Arch Linux

buttons

Member

From: NJ, USA

Registered: 2007-08-04

Posts: 620

PSA: Do you remember a time before journaled file systems? (netbooks)

I didn't either.  So when I read "You should format your SSD-based netbook with ext2 because journals write too much and SSDs have a write limit," I thought, "Seems logical.  What could go wrong?"

Apparently I didn't remember the dark ages, when men were men and a power failure meant you lost your partition table.

So I'm having a BLAST with my new dell mini, and reading this guide, and it says to load a hotplug module for your SD cards.  I wonder, as any computer scientist would, whether it was really hotpluggable with this driver loaded.  So I put an SD card in, formatted it with ext2, mounted it, and proceeded to remove it from the system.

Freeze!

Guess it's not so hotpluggable.

Reboot.

No root filesystem.

Actually, it was there, but most of the files were either zeroed out or acted as if they had never been edited, i.e., blissfully newborn rc.conf, complete with defaults.

So, use journals.  It's formatted with ext3 this time.

Last edited by buttons (2008-12-15 04:21:11)

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Cthulhu For President!

fumbles

Member

Registered: 2006-12-22

Posts: 246

Re: PSA: Do you remember a time before journaled file systems? (netbooks)

FAT (or HFS) isn't journaled, everytime pre-Win2k crashed it required a full ScanDisk which took ages! ext2 is the same, although since it's a SSD that isn't that much of a problem.

Depending on the nature of the crash a journal might not have saved you from that. Just because it has a journel doesn't mean the partition table won't be dumped.