10.2.2 Is Coming

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."

Comments

Spymac

[hotsauce]

Aren't these the iWalk guys?

Puh-leeze.

Re:Spymac

[crawdad62]

What? So you're saying there's not going to be an iWalk? Surely you jest. Hey I read about it on the internet so it's got to be true..........

Terminal my ass

[Mikey-San]

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.

-/-

Journal what?

[bckspc]

More about the journaling file system:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,634720,00.asp

Software Update

[tweder]

...Too bad you can't set the software update utility to check every minute...

Um, tell me again why you can't just make a cron job to run "softwareupdate" every minute?

Jeez.

Yes, you are wrong

[daveschroeder]

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

[Draoi]

I just ran it;

[dhcp1i174:build] pcassidy# diskutil enableJournal /
Allocated 8192K for journal file.
Journaling has been enabled on /

.... and ....

[dhcp1i174:build] pcassidy# diskutil information /
Device Node: /dev/disk0s9
Device Identifier: disk0s9
Mount Point: /
Volume Name: Falcon

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!

Re:Yes, you are wrong

[Draoi]

Let's see ....

[dhcp1i174:build] pcassidy# diskutil disableJournal /
Journaling disabled on /
Journaling has been disabled on /

That's all. Exciting stuff .... ;-)

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[Ranger Rick]

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.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[heliocentric]

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:

mount -t ext3 /dev/hdaX /mnt/somewhere

Of note, this info was shamlessly stolen from http://batleth.sapienti-sat.org/projects/FAQs/ext3 -faq.html and is a good FAQ for those who are not down and jiggy with ext3.

Java 1.4.1 included?

[Adam Fisk]

Anyone know if this release includes the 1.4.1 implementation of Java that's been in beta for about a month?

Re:Java 1.4.1 included?

[Draoi]

Nope ...

Re:Java 1.4.1 included?

[2starr]

1.4.1 is still in "Developer Preview" mode. I can't tell you much because I'm under NDA, but suffice it to say that "beta" means "feature complete" and it's not beta-ready yet.

Raid 5, the missing feature

[goombah99]

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.

Re:Raid 5, the missing feature

[susehat]

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

[babbage]

Well apple does not yet support partitioning a disk with different File systems.

FYI, I was running 10.0 on an iMac which I had split into multiple partitions, of which one was UFS and the others were HFS+. This was all with standard tools -- the installer let me do it so I just did it. I've since switched to all HFS+, but I don't see why Apple would have removed the functionality.

So -- have you actually tried it or are you just spouting off?

Re:Raid 5, the missing feature

[nachoman]

Most 1U racks don't support Raid 5. Dell's 1Us don't (low end). That is the line I see Apple's product competing with.

Re:Raid 5, the missing feature

[goombah99]

Contrary to the two preceeding reply, You CANNOT mix UFS and HFS+ partitions on the same raid drive set using apple tools. The fools who said you could did not actually try to do this else thay would know.

The confusion undoubtedly comes from the fact that you can mix a UFS and HFS+ partition on a single non-raid drive. But you CANNOT DO IT ON A RAID 1 System. end of story. Note this is a limitation of the apple tools not the RAID system.

Dont you just love the way the fools above insiunuate that the poster is an idiot "mouthing off". Sheesh, what dorks.

Re:Raid 5, the missing feature

[AlistairMcMillan]

Hey goombah99 relax a bit.

You said and I quote,

Well apple does not yet support partitioning a disk with different File systems.

You didn't explicitly say you meant only on a RAID system. Hence the confusion.

BTW Resorting to calling them "fools" twice and "dorks" doesn't help your credibility.

Re:Raid 5, the missing feature

[Into The White]

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.

Re:Raid 5, the missing feature

[Matty_]

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:Raid 5, the missing feature

[goombah99]

you're right.gotta relax.

I Sure Hope They Fixed WINS

[good soldier svejk]

Apple claims CIFS compatibility, but they horribly broke WINS in their Samba implementation. If you add a WINS server you can't browse across subnets. All you can see is the WINS server itself. If you remove WINS you can browse your local subnet normally.

For some reason, I seem to be the only person who cares about this. I have never seen it mentioned and nobody responds when I post about it. My local Apple Tech rep didn't even know aout it. I did find it documented in this technote.

question

[geek]

does this need to be done after each reboot or does it stay permanent?

Re:question

[Draoi]

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!)

Re:question

[Elwood P Dowd]

For some reason my FS's dirty bit gets set often when I do a regular shutdown.

Some day I'll reformat my drive, but 'till then, this is a great time saver for me.

Re:and how much does this "Service Pack" cost?

[Into The White]

Service packs? You obviously don't use a Mac very often, do you? Apple releases "software updates" that follow a logical numbering system.

Re:Exactly how much space does journaling take up.

[Doktor Memory]

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.

Re:Sorry you are wrong: raid cannot be partioned

[babbage]

Thank you for the pointless anger. It was both informative and stimulating. That said, if you'll recall, the point I was objecting to was that "you can't partition a disc with multiple file systems using Apple's tools." This is patently untrue and I personally have done this. It seemed to me -- and still does -- that if you had a detail like this wrong, maybe the larger point was questionable as well. But in the end, I'm not the one to say so -- I didn't say anything at all about what works or doesn't in a RAID array. That's not an area of expertise or even more than passing familiarity to me, so I'd rather not be drawn into an argument about it. If you say RAID is broken and no one can dispute you, fine, but at least make sure that your argument rests on a sturdy foundation & the supporting points you use actually support you. This time around, they didn't.

Software update once a minute...

[brianosaurus]

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.

a few comments

[moosesocks]

This looks like a worthwile release (unfortunately, I still don't have the cash to afford jaguar, so I am thus excluded from this update)

FTP: I suppose this means that apple will be intergraiting FTP into the finder gui, and possibly improving the built-in FTP server. On a side note: why can't we all use FTP for file sharing with some common locator/naming service... FTP seems to be the only file sharing protocol properly implimented into every major OS. SMB is a great protocol, but has lots of room for improvement.

NFS: Who uses THAT? Honestly, people... SMB is much more widely supported, no matter how poorly implemented.

Print Services - Apple needs more of a unified printer driver architecture similar to the one used in windows. The one in OSX now is good, but not quite there yet.

File system - Journaling FS is niice, even though HFS+ already maintains data integrity quite well without a journal.

All in all, this one looks like a winner. Had Jaguar included these enhancements to begin with, chaces are that apple would have sold many more copies (although I admire apple's policy of incremental updates that add functionality, as well as fixing bugs. No other OS offers that. Not linux, not windows, nothing.)

Re:a few comments

[Doktor Memory]

FTP seems to be the only file sharing protocol properly implimented into every major OS.

Ugh. I wish. Windows XP still ships with completely broken FTP support, both on the command line and in the Explorer, just like every version since Windows 95. The explorer doesn't support ftp upload at all.

And even if it were properly implemented everywhere, FTP is a horrible protocol. A crufty and overdesigned two-channel connection setup, no security, only one generally supported authentication mode, and terrible error handling. FTP is a relic from the bronze age of the internet, and the sooner it goes away, the better.

NFS: Who uses THAT?

You're kidding, right?

Fortune 1000 companies use NFS. Universities use NFS. The linux kid in the next apartment from you probably uses NFS. I use NFS. We don't necessarily like it, but we use it.

Apple needs more of a unified printer driver architecture similar to the one used in windows.

They have one. Really. It's as unified as it's possible to get. They just need more/better drivers.

HFS+ already maintains data integrity quite well without a journal.

You are a funny, funny man.

It's here.

[whee]

10.2.2 has been posted to Software Update. See here for the knowledge base document (may not be posted yet).

not necessary

[commodoresloat]

Run software update now; 10.2.2 is here.

No you cannot mirror 2or more xserves?

[goombah99]

There's no way to stripe across file systems with apples File system tools. Disk utility only makes raid sets out of the physical disks on the system and does not see disks on other computers.