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Xref: sserve comp.os.linux:31035 comp.os.386bsd.questions:1013 Newsgroups: comp.os.linux,comp.os.386bsd.questions Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!constellation!convex!convex!darwin.sura.net!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!news.claremont.edu!news!jwinstea From: jwinstea@fenris.claremont.edu (Jim Winstead Jr.) Subject: Re: 386bsd, linux: which runs more out of the box? In-Reply-To: curtis@cs.berkeley.edu's message of 24 Mar 1993 21:56:53 GMT Message-ID: <JWINSTEA.93Mar24143557@fenris.claremont.edu> Sender: news@news.claremont.edu (The News System) Organization: Harvey Mudd College, WIBSTR References: <CGD.93Mar23030821@erewhon.CS.Berkeley.EDU> <hwr.732890376@snert.ka.sub.org> <SCT.93Mar23224452@belnahua.dcs.ed.ac.uk> <1oqlf5$i8b@agate.berkeley.edu> Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1993 22:35:57 GMT Lines: 50 In article <1oqlf5$i8b@agate.berkeley.edu> curtis@cs.berkeley.edu (Curtis Yarvin) writes: In article <SCT.93Mar23224452@belnahua.dcs.ed.ac.uk> sct@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Stephen Tweedie) writes: >To the very best of my knowledge - and filesystems is What I Do on Linux >- there are no known bugs in the efs, minix or xiafs file systems. I've had huge problems with the minix filesystem in a number of recent releases, and I've seen reports of similar-looking efs snafus. This isn't a SCSI problem; I have IDE. What were the problems? I've seen a couple of people that very vehemently say that the minix (or ext or ext2 or xia) filesystem is buggy, and then provide absolutely no clue as to what problem they had! I don't expect any sort of full-on bug report that tells exactly what the problem is, but is it too much effort to say "fsck reported an inode was bad and said it fixed it, but next time I run fsck, it complains about the same thing!" My guess, in fact, is that the bug is in fsck (and efsck, which is based on fsck). The "standard" SLS system doesn't run fsck on boot, so it's not surprising that there have been few such bug reports; I think we might see a lot more if Peter got round to putting a decent shutdown/rc package in SLS. I do run fsck on boot on all of my partitions, and I haven't had a significant filesystem problem with Linux since the very first versions of the extended filesystem. Not a single one, and that's under lots of heavy use. (Heavy use = X + kernel compilation + other stuff). If you want an /etc/rc script that handles automatically doing fsck upon bootup, let me know and I'll send you one. It also handles runlevels and has potential to do all sorts of pretty neat stuff once it's completely finished, and it doesn't rely on a funky init program, but just uses the simpleinit from poeigl. I don't mean to be complaining about free software, but I've lost a lot of valuable data from the minix fs on a lot of occasions, and it rather disturbs me when people claim that it's bug-free. Fsck is a necessary part of the filesystem; if you can't recover all written data after an arbitrary crash, then your filesystem is broken. Period. If you aren't backing up important data on a regular basis, you are broken. Period. -- loveritablessencentipedependentalism+ Jim Winstead Jr. (CSci '95) andaterrificklengtherealityearguessy| Harvey Mudd College, WIBSTR mpathybridgenerationiceremonymphysic| jwinstea@jarthur.Claremont.EDU alendareadvertisexpresshothoughthend+ or jwinstea@fenris.Claremont.EDU