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On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:39:20 GMT,
alt wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:46:17 -0600, Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
>
>
>>> That being said, Ubuntu really likes the laptop
>>
>> You better hope it doesn't destroy the hard disk.
>
> Been running Ubuntu for over a year now. Never had a problem that
> resembled that. Not data corruption, not outright destruction.


It appears to be related to aggressive bios settings and some models of
HD. XP is reported by some of the commenters to have the same problem.




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--
Jim Richardson http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
"The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program"
-- Larry Niven

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On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:45:57 -0600,
Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 12:40:05 -0600, thad05@tux.glaci.delete-this.com wrote:
>
>> alt wrote:
>>> On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:46:17 -0600, Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>> That being said, Ubuntu really likes the laptop
>>>>
>>>> You better hope it doesn't destroy the hard disk.
>>>
>>> Been running Ubuntu for over a year now. Never had a problem that
>>> resembled that. Not data corruption, not outright destruction.
>>
>> I'm running Ubuntu 7.10 on my harddrive and the performance stats
>> show no sign of the rumored spindown bug. Perhaps it has been
>> patched already? Or did it only occur in very specific configurations?
>> Don't know... but I'm a very happy Linux user.
>
> ARe you running a laptop in laptop mode? That's where the problem is.


No, it's less common than that. It seems to be related to bios, laptop
mode, and HD model.

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--
Jim Richardson http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
Time is never wasted when you're wasted all the time.
-- Catherine Zandonella

* thad05@tux.glaci.delete-this.com fired off this tart reply:

> alt wrote:
>> On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:46:17 -0600, Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
>>
>>>> That being said, Ubuntu really likes the laptop
>>>
>>> You better hope it doesn't destroy the hard disk.
>>
>> Been running Ubuntu for over a year now. Never had a problem that
>> resembled that. Not data corruption, not outright destruction.
>
> I'm running Ubuntu 7.10 on my harddrive and the performance stats
> show no sign of the rumored spindown bug. Perhaps it has been
> patched already? Or did it only occur in very specific configurations?
> Don't know... but I'm a very happy Linux user.

I get that alert on my laptop. The drive, nonetheless, spins down
properly.

--
Tux rox!

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On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:01:36 -0600,
Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:14:18 -0500, Linonut wrote:
>
>>> I'll remind you never to hire Mr. ext3 or Mrs. XFS:
>>>
>>> http://www.webservertalk.com/archive...5-1037740.html
>>
>> There's a good reason why one of the posters in there recommends using
>> maildir format instead of mbox.
>
> For what it's worth, I agree that maildir is a far superior format, however
> it's a shame that so little mail software for Linux supports maildir
> without patches, particularly pop3 and imap daemons.


a quick apt search on my Ubuntu box returns the following options.

pop3:

dovecot
courier
solid-pop3d
teapop

imap:

dovecot
courier
bincimap
mailutils-imap4d


There's a few imap and pop3 daemons that *don't* support maildir, but
most of them on Ubuntu seem to do so.

Client side, there's a lot of maildir supporting clients. Including
Evolution and Kmail, and of course, the ever popular mutt.

Maybe you were thinking of some other thing you wanted to claim lacked
support in Linux?


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--
Jim Richardson http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
Think for yourselves and allow others the privilege to do the same.
- Voltaire

* Erik Funkenbusch fired off this tart reply:

> On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:14:18 -0500, Linonut wrote:
>
>>> I'll remind you never to hire Mr. ext3 or Mrs. XFS:
>>>
>>> http://www.webservertalk.com/archive...5-1037740.html
>>
>> There's a good reason why one of the posters in there recommends using
>> maildir format instead of mbox.
>
> For what it's worth, I agree that maildir is a far superior format, however
> it's a shame that so little mail software for Linux supports maildir
> without patches, particularly pop3 and imap daemons.

It looks like the biggie, Thunderbird, doesn't. But it doesn't use
mbox, either, if you're connecting to a POP3 server. It does seem that
it uses mbox if you connect to an IMAP server, though. But then
WikiPedia says:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maildir...by_implication

Many mail readers do not support Maildir but do support remote
access formats such as IMAP. Since there are several IMAP mail
stores that support Maildir, any mail reader that supports IMAP
such as Microsoft Outlook, Pine, or Mozilla Thunderbird can be used
to access Maildir folders.

The Maildir standard cannot be implemented without modification on
systems running Microsoft Windows, which does not tolerate colons
in filenames. There is no technical reason why software on Windows
cannot use an alternative (such as ";", or "-") however lacking any
way of updating the specification there has been no agreement on
what character this should be. One Windows program may write
Maildir files that are unreadable to another Windows program.

Evolution uses MH (one file per message), apparently.

But maildrop, procmail, and mutt do use maildir, without patches. And
it is easy to set up fetchmail to use procmail.

That same Wiki URL lists 9 mail servers, 3 delivery agents, 6 mail
readers, and 2 mail indexes.

--
Tux rox!

* Erik Funkenbusch fired off this tart reply:

> On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:22:17 -0500, Linonut wrote:
>
>> Defragmenting on Linux (or Windows) is easy:
>>
>> 1. Free up some disk space.
>>
>> 2. Move files to one filesystem, then back again. (This would be
>> much faster than any single-partition defrag, anyway.)
>>
>> Obviously, there are some issues with doing this on a running system.
>> For instance, the defrag app requires that the filesystem not be
>> mounted.
>
> That's not a very good solution, for a variety of reasons.

As I noted.

> First, a defrag
> app can be selective of precisely which sectors a file is moved to,
> allowing for various algorithms to improve read performance. An example is
> to place files that are frequently read at the same time together, or in a
> specific order that improves head efficiency.

So can a filesystem driver.

> Of course that's pretty useless on a file or web server, since multiple,
> concurrent access by multiple people makes this very difficult to predict.

Agreed.

--
Tux rox!

* Erik Funkenbusch fired off this tart reply:

> On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:23:01 -0500, Linonut wrote:
>
>> * alt fired off this tart reply:
>>
>>> On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:46:17 -0600, Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>> That being said, Ubuntu really likes the laptop
>>>>
>>>> You better hope it doesn't destroy the hard disk.
>>>
>>> Been running Ubuntu for over a year now. Never had a problem that
>>> resembled that. Not data corruption, not outright destruction.
>>
>> I run debian on all my laptops. Erik's full of it.
>
> I said ubuntu, not debian. Yes, ubuntu is based on debian, but it has it's
> own configurations.
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ort/+bug/59695

Ah, it was a different problem I was thinking of.

Interesting.

My Debian DELL laptop I bought many years ago was always showing this
symptom:

* frequent HD clicks -- more than one per 3 minutes while idle,
louder than the typical access sounds. Often more than twice per
minute.

It drove me nuts, listening to it.

However, that laptop is still going strong, with the original drive.

I like this guy:

I had used my old hard drive for more than 4 years under Windows.
However, after installing Ubuntu on it, it died in a few months. I
was wondering if Ubuntu had anything to do with it, now I know it was
probably the culprit.

My daughter had a hard drive die on her Windows laptop, after about a
years. I had one die on my old NT laptop, after some years. So who knows?

--
Tux rox!

On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:01:26 -0800, Jim Richardson wrote:

>> For what it's worth, I agree that maildir is a far superior format, however
>> it's a shame that so little mail software for Linux supports maildir
>> without patches, particularly pop3 and imap daemons.
>
> a quick apt search on my Ubuntu box returns the following options.
>
> pop3:
>
> dovecot
> courier
> solid-pop3d
> teapop
>
> imap:
>
> dovecot
> courier
> bincimap
> mailutils-imap4d
>
> There's a few imap and pop3 daemons that *don't* support maildir, but
> most of them on Ubuntu seem to do so.

It's likely that ubuntu applies many of the common patches out there.
Courier, in particular, is well know to require patching to support
maildir.

> Client side, there's a lot of maildir supporting clients. Including
> Evolution and Kmail, and of course, the ever popular mutt.
>
> Maybe you were thinking of some other thing you wanted to claim lacked
> support in Linux?

I don't typically deal with local maildir or mbox formats, even on Linux,
as usually the mailserver is on a different machine.

On 2007-11-21, Erik Funkenbusch claimed:

> So, what that means is that people that complain about the high level of
> fragmentation in Windows, and low level of fragmetation in Linux are using
> two wildly different measurements.

The main measurement I use is one of feel. If I let linux on a slow
machine (500MHz, 5400 RPM drive, 384M PC100 RAM) get to 5%
fragmentation, it's still more responsive than allowing the machine at
work (1.7GHz, 5400 RPM drive [I think, perhaps 7200, though I doubt
it], 512M PC2700 RAM) with 5% fragmentation.

Who gives a rat's ass if it *feels* good or bad and the stats say it
shouldn't? The fragmentation stats can't judge responsiveness.

That's why I don't like using (k|x|n)ubuntu. I get hesitations when I
run them. I can't quatify it in a way that says "Do this and it will
happen" or "Use this kind of $HARDWARE to get the effect". All I can
say is, it happens to me, and I don't like it.

The same sort of thing with Windows. If the fragmentation gets to 5%, I
start looking for a chance to defrag because I know it's close to the
time it becomes difficult to use. On every machine I've ever used it
on.

With linux, 5% is nothing. Most of the time it doesn't get that high.
But I've had drives do it, and they stayed responsive right up to the
time they were full.

--
Running Windows means never having to say: Task Complete!

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On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 16:22:49 -0600,
Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:01:26 -0800, Jim Richardson wrote:
>
>>> For what it's worth, I agree that maildir is a far superior format, however
>>> it's a shame that so little mail software for Linux supports maildir
>>> without patches, particularly pop3 and imap daemons.
>>
>> a quick apt search on my Ubuntu box returns the following options.
>>
>> pop3:
>>
>> dovecot
>> courier
>> solid-pop3d
>> teapop
>>
>> imap:
>>
>> dovecot
>> courier
>> bincimap
>> mailutils-imap4d
>>
>> There's a few imap and pop3 daemons that *don't* support maildir, but
>> most of them on Ubuntu seem to do so.
>
> It's likely that ubuntu applies many of the common patches out there.
> Courier, in particular, is well know to require patching to support
> maildir.
>


Unless by "patching" you mean "compile the code normally"...







Courier evolved out of several related projects, that merged together
(more on that later). Courier implements SMTP extensions for mailing
list management and spam filtering. Courier can function as an
intermediate mail relay, relaying mail between an internal LAN and the
Internet, or perform final delivery to mailboxes. Courier uses maildirs
as its native mail storage format, but it can also deliver mail to
legacy mailbox files as well. Courier's configuration is set by plain
text files and Perl scripts. Most of Courier's configuration can now be
adjusted from a web browser, using Courier's web-based administration
module.






Courier uses maildirs as its native mail storage format



>> Client side, there's a lot of maildir supporting clients. Including
>> Evolution and Kmail, and of course, the ever popular mutt.
>>
>> Maybe you were thinking of some other thing you wanted to claim lacked
>> support in Linux?
>
> I don't typically deal with local maildir or mbox formats, even on Linux,
> as usually the mailserver is on a different machine.


Other than clients and servers, what else were you claiming that Linux
didn't have many of that support maildir?




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--
Jim Richardson http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
You know, there's a word for people who
think that everyone is out to get them...'
`Yes! Perceptive!' --Woody Allen

On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 16:55:05 -0600, Sinister Midget wrote:


>On 2007-11-21, Erik Funkenbusch claimed:

>> So, what that means is that people that complain about the high level of
>> fragmentation in Windows, and low level of fragmetation in Linux are using
>> two wildly different measurements.

>The main measurement I use is one of feel. If I let linux on a slow
>machine (500MHz, 5400 RPM drive, 384M PC100 RAM) get to 5%
>fragmentation, it's still more responsive than allowing the machine at
>work (1.7GHz, 5400 RPM drive [I think, perhaps 7200, though I doubt
>it], 512M PC2700 RAM) with 5% fragmentation.

>Who gives a rat's ass if it *feels* good or bad and the stats say it
>shouldn't? The fragmentation stats can't judge responsiveness.

Windows has far more serious problems than file system fragmentation. An idle
system with 4ghz of processor, a gig of ram, and a 7ms hard drive that can move
50MB/s will still often lock up for 5-30 seconds at a time for doing trivial
activities such as opening the actions window for the desktop so that a user can
create an empty folder. Even if the file system were instantanious, the desktop
would still be a pain in the ass to use.

On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 16:36:59 -0500, Linonut wrote:

> * Erik Funkenbusch fired off this tart reply:
>
>> On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:23:01 -0500, Linonut wrote:
>>
>>> * alt fired off this tart reply:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:46:17 -0600, Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>> That being said, Ubuntu really likes the laptop
>>>>>
>>>>> You better hope it doesn't destroy the hard disk.
>>>>
>>>> Been running Ubuntu for over a year now. Never had a problem that
>>>> resembled that. Not data corruption, not outright destruction.
>>>
>>> I run debian on all my laptops. Erik's full of it.
>>
>> I said ubuntu, not debian. Yes, ubuntu is based on debian, but it has
>> it's own configurations.
>>
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ort/+bug/59695
>
> Ah, it was a different problem I was thinking of.
>
> Interesting.

Note, however, that this is NOT a bug in Ubuntu, but a misconfiguration
of default settings in their firmware by certain HD manufacturers.
Ubuntu's only mistake is respecting the manufacturer's programmed-in
defaults on the presumption that the manufacturer knows the best settings
for their own devices.

The problem doesn't surface in Windows or OS-X because both operating
systems override the manufacturer defaults. I suppose this has led some
HD manufacturers to get sloppy with their settings, figuring they'll just
get overridden anyway.

On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 12:40:05 -0600, thad05 wrote:

> alt wrote:
>> On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:46:17 -0600, Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
>>
>>
>>>> That being said, Ubuntu really likes the laptop
>>>
>>> You better hope it doesn't destroy the hard disk.
>>
>> Been running Ubuntu for over a year now. Never had a problem that
>> resembled that. Not data corruption, not outright destruction.
>
> I'm running Ubuntu 7.10 on my harddrive and the performance stats show
> no sign of the rumored spindown bug. Perhaps it has been patched
> already? Or did it only occur in very specific configurations? Don't
> know... but I'm a very happy Linux user.

Only in certain brands of HD's where the manufacturer programmed
incorrect settings into their firmware. Linux developers mistakenly
assumed that the manufacturer knows the best settings for their device
and used the defaults recommended by the firmware. Windows and OS/X both
ignore the manufacturer-supplied settings -- thus demonstrating that two
wrongs can occasionally make a right.

AZ Nomad wrote:

> Windows has far more serious problems than file system fragmentation.
> An idle system with 4ghz of processor, a gig of ram, and a 7ms hard
> drive that can move 50MB/s will still often lock up for 5-30 seconds
> at a time for doing trivial activities such as opening the actions
> window for the desktop so that a user can create an empty folder.

Yeah, you'll be posting your YouTube video proof real soon, right lamer?

Peter Köhlmann wrote:
> DFS wrote:

>> If they don't need defragmenting, why do defragmenters even exist for
>> Linux/OSS filesystems in the first place?
>
> Oh, you can certainly point us to those, right, DumbFull****?

Certainly, Herr Spast

http://freshmeat.net/projects/shake/
http://freshmeat.net/projects/defrag/
http://www.penguin-soft.com/penguin/man/8/xfs_fsr.html
http://e2compr.sourceforge.net/attic/defrag.html



>> uh duh... my names Dumb Willie.... uh duh.
>
> No. It is DumbFull**** for a reason

None that make any sense except to your mindless self.

On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 01:36:51 -0000, tramp wrote:

> Note, however, that this is NOT a bug in Ubuntu, but a misconfiguration
> of default settings in their firmware by certain HD manufacturers.
> Ubuntu's only mistake is respecting the manufacturer's programmed-in
> defaults on the presumption that the manufacturer knows the best settings
> for their own devices.
>
> The problem doesn't surface in Windows or OS-X because both operating
> systems override the manufacturer defaults. I suppose this has led some
> HD manufacturers to get sloppy with their settings, figuring they'll just
> get overridden anyway.

Yes, it is a bug in ubuntu. An operating system, especially on commodity
hardware has to take into account quirks and bugs in hardware and work
around them. You should see the Linux ATAPI code, for instance.. it's
riddled with various code paths and patches for different chipsets.

Yeah, it's not fair, but it's the price of doing business on commodity
hardware.

HangEveryRepubliKKKan wrote:

>
> "William Poaster" wrote \> Here's why linux doesn't
> need it:
>>
http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/ind..._defragmenting
\
>
> Why does Linux need defragmenting
>
> http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/2270

/quote
This so often repeated myth is getting so old and so boring. And untrue.
Linux doesn't need defragmenting, because its filesystem handling is not so
stupid like when using several decades old FAT
/unquote

Nice selfnuke

But then, you are "linux-sux". Nobody is as stupid as you are. Not even
OxRetard
--
The Day Microsoft makes something that does not suck is probably
the day they start making vacuum cleaners.

tramp wrote:

> On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 12:40:05 -0600, thad05 wrote:
>
>> alt wrote:
>>> On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:46:17 -0600, Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>> That being said, Ubuntu really likes the laptop
>>>>
>>>> You better hope it doesn't destroy the hard disk.
>>>
>>> Been running Ubuntu for over a year now. Never had a problem that
>>> resembled that. Not data corruption, not outright destruction.
>>
>> I'm running Ubuntu 7.10 on my harddrive and the performance stats show
>> no sign of the rumored spindown bug. Perhaps it has been patched
>> already? Or did it only occur in very specific configurations? Don't
>> know... but I'm a very happy Linux user.
>
> Only in certain brands of HD's where the manufacturer programmed
> incorrect settings into their firmware. Linux developers mistakenly
> assumed that the manufacturer knows the best settings for their device
> and used the defaults recommended by the firmware.

A fair assumption, you would think.

> Windows and OS/X both ignore the manufacturer-supplied settings -- thus
> demonstrating that two wrongs can occasionally make a right.

Interesting..

--
Operating systems: FreeBSD 6.2 (64bit), PC-BSD 1.4,
Testing: FreeBSD 7.0-BETA 2
Linux systems: Kubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy" amd64,
Debian 4.0, PCLinuxOS 2007.

On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 03:41:15 -0600, Erik Funkenbusch wrote:

> On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 01:36:51 -0000, tramp wrote:
>
>> Note, however, that this is NOT a bug in Ubuntu, but a misconfiguration
>> of default settings in their firmware by certain HD manufacturers.
>> Ubuntu's only mistake is respecting the manufacturer's programmed-in
>> defaults on the presumption that the manufacturer knows the best
>> settings for their own devices.
>>
>> The problem doesn't surface in Windows or OS-X because both operating
>> systems override the manufacturer defaults. I suppose this has led some
>> HD manufacturers to get sloppy with their settings, figuring they'll
>> just get overridden anyway.
>
> Yes, it is a bug in ubuntu.

No, it is not a bug in Ubuntu. Ubuntu makes no changes to hard-drive
settings that would cause this problem. This is a manufacture defect, for
which only the manufacturer is to blame.

> An operating system, especially on commodity hardware has to take into
> account quirks and bugs in hardware and work around them. You should
> see the Linux ATAPI code, for instance.. it's riddled with various code
> paths and patches for different chipsets.

Agreed, once the developers become aware of such a problem then no matter
whose fault it is, they owe it to their users to make a reasonable effort
to develop a work-around. I am really peeved that the Ubuntu developers
put this on the back burner and refused to move it up to critical until
mobbed by their users. However I see absolutely nothing wrong with
software developers assuming at the outset that a manufacturer knows the
best settings for his own designs.

> Yeah, it's not fair, but it's the price of doing business on commodity
> hardware.


Do you hold your Lord and Master, Microsoft, equally accountable for
defects in third-party products? If so, they owe me for a monitor...