Linux 3.6 Released

I Use Linux 3.6 by o5770 · 2012-10-01 03:00 · Score: 5, Funny

While the new features like quota groups, snapshot diffs and tcp "fast open" are great, what's really bothering this version is its tendency to

Re:I Use Linux 3.6 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 03:03 · Score: 5, Funny

Completely agree. I remember when a new Linux release was about a solid, compact code base. Now it's all about optimising for specific interests even at the expense of
Re:I Use Linux 3.6 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 03:04 · Score: 2, Funny

While the new features like quota groups, snapshot diffs and tcp "fast open" are great, what's really bothering this version is its tendency to
...core dump? ;)
I kid, I kid!
Re:I Use Linux 3.6 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 03:04 · Score: 0

I see what you mea
Re:I Use Linux 3.6 by Dave+Whiteside · 2012-10-01 03:12 · Score: 2, Funny

press the preview and submit buttons before crashing you mean

--
who where what when now?
Re:I Use Linux 3.6 by larry+bagina · 2012-10-01 03:16 · Score: 3, Funny

bugs TCP fast think reassemble are in I there code the

--
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Re:I Use Linux 3.6 by TheGratefulNet · 2012-10-01 04:17 · Score: 4, Funny

come on, finish the sentence. don't leave us hang

--

--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Re:I Use Linux 3.6 by MysteriousPreacher · 2012-10-01 04:37 · Score: 0

Lousy mod. Glad someone came in to give that post its rightfully deserved +1 funny.

--
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Re:I Use Linux 3.6 by organgtool · 2012-10-01 08:07 · Score: 2, Funny

While the new features like quota groups, snapshot diffs and tcp "fast open" are great, what's really bothering this version is its tendency to
click the Submit button on Slashdot before crashing?
Re:I Use Linux 3.6 by styrotech · 2012-10-01 11:03 · Score: 1

It looks like slashcode stripped the parentheses from your Lisp code listing.
Re:I Use Linux 3.6 by null+etc. · 2012-10-01 12:23 · Score: 1

Are you using ReiserFS?
Re:I Use Linux 3.6 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 12:43 · Score: 0

Most of the stuff just takes up disk space and isn't actually loaded unless you're doing something that

Thin clients rejoice! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 03:09 · Score: 5, Funny

Swap over NFS is something I've been waiting a long time for =)

Re:Thin clients rejoice! by wed128 · 2012-10-01 06:28 · Score: 1

Ha! I see what you did there...

Re:The consumers want to know by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 03:13 · Score: 0

1. Probably yes on Android/Linux, probably no on GNU/Linux.
2. iTunes is only for OS X and Windows I think, no Linux kernels in there.

(but I understood the mood of your question)

And if you're not a fan of binary blobs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 03:15 · Score: 5, Informative

there's Linux-libre.

http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/pub/linux-libre/releases/LATEST-3.6.0/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux-libre

Re:And if you're not a fan of binary blobs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 04:21 · Score: 0

I like binary Boobs...
Re:And if you're not a fan of binary blobs by Microlith · 2012-10-01 05:10 · Score: 1

Yup. I'm a fan of hardware arbitrarily failing to function. Looking at the list of distros that use it, they're all pretty much irrelevant at this point.
Re:And if you're not a fan of binary blobs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 07:13 · Score: 0

one or zero of 'em huh?
Re:And if you're not a fan of binary blobs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 10:01 · Score: 0

I think he means two base boobs.
Re:And if you're not a fan of binary blobs by unixisc · 2012-10-01 14:27 · Score: 1, Interesting

Yeah, good choice if you don't want your wi-fi or networking or 3D graphics accelaration to not work just b'cos the drivers aren't liberated firmware. Although that would beg the question - why not use Hurd, which would probably be GPL3 or beyond?
Re:And if you're not a fan of binary blobs by sysstemlord · 2012-10-01 22:01 · Score: 1

I would really like to know why in Linux the drivers are included with the kernel, and not as separate packages.
Re:And if you're not a fan of binary blobs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 01:50 · Score: 0

why in Linux the drivers are included with the kernel
Bell Labs never believed in micro kernels... Even Plan9's is monolithic...
Hopefully a Google size company will combine GNU Hurd and Plan 9 with a new WM\X server like in Android.
When pigs grow wings...
Re:And if you're not a fan of binary blobs by RaceProUK · 2012-10-02 02:13 · Score: 1

Same reason why drivers are served over Windows Update - convenience.

--
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun

Re:The consumers want to know by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 03:15 · Score: 0

A: What is "honey boo boo", and who is "nicki minaj"?

Re:The consumers want to know by mfwitten · 2012-10-01 03:18 · Score: 1

You make the common mistake of confusing your interests as my interests.

Re:The consumers want to know by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 03:24 · Score: 1

No idea about honey boo boo, but nicki minaj is apparently a popular rap vocalist noted for use of sexually explicit lyrics.

TCP Fast Open by w1z7ard · 2012-10-01 03:31 · Score: 4, Interesting

Sounds like a great feature! From the article:

"Fast Open could result in speed improvements of between 4% and 41% in the page load times on popular web sites. In this version only the client-side has been merged."

--

"Recursive bipartite matching"- try it!

Re:TCP Fast Open by Viol8 · 2012-10-01 03:55 · Score: 1

4% just possibly, 41%? Highly unlikely. The main slowdown on loading pages or any data is DNS lookup then the data itself. The time taken for actually doing all the TCP negotiation for a connection is trivial in comparison. Its only a few small packets after all.
Re:TCP Fast Open by SuricouRaven · 2012-10-01 04:02 · Score: 1

Opening a TCP connection requires, at the absolute minimum (using the right tricks), one packet each way. A DNS query needs one packet each way, assuming the server has the answer cached. The DNS server is usually going to be closer, so the DNS query should almost always take less time than opening a TCP session.
Re:TCP Fast Open by Marillion · 2012-10-01 04:09 · Score: 5, Interesting

On the and-user client side, there may not be much noticeable improvement. But on servers and/or load-balancing front ends this type of improvement could be quite significant.

--
This is a boring sig
Re:TCP Fast Open by Bengie · 2012-10-01 05:27 · Score: 2

Think high latency connections, like 3G/Satellite where a 3-way handshake is expensive.
Re:TCP Fast Open by Viol8 · 2012-10-01 20:52 · Score: 1

"A DNS query needs one packet each way, assuming the server has the answer cached."
Its pretty unlikely your local DNS server is going to have all the addresses in even a single web page cached , never mind an entire site. And if it doesn't then the query has to wander back up the DNS tree with all the packet passing that entails - which is what takes the time.

BTRFS experiences? by timeOday · 2012-10-01 03:31 · Score: 4, Interesting

I'd be interested to hear what uses people have found for the advanced features of BTRFS. (BTRFS snapshots on a RAID1 volume seem like a great /home partition?) Since BTRFS is gradually evolving it's kind of hard to get a grasp of what is currently available and trustworthy (although this approach is vastly preferable to Microsoft's approach to revolutionizing the filesystem - aim high and never deliver!)

Re:BTRFS experiences? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 03:47 · Score: 0

I tried Btrfs on openSUSE and Linux Mint. The performance is a little slower than with, say, ext3/ext4, but otherwise it held up fairly well. I like the snapshot features, especially the ability to do a diff on a current file against a snapshotted file. Really quite handy. I wouldn't use Btrfs in production yet as it is still constantly evolving, but for home use it should be fine.
Re:BTRFS experiences? by siDDis · 2012-10-01 03:59 · Score: 2

I'm not using BTRFS yet, however as send & receive in BTRFS is similar to the ZFS send & receive implementation you can do really cool things like superquick backup of a gigantic PostgreSQL Database.
The workflow is as following
Execute "pg_start_backup(‘snapshotting’,true)"
Snapshot the filesystem with PostgreSQL data
Execute "pg_stop_backup()"
Send the snapshot to your backup server
Re:BTRFS experiences? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 04:07 · Score: 1

A bit dated, but I had a pretty large data loss about a year ago-- about 6 months into my btrfs experiment. Most files were backed up, but I did lose a bit of work.
btrfs also uses quite a bit of memory (no, modern desktop users will not notice), but I was playing around with btrfs on my arm board, and the mem overhead was noticeable.
I ended up deciding to let others be the alpha testers.
Re:BTRFS experiences? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 04:34 · Score: 0

You want to know why WinFS was never finished?
"Fuck you! That's why." --Steve Ballmer
Re:BTRFS experiences? by bluefoxlucid · 2012-10-01 05:03 · Score: 1

I do that with ext4 already. Hell I do that with ext2.

--
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Re:BTRFS experiences? by Bengie · 2012-10-01 05:31 · Score: 2

Can you add randomly sized disks to EXT4 and transparently grow the volume? Yeah, didn't think so.

I'm not saying EXT4 is "bad", I'm just saying BTRFS has A LOT more useful features, just less tested and has some trade-offs.
Re:BTRFS experiences? by Bigby · 2012-10-01 05:51 · Score: 1

I use it on a MythTV server. I don't know if it is has been added yet, but it was lacking support to remove a stripped device. I want it to re-balance off of that disk, so I can replace it or upgrade it.
Can /boot be btrfs yet?
Otherwise it is pretty cool.
Re:BTRFS experiences? by mcelrath · 2012-10-01 05:53 · Score: 5, Informative

I've been using btrfs on two computers for about a year now. I'd say it's quite stable. I'm using it for /home as well as a data partition, with zlib compression on /home. The snapshot feature is amazing and should be used liberally. Early on I experienced some disk corruption (mostly due to rapidly switching kernel versions 3.0, 3.2, 3.4, 3.5), which was not a problem because there existed snapshots on the disk. The primary partition can be corrupted, but if you have an uncorrupted snapshot, you can mount it. So, it's a good idea to get in the habit of making regular snapshots. I've been doing it by hand, but a daily rotating snapshots would be a great idea for reliability. There are many cron jobs, shell scripts and whatnot to accomplish this (e.g. Autosnap). Furthermore there is apt-btrfs-snapshot which on Debian/Ubuntu systems will automatically snapshot whenever upgrading/installing a package. This basically takes care of changes in /usr (and you'll need a cron job for /home). The only real drawback I've encountered is that dpkg is very slow (likely due to my use of zlib compression). But dpkg's database access has been a snail for a long time and is dpkg's problem (and I hope someone looks into this soon, it's pissing me off -- zlib just exacerbates the problem). But since apt-get upgrade can run in the background while I'm working, it doesn't really bother me.
I'm also using RAID1 on all magnetic disks (plus one SSD not in a RAID configuration). After countless disk failures, I just don't trust magnetic disks any further than I can throw them. And, they are cheap enough that two instead of one is not a huge burden. In the last year, I have not had occasion to recover from a failure due to RAID1, but I have experimented with mounting one half of the RAID1, and it operates normally. There are a few tricks to re-sync the drives when its partner is re-added to the array, that one should be aware of. It's not fully automatic. One of my RAID1 arrays is over two LVM volumes, with the left half consisting of a single 3 TB disk, and the right half consisting of three disks concatenated into a single LVM. This makes it easier to add disks later. LVM and btrfs can both resize.
A couple things to be aware of: you cannot place a swap file on a btrfs partition. So use another filesystem, a full partition, or just buy more RAM (my preferred solution). You should not use a kernel version less than 3.5. There have been many fixes between 3.0 and 3.4, and you're asking for trouble if you use btrfs on a 3.0 or 3.2 kernel. Since I installed 3.5 kernels on all my machines, I have not had any btrfs-related problems. FWIW, I regularly have to reboot because ATI's shitty video driver causes a kernel panic, sometimes via a hard reset. I have yet to see any filesystem corruption due to this. And everyone should know how to use the Magic SysRq key in the event of kernel panics too. (Alt-SysRq- REIUSB should unmount, sync, and boot, leaving filesystems in a consistent state)
I highly recommend BTRFS at this point. I'm not sure the distributions are up to noob auto-installs, but if you like to do things yourself, it offers a lot of advantages over ext4.

--
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
Re:BTRFS experiences? by flok · 2012-10-01 05:55 · Score: 4, Informative

If you have LVM underneath the ext4 filesystem, you can indeed randomly grow the fs.

--

www.vanheusden.com - home of Multitail, HTTPing, CoffeeSaint, EntropyBroker, rsstail, bsod, listener, nagcon, nagi
Re:BTRFS experiences? by bluefoxlucid · 2012-10-01 05:58 · Score: 1

Thin provisioning etc, as well ext4 lets you shift the journal and do full ordered write (so you can use an SSD for a journal, and avoid all that sync() to slow hard disk and have bulletproof journaling with both data and metadata, ordered properly).

--
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Re:BTRFS experiences? by snadrus · 2012-10-01 06:29 · Score: 1

Enabling compression actually was what made better performance for me. Of-course to do it right you need to remount the partition at the OS install phase, or copy the files afterward (as it's compress-on-New-file-write).

--
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
Re:BTRFS experiences? by Rich0 · 2012-10-01 07:27 · Score: 3, Interesting

Sure, if you don't mind it being a pain to dynamically reallocate space between all your filesystems.
Oh, can you copy a 300GB file full of data in a few milliseconds and have the copy only occupy the space necessary to capture the differences between them? No, I don't want a hard link - I want changes to either file to not affect the other.
You can also instantly snapshot files, directories, or the entire filesystem, and the snapshots are first-class citizens (they can be modified, be used in place of the originals, etc).
Oh, and if the power dies in the middle of writing a RAID stripe you don't lose anything beyond the changes to the files you were intending to modify.
Btrfs will be the standard filesystem on linux in a few years - nobody really doubts that. Its main issue now is that it is still fairly immature.
Re:BTRFS experiences? by Rich0 · 2012-10-01 07:31 · Score: 1

Still waiting for more stability and raid5 support, but I agree, it definitely is going to be the way to go at some point.
Re:BTRFS experiences? by Bengie · 2012-10-01 07:42 · Score: 3, Interesting

I know I tend to play Devil's advocate in an almost trollish way, but it invokes great responses like your's and bluefoxlucid. It seems if you don't get people defensive on the internet, they tend to ignore your posts and don't reply with potentially great stuff.

Anyway, I didn't know about LVM and it looks quite "great". One question I have about it is that it supports allowing a volume to have a RAID1 style backing. If some of the data got silently corrupted in one of the mirrors, how would EXT4 decide which data to choose and how would it fix it or does LVM do this?

The biggest logical issue I've seen with separating volume managers from the FS is that the two typically don't communicate. This lack of communication hurts the overall resiliency. Not to say the FS and volume manager couldn't communicate via an API or something.
Re:BTRFS experiences? by subreality · 2012-10-01 07:52 · Score: 2

I've used it for a couple years now. My experience:
The good:
Snapshots are a killer feature.
Integrated redundancy is much nicer than RAID.
Integrating LVM into the FS is very nice.
The bad:
sync is SLOW, and dpkg will suffer. You can work around it by creating a snapshot and then running 'eatmydata apt-get whatever' - and accept that you'll have to roll back if you have a power failure mid-install.
It finally has a functional fsck, but I don't trust it yet with mission-critical data.
Generally it works well, but it's still a new FS so I'm not ready to deploy it everywhere yet.
Re:BTRFS experiences? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 08:51 · Score: 0

One of my RAID1 arrays is over two LVM volumes, with the left half consisting of a single 3 TB disk, and the right half consisting of three disks concatenated into a single LVM.
o.O
Re:BTRFS experiences? by WuphonsReach · 2012-10-01 09:52 · Score: 1

It was only in the last year or two that ext4 got to the point where it was considered reliable enough for production use. That was released in 2008 and we didn't switch any production stuff over until 2010 or 2011.

I expect btrfs to have a similar roll-out period which means you won't see it heavily used in production until late-2013 or 2014. Especially since it's still being actively hacked upon and doesn't seem to be feature complete yet.

Pessimistic view says 2015 before it's a safe choice for production, but I'd expect early adopters to start shifting next year in earnest.

--
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Re:BTRFS experiences? by mcelrath · 2012-10-01 11:01 · Score: 1

I think fsck is a non issue. I can't count the number of times fsck has swiss-cheesed my disk, filling /lost+found with thousands of numbered files. In no way is that kind of treatment of my data a "recovery". What btrfs had that is far more valuable than fsck is snapshots. I'll take a mountable, old snapshot over numbered inodes in /lost+found any day.

--
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
Re:BTRFS experiences? by steverweber · 2012-10-01 12:19 · Score: 1

Wait..

Perhaps corruption was not BARTFS but because you unmount before sync after your ATI panics!
TRY: REISUB
Re:BTRFS experiences? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 13:31 · Score: 0

They really need to fix up the integration of free-space display into regular "df". Using "btrfs fi df" results in a dog's breakfast of output.
Re:BTRFS experiences? by unixisc · 2012-10-01 14:32 · Score: 1

In fact, how does BTRFS compare to BSD and other unix file systems like ZFS, Hammer, XFS, UFS, Veritas and so on?
Re:BTRFS experiences? by mcelrath · 2012-10-01 16:22 · Score: 1

Good catch! Sadly, in fact I have been doing U before S. I even knew what both of them did!!!!
Well, score one more for btrfs, that my idiocy did not result in any disk corruption.

--
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
Re:BTRFS experiences? by Dolda2000 · 2012-10-01 16:55 · Score: 1

You don't normally use LVM for RAID1 (you can, but it kind of sucks and is a bit immature). Normally, you'd use mdraid for that, and then construct a LVM PV from the resulting mdraid device(s).
Neither ext3, LVM nor mdraid checks for silent corruption, however. That's strictly a feature of filesystems like ZFS or btrfs that explicitly checksum all data.
Re:BTRFS experiences? by Cato · 2012-10-01 17:02 · Score: 1

LVM has some issues of its own, and requires careful setup to avoid data loss. Also its snapshots are quite buggy and slow. See http://serverfault.com/questions/279571/lvm-dangers-and-caveats/279577#279577 for details.

Re:The consumers want to know by Scarred+Intellect · 2012-10-01 03:33 · Score: 1

Important questions from consumers, who are also voters and thus determine (collectively) your fate:

1. Does it stream video of Honey Boo Boo?
2. Does it have iTunes to get the latest from Nicki Minaj?

If not, we know this is relevant to our fascinating modern lives.

FTFY.

Re:The consumers want to know by rjr162 · 2012-10-01 03:37 · Score: 1

I happened to see 5 minutes of the show yesterday when I first sat down.. someone had TLC on it that show was on. 5 minutes was 5 minutes too many.

Re:The consumers want to know by smooth+wombat · 2012-10-01 03:38 · Score: 4, Insightful

So no one important.

--
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Mostly about btrfs by javilon · 2012-10-01 03:41 · Score: 3, Interesting

The most active area seems to be btrfs. What is the general opinion, is it ready for general usage?

Any one with feedback from production setups?

--

When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."

Re:Mostly about btrfs by mlts · 2012-10-01 04:09 · Score: 3, Interesting

btrfs is coming along, but most distros still tend to have ext4 as a default. The one thing that btrfs really and desperately needs is filesystem deduplication. Even Windows now has that in place (although it is of a delayed variety where a background task searches for identical blocks and replaces the copies with pointers.)
Re:Mostly about btrfs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 04:30 · Score: 0

I used it for the previous version of Ubuntu (since I had just purchased my first SSD and BTRFS was one of the file systems with TRIM support. That version of BTRFS was not exactly self-cleaning. Boot times got longer over a period of months to the point where I was waiting about 5 minutes. I switched to ReiserFS and I can cold boot in about 15 seconds, including all the ASUS 'instant web' stuff (which has its own 5 second countdown).
Re:Mostly about btrfs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 04:33 · Score: 0

Not going to happen while patents are being thrown about. It's one thing to do it then have some submariner troll pop up and say "patented!" and then everyone groans about how it was obvious since we invented it ourselves without any help from the troll, another thing entirely to try and do it while a developer like Quantum is in the middle of suing other people who try it.
Re:Mostly about btrfs by h4rr4r · 2012-10-01 04:52 · Score: 1

How does shit like this not fail the obviousness test?
I get the feeling you are not telling the whole story, any links to clear this up?
Re:Mostly about btrfs by bluefoxlucid · 2012-10-01 05:08 · Score: 3, Informative

Because you have people like me who say, "What we should do for deduplication is hash blocks and keep them in a fast bucket hash table cached in RAM and pointed to in the block index. Then we can occasionally compare identically-hashed pointers to see if the blocks are the same, and if so drop one or the other pointer and repoint the others. This dropping can be done by selecting the one with the highest use count as our new pointer, and altering old pointers as they're accessed rather than actively, until the duplicate pointer is empty." Someone says, "PATENTED ALREADY LOL!" It's not "I patented data dedup," it's "Here's every way I can think of to do it, PATENT NOW! Oh you did something vaguely similar to this one, that's mine..."

--
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Re:Mostly about btrfs by h4rr4r · 2012-10-01 05:27 · Score: 1

I still don't see how that is not obvious. I don't see how checking at write time, or later when the disk is free or any other time is anything other than a trivial change.
Re:Mostly about btrfs by Bengie · 2012-10-01 05:33 · Score: 3, Informative

Any transactional FS(ZFS/BTRFS) shouldn't need fsck. You always start from the last commited transaction or snapshot.
Re:Mostly about btrfs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 05:43 · Score: 0

It always amazes me that so many people think hardware actually works properly.
Re:Mostly about btrfs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 06:31 · Score: 1

Dunno...I couldn't trust it for production, so I don't have a production setup. I tried to simulate bad blocks by writing random zeroes to random places on an unmounted FS, for different file systems. For mounting and repairing the FS, my order of confidence would be in ext4, then XFS, then ZFS on FreeBSD (especially mirrored), UFS on FreeBSD, then JFS, then NILFS2. As far as btrfs goes, errors seem to panic the kernel--does btrfs default to errors=panic?--and even when using the built-in RAID1, btrfs would rather panic the kernel than rebuild from the good side of the mirror like ZFS does. btrfsck could not repair the intentionally damaged file system enough to solve this problem.
Maybe btrfs is good enough for production on a good hard drive, maybe not, but the tools are definitely not there yet. The tools are version 0.19 (at time of testing) for a reason. I learned my lesson on using a FS with the promise of better tools and a better file system while using ReiserFS. ReiserFS was good and never failed me, but I'm not going through that again!
The performance is fine, though. In 3.6, it seems like performance with snapshots is competitive with other file systems that support snapshots natively. btrfs handles abuse just as well as other file systems I've tried. For what it's supposed to do, the btrfs programmers are doing a good job so far. If you trust your underlying hardware, you might try btrfs on a not-so-critical partition and give it a try.
Re:Mostly about btrfs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 08:32 · Score: 0

filesystem deduplication. Even Windows now has that in place
Where? Where?
Re:Mostly about btrfs by fa2k · 2012-10-01 09:11 · Score: 1

That sounds like a bad idea anyway (not an expert here). btrfs comes with data checksums, so why not use those checksums for deduplication at write time, instead of doing it "occasionally" later? The checksums could be stored in a binary tree or a hash table. I think that's what ZFS does, and they don't have any patent problems.
Re:Mostly about btrfs by mlts · 2012-10-01 09:53 · Score: 1

Windows Server 2012 has this as a feature. Caveats:
1: It has to be a NTFS volume. No ReFS, FAT32, or other filesystems.
2: The deduplication does not happen in real time. Store 500 of the same one gig files, and it will initially take up 500 gigs until the background task gets around to replacing redundant blocks with links.
Re:Mostly about btrfs by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 05:58 · Score: 0

My cousin admins a datacenter with several petabytes of live data and he has given guest speaker talks to the research community on how to design large storage systems. He told me ZFS is the best FS he has ever had the pleasure to work with. Absolutely nothing he or his fellow storage admins could do to make ZFS break, and they have a slew of in-house tests and require several years of testing before they can go live with a new FS.

Nothing against EXT4, as I hear it's great, but I am under the impression that a properly configured ZFS system is damned near unbreakable.

Still no TRIM on software RAID (md) by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 04:03 · Score: 2, Interesting

Still no TRIM on software RAID (md).

Astounding that all the other components (major filesystems, device mapper, LVM) support TRIM but the underlying md devices still don't.

Re:Still no TRIM on software RAID (md) by Rich0 · 2012-10-01 07:35 · Score: 1

How often does an entire stripe become empty? And the software RAID layer would need to keep track of cumulative TRIMS on all the blocks in the stripe so that it could issue the TRIM when the whole thing becomes empty. Then you need someplace to store that metadata, and will doing that cause more problems than the TRIM fixes?
That said, might be nice if it worked since a rebuild could skip known-empty areas.
Of course, eventually btrfs is likely to make many md applications obsolete. Obviously it isn't there yet.
Re:Still no TRIM on software RAID (md) by Mad+Merlin · 2012-10-01 09:58 · Score: 3, Informative

Support for TRIM on RAID linear/0/1/10 md devices was quite recently added. The patch series is here: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/3/11/261. I can't find the actual merge now, but I believe it'll be in 3.7.

--
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!

Re:Will this be in Quantal? by lengau · 2012-10-01 04:04 · Score: 2

I highly doubt it since they're already in the beta stage, so major version changes are a no-no at this point. You can however get the latest kernel in the Kernel ppa.

--
I really wanted to change my sig to something witty, but all I could come up with is this.

Ok, ok, question by theRunicBard · 2012-10-01 04:09 · Score: 2

As a Linux noob, how do I learn what all of those words mean? The only one I even vaguely recognize is TCP and i don't even know what that is. Until someone responds, I'll be at Google.

Re:Ok, ok, question by hduff · 2012-10-01 05:06 · Score: 3, Insightful

As a Linux noob, how do I learn what all of those words mean? The only one I even vaguely recognize is TCP and i don't even know what that is. Until someone responds, I'll be at Google.
Which is how it is done.

--
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Re:Ok, ok, question by jones_supa · 2012-10-01 05:10 · Score: 4, Informative

Try kernelnewbies.org and Wikipedia also.
Re:Ok, ok, question by Lennie · 2012-10-01 05:25 · Score: 3, Informative

You might want this page then:
http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_3.6
It usually has links to http://www.h-online.com/ http://lwn.net/ and/or Wikipedia which hopefully explains it in a way you'll understand.

--
New things are always on the horizon
Re:Ok, ok, question by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 05:27 · Score: 0

If you're asking this question you probably won't notice a difference... And the fact is that most users won't notice the difference even if they do understand each of these concepts.
This is the weird thing about covering kernel releases on Slashdot. The kernel will continue its path of incremental progress. That's good. But most of us don't really need detailed reports along the way. If you're sincerely interested, you'll learn a lot more by reading LKML.
Re:Ok, ok, question by hobarrera · 2012-10-01 06:08 · Score: 3, Insightful

Most of these words are not linux-specific, though they are rather technical. It's what you'd expect on the release of a new kernel version, especially on slashdot.
Re:Ok, ok, question by lennier · 2012-10-01 09:59 · Score: 2

Until someone responds, I'll be at Google.
Larry Page, what are you doing here?

--
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC

Re:might have cared... by Karzz1 · 2012-10-01 04:10 · Score: 2

Please do not feed the trolls. :D

--
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

Re:The consumers want to know by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 04:44 · Score: 0

Honey boo boo is a bit like Arthur Askey's Band Waggon show. Nicki Minaj is a bit like Mamie Smith.

Re:The consumers want to know by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 04:45 · Score: 4, Informative

It was some fine Tuesday back in 2008-09. Why do you ask?

Please explain by Frankie70 · 2012-10-01 05:16 · Score: 1

I don't get the joke in the parent and grandparent about leaving the sentence incomplete. Can someone explain?

Re:Please explain by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 05:55 · Score: 0

The joke is that on a windy day it's about as reliable as a flickering candle. Jack, my brother, installed lin
Re:Please explain by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 06:05 · Score: 0

It's a variation on the old NO CARRIER joke where you imply that you somehow manage to post what you were typing when your modem suddenly disconnected / computer suddenly crashed.
Re:Please explain by Metabolife · 2012-10-01 06:10 · Score: 5, Funny

It's really quite simple. The parent and grandparent are simply implying that
Re:Please explain by sourcerror · 2012-10-01 06:35 · Score: 2

The problem is that with HTTP if your computer crashes not even half of your message will be sent, no wonder some people don't get it.
Re:Please explain by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 06:45 · Score: 0

Quotas reached, probably.
Re:Please explain by blane.bramble · 2012-10-01 07:10 · Score: 1

You seem to be unaware how TCP/IP packets work, each packet has a limited size negotiated by the transport layer, it's quite possible for the first few packets to be sent and received, and subsequent packets to be
Re:Please explain by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 07:28 · Score: 0

I, for one, am using HTTP over UDP where I have removed the HTTP header "Content-Length".
Re:Please explain by sgage · 2012-10-01 08:11 · Score: 5, Funny

There once was a man from Lahore,
whose limericks stopped at line four.
When asked why this was,
he said just because
Re:Please explain by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 08:37 · Score: 1

Except that web server will reject any incomplete request therefore we will never see those posts. [no crash, I'm running FreeBSD]
Re:Please explain by equex · 2012-10-01 08:47 · Score: 1

...but in a in a virtual ma

--
Can I light a sig ?
Re:Please explain by DiegoBravo · 2012-10-01 11:42 · Score: 1

The /. server is running li
Re:Please explain by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 14:40 · Score: 1

There once was a man from Verdun.

I WTFM... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 05:18 · Score: 0

...U RTFM.

Re:The consumers want to know by dnaumov · 2012-10-01 05:30 · Score: 1

I happened to see 5 minutes of the show yesterday when I first sat down.. someone had TLC on it that show was on. 5 minutes was 5 minutes too many.

what do Tables, Ladders and Chairs wrestling matches have to do with this?

Re:The consumers want to know by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 05:32 · Score: 0

My wife showed me a clip last week from that retarded child thinking it was funny. I filed for divorce today.

Sounds like Windows' IIS by PhrostyMcByte · 2012-10-01 05:53 · Score: 4, Interesting

This sounds a bit like they generalized the clever latency-saving behavior of IE which skips the TCP handshake when talking to IIS and leaves connections half-open. Latency could indeed be greatly improved for servers supporting it.

Re:Sounds like Windows' IIS by snadrus · 2012-10-01 06:26 · Score: 1

The difference being this is a previously-unimplemented feature of a standard approved a decade ago, so lots of eyes have already considered it.

--
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.

Re:The consumers want to know by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 06:03 · Score: 1

See that thing in the distance? That was the point you missed.

If people can't stream videos and play mp3s without major configuration and grief, who cares what version the Linux kernel is at?

Comparison by Sun.Jedi · 2012-10-01 07:54 · Score: 1

Ask Woz thread: 318 comments
Linux 3.6 thread: 82 comments

I guess we know what stuff matters. :/

Re:Comparison by MtHuurne · 2012-10-01 09:02 · Score: 3, Insightful

There is a new Linux kernel release every two months; Ask Woz is a once in 15 years event.
Re:Comparison by dfries · 2012-10-01 13:26 · Score: 1

I guess we know what stuff matters. :/

Linux kernel mailing list, 774 today *
Guess we know where the Linux kernel activity is.
* and there's still 4 hours of today left for me

The consumers are not who you think by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 08:03 · Score: 0

Those people who make websites, embedded devices, phones, and supercomputers very much care about kernel features.

The point of linux is that *you* can hack it up how you want. Fortunately there are a lot of people working on various parts of this (free) OS, so you don't have to hack everything. In fact, most people can get away without having to do any coding, even those people who want to watch (patent-restricted) videos mp3s.

It's unfortunate that you may have to learn something in order to consume your mindless entertainment. You've already come such a long way from only knowing how to cry and suckle. We don't really want to impinge on your vacuity any more than necessary. However, if you found in your use of the system that it did not fulfill some vital need of yours, after the requisite period of entitled ranting, you might stir yourself to one of the following:
[a] File a bug report.
[b] Donate to the organization in charge of said code.
[c] Pay someone to code that feature.
[d] Code it your damn self.

And try not to get stuck at the entitlement/ranting stage. Oh. Too late :(

Re:The consumers are not who you think by Bengie · 2012-10-01 15:47 · Score: 1

"Why won't people use Linux?"

"If the feature doesn't exist, code it yourself"

hmmm... I think #1 is answered by #2.

It's not about being obvious by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 08:05 · Score: 2, Insightful

It doesn't matter that it is obvious and shouldn't be patented. What matters is that you can't afford to enter into a drawn out war of attrition that the other sides lawyers are going to make of this case when you bring it.

Abolish all patents now. All of them. Now.

Re:The consumers want to know by Antonovich · 2012-10-01 08:09 · Score: 1

Eh... maybe the people who hang around /.? And if it didn't take serious configuration and grief and only really work when launched from the command line, then what kind of stupid, boring and mundane kind of interface would that be?!? And yes, this may be being posted from an Ubuntu but have you ever tried getting something like a fingerprint reader or automatic graphics card switching to work, even on Ubuntu? Grow a pair! 8-}

Re:The consumers want to know by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 09:14 · Score: 0

No it wasn't. Flash is utter shit on every platform other than windows. Fullscreen flash video on a netbook (underpowered CPU, shit GPU) has awful performance on Windows XP and even worse performance on Linux. Or maybe you meant WebM. Most youtube videos aren't encoded in WebM. Oops.

Re:The consumers want to know by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 10:59 · Score: 1

Yes, it can play midget porn.

Re:The consumers want to know by stoborrobots · 2012-10-01 11:44 · Score: 2

If people can't stream videos and play mp3s without major configuration and grief, who cares what version the Linux kernel is at?

And conversely, if people CAN stream videos and play mp3s without major configuration and grief, who cares what version the Linux kernel is at?

(Nerds like us, that's who...)

--
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco

Re:The consumers want to know by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-01 12:16 · Score: 0

I wish. Sadly that is not the case with any remotely HD video.

Re:The consumers want to know by UltraZelda64 · 2012-10-01 12:40 · Score: 1

Flash is not utter shit on Windows? That's news to me, and I haven't touched that OS since 2006...

Re:You may find THIS, interesting... apk by Bengie · 2012-10-01 15:52 · Score: 1

"I do this in Opera's "By Site" preferences - setting ALL pages by default, not being able to run:

1.) Cookies
2.) Scripts
3.) Plugins"

And all of my sites suddenly don't work.

The point is I should be able to browse the full-featured web without slowdowns. I shouldn't have to disable 90% of the "features" of a web-page because of latency sensitive loading. What you're suggesting is a bandaid to the problem.

Re:I beat the DNS part (in part) by SuricouRaven · 2012-10-01 21:12 · Score: 0

You could make a script that runs every week and updates the hosts list.

Re:might have cared... by RaceProUK · 2012-10-02 02:11 · Score: 1

See my sig :)

--
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun

Downmodding my post to hide it? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-03 03:07 · Score: 0

Don't even try - this brings it right back into view, trolls...

* Additonally: I challenge anyone to disprove the points I put up in my post you bogusly downmodded here -> http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3156173&cid=41516233 also...

(You can't, you know it, I know it, & anyone else reading with 1/2 a brain knows it... you FAIL, trolls!)

APK

P.S.=> You trolling wusses make me laugh with your totally computing-technically UNJUSTIFIABLE downmods of my posts...

... apk

Downmodding my posts to try "hide" them, trolls? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-03 03:31 · Score: 0

Don't even try - this brings it right back into view, trolls...

* Additonally: I challenge anyone to disprove the points I put up in my post you bogusly downmodded here -> http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3156173&cid=41516905 also...

After all - We ALL know who the REAL TROLLS are after you downmodded my post, and are unable to disprove my technical points in it, now don't we?? Of course we do, and, it's not myself...

(You can't, you know it, I know it, & anyone else reading with 1/2 a brain knows it... you FAIL, trolls!)

APK

P.S.=> You trolling wusses make me laugh with your totally computing-technically UNJUSTIFIABLE downmods of my posts...

... apk

Good choice (especially if you don't script) by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-03 05:46 · Score: 0

"I don't write scripts. I decided to use apk's program http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3156173&cid=41518191" - by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02, @09:43AM (#41524865)

Per my subject-line above - I notice they downmodded you too!

* LMAO - How lame, when that's "the best trolls got", every time on this subject, vs. myself!

APK

P.S.=> Compared to a GUI version of this, scripts suck!

(Especially for someone that can't script!)

However - I have seen, & written, "scripts" for this too (via Python, with my nephew (who did the BULK of the work, after my suggesting that he have SOMETHING to show potential employers on interviews since he was in RIT @ the time... I just added err-trapping + better filtering, while coaching him on WHAT NEEDS TO BE "LOOKED OUT" FOR when processing hosts file data)).

I've also seen *NIX shellscripts that can do a lot of what needs doing too for this type of work, but... if/when you don't script? This is for you - saves you time, & effort!

... apk

Re:You may find THIS, interesting... apk by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-03 09:18 · Score: 0

Learn to read moron (you messed up big) http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3156173&cid=41524271

143 comments