Linux 3.2 Has Been Released

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday January 4, 2012 @02:06PM from the check-it-out dept.

diegocg writes "Linux 3.2 has been released. New features include support for Ext4 block size bigger than 4KB and up to 1MB, btrfs has added faster scrubbing, automatic backup of critical metadata and tools for manual inspection; the process scheduler has added support to set upper limits of CPU time; the desktop responsiveness in presence of heavy writes has been improved, TCP has been updated to include an algorithm which speeds up the recovery of connection after lost packets; the profiling tool 'perf top' has added support for live inspection of tasks and libraries. The Device Mapper has added support for 'thin provisioning' of storage, and a support for a new architecture has been added: Hexagon DSP processor from Qualcomm. New drivers and small improvements and fixes are also available in this release. Here's the full list of changes."

173 of 271 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Btrfs by davegaramond · 2012-01-04 14:09 · Score: 4, Interesting

So does this mean I can start using btrfs, at least for personal workstations? I've got a new box at the office waiting to be setup, with a 120GB Corsair SSD as the main system disk, normal 2TB harddisk as backup/media storage. Will be using Debian. Should I use btrfs?
1. Re:Btrfs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-04 14:15 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Short answer: no.
  Long answer: Please! The more people exercising the code, the more bugs will be revealed, and the more confident the developers can be. But you will have to be ready for some performance regressions and data loss danger. For the brave.
2. Re:Btrfs by francium+de+neobie · 2012-01-04 14:17 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  There's no fsck.. So unless you're 100% sure your Linux machine never crashes and your power supply is never interrupted - don't.
3. Re:Btrfs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-04 14:23 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Even without any crashes or power fails, I've managed to corrupt BTRFS in testing, with just a defrag (as recently as 3.2-RC6). I wouldn't look at BTRFS for a while, at least until it's no longer marked experimental. By all means test away, but don't assume you'll be able to get to any data you put in it.
4. Re:Btrfs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-04 14:32 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Performance is still pretty bad, especially when deleting many small files. It can take minutes with BTRFS, while EXT4 does it almost instantly in comparison.
5. Re:Btrfs by dnaumov · 2012-01-04 15:05 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  There's no fsck.. So unless you're 100% sure your Linux machine never crashes and your power supply is never interrupted - don't.
  If this is the case, whats the fucking point really? BTRFS was heralded are the replacement for ZFS, but you are seriously telling me that after all this time, you can still lose a large amount of data and end up with a corrupt filesystem after such a trivial thing as a powerloss? Really? It seems like I am still stuck with FreeBSD and Solaris11/OpenIndiana if I want to use a decent filesystem, because even Windows hasn't had such issues in over a goddamn decade.
6. Re:Btrfs by nzac · 2012-01-04 15:11 · Score: 1
  
  I have herd a number of recommend that for a personal desktop you could use it for non user files (ext for home and boot and btrfs for ever thing else).
  The idea being that if something goes wrong you can just reinstall (30 min for me if I cache my updates).
  You just have weigh up the risk and minimize the damage. Unless you are using it with something like snapper (fs snapshot and roll back) or a stopwatch you will never know the difference unless it gets corrupted.
7. Re:Btrfs by mattbee · 2012-01-04 15:11 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  btrfs is tanatlizing for VMs because of the copy-on-write file behaviour (i.e. "cp --reflink a b" creates b instantly regardless of the size of a), but http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2011-July/154251.html is still an issue, as far as I'm aware. So storing VMs, where you access them with O_SYNC, just gets slower over time until it's unusable. I'm not quite brave enough to suggest that any of our customers use it, at least until there's a working fsck.
  
  --
  Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
8. Re:Btrfs by taricorp · 2012-01-04 15:12 · Score: 1
  
  $ btrfsck
  usage: btrfsck dev
  Btrfs Btrfs v0.19
  It's there if your userland is new enough, but I don't know how much it actually does.
  I've been running btrfs on my workstation for a while now and have not had any issues with its stability. I still wouldn't run it without regular backups, though.
9. Re:Btrfs by 0123456 · 2012-01-04 15:27 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  If this is the case, whats the fucking point really? BTRFS was heralded are the replacement for ZFS, but you are seriously telling me that after all this time, you can still lose a large amount of data and end up with a corrupt filesystem after such a trivial thing as a powerloss? Really?
  BTRFS has only been around for a short time and I don't believe any OS uses it as the default filesystem yet. And you're surprised that it still has problems?
  And I don't remember anyone claiming that BTRFS would replace ZFS, merely that it would eventually have many of the same capabilities that ZFS has.
10. Re:Btrfs by icebraining · 2012-01-04 15:28 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  even Windows hasn't had such issues in over a goddamn decade.
  Windows is not a filesystem. And that's only relevant if NTFS has the same features as ZFS: Ext doesn't have the same issues either.
  
  --
  Dilbert RSS feed
11. Re:Btrfs by tetromino · 2012-01-04 15:41 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  If this is the case, whats the fucking point really?
  The fucking point is to encourage beta-testers. Bleeding-edge users who know what they are doing and don't care about data loss are being offered the chance to test a new and interesting filesystem and (ab)use it in ways that upstream developers had not thought of, hopefully uncovering major bugs before the thing will get marked as feature-complete and enabled by default for new installs by major distros.
12. Re:Btrfs by thomas8166 · 2012-01-04 15:42 · Score: 2
  
  Well, technically there is, but since it doesn't repair errors, it's not much good.
  
  --
  I make hardware RNGs, which give 2.5849625 bits of entropy per use in theory (actual performance dependent on usage).
13. Re:Btrfs by adolf · 2012-01-04 16:34 · Score: 2
  
  Windows is not a filesystem.
  Windows may not be a filesystem, but it only ships with one sane choice of general-purpose filesystem, and that choice is NTFS. Therefore, Windows == NTFS for the purpose of a discussion in the context of filesystems. Not literally, but plainly for all intents and purposes.
  (Counterarguments about Windows also shipping with crappy filesystem(s) needn't apply, since Linux/*BSD ships with those too. And HPFS, the only other then-viable choice from IBM/MSFT, and perhaps the only one that Linux and Windows and OS/2 all supported properly at the same time, got killed a long long time ago.)
  (Disclaimer: This is does not represent my opinion on anything. It simply is a representation of how things are.)
  
  --
  Kid-proof tablet..
14. Re:Btrfs by boxxertrumps · 2012-01-04 16:45 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  Windows may not be a filesystem, but it only ships with one sane choice of general-purpose filesystem, and that choice is NTFS.
  In your opinion it's a sane FS.
  
  ... does not represent my opinion on anything. It simply is.. ..how things are.
  Wait, what?
  NTFS and windows are a pain in _my_ ass. That's an opinion.
15. Re:Btrfs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-04 17:14 · Score: 1
  
  not only in yours, have fun creating a few thousand small files in one directory on ntfs. And also have fun with the invisible incompatibilities (xp_ntfs vs 7_ntfs)
16. Re:Btrfs by ILongForDarkness · 2012-01-04 17:16 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  format /dev/null as BTRFS then?
17. Re:Btrfs by waveclaw · 2012-01-04 17:23 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Bleeding-edge users who know what they are doing and don't care about data loss are being offered the chance to test a new and interesting filesystem
  
  Amen.
  fsck's only job is to make that junk that was a filesystem look something like a filesystem again. Nothing in there about making it look like the particular filesystem you used to have. fsck is not backups. fsck will not (necessarily) get your data back. fsck may eat kittens on a bad day. What fsck does hand back to you should not be trusted and should certainly be verified.
  If you think that pulling most of what was /home, /var, /srv or /opt out of lost+found is fun, just remember that corrupted directory and filenames get named after their inodes. Nothing like trying to figure out of 1234567 or 1234568 was the start of the quarterly financials report.
  If you are relying upon a fsck to get your data back after a power outage, you have more faith in your filesystem than you should. It's a nice validation tool, with the caveat that a False Negative means you go back to using a damaged filesystem for more fun later, rather than now.
  BUT if you have backups, please do test. Having talked to the BTRFS team directly at LINUXCON, Mr. Chacon and folks are pretty cool about getting feedback. And you can do nifty things like snapshots for backups on RAID10 or thin disks on virtual machines which don't inflate during formatting.
  For many filesystems, failing a fcsk means reaching for the format tools and the last (verified) backup. You are backing up everything, right?
  
  --
  
  "You cannot have a General Will unless you have shared experiences. You cannot be fair to people you don't know."
18. Re:Btrfs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-04 17:46 · Score: 1
  
  It's a copy on write filesystem, so like ZFS, it really can't become corrupt. You might lose a file if that write hasn't been commited yet and your application might be out of whack, but the filesystem itself will be clean. This is why one has battery backups and your app being screwed up isn't a filesystem issue at this point.
19. Re:Btrfs by Sloppy · 2012-01-04 17:50 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Short answer: no.
  Long answer: Please!
  In other words, "better you than me."
  
  --
  As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
20. Re:Btrfs by dogganos · 2012-01-04 18:21 · Score: 1
  
  I was using BTRFS on two laptops everyday and all was fine for at least a year, but had to remove it because I really needed the accurate free space reading feature...
21. Re:Btrfs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-04 18:23 · Score: 1
  
  In other words, "better you than me."
  Why so bitter? He didn't sugar-coat the dangers, and he used a colorful idiom to make his writing lively. If I had mod points, I'd mod him up.
  What part of "data loss danger. For the brave" sounded to you like he was being disingenuous?
22. Re:Btrfs by adolf · 2012-01-04 18:44 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I'm just one man, but I've tried hard over the past decade to find a real problem with NTFS (and I've been sternly bitten by ReiserFS and ext2/3 over that same period), and just haven't: It's worked on the many hundreds of computers I've fondled just fine, and even seems to survive mild hard disk failure with some amount of reasonableness.
  What, in your opinion, makes NTFS a pain in your ass? (I ask because I'm curious and want to avoid any such scenario, not because I am predisposed to attack your observations.)
  
  --
  Kid-proof tablet..
23. Re:Btrfs by adolf · 2012-01-04 18:56 · Score: 1
  
  except you're wrong. NTFS is not general purpse, you're probably thinking of FAT32/vfat
  Actually, AC: I think I know what I'm "probably thinking of," and FAT (in any incarnation) isn't it.
  
  --
  Kid-proof tablet..
24. Re:Btrfs by subreality · 2012-01-04 19:09 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  BTRFS is journaled (the log tree), so you don't lose data due to a power failure. It just replays the journal when you mount it again.
  btrfsck is only really needed to recover from something unanticipated happening. Like software bugs. The kind that you'd expect in a new filesystem. So it's absolutely not ready for prime-time until a fsck is released.
  For non-critical systems it's completely usable for people who like to experiment with the new toys. I've been using it for a year on my laptop (including multiple power losses and other shenanigans) with no problems.
  My experience so far:
  Good:
  Snapshots (and subvolumes) are a killer feature. Having hourly and daily versions of everything is wonderful. I have subvolumes for root (@) and /home (@home). If I want to roll back my entire system but keep my homedir, I can simply: "cd /snap ; mv @ @-2012.01.04-broken ; btrfs subv snap @-2012-01-02--00-40-39-apt @ ; reboot". Translated - Save a copy of my current root; create a new root from the last snapshot that was automatically created when I last ran apt-get ; then reboot (all shutdown continues in the @-2012.01.04-broken subvolume, it doesn't corrupt the new @). Killer. Feature.
  Bad:
  fsync is god.awful.slow. And dpkg does a whole lot of fsync. It's completely unacceptable performance, and either btrfs has to get faster or dpkg has to be a little more miserly with fsync. If dpkg could send write barriers instead of syncs it'd probably solve it, but who knows. For the time being: "apt-get install eatmydata; ln -s `which eatmydata` /usr/local/bin/aptitude ; ln -s `which eatmydata` /usr/local/bin/apt-get" . eatmydata preloads a library that overrides sync and fsync (they're simply ignored). dpkg is now screaming fast, but I run the risk of completely screwing its metadata if there's a crash or poweroff while it's doing something. So the solution is I have a /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/80-snapshot that creates a snapshot before every apt run. If something goes wrong, I just roll back the system like I mentioned under Good.
  So in summary: Some good, some bad, definitely not fully baked yet, but completely usable if you're adventurous. No fsck required. Yet. Keep backups. :)
25. Re:Btrfs by thegoldenear · 2012-01-04 19:29 · Score: 2
  
  What part of "better you than me." sounded to you like he was bitter? I read it as quite humorous.
26. Re:Btrfs by dbIII · 2012-01-04 19:55 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Performance can be a pain with very large files and with a lot of very small ones, and it's the people with such uses that are pissed off with NTFS - I'm not sure that can be classed as a "real problem".
  Any security considerations can be ignored since if you took those seriously you wouldn't be advertising something even worse in that respect than plain 20 year old FTP.
27. Re:Btrfs by adolf · 2012-01-04 20:31 · Score: 2
  
  Right. So I shouldn't store a massive many-user maildir on NTFS, and I shouldn't keep huge single-file datasets there either. Got it.
  But those are corner-cases, of which I'm sure there are some that ext2/3/4 falls down on as well: Ain't nothin' perfect.
  For common use, where there often aren't more than a few hundred smallish files in a directory or any one file exceeding a few gigabytes: What's the problem?
  And even then: If I push the envelope with NTFS and do those horrible, horrible things with it: What's the downside? Will performance simply be less than ideal, or will my cat spontaneously give birth to honest-to-god Gremlins who will incite the apocalypse?
  
  --
  Kid-proof tablet..
28. Re:Btrfs by MemoryDragon · 2012-01-04 20:36 · Score: 1
  
  Yes that can be a real problem for people with lots of files. Years ago I did programming on Windows (thank god anymore) there were literally thousands of files in my home dir.
  The problem was there was this threshold of number of files which if you crossed it brought the FS to a crawl. I could notice that by deleting a few files then suddenly performance was back (except for the defragmentation induced one) once you crossed this boundary performance were back to a crawl.
  Add to that the windows inherent pessimistic locking and worse fragmentation than on most unix filesystems and you are in for hell.
  Now I am on a mac, no matter how crappy HFS+ is in many aspects from a users point of view it scales way better than NTFS with lots of files.
29. Re:Btrfs by RubberMallet · 2012-01-04 20:37 · Score: 2
  
  Ok, but the tree can go for a pout in a corner and you'll just get kernel panics on restart - this happened to me. No power outage, just a normal reboot and poof... it was repairable using the btrfs-zero-log tool.... but it wasn't a pleasant 10 minutes while I was thinking.. "What did I do, why why why did I think it was good to try out btrfs?" Of course once I got it booting again, I kept right on using btrfs :-) I love the snapshot thing... very useful
30. Re:Btrfs by subreality · 2012-01-04 20:55 · Score: 1
  
  I don't think it's exposed yet, but hey, that's what the future is for.
  I suspect there are plenty of userspace operations that need ordering but that don't actually need the performance hit of guaranteed durability.
31. Re:Btrfs by daid303 · 2012-01-04 22:32 · Score: 1
  
  For many filesystems, failing a fcsk means reaching for the format tools and the last (verified) backup. You are backing up everything, right?
  So... you just killed your own rant by saying in the end "you should really have an fsck for an experimental filesystem so you know when it failed?"
32. Re:Btrfs by SuricouRaven · 2012-01-04 23:34 · Score: 1
  
  I work at a school, and lazy students are constantly turning computers off by holding the button or turning off the plug to save a few seconds. NTFS is resistant to power-loss-induced damage, but it is not entirely immune: We get a couple of machines a week with such problems. Fortunatly we have a backup partition as well, so all we need do is boot off of a USB stick and copy the backup over the damaged partition.
33. Re:Btrfs by HyperQuantum · 2012-01-04 23:55 · Score: 1
  
  Honest question: how can a simple user of btrfs find and report bugs? What useful feedback could he provide, other than "Help! My filesystem got trashed!"? And the other way around, all seems to be going fine because he just doesn't notice the few corruptions that occurred?
  
  --
  I am not really here right now.
34. Re:Btrfs by DarkOx · 2012-01-05 00:51 · Score: 2
  
  Depends are we talking about the ordinary 'user' here or the ordinary "user of btrfs", which is pretty extraordinary when compared with the population of general PC users. A PRENDEND bug report that I would think might be useful would be:
  I have ~?TB volume composed of three drives each with a single partition of sizes X, Y, and Z. I have noticed that after I remove a snapshot really big files, in my case some VM images of size T, get corrupted, in that they seem to contain old data that would have been in the snap shot...
  Please find attached copies of the MBR from each disk, and the first 1024bytes from each partition. Let me know if I can provide anything else.
  -----------
  A bug report like that while does not likely contain the really specific details about file system structures (some of them might be in the attached data), does alter the devs to the fact there may be a problem and provides some information about how they might recreated it, so they can extract the data they really need. My guess is the typical btrfs user at this point is capable of creating such a bug report. As I don't think any teir1 distributions are using it as a default FS yet. So anyone with btrfs volume at least knows how run fdisk, dd, and use the btrfs progs.
  
  --
  Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
35. Re:Btrfs by jones_supa · 2012-01-05 01:06 · Score: 1
  
  You're absolutely correct that clearly most useful will be a developer with proper debug setup, but there still might be some occasions where a normal user can roughly describe the actions that led to the filesystem crash, such as "I was torrenting like a mad", "I cleared my browser cache", "I copied some files off a USB drive".
36. Re:Btrfs by molukki · 2012-01-05 02:18 · Score: 1
  
  fsync is god.awful.slow.
  Are you using it on a SSD with the 'discard' mount option? If yes, that's what's making the fsyncs horribly slow.
  
  Personally I don't use the discard option but I run fstrim from a cron job once a week to TRIM the SSD. Works like a charm.
  
  (Also, once you mount a SSD root with -o discard, remounting it using -o remount,nodiscard will not fix the fsync problem. A reboot is required.)
37. Re:Btrfs by dbIII · 2012-01-05 02:19 · Score: 1
  
  But those are corner-cases
  Which is why I wrote that people are pissed off with it but I don't know if it's a real problem. Some other file systems have been tweaked specificly for those corner cases anyway, and that's where I don't use NTFS if I can help it. Sometimes I can't help it and users complain until I move the stuff off the local drive onto a network drive with a different file system that even if it physically has a lower data access speed than local drives gets the job done more quickly.
38. Re:Btrfs by subreality · 2012-01-05 02:25 · Score: 1
  
  Nope. This is with old fashioned spinning media.
  It's a known problem. Google "btrfs dpkg"... it's just a question of which side wants to tackle it first.
39. Re:Btrfs by Dog-Cow · 2012-01-05 03:13 · Score: 1
  
  That's only a problem because MS doesn't provide a filesystem tightener.
40. Re:Btrfs by Dog-Cow · 2012-01-05 03:22 · Score: 1
  
  How is NTFS not general purpose?
41. Re:Btrfs by RemyBR · 2012-01-05 03:41 · Score: 2
  
  This.
  Don't know about this new version, but I tried btrfs on ubuntu a few months ago, on a box I use mostly with photo and video editing software. It was slow to the point of being completely unusable. Specially for non destructive photo editing, where the software creates and modifies (replaces) small files with metadata for each action you perform on the images. Have being using ext4 since then, and everything is ok.
  
  --
  Cosplayers.net - The Cosplayers Network
42. Re:Btrfs by WuphonsReach · 2012-01-05 04:01 · Score: 1
  
  If this is the case, whats the fucking point really?
  
  Mostly that it's not ready for production use, and if you do use it, you darn well better make sure to have a generational backup strategy in place.
  
  You know, similar to how ext4 was a few years ago, and ext3 before that, and (insert other FS names)...
  
  --
  Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
43. Re:Btrfs by ConceptJunkie · 2012-01-05 04:20 · Score: 2
  
  Well, the file system should be loosened so it can move about the whole partition. Otherwise you lose space.
  Besides, the defragmentation engine in NT, which was licensed from the folks who make Diskeeper, is extremely robust. I'm as much of a critic of Microsoft as they come; my opinion of Microsoft borders on hatred. But I've got nothing bad to say about NTFS other than to comment the need for constant defragging is a pain. But as far as robustness, in almost 20 years, I can honestly say I've almost never seen hard drive corruption with NTFS that wasn't associated with a hardware failure... and even when I wasn't sure, I'd give it the benefit of the doubt based on my experience. I don't ever recall seeing a power outage toast an NTFS partition. I'm not saying it's not possible, but I've used the NT line since 3.51 on many, many computers and since NTFS came along, it's one of the few things I have not felt the need to complain about.
  There are plenty of things to criticize Microsoft about, and I'm usually first in line to do so, but I really don't think NTFS is one place where they have failed.
  
  --
  You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
44. Re:Btrfs by ConceptJunkie · 2012-01-05 04:22 · Score: 1
  
  I can't use it to store my comic books. Or Hot Pockets. It only works with files.
  
  --
  You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
45. Re:Btrfs by steelfood · 2012-01-05 04:32 · Score: 1
  
  Performance can be a pain with very large files and with a lot of very small ones,
  In other words: It's bad for storing and retrieving pr0n.
  
  --
  "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
46. Re:Btrfs by Ragun · 2012-01-05 04:39 · Score: 1
  
  The tools to fix this stuff exist, they just aren't done yet. You can still get them if you are willing to swing by their IRC channel.
47. Re:Btrfs by ducman · 2012-01-05 04:42 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I MISS btrsf!
  I had a home server with 6TB of disk using btrfs and a second server with the same amount of disk, also using btrfs for backup. I had a power failure while the rsync backup was running, and both btrfs filesytems were mangled. I managed to recover most of the stuff after a couple days' worth of work, but I definitely changed back to xfs on LVM2.
  Btrfs was so much simpler, and I was able to maintain > 60 Mb/s write speeds to a set of crapy disks that only manage 12-14 Mb/s writes, now. I know I could RAID my disks to get back to those speeds, but with btrfs I was able to grow my server by replacing one disk at a time. With RAID and LVM2, it's not worth that much effort for a home media server.
  
  --
  "We have nothing in common, your attitude annoys me, and your political views are appalling."
48. Re:Btrfs by LordLimecat · 2012-01-05 05:28 · Score: 1
  
  What security concerns? Arent NTFS ACLs more granular than most anything a stock linux install can use? Or are you suggesting there is a way to circumvent those ACLs?
49. Re:Btrfs by KingMotley · 2012-01-05 05:48 · Score: 1
  
  As far as I know, there is no problem with very large files in NTFS, and I've created multiterabyte files. As for many little files, that isn't an issue with NTFS, but some NTFS implementations performed poorly with large numbers of files (and that goes back to Windows 95/NT 3.5/3.51/4.0).
  Current implementations of NTFS drivers for Windows no longer have any issues with large number of files, especially if you turn off compatibility with legacy 8.3 filenames.
50. Re:Btrfs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-05 06:43 · Score: 2
  
  Are you stinking nuts? Do you know how many programs depend on the stability of /dev/null? I would start with less important devices first (like the device you keep the Qt 4 dance on).
51. Re:Btrfs by NotBorg · 2012-01-05 06:59 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  It didn't happen in Fedora 16 as once planned but they're apparently going to make a go of it in Fedora 17: http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Btrfs-and-new-file-system-structure-agreed-for-Fedora-17-1389851.html
  Tick tick tick...
  
  --
  I want this account deleted.
52. Re:Btrfs by Cramer · 2012-01-05 07:53 · Score: 1
  
  because even Windows hasn't had such issues in over a goddamn decade
  BULL FUCKING SHIT! I have machines all over the office with subtly screwed NTFS's due to power failures. I've had to completely rebuild 3 machines over the last year due to power failures resulting in corrupt and unbootable systems. I've had to repair the same g** d*** VM three times in the last month due to power glitches. I G** D**** HATE!!!!! WINDOWS. For a "journaled filesystem", Microsoft has failed in every way.
  In contrast, the dozens of linux systems (all using xfs) have been kicked about hundreds of times over the last few years. I've not had to touch a single. f'ing. one. Bare hardware, VM, makes no difference. I can pull the FC storage link mid-write and the linux images will be just fine -- sure the vm crashes, but plug it back in and it'll boot up fine.
53. Re:Btrfs by Cramer · 2012-01-05 08:03 · Score: 1
  
  Please come visit my office to see just how much of a pain in the ass the "stable" NTFS can be.
54. Re:Btrfs by Cramer · 2012-01-05 08:12 · Score: 1
  
  So, that'd be "don't do it the UNIX(tm) way" and "don't do it the Microsoft Exchange way". In other words... "Don't run a mail server on windows." I agree with this.
  The problem here is that the base installation of windows will put a few hundred smallish files (i.e 0-2 blocks) in a directory -- inf files, fonts, log files, cursors, etc. Once running, IE will do the same thing with it's cache (cookie files.) Registry files and event logs will grow without bounds (unless you set one) -- and the registry will never shrink without direct user action (i.e. using a 3rd party tool.)
55. Re:Btrfs by Cramer · 2012-01-05 08:20 · Score: 1
  
  NTFS is resistant to power-loss-induced damage...
  No it isn't. Or do you think "resistant" is the word to describe a filesystem that can corrupt files that haven't been touched since the OS was installed simply from the power being pulled?
56. Re:Btrfs by Cramer · 2012-01-05 08:26 · Score: 1
  
  it really can't become corrupt
  RIGHT. Said like a marketing exec for InnoDB. I guess you've never heard of bugs, hardware faults, cosmic rays, etc.
57. Re:Btrfs by SuricouRaven · 2012-01-05 09:14 · Score: 1
  
  I remember the old days of Ext2... you didn't want to run that without a UPS! NTFS will at least *usually* get through intact. I'm not sure why it corrupts files not opened for writing - the stations all run XP, which doesn't do background defragging, but perhaps there is some other optimisation process that moves them around.
58. Re:Btrfs by bill_mcgonigle · 2012-01-05 09:51 · Score: 1
  
  I have btrfs on root (I liked the idea of yum integration), but
  fsync is god.awful.slow
  I wonder if this is why my machine becomes completely unresponsive (clock stops and everything) every few minutes with the drive lights on solid since I switched to btrfs.
  
  --
  My God, it's Full of Source!
  OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
59. Re:Btrfs by allo · 2012-01-05 10:51 · Score: 1
  
  i know this problem from ext3, is it better on ext4?
60. Re:Btrfs by Jonner · 2012-01-05 11:01 · Score: 1
  
  Prudent people never assume any particular piece of data can be retrieved from any one place it's been stored and make frequent backups. Btrfs is still probably a little more likely to permanently lose data than Ext4, but no file system is perfect, especially since no hardware is perfect. Do yourself a favor and set up automatic backups of essential data and you'll be free to use whatever file system you want.
61. Re:Btrfs by cas2000 · 2012-01-05 14:06 · Score: 1
  
  1. btrfs is experimental. corruption and data-loss is not surprising (or even a valid cause of complaint) for a fs tagged as being experimental.
  2. btrfs is far from the only fs available for linux. the default ext4 is quite reliable. as is XFS.
  3. Native (in-kernel, not FUSE) ZFS is available for linux. Will probably never be in mainline kernel due to licensing issues (CDDL vs GPL) unless Oracle relicenses ZFS as BSD or similar (making it GPL would make it incompatible with *BSD and opensolaris etc)
  http://zfsonlinux.org/
  works well.
  The Ubuntu PPA packages easily re-compiled for debian (just change the Depends line from zfs-grub to grub)...builds nice dkms module packages, so maintainence is almost as hassle-free as if it were in the mainline kernel.
62. Re:Btrfs by dbIII · 2012-01-05 14:58 · Score: 1
  
  Very large files on NTFS in my experience are often very heavily fragmented and thus result in very poor performance. That is my problem with large files on NTFS, but it's more of an annoyance than a show stopper. The small file problem at the other end of the scale manifests frequently where I work due to the use of a program written by people that really do not understand the platform - a small 5GB project may have in excess of fifty thousand files and takes a very long time to copy that from an NTFS volume to anywhere else even on MS Windows 7.
  It's more items to watch for than a show stopper.
  
  It's odd that people are so defensive that they didn't even make it to the end to the sentence (ie. I'm not sure that can be classed as a "real problem") before reacting :(
63. Re:Btrfs by lems1 · 2012-01-05 17:12 · Score: 1
  
  I used it for about 6 months. my machine crashed and i had to hard power off, after that some files were size 0 no matter what i did. recreating any files in any part of the filesystem with the same name will make them size 0 in about 1 min or if you run "sync". Like pointed out by somebody else, there is NO fsck and therefore you should not use this for anything other than playing around ;)
  
  --
  This sig can be distributed under the LGPL license
Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by inflex · 2012-01-04 14:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

Waiting to see the usual fanatical wars over filesystems... people calling for the death of the EXT3/4 system.
Personally the whole fanatical thing seems a bit silly - who'd have ever thought that people would lynch each other over having different options for different purposes/tasks, the very core of the whole idea of what we do and strive for. I'm fine with ext4, thanks :)
1. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by RobbieThe1st · 2012-01-04 14:22 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I still say we should lynch EXT3/4(even though I use it) due to it's complete /inability/ to undelete files.
  Because, as we all know, people /never/ manage to accidentally delete files and /always/ have recent backups handy.
2. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by martin-boundary · 2012-01-04 14:24 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Personally the whole fanatical thing seems a bit silly
  
  That's not silly! There are two reasons for silliness. Surprise and fear. Fear and surprise... and ruthless efficiency. There are *three* reasons for silliness, these being fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency... and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope. *Amongst* the reasons for silliness are such elements as fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency and ... Ok, you're right, fanatical is silly after all.
3. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by MichaelSmith · 2012-01-04 14:28 · Score: 1
  
  I tried btrfs when I recently installed ubuntu on a new netbook. It was taking 15 minutes to fsck the disk on startup. This file system seems a long way from being used by default.
  
  --
  http://michaelsmith.id.au
4. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by inflex · 2012-01-04 14:29 · Score: 1
  
  People generally only make that mistake once or twice before they become a bit more clued up and invest in a backup option, even on OS's that provide undelete (Windows). Agreeably it doesn't save you when you create and then lose a file between the backup times.
  It might be a nice option to have, so long as it doesn't inhibit/hinder the existing system. I think an entirely different filesystem would be a better option, something with inbuilt versioning/history.
5. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by DarkOx · 2012-01-04 14:33 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Then what you should do is change you shell so rm is a functIon that moves stuff to the "trash" rather than compromise the on disk format of the file system so an operation "unlink" which is supposed to be destructive can be undone. Solve the problem in the correct place.
  
  --
  Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
6. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-04 14:38 · Score: 1
  
  ...undelete files.
  Not to mention I can't unwrite the file once I'm done with it!
7. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by berashith · 2012-01-04 14:42 · Score: 1
  
  I bet you use emacs
8. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by MichaelSmith · 2012-01-04 14:44 · Score: 1
  
  If thats a problem then just replace the rm command with something less final.
  
  --
  http://michaelsmith.id.au
9. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by inflex · 2012-01-04 14:45 · Score: 1
  
  tsk.... notepad.exe ftw! ;)
  ( okay, I use vim )
10. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-04 14:48 · Score: 1
  
  The filesystem is the wrong place to solve that problem, though.
  kioclient move myfile trash:/
  If you want, wrap that up and call it rm. If you really want, replace the unlink system call with something that does that.
11. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by Wintervenom · 2012-01-04 14:53 · Score: 1
  
  One, back up. Two, see one. Three, try extundelete <http://extundelete.sourceforge.net/>.
12. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by msk · 2012-01-04 14:58 · Score: 2
  
  Where'd you get fsck for btrfs?
13. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by MichaelSmith · 2012-01-04 15:02 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  I want a computer which lets me unsee certain image files.
  
  --
  http://michaelsmith.id.au
14. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-04 15:08 · Score: 1
  
  ...and I want to unread comments sometimes.
15. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by MichaelSmith · 2012-01-04 15:17 · Score: 1
  
  Thats a good question. I thought it was running fsck because it took forever to mount on startup. But maybe the mount was slow for other reasons.
  
  --
  http://michaelsmith.id.au
16. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by mcavic · 2012-01-04 15:23 · Score: 1
  
  The filesystem needn't be burdened with it. But if was a kernel function, you'd have the option of saving clobbered files as well as deleted files. You could also design a friendly retrieval system, without requiring a versioning filesystem, per se.
17. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by MightyYar · 2012-01-04 15:23 · Score: 2
  
  Agreed. I alias rm to 'rm -i' so that I have to at least type -f if I really mean it :)
  
  --
  W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
18. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by RobbieThe1st · 2012-01-04 15:32 · Score: 1
  
  Three, only works with EXT2. Which it works perfectly well on. But nothing later.
  Y'know, tossing a copy of the deleted inode entries(in a different format) somewhere else on disk, to be used only when space runs low would solve all of the many, many topics out there about people losing data due to a mistake etc. Perhaps an option that could easily be disabled for the tech-savvy(See: the number of people who use the stock desktop on, e.g. ubuntu, even when a seperate desktop is available easily via apt-get)...
  But everyone seems to think that people will back things up, which doesn't happen until said people lose a lot of data.
19. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by Daniel+Phillips · 2012-01-04 16:06 · Score: 2
  
  Ext4's only major flaw is that it does not have snapshots. That can be fixed, actually.
  
  --
  Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
20. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-04 16:50 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  One workaround we did on our server over a decade ago was to hardlink basically everything to /shadow
  Entries in /shadow went through periodic timed deletes, but that avoided irreparable stupidity.
21. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by msuarezalvarez · 2012-01-04 17:16 · Score: 1
  
  Please look up the actual meaning of the *per se* thingie you used there.
22. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by ILongForDarkness · 2012-01-04 17:24 · Score: 2
  
  And when your backup hasn't run yet what than? I've worked on 100+ TB of live data several PB of capacity systems. Sometimes users are dumping 10Gbps data to disk for days at a time. Than someone deletes something and woops the tape hasn't archived it yet. Admittedly a "recycle bin" probably wouldn't handle TBs of data but still scale the problem done and it is still a real issue. Downloaded a pdf and accidentally deleted it rather than the paper you just read. Oh crap and can't remember where it came from because you've clicked on 50 links between than and very useful links like http://something.com/alkshftfhY^asdlfkhalnlknlkrehwo aren't very helpful in finding out what the docs were. Seems trivial but anything that a user can see on a nearly daily basis isn't trivial it is a every day net positive feature to have.
23. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by Tubal-Cain · 2012-01-04 18:46 · Score: 1
  
  I don't know about you, but my browser keeps a history of which files I've downloaded.
  But if you know so little about the PDF that you can't find it again, then it obviously wasn't that important to you.
24. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by ILongForDarkness · 2012-01-04 19:11 · Score: 2
  
  Nope doesn't wash. Sometimes you don't know what is important to you until someone else tells you its important. Like studying for exams and someone tells you oh you should look at that file again the prof said there will be a question on it on the exam, a book you finished reading you find out 3 weeks later someone else wants to read etc. It seems pretty ridiculous to me to assume that everyone will always only delete things that they will end up never needing in the future when no one knows the future, no one has perfect manual or mental dexterity to make sure that they don't accidentally hit enter after a typo, select the wrong folder etc. Shit happens that is why there is an undo button in word processors and that is why there should be an undo in the filesystem (or at least at the "presentation" layer (command processor, GUI etc)).
25. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by Robert+Zenz · 2012-01-04 20:01 · Score: 1
  
  That's not a bug, that's a feature!
26. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by MemoryDragon · 2012-01-04 20:30 · Score: 2
  
  Why? The last time I had a look at BTRFs it was at least in a VM significantly slower than EXT4.
  This was noticable at every corner of the OS.
  I would not use it for production, at least not in a scenario where I/O performance matters, but the features are neat. I love
  the snapshotting. But my personal guess is it is at least a year away from being a viable EXT4 replacement.
27. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by ProbablyJoe · 2012-01-04 23:02 · Score: 1
  
  That's really anything to do with the file system anyway. Recycle Bin isn't a feature of NTFS/FAT, it's a feature of Windows, and there's plenty of things available in Linux that do the same thing for EXT3/4 and I assume work fine for any natively supported FS. It's not like it's magically "undeleting" files, it just moves them to some other location, which the OS may choose to handle differently to normal directories.
  Even after you remove it from there, the data's still on the disk, until that part of the disk gets written over. I guess you could have some sort of filesystem level backup of deleted files, but it's still just a lower level abstraction of "moving the file somewhere you can't see it" rather than "removing" it.
  In the end, if you're deleting files because you're need the disk space for something else, you're probably going to want to write over those bits at some point. I can't see much benefit of a filesystem level version of 'undelete' besides working across OSs, and that'd actually require the OSs to support it. I guess it'd be a 'catch all' for different desktop environments/UIs/command lines.
28. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by chthon · 2012-01-04 23:19 · Score: 1
  
  I put everything that I use or create for school in a version control system, bzr in this case. Saving a file is just a commit away.
29. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by McLoud · 2012-01-04 23:26 · Score: 1
  
  The only FS who can call death upon something/someone is ReiserFS
  *ducks*
  
  --
  sign(c14n(envelop(this)), x509)
30. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by ILongForDarkness · 2012-01-05 00:51 · Score: 1
  
  Yep and could be much faster. Scenario: download loads of files say pictures. Delete in the standard way and you have to move all those files around which is some function of size of individual files and how shotgunned across the filesystem they are. So they might be contiguous after they get written to one location all in a very short interval but not before. Versus something like a "I'm 'deleted'" bit on the file you lose a bit of space but don't have to move the file to "delete" it. Someone mounts the file system using NFS/samba/whatever and they can see both current and undeletable files (assuming access rights of course). None of this as you get on a windows system deleting files on a remote system being permanent and not making it to your recycle bin etc, it is just a bit that is being flipped. Heck the filesystem cache could make the operation extremely quick and process the transactions asynchronously. This is assuming people are willing to tolerate some deletions failing to happen in case of an interruption which I think would be the case for most people where I think failed writes of new data would be more critical to avoid.
31. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by Urkki · 2012-01-05 00:52 · Score: 1
  
  Agreed. I alias rm to 'rm -i' so that I have to at least type -f if I really mean it :)
  ...and then, you get into habit of using -f when you're sure you want to delete, and soon you get the habit of using -f with rm. Which, needless to say, is pretty dangerous habit to have.
32. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by 0123456 · 2012-01-05 02:16 · Score: 1
  
  I've never lost data on ext3 without a hardware failure. Yeah, ext4 sucked before they stopped saying 'the users are wrong' and made the filesystem non-braindead, but I haven't lost any data since.
  As for fsck, I remember ext4 would regularly fsck at boot before they fixed it, so I have a hard time believing that it's only just gained that capability?
33. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by MightyYar · 2012-01-05 02:23 · Score: 1
  
  LOL, yes I'm aware of that danger. Unless I'm wiping out an entire folder recursively or something, I don't bother with the -f flag. FreeBSD has a -I now (capital i) which only prompts you if more than 3 files are going to be deleted. This isn't available on Mac, but I think Linux has it as well.
  
  --
  W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
34. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by Hatta · 2012-01-05 02:34 · Score: 1
  
  Do you remember when Ext4 came out? A bunch of people had data loss after system crashes. It was explained that this was intentional behavior, as specified by the POSIX standard, and the safer behavior of Ext3 was unintentional. Of course, no one cares when they're looking at a tree full of zero byte files, so the file system fanatics rose hell and got them to patch Ext4. So file system fanatics have their uses.
  
  --
  Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
35. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by mcavic · 2012-01-05 03:12 · Score: 1
  
  "By itself; without consideration of extraneous factors."
  Also: "not precisely", "not actually", or "not really".
  
  Meaning that the end result can be like a versioning filesystem, without adding any features to the filesystem code. In other words, it could be implemented right now on ext2, or any other filesystem.
36. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by jones_supa · 2012-01-05 03:16 · Score: 1
  
  In Finnish, "perse" means "ass".
37. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by Cramer · 2012-01-05 08:35 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, Windows doesn't provide an undelete either. What you may be thinking of (the recycling bin) is an artifact of Explorer. (and to some extent, system restore.) While there are tools to look for deleted files and attempt to restore them, they are not "builtin", but understand how files are deleted and allocated and can "reverse" the process. Technically, the exact same sort of tool can be created for most linux filesystems -- in fact, I've done it for ext2. The reason such tools don't exist is because of the nature of UNIX(tm) -- once the blocks are free, they can be used by another file immediately, and often are.
38. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by Jonner · 2012-01-05 10:41 · Score: 1
  
  I haven't used EXTn for my main file systems for many years as there have been superior options for a long time, including ReiserFS, JFS and XFS. Now, most of my file systems are XFS but I'm using Btrfs for some. Of course, Ext4 is good enough for most uses.
39. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by Jonner · 2012-01-05 10:56 · Score: 1
  
  I tried btrfs when I recently installed ubuntu on a new netbook. It was taking 15 minutes to fsck the disk on startup. This file system seems a long way from being used by default.
  The btrfsck command is quite new and immature. I've been using btrfs for many months without having it at all. Like all modern Linux journaling file systems, running fsck before mount is unnecessary since the kernel itself takes care of consistency, so what you're experiencing could simply be a misconfiguration. Simply change the last field in the "/etc/fstab" line describing your Btrfs file system from 1 or 2 to 0 to skip running fsck at boot if it's wasting a lot of time. However, the lack of useable btrfsck for when something goes wrong has long been the main reason Btrfs is only for experimenters.
40. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by msuarezalvarez · 2012-01-05 16:07 · Score: 1
  
  You will need (correct) usage examples, then, on top of the definition...
41. Re:Popcorn loaded, commence fanatical BS... by mcavic · 2012-01-05 16:52 · Score: 1
  
  I don't know what the problem is, and I hate guessing games. I'm not too worried about it, though.
Good stuff! by ickleberry · 2012-01-04 14:16 · Score: 5, Funny

I never did like the number "3.1" for some reason
1. Re:Good stuff! by sconeu · 2012-01-04 14:36 · Score: 1
  
  What 4?
  Actually, it's WATFOR, and the next iteration will be WATFIV.
  
  --
  General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
2. Re:Good stuff! by Nursie · 2012-01-04 14:46 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Maybe it's because we all know what comes next - 3.11, Linux for workgroups and then the dreaded Linux 95!
3. Re:Good stuff! by Psicopatico · 2012-01-04 14:56 · Score: 1
  
  I never did like the number "3.1" for some reason
  Because you know odd minor version numbers are experimental?
  
  --
  Mastering the English language is fucking easy: all you have to do is to put an f* word in every fucking sentence.
4. Re:Good stuff! by unixisc · 2012-01-04 17:27 · Score: 1
  
  Well, now Linux is in sync w/ Gnome - both @ 3.2.
5. Re:Good stuff! by Kjella · 2012-01-05 00:20 · Score: 1
  
  Actually with Linux' numbering scheme, we will probably get to 3.11, after 3.10 and 3.9. You just have to wait another couple years for the punchline.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
6. Re:Good stuff! by jpvlsmv · 2012-01-05 02:58 · Score: 1
  
  I installed Slackware '96 about 15 years ago. It was 1 better than that other "operating system" that came out about the same time.
  --Joe
Wow by wbr1 · 2012-01-04 14:26 · Score: 2

The first kernel I compiled was 1.2.10, I know there are people who have here who have been it longer than I, so this is not an ego-trip. I just feel old. I need doctor Carol Marcus to make me .... "Feel young, as when the earth was new."

--
Silence is a state of mime.
1. Re:Wow by wbr1 · 2012-01-04 17:26 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  yep you're right.. no hair, no brains, no memory, no women.. life sucks!
  
  --
  Silence is a state of mime.
2. Re:Wow by rubycodez · 2012-01-04 17:43 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  I definitely still like women, I just can't remember why....
3. Re: Wow by leereyno · 2012-01-04 19:13 · Score: 1
  
  Carol Marcus?
  I'd much rather take her daughter, Samantha Mathis:
  http://celebritynet.cz/photos/0/b/5/0b54be45ee551a354ab31998d2f1a689.jpg
  http://www.moviespad.com/photos/samantha-mathis-lost-b6bc2.jpg
  http://www.allcelebspics.com/wp-content/gallery/samantha-mathis/Samantha%20Mathis_1295188973516939.jpg
  
  --
  Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
4. Re:Wow by Howard+Beale · 2012-01-05 01:18 · Score: 1
  
  Boobies.
5. Re:Wow by rubycodez · 2012-01-05 04:08 · Score: 1
  
  that was part of it....but I'm sure there was more.....
6. Re:Wow by steelfood · 2012-01-05 04:39 · Score: 1
  
  no brains
  Well, there's your problem right there. Zombies aren't in with the women these days. Vampires and werewolves are.
  
  --
  "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
7. Re:Wow by sciencewhiz · 2012-01-05 11:58 · Score: 1
  
  That's only 3 months ago in firefox time.
Re:I call bullshit. by johnsnails · 2012-01-04 14:30 · Score: 1

I use fedora you insensitive clod! -- blah blah to this http://www.omniscientx.com/howto-articles/howto-apt-get-on-fedora/
Version number MADNESS by RMingin · 2012-01-04 14:34 · Score: 1, Funny

Wake me when we get to 7.1. At this rate it ought to be sometime this fall.

--
The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
1. Re:Version number MADNESS by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-04 14:51 · Score: 1
  
  It would be next week if they let Mozilla number them.
2. Re:Version number MADNESS by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-04 15:07 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  Wake me when we get to 7.1. At this rate it ought to be sometime this fall.
  Whats your problem? Linus chose to drop the extra number because it had become meaningless with the current development model of the kernel, and I have to agree with him that saying '2.6.34.3" was annoying in conversations; its much easier to just say 'oh im on kernel 3.{0,1,2} " Its quick, simple, rolls off the tongue much more easily. Also, major version numbers are still used to denote an API/ABI break. So unless you're telling me that Linus is going to accept patches that break the API/ABI on FOUR seperate occasions in the span of 7 months or so, the exaggeration is even more over the top than a normal expression
  -- Reaper924
3. Re:Version number MADNESS by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-04 16:26 · Score: 1
  
  Yea, could've been worse, he could've just dropped the 2 off the front and started calling it 6.34 or whatever....pretty sure somebody did that, was it Java? Don't remember.
4. Re:Version number MADNESS by wbr1 · 2012-01-04 17:27 · Score: 1
  
  And FireFox will be upto 321.6.98
  
  --
  Silence is a state of mime.
5. Re:Version number MADNESS by rubycodez · 2012-01-04 17:51 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, it was version 2.7 of Solaris that was renamed as Solaris 7 which also is SunOS 5.7 (e.g. in man pages). The current Solaris 11 is really Solaris 2.11 is also SunOS 5.11.
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(operating_system)#Version_history
  
  Everybody Clear?
6. Re:Version number MADNESS by ProbablyJoe · 2012-01-04 23:18 · Score: 1
  
  Sort of. The actual version number of java is still 1.6, 1.7, etc, but it's always referred to (by Oracle officially and by people generally) as Java 6, Java 7, etc. I'm not entirely sure when they did that, but the guy sat at the desk next to me has a "Java 2" book. I guess they got to 1.2 and wanted to make it sound big, but didn't want to change the version number?
  Who knows what they'll do when they hit version 2.0.
7. Re:Version number MADNESS by compro01 · 2012-01-05 02:52 · Score: 1
  
  You might be thinking of Emacs.
  Past version 1.12 they dropped the 1, hence why they're up to 23.3 now.
  
  --
  upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Re:I call bullshit. by Trepidity · 2012-01-04 14:38 · Score: 2

A 3.2-rc7 kernel is already in Debian's experimental repository fwiw.

--
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Forgive my ignorance by mark_reh · 2012-01-04 14:56 · Score: 1

but I'm an amateur at this stuff. I look at the page that lists the improvements and don't see anything that addresses the power regression that affects battery charge life in laptops. Or am I wrong (please...)?
1. Re:Forgive my ignorance by Microlith · 2012-01-04 15:03 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  That was Ubuntu, as I recall, and not necessarily the greater kernel community. I'm sure they'd rather play it safe and have a slightly more power hungry but stable system than risk crashing people's systems because OEMs are incompetent and can't report their shit properly.
2. Re:Forgive my ignorance by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-04 15:07 · Score: 1
  
  Wasn't that fixed earlier this year?
  Check out the slashdot stories, hold on, I'll do it. http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/11/11/2036245/linux-kernel-power-bug-is-fixed
  There you go. Problem solved from ages ago.
3. Re:Forgive my ignorance by nschubach · 2012-01-04 15:10 · Score: 1
  
  This one? http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php/images/www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTAyMjk
  Wait for 3.3
  
  --
  Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
4. Re:Forgive my ignorance by mark_reh · 2012-01-04 17:26 · Score: 2
  
  No, as I understand it, it is actually in the kernel. I think the problem was found in Ubuntu simply because it's the most popular (?) linux distro.
Versioning by mschoolbus · 2012-01-04 15:05 · Score: 1

Linux should increase versions like Firefox did in order to be as good as 7.
1. Re:Versioning by nzac · 2012-01-04 15:21 · Score: 1
  
  But Fedora is more than twice as good already, that would be too elitist.
Looks like a really good release by Shaman · 2012-01-04 15:06 · Score: 1

This looks to be a really strong, likely to be long-supported, kernel. Providing that the Googleification of the TCP stack doesn't hurt local 1-10Gbps performance, that is. Have a care if you do your own kernel compiles... the whole Ethernet driver subsystem has been merged together.

--
...Steve
ext4 blocks? by hcs_$reboot · 2012-01-04 16:01 · Score: 1

Engineers kept using ext3 (or reiserfs...) for a while because ext4 was "too new".
Now that it's stable and used, is it safe to extend it with such a powerful "block" option, and risk a potential regression?

--
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
1. Re:ext4 blocks? by hedwards · 2012-01-04 17:32 · Score: 1
  
  IIRC weren't they not using ext4 because it was missing some crucial features like fsck support?
Re:Haha Linux such loosers! by unixisc · 2012-01-04 17:30 · Score: 1

But now Windows is back down to 7, next year maybe 8. And no, it doesn't mean Windows 2007, 2008....
Re:Linux = 1/2 as good as Windows 7 by rubycodez · 2012-01-04 17:53 · Score: 1

My Linux Mint goes all the way to 11!
rm -i by steveha · 2012-01-04 17:54 · Score: 5, Insightful

I used to alias "rm" as "rm -i".
Then, one day, I was using someone else's computer. I used "rm" with the expectation that it would prompt me, but this person never bothered to set it up that way, and I had the fearful experience of worrying whether it was deleting too much. I hadn't been too careless that time, but it got me thinking. It's dangerous to use "rm" when I really mean "rm -i"; habits are strong things.
So I made a change that I still use. I now alias "r" as "rm -i". "r" by itself does not have default behavior on most computers. Now if I absent-mindedly type "r *.txt" on someone else's computer, I get "r: command not found" and I edit the command to say "rm -i".
I suppose I should have used "rmi" or something like that, just in case I am a guest somewhere that "r" was aliased to something crazy. In practice, it hasn't been a problem. I use more aliases than most people seem to; they seem to be content with the defaults. I seem to be the only one I know who likes one-letter aliases.
Hmm, I guess I might accidentally run the R statistics package someday?
steveha

--
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
1. Re:rm -i by huge · 2012-01-04 21:00 · Score: 1
  
  I now alias "r" as "rm -i". "r" by itself does not have default behavior on most computers.
  I have a friend that used to alias "r" for "rm" and "e" for "emacs". Once he had to restore his thesis from day or two old backup he stopped doing that :)
  
  --
  -- Reality checks don't bounce.
2. Re:rm -i by Krigl · 2012-01-04 21:19 · Score: 1
  
  Hmm, I guess I might accidentally run the R statistics package someday?
  Have no worry. That one's executable is capitalized.
  
  --
  Troll 2.0 Fear my asocial networking!
3. Re:rm -i by dotancohen · 2012-01-04 21:24 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  It's dangerous to use "rm" when I really mean "rm -i"; habits are strong things.
  Especially muscle-memory habits.:wq
  
  --
  It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
4. Re:rm -i by rjforster · 2012-01-05 00:02 · Score: 1
  
  Especially muscle-memory habits.:wq
  The number of times I've typed that into notepad....
5. Re:rm -i by g00ey · 2012-01-05 01:04 · Score: 1
  
  I generally don't delete files by mistake but there was one day when I did. I had a directory with .rar files that I wanted to remove while doing other things that involved repetitive tasks. So I issued rm *.rar in the directory I was at and removed the files that I wanted. Since the tasks were repetitive I issued commands from the command history and when I was in another directory I mistakenly brought up and entered the rm *.rar command again. Not funny.
  
  I think it would be useful if there were some sort of prefix (like I enter !rm, !chmod, !format instead of rm, chmod, format) that prevents the given command to be either stored in the command history or be prevented from being invoked from the command history again.
6. Re:rm -i by lithis · 2012-01-05 02:13 · Score: 2
  
  Set HISTCONTROL to ignorespace. Then bash will not save any commands that begin with a space.
7. Re:rm -i by CoolHnd30 · 2012-01-05 08:52 · Score: 1
  
  ...and what are you going to think of that when you come across the rare system where someone has setup r to alias to "rm -rf"?
8. Re:rm -i by lems1 · 2012-01-05 18:11 · Score: 1
  
  or go to someone else's who aliases r to rails ;)
  
  --
  This sig can be distributed under the LGPL license
Jesus H! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-04 18:53 · Score: 1

Why is APK such an asshole?
Re:Linux "fine security record" in 2011 (lol, NOT) by Barsteward · 2012-01-04 21:00 · Score: 1

Slashdot Mods...

Can we change these posts from "Anonymous Coward" to "Anonymous Cowardly Twat"?

--
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Good: x86 PC will read my NAS 16k ext3 :) by advid.net · 2012-01-04 22:30 · Score: 1

Very good news: standard Linux box will read my NAS' drives without using specific package and user space FS tools.
The NAS has a Debian Sparc system with ext3 16k blocks. Recovering the data when the NAS is dead (or has problems) is always a concern. Knowing I will be able to start a PC with Linux Live CD and plug those disks to recover my data is a relief.
I hope this NAS will also accept USB drives with ext3 16k FS made by x86 Linux (it doesn' read ext3 4k FS). I've prepared some with thorough blocks rw check, quite a long process.
1. Re:Good: x86 PC will read my NAS 16k ext3 :) by hippo · 2012-01-05 01:16 · Score: 1
  
  You should try this out, hopefully you won't have any endian problems.
Re:Linux = 1/2 as good as Windows 7 by petman · 2012-01-04 22:33 · Score: 1

Linux Mint is up to 12 now.

--
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
Re:Linux "fine security record" in 2011 (lol, NOT) by Ginger+Unicorn · 2012-01-04 23:29 · Score: 4, Funny

the fools... if only they'd used HOSTS FILES

--
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Re:Linux "fine security record" (lol, NOT) in 2011 by Fri13 · 2012-01-05 00:28 · Score: 1

Please, show even 1-2 of those where LINUX operating system was compromised, instead service or system because wrong settings?
.Trash-1001 by tepples · 2012-01-05 01:50 · Score: 1

Versus something like a "I'm 'deleted'" bit on the file you lose a bit of space but don't have to move the file to "delete" it.
How is that different from moving the directory entries for loads of files into the "I'm deleted" folder, as has been done on the Mac since 1991 and on Windows since 1995? None of the data gets moved; the inodes (or whatever FAT, HFS, and NTFS call them) stay in the same place.

None of this as you get on a windows system deleting files on a remote system being permanent and not making it to your recycle bin etc
I seem to remember at least some versions of the Nautilus file manager creating an invisible ".Trash-1001" folder on an SMB share and then "deleting" files by moving them into that folder.
1. Re:.Trash-1001 by ILongForDarkness · 2012-01-05 03:42 · Score: 1
  
  How is that different from moving the directory entries for loads of files into the "I'm deleted" folder, as has been done on the Mac since 1991 and on Windows since 1995? None of the data gets moved; the inodes (or whatever FAT, HFS, and NTFS call them) stay in the same place.
  Well if you don't move the file than you don't have to write stuff to the new folder (even if it is just a pointer in a table presumably something gets written to say "this file is here now") and remove the corresponding thing to the old folder as well as for any systems I've used store somewhere what the original folder was. Very expensive. I'm not sure why but I find for example on win 7 up to about 2k files being deleted everything is quick past that it is non-linear. I deleted 50k files once and it took probably 500X more than 1k. Not sure why and they were all similarly sized files (though as you say size shouldn't matter much). Perhaps past a certain size the OS does more work to free up the space since freeing up large space timely (or more cleanly like writing every block as free rather than just a flag on the first block of the file) might be more important than a small amount of space.
  Moving files is not a good idea in my opinion because that seems to always be system specific, one calls it recycle bin, another .trash, another something else. It just seems inherently unclean to have to muck with things in two locations to complete one operation.
Re:Linux "fine security record" in 2011 (lol, NOT) by justforgetme · 2012-01-05 02:29 · Score: 1

my favorite part of this Microsoft FUD is

Phishers/Spammers FAVOR attacking LAMP
Like there is another web server stack on the Internet.

--
-- no sig today
google cache of kernelnewbies by wdebruij · 2012-01-05 02:44 · Score: 1

google cache result for kernelnewbies.org/Linux_3.2
It's Microsoft's fault, as often by tepples · 2012-01-05 03:53 · Score: 1

Moving files is not a good idea in my opinion because that seems to always be system specific, one calls it recycle bin, another .trash, another something else.
As I understand it, this is entirely because Windows doesn't support the recycle bin at all on removable media, unlike say Mac OS since 7. On HFS+, it's always "Trash" because that's what Finder calls it. But on FAT, Microsoft never set a standard for what to call the Trash folder on FAT file systems, so every OS calls it something different. Had Microsoft supported the recycle bin on FAT-formatted removable media, then the rest of the industry would probably have adopted that for FAT.
Re:Linux = 1/2 as good as Windows 7 by rubycodez · 2012-01-05 04:06 · Score: 1

I don't like 12, Clem is trying very hard to get the suck out of GNOME 3, but he's not their yet.
NTFS performance by Ocrad · 2012-01-05 05:41 · Score: 1

What, in your opinion, makes NTFS a pain in your ass?
For example performance with very large files.

Subject: Re: [Bug-ddrescue] ddrescue. NTFS-3g eating 100%. Solved by switching to ext3
I had a ddrescue imaging to a file on an ntfs partition (mounted with ntfs-3g) on a USB drive on Ubuntu 9.04 LiveCD. It was going slower and slower, although number of errors was not increasing. I tried all the ddrescue options I could find, but nothing helped - it was working for 5 days already and was slowing down so much so it would never end. By the time I stopped it it copied 112Gb out of 223Gb.
Then I noticed that ntfs-3g was eating 100% cpu. So, I created an ext3 partition on the same USB drive, copied my image file and log there and restarted ddrescue.
Boy! it finished in a couple of hours!
1. Re:NTFS performance by adolf · 2012-01-05 08:49 · Score: 1
  
  Is that a problem with NTFS, or with NTFS-3g's implementation of it?
  
  --
  Kid-proof tablet..
Re:Linux = 1/2 as good as Windows 7 by rubycodez · 2012-01-05 07:41 · Score: 1

speaking of which, Clem's Cinnamon project (GNOME 3 under the hood but usable and configurable and not forcing an idea of workflow on user, yay!) is coming along very well, Mint 13 will have this. They're still adding the base features, but they have the right goals: http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1910
USB by specific · 2012-01-05 09:48 · Score: 1

Does USB work yet?

--
If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
I was just having a go at DropBox by dbIII · 2012-01-05 14:47 · Score: 1

I didn't say that it was bad, just that it's not worth comparing that feature for feature with filesystems that consider it in more or less detail. Why? Because the above poster was advertising a bunch that are infamous for spectacular security stuffups (that have nothing at all to do with NTFS), so presumably doesn't care about file security much.
So to some up - when I wrote "can be ignored" I meant it, but I just couldn't resist having a dig at such a colossal fuckup as DropBox which people are still using for files that are supposed to be condifential and could land them in deep shit if other people read them.
Re:Linux's "excellent security" (lol, NOT) in 2011 by cas2000 · 2012-01-05 16:08 · Score: 1

fuck off and die, spammer.
even if you had a legitimate point or worthwhile information to distribute, repeatedly spamming the same fucking post dozens of times is just going to piss off and alienate anyone who might potentially benefit from it.
but it's most likely that you're just a troll. you're certainly a spammer.
Re:A dose of reality (not Open "SORES" phantasy) by gottabeme · 2012-01-10 22:09 · Score: 1

Are Google and Amazon small fries?
P.S. The NYSE runs Linux, and it's bigger than NASDAQ or the LSE.

--
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Re:Linux "fine security record" in 2011 (lol, NOT) by badkarmadayaccount · 2012-01-14 05:28 · Score: 1

APK: The Candlejack of Slashdot.

--
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.