Devs potentially plan to remove soft updates feature from FFS reddit / BSD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ayleid96 · 2023-07-16 15:17 Read here: [http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20230706044554](http://und eadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20230706044554) ​ So OpenBSD 7.3 will (maybe) be last release with soft updates, not having that features makes me feel incredibly unsafe. What do you think about this? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mike_elapid · 2023-07-16 15:36 I think its a step back to go forwards. If this leads to a more progressive UFS filesystem then its probably worth it, I am sure the devs know more about it than we do ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ayleid96 · 2023-07-16 16:22 I hope you are right, proper FS should always have some safety mechanism just in case, in my opinion. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gumnos · 2023-07-16 18:58 My understanding is the path has been 1. no soft updates, writes are fairly safe (depending on whether you use the default settings or the riskier `async` option), but it's a bit slow 2. soft updates get added, writes are safe, but faster 3. adding more file-system features is hard because of soft-updates, so let's remove them [←we are here] 4. new UFS development can proceed without needing to deal with the complexities of soft-updates 5. exciting new UFS developments (profit!) So I expect filesystem-metadata operations will be a bit slower for a release or two, but with the promise of easier development in the future, I'm hopeful that improvements will arrive in multiple areas. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ben_bai · 2023-07-16 19:45 Reasons SMP unlocking of the VFS layer: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=168666483802245&w=2 Also hinting at some new development: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=168666939505958&w=2 This will take some time, especially b.c. it's dealing with filesystems. Nobody likes their data to be corrupted. I'm all for it. Especially if it means a chance to get WAPBL or even Hammer2 support sometimes. https://github.com/kusumi/openbsd_hammer2 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PunishedRaion · 2023-07-17 03:50 UFS is a weak filesystem, all things considered. It's a densely crufty code base. Soft dependencies was always an interesting idea but it has failed to provide the long-term performance and simplicity benefits. In other words, it failed to deliver. The BSDs are held back by not accepting a better filesystem such as XFS which is so well documented that a reverse engineered version of directory structure V2 would not be hard . You could also potentially do JFS or something else out there as well but xfs is probably the most well documented. It doesn't have to be directly interoperable with the Linux version but regardless I know I'm preaching to people who don't agree with me ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ayleid96 · 2023-07-17 03:56 It seems that obsd takes lots of consideration about amount of change they need to make in kernel/base in order to run some software. Obsd is more technically purist than convenient. Take a look at install.img, about 400 megs for base/kernel and fully finctional xorg distribution, thats awesome in 2023. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vermaden · 2023-07-17 06:32 Maybe OpenBSD will not import 'safe' filesystem with checksums like ZFS or HAMMER but at least they will cripple more the filesystem they already have :p ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ryunosuke_TSOU · 2023-07-17 08:02 OpenBSD does have [muxfs](https://sdadams.org/blog/introducing- muxfs/), it’s not perfect but it do serve as a alternative. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vermaden · 2023-07-17 08:05 I have heard about it - is it production ready now? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ryunosuke_TSOU · 2023-07-17 08:08 I haven’t use it yet, I only start using OpenBSD weeks ago. I found this by someone mentioning on hacker news. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vermaden · 2023-07-17 08:13 I am not sure that this is the right [1] repository - but if yes - then it was not updated for about a year ... [1] https://github.com/s-d-adams/muxfs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ryunosuke_TSOU · 2023-07-17 08:19 On the button of the session of “muxfs need you” do provide a link to GitHub and it’s the same as yours. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ayleid96 · 2023-07-17 09:51 OpenBSD goes more and more hardcore from release to release, i like that. Buckle up people, huge things are probably going to happen. I migrated from FreeBSD couple of days ago and i like this tech-purist- dont-give-a-damn and do-it-the-right-way mentality. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vermaden · 2023-07-17 11:54 I could not migrate to OpenBSD because - as one of its users wrote - its a 'NO OS' as shown below: - https://i.imgur.com/HNpZ5mM.png Basically too many things that I need daily are absent on OpenBSD while they work very well on FreeBSD. I am curious what forced you out of FreeBSD into OpenBSD. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ayleid96 · 2023-07-17 12:44 I understand, its not for everybody. Nothing forced me out of FreeBSD. I recently bough used laptop because i am probably going to relocate because of work, older intel gpu chip wont work on FreeBSD because port maintainer of mesa wont enable amber drivers by default despite some complaints on bugzilla and forums, wifi also constantly disconnects, hibernate/sleep doesn't work at all. So i installed obsd on that machine and everything mentioned above works out of the box. My desktop will remain with freebsd because of nvidia and some games i like to play. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vermaden · 2023-07-17 12:51 Thanks for sharing. Pity to hear that. I also often 'fight' for good defaults on FreeBSD. In the past one of such things was the 'audio/lame' package. It was available on OpenBSD while FreeBSD team was afraid to provide it ... same for WiFi drivers unfortunately. Regards. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- laffer1 · 2023-07-17 16:48 Dragonfly has hammer/hammer2 and freebsd/MidnightBSD/netbsd have zfs. UFS works for low memory scenarios but it’s not like there isn’t a better file system already available. Linux folks like new shiny too much and that’s why Linux rarely has a good file system. By the time they are stable, the next new shiny comes along and we repeat. I doubt most of us have a problem with xfs but I haven’t seen a compelling reason to put the work in when zfs is already better. Linux is due for a new chaos cycle soon. Ext4 is very stable and btrfs is starting to be. It’s time to break everything! My bet is they’ll start working on ssd optimized file systems like apple did. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PunishedRaion · 2023-07-17 17:04 > Dragonfly has hammer/hammer2 and freebsd/MidnightBSD/netbsd have zfs. Hey man, been a while. Haven't had time to hang out on IRC but I'll be on there sooner or later. Anyways I agree with your sentiment to some degree, excepting that neither of those are really designed for general purpose uses. They are highly specialized COW file systems. > UFS works for low memory scenarios but it’s not like there isn’t a better file system already available. My argument is simply that there's better filesystems that serve the general purpose role. You and me may not necessarily require the highest disk throughput and all that, but we are not say a server administration business trying to sell a product. If you look at raw performance figures, UFS/FFS is not particularly competitive. That's my biggest concern. Not every situation calls for ZFS or anything. > Linux folks like new shiny too much and that’s why Linux rarely has a good file system. By the time they are stable, the next new shiny comes along and we repeat. I somewhat disagree. While many Linux distros use ext4 which is an unstable mess, RHEL and SLES use XFS by default which has a few drawbacks (namely, volumes cannot be shrank) but it's far less crash prone than ext4. > I doubt most of us have a problem with xfs but I haven’t seen a compelling reason to put the work in when zfs is already better. Not better, just different. The other aspect is that ZFS requires a lot of adaptation and currently is a feeder project from ZFS on Linux, which e have previously, unpopularly stated is a non ideal situation where BSD is always a second class citizen. ext4 is not super great in my experience. When it works it works perfectly fine but when it breaks it's always going through backups time especially when a server is unclearly shut down and has a lot of lost + found fragmented inodes and data during the repair. I guess what I'm trying to say is xfs has three prominent benefits over ufs: 1. A standardized and well documented implementation which is stable and has already been ported from system v to Linux, so we know the code base is incredibly flexible to go from one system to another 2. All of the data structures are independent of things like page size or other architectural specific changes so the file system is always guaranteed to work across every architecture. This is not the case with btrfs or ext4 for example and is not the case for ufs as well. 3. The documentation out there is excellent and is more than enough to reconstruct the entire file system in its entirety under the BSD license. Now of course you might be asking why I haven't gone and done it and that's simply because I recognize my own limitations as a developer. Besides the fact that I have a new job that is demanding a lot of my time, the fact remains that I'm not hugely skilled with kernel dev. Given enough resources and time I could probably make a decent port, But ultimately at this very moment it's not something in my area of expertise. One of the reasons I do know this however is that I am funding file system development on irix. Now you might be asking yourself why I am putting actual money on the line for an operating system that hasn't been maintained in 20 years and the answer is that I am insane, that I fully embrace my insanity and acknowledge that my computing habits are not shared by the vast majority of the population. With all that said that's what most of my hobbyist time is devoted to is trying to slowly but surely free that operating system from its eternal torment in the vault of HP Enterprise. I realize this got a little incoherent towards the end and I apologize for that lol. It's been a tough time for me as a reason because of how much work has had to go into my job. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- laffer1 · 2023-07-17 17:15 As far as XFS goes, there is a read-only port in FreeBSD and MidnightBSD. Someone needs to finish it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PunishedRaion · 2023-07-17 17:37 I did actually look at the code. It looks to be a straight port at the Linux version dating the 2.4 era so if I were to ever do it, I would probably want to start over. For us, there is an eventual goal to make an open source version of XFS for IRIX. Once that is done it'll be released under a favorable permissive license and hopefully we can simply provide documentation on the general porting strategy. IRIX's vnode system is a little particular being the first of its kind but it shouldn't be a massive deal for any system that has a VFS layer. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SmartLog5295 · 2023-07-18 07:17 Time to trust the 'dev-ine' wisdom! Let's pray for a successful leap forward. 🙏