*BSD News Article 13332


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Newsgroups: comp.os.linux,comp.os.386bsd.questions
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!linac!att!cbnewse!sph1
From: sph1@cbnewse.cb.att.com (stephen.p.hill)
Subject: Re: 386bsd, linux: which runs more out of the box?
Organization: AT&T
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1993 00:16:49 GMT
Message-ID: <1993Mar25.001649.11604@cbnewse.cb.att.com>
Followup-To: poster
Summary: no fs problems
References: <CGD.93Mar23030821@erewhon.CS.Berkeley.EDU> <JWINSTEA.93Mar24143557@fenris.claremont.edu>
Lines: 49

In article <JWINSTEA.93Mar24143557@fenris.claremont.edu>, jwinstea@fenris.claremont.edu (Jim Winstead Jr.) writes:

(in response to many other postings about fs problems )

> 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 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).

So many people are posting about having problems that perhaps 
there really is some kind of problem?  Maybe a kernel bug which 
only causes problems with specific hardware?  I have never had 
a single filesystem problem at all (not counting the 3 or 4 times 
fsck has reported something minor AND FIXED IT).  I started 11 
months ago with 4 minix filesystems.  For that last 3 months I 
have had one minix fs ( the root fs ) and one ext2fs (/usr).  
Nary a problem at all.

On the other hand, I usually only run it for about 3 - 4 hours 
a day.  Occasionally I will leave it up for 12 or 14 hours 
if I want to do a loooong unattended download or a huge 
compile like pspice.  I fsck both the fs's about once a 
week rather than every boot: I am lazy.

I often do crazy thing ( like 'mv'ing sizable files between 
the two filesystems ) that cause lots of disk I/O at the 
same time I am eating up CPU time with something else.  I run 
other heavy disk I/O during kernel compiles, etc.  I have never 
had a problem.

> If you aren't backing up important data on a regular basis, you are
> broken.  Period.

I guess I am broken, then.  I keep thinking about doing it, but 
I never get around to it.  No major disasters yet... (it is 
sure to happen after saying that )


Stephen Hill
sph@ihlpe.ih.att.com
sph1@cbnewse.att.com

Linux is great!