>
> Whither backups? A journaled filesystem will NOT protect against: 1)
> failed hard drive; 2) hacker damage; 3) virus/worm damage; 4) accidental
> file deletions or modifications. In my experience managing about 300
> computers, hard drives fail more often than it is necessary to run fsck
> "manually." I think "spreading the gospel" about making regular backups
> is at least as important as a journaled filesystem.
>
First: for private users there is no reasonably priced solution for
backing up a 20G disk spevcilly since they should have at least three
complete backups of it.
Second: In corporate settings backups are good for toy applications
but in the crucial ones (say plane reservation) you will want to
restart with an image of your data like it was the second before the
crash since your boss will have have you shot twice if you restart
from a 24 hours old image.
In other words backups are not a substitute for a journalled filesytem.
Neither is the opposite.
> It would also be a good idea to have some hardcopy documentation which
> explains these sorts of recovery procedures since you can't get to
> online documentation if your system is down--I think there's something
> in LDP but I don't know off the top of my head. BTW you could have used
> e2fsck with the "-y" flag and not have to hit "y" a billion times, or
In fact we could sophisticate this a bit more.
if egrep -q 'Alan Cox|Linus' /etc/passwd
then
e2fsck
else
e2fsck -y
fi
:-)
> you could have piped the "yes" command to e2fsck like "yes | e2fsck."
> In any case, "killer apps" and ease of use are apt to be more important
> factors in attracting unsophisticated users rather than a journaled FS
> IMHO.
>
Be reasonably tolerant to user errors is important for unsophisticated
users. Unix people tend to assume Linux is like Unix where users had
some training before real use and then some months or yeatrs practice
before being allowed to become system administrators. This is wrong:
in Linux you have private users and these will have to care for the
box with only minutes experience. That means they will mistakes so
you must put safety nets
> Back to the original issue, a ReiserFS packaged kernel sounds like a job
> for folks involved with the development of ReiserFS, or possibly for
> inclusion in Powertools, but not in the standard distribution since I
> don't think it's the sort of thing you want an unsophisticated user to
> muck around with. Knowing how to patch and build your own custom kernel
> seems like a fair piece of prerequisite knowledge to have before
> experimenting with ReiserFS. Software RAID did eventually find its way
> into the stock kernel, but not until it was reasonably stable and safe
> for the unwashed masses.
>
No requisite is having ReiserFS in the distrib not knowing how to
compile a kernel. Of course prerequisite is TReiserFs being ready for
prime-time.
--
Jean Francois Martinez
Project Independence: Linux for the Masses
http://www.independence.seul.org
_______________________________________________
Redhat-devel-list mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-devel-list
