up a cron job to automatically update and reboot as needed. Hmm.
Permanent! You can turn it back off at any time with 'diskutil disableJournal/' & back off it goes.
Not sure what use this is to the average single-small-drive user other than the fast reboot after a dodgy shutdown. I tried this & fsck automatically does journal replays (and FAST!)
-- Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Slashdot Mirror
From SpyMac:
"The most anticipated addition to 10.2.2 is File Journaling, which is off by default and can only be turned on via the Terminal."
Um, no. The journaled file system will not be enabled by default, true, but partially because it requires you to change from "HFS+" to "HFS+ (Journaled)" in Disk Utility.
In other words, no formatty, no journaly.
I, of course, could be wrong, but I remember seeing a screenshot of the updated Disk Utility window a few weeks ago, and "HFS+ (Journaled)" was a new option for formatting.
Never mind the fact that 10.2.2 getting closer and closer--/really/ close at this point--is essentially common knowledge, anyway. SpyMac has nothing new here.
-/-
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
The GUI to enable journaling in Disk Utility will only be exposed on Mac OS X Server 10.2.2. The option will NOT be present in Disk Utility on Mac OS X 10.2.2 (non-Server). Thus, the only way to enable it on non-Server is to use:
sudo diskutil enableJournal [volume]
And you don't have to format to enable it.
ext2 and ext3 are identical on-disk, except ext3 has a journal file. Apple's HFS+ journaling is apparently similar, in that all you need to do is run a command to enable journaling on a disk, without reformatting.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
I don't know about MAC-land, but I do know linux land. You can boot a cleanly unmounted ext3 under ext2 (if it's not clean, do e2fsck).
/dev/hdaX
.journal file. Don't try to delete this and don't back this up or restore it from backup! If you run tune2fs -j on an unmounted partition an unvisible journal file will be created.
/dev/hdaX /mnt/somewhere
3 -faq.html and is a good FAQ for those who are not down and jiggy with ext3.
To mount something as ext3 you need to run:
tune2fs -j
on it first. This can be done on an unmounted or on a mounted filesystem. If you create the journal on a mounted filesystem you will see a
Now you can mount the filesystem as ext3 using:
mount -t ext3
Of note, this info was shamlessly stolen from http://batleth.sapienti-sat.org/projects/FAQs/ext
Wheeeee
the missing raid mode is worse than it seems. The mac xserves come with 4 big IDE disks. If you want to you want the Xserve to play nice in a unix environment then its a good idea to format the disks UFS. (you dont have to, NFS works fine with HFS+, but you risk screwing yourself with the file name case insensitivity of the mac. A rare event since most people dont have important files that differ in name only in their case but it's lurking.
But wait! you cant format the whole thing UFS becausesome of the mac apps break unless they are on HFS+. So this means you need to format atleast one of the disks HFS for the OS and apps. that leaves three disks. But in RAID 1, you cant use an odd number of disks. So that leaves two disks for raid 1 UFS.
Thus the best you can do is 120GB HFS+ Raid 1 and 120GB UFS Raid 1. So out of four disks the most you can get is 120GB UFS redundant storage. Ah you say, why not just make a small HFS+ partition and let the rest be UFS. Well apple does not yet support partitioning a disk with different File systems. Thus you cant split the disk into UFS and HFS+ partitions.
Two companies are promised a partionalble raid 5 system (Xraid and NXraid) but both suddenly announced delayed shippments. My guess is they are trying to incoporate this new journaling system.
I spoke to apple about this several times. It was hinted to me to keep watching because big things were coming. I suspect these are the Journalling FS and and an outboard mass storage disk sytem. but that's a conjecture.
That's the bad news. The good news is that these Xserves are otherwise a very good deal. The throughput is better than comparably priced linux systems. Also they occupy only 1U but hold 480GB of hot swapable storage. Yes there are some NAS systems that are 1U but they are about 10 X slower in throughput, not to mention that they dont support as many services as the macs (LDAP, NFS, SAMBA, SSH, SCP, FTP, MAIL server, RSYNC,NET info, Net boot ...). The macs have dual Gig-E too. ANd in a very nice move Apple will sell you a spare parts kit with everyhing you are likely to need to fix a deadXSERVE in the field.
Plus 24hour tech support.
the other nice thing about the Xserve is the construction. In addition to tool-free hot swap drives, the entire chasis slides out to the front revealing everything with no screws to undo or panels to remove. It's a clever design lacking the usual add-on slider rails of your gneric linux boxes. There's even a firewire port on the front for quick access. Another nice feature is that you dont need a terminal to set them up, they will auotmatically find the administration computer on any DNS system. And if you need to have a terminal attached, you can buy a UPS based KVM switch rather then the usual clumsy Video/mouse/keyboard KVMs.
Anyhow the bottom line is this as soon as a partionalble journaled raid 5 system is avaliable the Xserves will be one of the least expensivie full featured HIGH QUALITY 1U half terrabyte disk servers you can own. (note I said High quality). I just wish they would hurry up since I have two of these cooling their heels waiting for raid 5.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Breathe easy. Filesystem commit logs (aka journals) are generally tiny things: 15-30mb at worst. NetApp, for instance, keeps the filesystem journal for their Filer NAS servers in 32mb of mirrored NVRAM. You'll never notice the lost space.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Remember, its UNIX underneath:
/usr/sbin/softwareupdate ;)
#!/bin/bash
while true; do
sleep 60
done
A perl wrapper to parse the output of "softwareupdate" is probably more useful, as it could email you that there's new updates, or maybe do the installation itself.
Actually, that's not a bad idea for a server... set up a cron job to automatically update and reboot as needed. Hmm.
blog
Not sure what use this is to the average single-small-drive user other than the fast reboot after a dodgy shutdown. I tried this & fsck automatically does journal replays (and FAST!)
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
10.2.2 has been posted to Software Update. See here for the knowledge base document (may not be posted yet).