4 ms·

Not a guru, but I've used it for a while. Both as desktop and server. My main gripe is that FreeBSD doesn't have a reliable filesystem. FreeBSD still dies prett

by jd 18y ago

Not a guru, but I've used it for a while. Both as desktop and server. My main gripe is that FreeBSD doesn't have a reliable filesystem. FreeBSD still dies pretty horribly after a few hard crashes (power loss, whatever). fsck? In 2008? No thanks. Messages about possibly corrupted inodes? How should that be my problem? I can't stress this enough, one day you will wake up and FreeBSD will refuse to boot. And that day will, by Murphy's Law, be one of those days where you have to get an incredible amount of real work done. I'm a big fan of FreeBSD, ports, and the whole "do it right" and "proper documentation" philosophy. But until they get journalling right you should probably stay away. (also: upgrading from FreeBSD 6.x to 6.(x+1) is incredibly painful. I don't think upgrading a 7.x system is going to be much easier. Reinstalling FreeBSD gets old fast, so you'll probably just shrug and stick with whatever version you already have)

sjs382 18y ago
ZFS has a freebsd port.
- jd 18y ago
  Experimental.
jlouis 18y ago
FreeBSDs filesystem is one of the most reliable filesystems out there. It is old, but still performs pretty well and the age transfers to reliability. There are 2 things creating problems now, though: first, it does not use journaling (by default) leading to expensive fsck times on big disks. Second, it could have faster meta-data operations. The filesystem has a construction such that a system crash can only lead to unreclaimed free space on the disk. If that is not the case, you are facing a hardware error. The primary role of fsck is to put back this free space. Journaling is now experimental in FreeBSD. ZFS is experimental in FreeBSD. As soon as these stabilizes, the problems mentioned here goes away entirely. Note that "experimental" means that the state is equivalent to most things linux: the crap actually works but have not yet seen the strains of time.
cperciva 18y ago
upgrading from FreeBSD 6.x to 6.(x+1) is incredibly painful With FreeBSD Update, it takes two commands, "freebsd-update upgrade -r <new release>" and "freebsd-update install".
drhowarddrfine 18y ago
Yes. You're comments about the filesystem and fsck and other things show you definitely are no guru.
- silentbicycle 18y ago
  Please explain. Do you have a better solution?
silentbicycle 18y ago
A data point: In five-plus years of using OpenBSD heavily (and occasionally FreeBSD on the side), I have never run into this. OpenBSD has "soft updates" (http://openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#SoftUpdates http://openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#SoftUpdates) on its filesystem, though, which has similar results as a journaling filesystem. Sometimes fsck needs to run for a bit after a crash or power outage, but it has only lead to a 2-10 minute delay for me, not refusing to boot. Annoying, but hardly fatal.

by jd 18y ago

sjs382 18y ago

ZFS has a freebsd port.

jd 18y ago
Experimental.

jlouis 18y ago

FreeBSDs filesystem is one of the most reliable filesystems out there. It is old, but still performs pretty well and the age transfers to reliability. There are 2 things creating problems now, though: first, it does not use journaling (by default) leading to expensive fsck times on big disks. Second, it could have faster meta-data operations. The filesystem has a construction such that a system crash can only lead to unreclaimed free space on the disk. If that is not the case, you are facing a hardware error. The primary role of fsck is to put back this free space. Journaling is now experimental in FreeBSD. ZFS is experimental in FreeBSD. As soon as these stabilizes, the problems mentioned here goes away entirely. Note that "experimental" means that the state is equivalent to most things linux: the crap actually works but have not yet seen the strains of time.

cperciva 18y ago

upgrading from FreeBSD 6.x to 6.(x+1) is incredibly painful With FreeBSD Update, it takes two commands, "freebsd-update upgrade -r <new release>" and "freebsd-update install".

drhowarddrfine 18y ago

Yes. You're comments about the filesystem and fsck and other things show you definitely are no guru.

silentbicycle 18y ago
Please explain. Do you have a better solution?

silentbicycle 18y ago

A data point: In five-plus years of using OpenBSD heavily (and occasionally FreeBSD on the side), I have never run into this. OpenBSD has "soft updates" (http://openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#SoftUpdates http://openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#SoftUpdates) on its filesystem, though, which has similar results as a journaling filesystem. Sometimes fsck needs to run for a bit after a crash or power outage, but it has only lead to a 2-10 minute delay for me, not refusing to boot. Annoying, but hardly fatal.