Just to be more specific, I have worked in the field in another life. I don't consider myself as an expert but I am surely above average when comes the time to discuss oil well drilling.
It doesn't mean my opinion is the best although. Some more knowledgeable/. user has posted an interesting reply and this is always what I try to cause on/. to happen:
IMHO, of course BP tried the most likely quick fix solution and it would have been great if it worked. Unfortunately, those solutions had the least chances of success and when reading about those I just couldn't believe my eyes but who am I to know ?
Dynamite was used in Kuwait to put out the flames (lack of oxygen caused by the explosion), not to plug the well.
They still had to manually plug the hole after the flames were put out on a live well spitting gazes like crazy. Be careful for sparks and get the big wages;-)
The top kill procedure is well known in the oil fields. Pumping mud and cement is what oil drilling is all about.
Of course, at this depth, things may be more difficult. I read TFA and it makes sense except maybe for this part, which sound too much politically correct:
His agency has been working closely with BP staff to "ensure that procedures are conducted in a safe, environmentally sensitive manner and reduce any risk of additional impact," he told reporters in a conference call on Thursday.
Although he used the term "reduce the risk". There is always risk but this procedure seems the most logical one so far for all I know about oil well drilling. So I wouldn't say that "At this point it's pretty obvious that BP is out of ideas".
In fact, they probably tried to save money with the previous procedures they used;-)
I feel like Microsoft has never developed a key software innovation and is not that good at predictions. I guess a lot of people feel the same as me. They are excellent at marketing their products and at keeping a healthy business although.
I searched Google with the terms "Microsoft innovation" and "Microsoft best innovation" to try to prove myself wrong but I did not find anything. Try it for yourself.
The best innovation from Microsoft I could think of is DOS, but it was originally written to IBM specs then Microsoft recycled it into MS-DOS which is more a profiting after the fact attitude.
So here we go slashdotters: What is the best innovation Microsoft has brought to us and/or which Microsoft prophecy turned out to be the best prediction ?
As long as it is not a tinyurl link like the one you submit in every post which forces one to use telnet or netcat to find out where he is going to end up before actually going there...
Well, lynx will do it too but there is still a very slightly higher risk in theory;-)
Here is more for you then. The lyrics mentioning Alice Cooper from "What Kind Of Girl Do You Think We Are?" written by Frank Zappa. It seems on topic with this thread;-)
http://www.lyricstime.com/frank-zappa-what-kind-of-girl-do-you-think-we-are-lyrics.html... Mark: Well, I'll tell ya Well I get off bein' juked With a baby octopus And spewed upon with creamed corn . . . An' my girlfriend, she digs it With a hot Yoo-hoo bottle While somebody's screamin': CORKS 'N SAFETIES PIGS 'N DONKEYS ALICE COOPER, baby . . . WAAAAH!
Bob: Well, it gets me so hot I could scream
Chorus: ALICE COOPER, ALICE COOPER! WAAAAH! ALICE COOPER, ALICE COOPER! WAAAAH!...
So, are you saying that it is impossible to meet a requirement to have that occur only once every 25 years ?
All you need is redundancy of power supplies in the machines, redundancy of the power circuits and sensors to order a clean shutdown for whatever reason you may think of; room temperature to high, fire, smoke, etc.
Granted, those come at a greater cost, so do not expect them in discount data centers.
Additionally, if your kernel crashes, I suggest you fix your kernel instead, preferably before putting it on a production server.
So you are saying that a small server room is more reliable than a big data center ?
This is interesting from somebody who managed several large data centers.
Hint about failing air conditioning units: Sensors to perform a clean shutdown when room temperature is too high exist on this planet, not only on the Stargate Universe space ship;-)
Hint about breakers and UPS: you need redundancy of the circuits and redundancy of the power supplies in the machines. You will then be able to meet a requirement of a failure once every 25 years. It is rare well designed redundant circuits all fail at the same time.
Oh come on, my first post stated that I was "still on ext2" because those partitions were created before ext3 even existed. I do not run around disabling journaling as you suggest.
Damn, it frustrates me every time people don't take the time to read and analyze a post before replying...
My answer it yes, once every 25 years on average; I will do just that but I test the procedure often enough.
I have nothing against journaling FS. I merely stated that it doesn't bring much to my table. I also stated that IMHO, in your case, it brings you a false sense of confidence.
I sure enjoy NTFS using journaling on my laptop;-)
Oh, and just in case you do not know; some (most?) systems keep some critical data in RAM. Now, talk about pulling the power cord...
Pulling the power cord is unacceptable once you reach a certain level of data integrity requirements.
I control my own data center. If you don't, then you may have a point in using journaling to cover for the incompetency of the people you are dealing with. I believe in addressing the problem at the source.
Anyway, even journaling file systems may suffer serious damage when "you pull the power cord off the plug" as you suggested. Journaling FS are not magic you know;-)
> Even the best designed systems will run into unclean > shutdown situations from time to time so I would > always run with journaling on.
It depends what is time to time. If it is every 25 years, then I agree with you !;-) When that occurs, an fsck on ext2 will bring back the FS in a state that I would trust as much as a state reached from rebuilding from the journal, or pretty close enough. Seriously, it that case, I restore from a clean system image and backups/replicated data. You should do the same even if you use journaling. You seem to use journaling to address problems it can't really solve IMHO.
Nice try, that registry value only changes a hard coded value, that is no write algorithm to avoid fragmentation like ext2 FS has.
NTFS will still use the first space that fits it finds. Please re-read my other post.
Worse, what you talk about will make you waste space and get a "full drive" sooner as stated on the link below. I wouldn't recommend fooling around with those settings unless you know what you are doing and monitor the results with appropriate tools. You would be better off using a defragmenter. It is the standard solution with NTFS:
NTFS algorithm is kind of silly and will pick the first free block it encounters to begin to write a big file *without regards* for the amount of consecutive free blocks available there.
On the Windows install you are talking about, all it takes is a little temporary file getting deleted. NTFS encounter a couple free blocks freed by that file and starts writing there only to realize there is not enough space for the whole new file it needs to write once it uses the last consecutive free block available there.
In contrast, even ext2 FS keeps some knowledge of the global state of the FS so it will pick the best free available block to start to write the file *with regards* for the amount of consecutive blocks available.
I have never defragmented an ext2 FS in my life, the write algorithm takes care of keeping fragmentation low.
My machines never shutdown due to the lack of power, if it ever occurs they would perform a clean shutdown anyway. This should be the case for most servers IMHO.
I do not need journaling or any other type of FS overhead right now. If I move to journaling and/or copy on write FS. I will take it into account in my architecture and backup procedure to get the full benefit of it. I am not going to upgrade just for the fun of it.
Ok don't tell anybody but I am still on ext2, pretty stable in humble my opinion;-)
Jounaling and other functionality just isn't required for my servers and use cases. I would use ext3 or maybe even btrfs if I have to install Linux on a laptop.
Hmm... I am going to pass for now on servers. I might try it on desktops/workstations. Not that I use Ubuntu at all. Btrfs is supported by kernel 2.6.32 on other distros as well if you care to configure it properly.
I remember failure stories with other latest and greatest filesystems lately and I will let others continue to test and identify bugs before I use it on servers/SAN with critical data.
btrfs is a new copy on write filesystem for Linux...
Btrfs is under heavy development, but every effort is being made to keep the filesystem stable and fast. As of 2.6.31, we only plan to make forward compatible disk format changes, and many users have been experimenting with Btrfs on their systems with good results. Please email the Btrfs mailing list if you have any problems or questions while using Btrfs.
Slashdot Mirror
Just to be more specific, I have worked in the field in another life. I don't consider myself as an expert but I am surely above average when comes the time to discuss oil well drilling.
It doesn't mean my opinion is the best although. Some more knowledgeable /. user has posted an interesting reply and this is always what I try to cause on /. to happen:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1662156&cid=32317082
IMHO, of course BP tried the most likely quick fix solution and it would have been great if it worked. Unfortunately, those solutions had the least chances of success and when reading about those I just couldn't believe my eyes but who am I to know ?
Let's wish them luck with the next one ! ;-)
Dynamite was used in Kuwait to put out the flames (lack of oxygen caused by the explosion), not to plug the well.
They still had to manually plug the hole after the flames were put out on a live well spitting gazes like crazy. Be careful for sparks and get the big wages ;-)
Nuking is a pretty high risk gamble IMHO.
Let's wish them luck.
The top kill procedure is well known in the oil fields. Pumping mud and cement is what oil drilling is all about.
Of course, at this depth, things may be more difficult. I read TFA and it makes sense except maybe for this part, which sound too much politically correct:
His agency has been working closely with BP staff to "ensure that procedures are conducted in a safe, environmentally sensitive manner and reduce any risk of additional impact," he told reporters in a conference call on Thursday.
Although he used the term "reduce the risk". There is always risk but this procedure seems the most logical one so far for all I know about oil well drilling. So I wouldn't say that "At this point it's pretty obvious that BP is out of ideas".
In fact, they probably tried to save money with the previous procedures they used ;-)
"Component Object Model (COM) is a binary-interface standard for software componentry introduced by Microsoft in 1993."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model
"The idea of RPC (Remote Procedure Call) goes back at least as far as 1976"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_procedure_call
I feel like Microsoft has never developed a key software innovation and is not that good at predictions. I guess a lot of people feel the same as me. They are excellent at marketing their products and at keeping a healthy business although.
I searched Google with the terms "Microsoft innovation" and "Microsoft best innovation" to try to prove myself wrong but I did not find anything. Try it for yourself.
The best innovation from Microsoft I could think of is DOS, but it was originally written to IBM specs then Microsoft recycled it into MS-DOS which is more a profiting after the fact attitude.
So here we go slashdotters: What is the best innovation Microsoft has brought to us and/or which Microsoft prophecy turned out to be the best prediction ?
http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/microsoft.html
Having to go to a web site to find out which web site to go to seems redundant enough for me !
You could easily build and endless loop with that ;-)
As long as it is not a tinyurl link like the one you submit in every post which forces one to use telnet or netcat to find out where he is going to end up before actually going there...
Well, lynx will do it too but there is still a very slightly higher risk in theory ;-)
Youtube should be safer in theory than a tinyurl link so, IMHO, you are not helping yourself if you want people to actually click on the link. URL Shorteners were discussed on /. a while ago:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/11/14/184256/URL-Shorteners-Get-Some-Backup?art_pos=7
~$ telnet tinyurl.com 80 /yb3xk54 HTTP/1.1
Trying 216.218.139.84...
Connected to tinyurl.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET
host: tinyurl.com
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.12
Location: http://www.youtube.com/user/SanityInAnarchy#p/c/9163476757B9016C/0/fdVucvo-kDU
Content-type: text/html
Content-Length: 0
Connection: close
Date: Fri, 21 May 2010 02:09:51 GMT
Server: TinyURL/1.6
Connection closed by foreign host.
Apparently Twitter supports Unicode, which opens a whole range of new possibilities ;-)
http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2009/01/14/how-to-insert-graphics-in-twitter-messages/
Nope, it was Miss Crabtree:
http://spakatak.0catch.com/southpark/character_ms_crabtree.gif
Here is more for you then. The lyrics mentioning Alice Cooper from "What Kind Of Girl Do You Think We Are?" written by Frank Zappa. It seems on topic with this thread ;-)
http://www.lyricstime.com/frank-zappa-what-kind-of-girl-do-you-think-we-are-lyrics.html ...
Mark:
Well, I'll tell ya
Well I get off bein' juked
With a baby octopus
And spewed upon with creamed corn . . .
An' my girlfriend, she digs it
With a hot Yoo-hoo bottle
While somebody's screamin':
CORKS 'N SAFETIES
PIGS 'N DONKEYS
ALICE COOPER, baby . . .
WAAAAH!
Bob:
Well, it gets me so hot
I could scream
Chorus: ...
ALICE COOPER, ALICE COOPER! WAAAAH!
ALICE COOPER, ALICE COOPER! WAAAAH!
So, are you saying that it is impossible to meet a requirement to have that occur only once every 25 years ?
All you need is redundancy of power supplies in the machines, redundancy of the power circuits and sensors to order a clean shutdown for whatever reason you may think of; room temperature to high, fire, smoke, etc.
Granted, those come at a greater cost, so do not expect them in discount data centers.
Additionally, if your kernel crashes, I suggest you fix your kernel instead, preferably before putting it on a production server.
So you are saying that a small server room is more reliable than a big data center ?
This is interesting from somebody who managed several large data centers.
Hint about failing air conditioning units: Sensors to perform a clean shutdown when room temperature is too high exist on this planet, not only on the Stargate Universe space ship ;-)
Hint about breakers and UPS: you need redundancy of the circuits and redundancy of the power supplies in the machines. You will then be able to meet a requirement of a failure once every 25 years. It is rare well designed redundant circuits all fail at the same time.
Oh come on, my first post stated that I was "still on ext2" because those partitions were created before ext3 even existed. I do not run around disabling journaling as you suggest.
Damn, it frustrates me every time people don't take the time to read and analyze a post before replying...
My answer it yes, once every 25 years on average; I will do just that but I test the procedure often enough.
I have nothing against journaling FS. I merely stated that it doesn't bring much to my table. I also stated that IMHO, in your case, it brings you a false sense of confidence.
I sure enjoy NTFS using journaling on my laptop ;-)
Oh, and just in case you do not know; some (most?) systems keep some critical data in RAM. Now, talk about pulling the power cord...
Pulling the power cord is unacceptable once you reach a certain level of data integrity requirements.
I am a happy Slackware user since 1995 but this is just me, milleage may vary.
I control my own data center. If you don't, then you may have a point in using journaling to cover for the incompetency of the people you are dealing with. I believe in addressing the problem at the source.
Anyway, even journaling file systems may suffer serious damage when "you pull the power cord off the plug" as you suggested. Journaling FS are not magic you know ;-)
> Even the best designed systems will run into unclean
> shutdown situations from time to time so I would
> always run with journaling on.
It depends what is time to time. If it is every 25 years, then I agree with you ! ;-) When that occurs, an fsck on ext2 will bring back the FS in a state that I would trust as much as a state reached from rebuilding from the journal, or pretty close enough. Seriously, it that case, I restore from a clean system image and backups/replicated data. You should do the same even if you use journaling. You seem to use journaling to address problems it can't really solve IMHO.
http://www.virtualdub.org/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=71
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/ntfs/relFrag-c.html
http://www.virtualdub.org/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=71
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/ntfs/relFrag-c.html
Nice try, that registry value only changes a hard coded value, that is no write algorithm to avoid fragmentation like ext2 FS has.
NTFS will still use the first space that fits it finds. Please re-read my other post.
Worse, what you talk about will make you waste space and get a "full drive" sooner as stated on the link below. I wouldn't recommend fooling around with those settings unless you know what you are doing and monitor the results with appropriate tools. You would be better off using a defragmenter. It is the standard solution with NTFS:
http://www.dev-toast.com/?s=contigfileallocsize
NTFS algorithm is kind of silly and will pick the first free block it encounters to begin to write a big file *without regards* for the amount of consecutive free blocks available there.
On the Windows install you are talking about, all it takes is a little temporary file getting deleted. NTFS encounter a couple free blocks freed by that file and starts writing there only to realize there is not enough space for the whole new file it needs to write once it uses the last consecutive free block available there.
In contrast, even ext2 FS keeps some knowledge of the global state of the FS so it will pick the best free available block to start to write the file *with regards* for the amount of consecutive blocks available.
I have never defragmented an ext2 FS in my life, the write algorithm takes care of keeping fragmentation low.
Didn't you noticed I wrote: for my use cases
My machines never shutdown due to the lack of power, if it ever occurs they would perform a clean shutdown anyway. This should be the case for most servers IMHO.
I do not need journaling or any other type of FS overhead right now. If I move to journaling and/or copy on write FS. I will take it into account in my architecture and backup procedure to get the full benefit of it. I am not going to upgrade just for the fun of it.
If it ain't broken, don't fix it. ;-)
I not understand do -> do I not understand ?
In humble your opinion -> opinion In humble your ?
see, simple enough..
Ok don't tell anybody but I am still on ext2, pretty stable in humble my opinion ;-)
Jounaling and other functionality just isn't required for my servers and use cases. I would use ext3 or maybe even btrfs if I have to install Linux on a laptop.
Hmm... I am going to pass for now on servers. I might try it on desktops/workstations. Not that I use Ubuntu at all. Btrfs is supported by kernel 2.6.32 on other distros as well if you care to configure it properly.
I remember failure stories with other latest and greatest filesystems lately and I will let others continue to test and identify bugs before I use it on servers/SAN with critical data.
From the btrfs wiki https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page :
btrfs is a new copy on write filesystem for Linux...
Btrfs is under heavy development, but every effort is being made to keep the filesystem stable and fast. As of 2.6.31, we only plan to make forward compatible disk format changes, and many users have been experimenting with Btrfs on their systems with good results. Please email the Btrfs mailing list if you have any problems or questions while using Btrfs.
Do as I say don't do as I do, some politicians outside of Argentina also have that attitude ;-)