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1. There was no such warning for a long, long time. 2. It's a dumb limitation, and an architectural issue as far as I'm concerned. 3. It still doesn't justify

1. There was no such warning for a long, long time. 2. It's a dumb limitation, and an architectural issue as far as I'm concerned. 3. It still doesn't justify silently throwing away data for years. 4. Many of the points on my list remain unaddressed, and likely never will be addressed. EDIT: Additionally, the typical system administrator doesn't install MongoDB from the 'Downloads' page, but uses a package manager, and thus never sees the warning even if it's there. Warnings like this belong in all the relevant spots in the documentation, not just on a download page.

yousoundmad 11y ago
yousoundmad
cheald 11y ago
That 32bit startup warning has been in place since 2009. It was in the README in 2008 (IIRC, pre-1.0). https://github.com/mongodb/mongo/commit/b3322b86a014683018ac81c30df0b0823bf03272 https://github.com/mongodb/mongo/commit/b3322b86a014683018ac... There's plenty in Mongo to complain about, but grousing about the 32-bit limitation just makes you look like you're bad at reading introductory documentation.
- joepie91_ 11y ago
  This doesn't explain the data loss consequences (remember the client default!), nor was it clearly visible on the download page - you'd have to explicitly look for it. This was the case until as late as 2014: https://web.archive.org/web/20140704182658/http://www.mongodb.org/downloads https://web.archive.org/web/20140704182658/http://www.mongod... And again, the 'download' page or README is not sufficient for such a warning, nor is a startup message a reliable place to put it (because of initscripts and such). It should have been in all the relevant places in the documentation, instead.
  - cheald 11y ago
    Unacknowleged writes were a bad default. I think everyone with a shred of honesty will happily admit to that. It was certainly in the documentation, in the blog posts, in the startup logs, and in the README for quite a long time. If you missed it, it's probably because you weren't paying attention. Again, there are plenty of good reasons to dislike MongoDB, but this isn't one of them, and harping on it substantially degrades your credibility.
    - joepie91_ 11y ago
      > It was certainly in the documentation, [...] in the startup logs, and in the README for quite a long time. All the wrong places, as already stated. These are not the places where developers actually look. I provided some better example locations here: https://twitter.com/joepie91/status/622920351731843072 https://twitter.com/joepie91/status/622920351731843072 > [...] in the blog posts [...] Certainly not there. Go look around for MongoDB tutorials from the timespan where unacknowledged writes were the default, and almost none of them remark on the 32-bits limitation. > If you missed it, it's probably because you weren't paying attention. Nonsense. It simply wasn't in the locations where people actually look. You can easily verify that using the Wayback Machine (and in fact, this is still mostly the case today). > Again, there are plenty of good reasons to dislike MongoDB, but this isn't one of them, and harping on it substantially degrades your credibility. If pointing out extremely dangerous past negligence from the MongoDB developers "degrades my credibility" in your view, then you have some very strange ways to determine credibility.
      - cheald 11y ago
        > All the wrong places, as already stated. These are not the places where developers actually look. If you're not reading READMEs, installation notes, and server logs and instead depend on marketing splash pages to highlight the limitations of the technologies you use, you're a bad developer. Sorry. > Certainly not [in blog posts] http://blog.mongodb.org/post/137788967/32-bit-limitations http://blog.mongodb.org/post/137788967/32-bit-limitations > It simply wasn't in the locations where people actually look. You can easily verify that using the Wayback Machine (and in fact, this is still mostly the case today). I first started using Mongo in 2010 according to my gitlogs (after it having been on my radar for some time before that), and I very distinctly remember reading about the 32-bit limitation well before I'd ever installed it, because we were also using Varnish at the time, which has similar issues on 32-bit systems because it too uses (or at least, at that time used) memory-mapped files. The claim that the limitation was not documented well, or was hidden, or was generally unknown at that time is just simply false.
rrss1122 11y ago
If you're on 32-bit systems, you're even more out of luck. With the release of version 3.0, MongoDB dropped commercial support for 32-bit systems. You can still get binaries, but without commercial support they'll probably stop making those for 32-bit systems soon enough.

yousoundmad 11y ago

yousoundmad

cheald 11y ago

That 32bit startup warning has been in place since 2009. It was in the README in 2008 (IIRC, pre-1.0). https://github.com/mongodb/mongo/commit/b3322b86a014683018ac81c30df0b0823bf03272 https://github.com/mongodb/mongo/commit/b3322b86a014683018ac... There's plenty in Mongo to complain about, but grousing about the 32-bit limitation just makes you look like you're bad at reading introductory documentation.

joepie91_ 11y ago
This doesn't explain the data loss consequences (remember the client default!), nor was it clearly visible on the download page - you'd have to explicitly look for it. This was the case until as late as 2014: https://web.archive.org/web/20140704182658/http://www.mongodb.org/downloads https://web.archive.org/web/20140704182658/http://www.mongod... And again, the 'download' page or README is not sufficient for such a warning, nor is a startup message a reliable place to put it (because of initscripts and such). It should have been in all the relevant places in the documentation, instead.
- cheald 11y ago
  Unacknowleged writes were a bad default. I think everyone with a shred of honesty will happily admit to that. It was certainly in the documentation, in the blog posts, in the startup logs, and in the README for quite a long time. If you missed it, it's probably because you weren't paying attention. Again, there are plenty of good reasons to dislike MongoDB, but this isn't one of them, and harping on it substantially degrades your credibility.
  - joepie91_ 11y ago
    > It was certainly in the documentation, [...] in the startup logs, and in the README for quite a long time. All the wrong places, as already stated. These are not the places where developers actually look. I provided some better example locations here: https://twitter.com/joepie91/status/622920351731843072 https://twitter.com/joepie91/status/622920351731843072 > [...] in the blog posts [...] Certainly not there. Go look around for MongoDB tutorials from the timespan where unacknowledged writes were the default, and almost none of them remark on the 32-bits limitation. > If you missed it, it's probably because you weren't paying attention. Nonsense. It simply wasn't in the locations where people actually look. You can easily verify that using the Wayback Machine (and in fact, this is still mostly the case today). > Again, there are plenty of good reasons to dislike MongoDB, but this isn't one of them, and harping on it substantially degrades your credibility. If pointing out extremely dangerous past negligence from the MongoDB developers "degrades my credibility" in your view, then you have some very strange ways to determine credibility.
    - cheald 11y ago
      > All the wrong places, as already stated. These are not the places where developers actually look. If you're not reading READMEs, installation notes, and server logs and instead depend on marketing splash pages to highlight the limitations of the technologies you use, you're a bad developer. Sorry. > Certainly not [in blog posts] http://blog.mongodb.org/post/137788967/32-bit-limitations http://blog.mongodb.org/post/137788967/32-bit-limitations > It simply wasn't in the locations where people actually look. You can easily verify that using the Wayback Machine (and in fact, this is still mostly the case today). I first started using Mongo in 2010 according to my gitlogs (after it having been on my radar for some time before that), and I very distinctly remember reading about the 32-bit limitation well before I'd ever installed it, because we were also using Varnish at the time, which has similar issues on 32-bit systems because it too uses (or at least, at that time used) memory-mapped files. The claim that the limitation was not documented well, or was hidden, or was generally unknown at that time is just simply false.

rrss1122 11y ago

If you're on 32-bit systems, you're even more out of luck. With the release of version 3.0, MongoDB dropped commercial support for 32-bit systems. You can still get binaries, but without commercial support they'll probably stop making those for 32-bit systems soon enough.