3 ms·

What’s crazy for me, after reading all this, is how wonderfully stable my Linux (kernel-level)[0] experience has been. I’ve never used any non-ext2/3/4 filesyst

by snazz 8y ago

What’s crazy for me, after reading all this, is how wonderfully stable my Linux (kernel-level)[0] experience has been. I’ve never used any non-ext2/3/4 filesystems, granted, so I haven’t used this code, but I find it hard to believe that these findings are indicative of the code I have used on a relatively run-of-the-mill amd64 machine. So maybe if you’re like me, using a fairly standard distro with the official kernel on somewhat normal hardware, you would have the benefit of millions others testing the same code. [0]: I have had more than my fair share of user land problems, but I have come to expect that on any platform.

chubot 8y ago
Yeah I've also had good experiences with Linux reliability. But that's because I intentionally stay on the "happy path" that's been tested by millions of others. I avoid changing any kernel settings and purposely choose bog-standard hardware (Dell). When you're on the other side, you're not just maintaining the happy path. You're maintaining every path! And I'm sure it is unbelievably complex and frustrating to work with. ----- Personally I would like software to move beyond "the happy path works" but that seems beyond the state of the art. I also think there is a big component of this: Operant Conditioning by Software Bugs https://blog.regehr.org/archives/861 https://blog.regehr.org/archives/861 Over time you get trained not to do anything "weird" on your computer, because you know that say opening too many programs at once can cause a lockup. Or you don't want to aggressively move your mouse too much when doing other expensive operations. (This may be in user space or the kernel, but either way you're trained not to do it.) There is another post that I can't find that is about "changing defaults". I used to be one of those people who tried to configure my system, but I've given up on that. The minute you have a custom configuration, you run into bugs, with both open source and commercial software. The kernel has thousands of runtime and compile-time options, so I have no doubt that there are thousands upon thousands of bugs available for you to experience if you change them in a way that nobody else does. :)
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > Or you don't want to aggressively move your mouse too much when doing other expensive operations. (This may be in user space or the kernel, but either way you're trained not to do it.) Operant conditioning by software bugs is totally a thing, but for this particular example I was trained into exactly opposite behaviour. I do move my mouse a lot during very resource-intensive computations, because that lets me gauge the load on my system (is there UI animation lag? is there cursor movement lag?), and in extreme cases, it can tell me when there's time to do a hard reboot. I've also learned through experience that screensavers, auto-locking, and even auto-poweroff of the screen can all turn what was a long computation into forced reboot, so avoiding long inactivity periods is important. This conditioning comes from me growing up with Windows, but I hear people brought up on Linux have their own reason - apparently it used to be the case (maybe it still is?) that some computations relying on PRNG would constantly deplete OS's entropy pool, and so just moving your mouse around would make those computations go faster.
kev009 8y ago
http://www2.rdrop.com/~paulmck/RCU/Validation.2018.03.15a.DATEfmt.pdf http://www2.rdrop.com/~paulmck/RCU/Validation.2018.03.15a.DA... Your lens is probably too small, Paul does a great job quantifying bug probability to more human terms in the above presentation. I ran all OS dev and support in an environment with 10000 FreeBSD systems and 3000 Linux systems in high scale production. The ratio of kernel panics was similar (although Linux tended to exhibit additional less rigorous failure modes due to more usage of work queues and other reasons). You could expect at least a couple faults per day depending on the quality of hardware and how far off the beaten path your system usage is at this scale. The big benefit I found with FreeBSD is that I could understand and fix the bugs, and I was generally intimidated by doing so on Linux.
barrkel 8y ago
I have never used a less reliable operating system than Linux in the presence of a changing count of monitors. You might classify that as userland, but it manifests as hard lockups on suspend, resume, monitor disconnect or reconnect.

by snazz 8y ago

chubot 8y ago

Yeah I've also had good experiences with Linux reliability. But that's because I intentionally stay on the "happy path" that's been tested by millions of others. I avoid changing any kernel settings and purposely choose bog-standard hardware (Dell). When you're on the other side, you're not just maintaining the happy path. You're maintaining every path! And I'm sure it is unbelievably complex and frustrating to work with. ----- Personally I would like software to move beyond "the happy path works" but that seems beyond the state of the art. I also think there is a big component of this: Operant Conditioning by Software Bugs https://blog.regehr.org/archives/861 https://blog.regehr.org/archives/861 Over time you get trained not to do anything "weird" on your computer, because you know that say opening too many programs at once can cause a lockup. Or you don't want to aggressively move your mouse too much when doing other expensive operations. (This may be in user space or the kernel, but either way you're trained not to do it.) There is another post that I can't find that is about "changing defaults". I used to be one of those people who tried to configure my system, but I've given up on that. The minute you have a custom configuration, you run into bugs, with both open source and commercial software. The kernel has thousands of runtime and compile-time options, so I have no doubt that there are thousands upon thousands of bugs available for you to experience if you change them in a way that nobody else does. :)

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> Or you don't want to aggressively move your mouse too much when doing other expensive operations. (This may be in user space or the kernel, but either way you're trained not to do it.) Operant conditioning by software bugs is totally a thing, but for this particular example I was trained into exactly opposite behaviour. I do move my mouse a lot during very resource-intensive computations, because that lets me gauge the load on my system (is there UI animation lag? is there cursor movement lag?), and in extreme cases, it can tell me when there's time to do a hard reboot. I've also learned through experience that screensavers, auto-locking, and even auto-poweroff of the screen can all turn what was a long computation into forced reboot, so avoiding long inactivity periods is important. This conditioning comes from me growing up with Windows, but I hear people brought up on Linux have their own reason - apparently it used to be the case (maybe it still is?) that some computations relying on PRNG would constantly deplete OS's entropy pool, and so just moving your mouse around would make those computations go faster.

kev009 8y ago

http://www2.rdrop.com/~paulmck/RCU/Validation.2018.03.15a.DATEfmt.pdf http://www2.rdrop.com/~paulmck/RCU/Validation.2018.03.15a.DA... Your lens is probably too small, Paul does a great job quantifying bug probability to more human terms in the above presentation. I ran all OS dev and support in an environment with 10000 FreeBSD systems and 3000 Linux systems in high scale production. The ratio of kernel panics was similar (although Linux tended to exhibit additional less rigorous failure modes due to more usage of work queues and other reasons). You could expect at least a couple faults per day depending on the quality of hardware and how far off the beaten path your system usage is at this scale. The big benefit I found with FreeBSD is that I could understand and fix the bugs, and I was generally intimidated by doing so on Linux.

barrkel 8y ago

I have never used a less reliable operating system than Linux in the presence of a changing count of monitors. You might classify that as userland, but it manifests as hard lockups on suspend, resume, monitor disconnect or reconnect.