On Sat, 23 Sep 2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>> You just don't get it. There is _NO_ 100% solution that will
>> stop every single user from ever experiencing disk corruption,
>> and hence fsck from needing to be ran. It is impossible for fsck
>> to automatically repair filesystems 100% of the time in an
>> acceptable way without manual intervention. Therefore, if
>> someone can't use fsck, doesn't want to reinstall, and can't pay
>> someone to fix it for them, then they shouldn't use a computer.
>
>The fact there is no 100% solution is no excuse to not take steps to
>reduce probability of problems.
I agree. The user should do whatever they can to reduce the
chance of problems. Absolutely.
>One way is to improve the init scripts, the other one is to
How so exactly? I'm not disagreeing here, I think that if there
is room for improvement, then it should at least be looked at,
and perhaps some changes made. If you can come up with some
suggestions for improvements to the initscripts which truely are
useful, and do not interfere with the system in a way that others
expect, I would be glad to make the changes and send patches to
the initscripts maintainer. Let the suggestions be known though
or nobody can do anything...
>shift to a journaled FS (not necessarily Reiser) ASAP.
The journalled filesystems are not ready for widespread
dissemination yet. People will have differing opinions on this
topic however, as everyone has their own idea and reasoning of
what should be included. Linus cares about pure technical
matters and stability before all else. None of the journalled
fs's pass this test yet. The distributions have their own
mandate however, and some of them choose to include journalled
fs's, but they also choose to then handle any problems that may
or may not arise too. Personally, I use reiserfs, and recommend
it to anyone wanting to try journalling. ext3 as I understand is
going to be ready to go in about 3 months, and is shaping up
nicely right now. Putting "beta" or "alpha" quality code in for
something as important as a filesystem though is likely to
INCREASE the chance of disk corruption rather than fix it.
If I were making decisions on what to put in a distribution
kernel, I would not put in either journalled fs until it is
accepted into the mainstream kernel by Linus. That is my own
opinion however, which is based on the "technical purity"
paradigm, and doesn't have anything to do with ease of use, or
end user paradigms at all.
>And as I said you can't design for Linux where you have individual
>users and small organizations like in Unix were such are virtually non
>existent.
Sorry, I can't understand that sentence to comment on it.. I'll
just assume it says something good and agree (50/50
chance..) ;o)
>Let's see a concrete example: fonts. RedHat uses a font server.
>Problem: what happens if font server has been stopped or does not
>start due to a corrupted font path: X does not start and in case box
>is at runlevel 5 there is an "X loop of death" where init indefintely
>tries to start it. Unless you are in a LAN and telnet is started you
>could end resetting the box (means an fsck) since it is very difficult
>to CTRL-ALT-DEL this box just the right moment.
I had that exact problem. Solving it was non-trivial too. I did
get it fixed though and the likelyhood of it happening again is
small. It was _my_ fault though, and nothing that the system
did. I foobed some stuff. ;o)
>If you live in a Unix world where the system administrator is ever a
>user with years of experience this is no big probelm since you know
>that a) he will not make stupid things like stopping the font server
>and b) he will able to cope with problems
Yeah, usually that is the case.
>if you live in a Linux world where people could be individual users
>caring for themselves from the start then you know some of them will
>stop font server thinking they don't need it and that they will unable
>to handle the situation.
That is a part of life. If you pour coffee on your keyboard,
nothing will stop you either. When people touch things without
knowing the ramifications ahead of time, they enter into the
"experiential learning" process. Put your hand in the fire and
you burn your hand, do it again and you burn your hand
again. After that, you are most likely not going to put your
hand in the fire again.
The system can only do so much hand-holding. If Linux is to
adopt a hand holding model for end users, then it should be
either a separate distribution called "Dummy Linux" (as in the
IDG xxxxx for dummies books), or something similar. It should
not ever be forced upon the world, and wouldn't ever be accepted
if someone tried. It is easy to fork Linux, or fork a
distribution of Linux should someone force stuff upon the
userbase that a lot of people do not want. Everything in Linux
needs to be optional, and "smart" things need to be VERY careful
because they are often the CAUSE of problems in other OS's like
Windows.
>In that case you start X with a fixed font path and in its
>setup script try to replace it with a font server (if font
>server is not running this will fail). This is a _one_ line
>patch. This way even in case font server does not work, X will
>not crash. Since no font server means no True Type fonts you
>could improve this by having a window popping up if font server
>is not running. Trivial.
>
>Does the above solve all X problems? No, but it makes X more robust
>and robustness is a must given Linux sociology.
Submit it to Red Hat bugzilla if you think it is an easy and
useful enhancement. If it doesn't interfere with anything, there
is a good chance your suggestion will be taken seriously. Red
Hat has always been very responsive to user suggestions, as long
as they are useful and don't impact anyone in a negative way.
You sound like you've got some good ideas for making Linux easier
to use. Just keep in mind that such enhancements must never take
away "joe sysadmins" power or judgement or they will not be
adopted. Try to come up with ideas that are non-intrusive, but
very useful, and I'll bet that if you suggest them to the right
people, you'll have good chances of getting changes made.
I am always interested in hearing new ideas for how to make Linux
friendlier for new users, and will do what I can to help in such
discussions.
Take care!
TTYL
--
Mike A. Harris - Linux advocate - Open source advocate
Copyright 2000 all rights reserved
----------
[Mike A. Harris Linux tip #1 - 50 line mode]
Is the 80x25 line screen too small for you? If you want more screen real
estate, you can set 50 column mode by editing your /etc/lilo.conf file, and
adding a new line with "vga=ext" to the global section near the top. Save
and exit, then run "lilo". Next time you boot, you'll have a nice big 80x50
screen.
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