which Filesytem are you using ?

AmigaOne X5000 platform specific issues.
Lio
Posts: 47
Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2011 8:07 pm

which Filesytem are you using ?

Post by Lio »

Hi All,

since I am experiencing some annoying behavior with simplemail on a NGFS partition, I was wondering if you use NGFS (should be the default for X5000 according to the doc) or other FS on your X5000.

so which FS are you using on your X5000 and why ?
User avatar
tbreeden
Posts: 160
Joined: Sat Jun 18, 2011 12:57 am
Location: Charlottesville, VA, USA
Contact:

Re: which Filesytem are you using ?

Post by tbreeden »

Probably not a good idea to use NGFS as data storage location for a program is open when a crash or shutdown occurs.

Apparently, NGFS uses a partial write-behind for open files.

I solved some Odyssey loss of cookie and preferences info by taking it off of NGFS and moving to SFS/02.

See tonyw's comment here:
http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz ... GFS#p42129

tom
User avatar
Raziel
Posts: 1170
Joined: Sat Jun 18, 2011 4:00 pm
Location: a dying planet

Re: which Filesytem are you using ?

Post by Raziel »

tbreeden wrote:Probably not a good idea to use NGFS as data storage location for a program is open when a crash or shutdown occurs.

Apparently, NGFS uses a partial write-behind for open files.

I solved some Odyssey loss of cookie and preferences info by taking it off of NGFS and moving to SFS/02.

See tonyw's comment here:
http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz ... GFS#p42129

tom
Wasn't NGFS supposed to become the new "offical" AmigaOS4x FS?

Why not use it then, even tell users to avoid it?
Will it take the same road as the highly hyped JXFS, which has since been set to read-only because of unsolvable problems?

Just curious...

edit: Wording
Last edited by Raziel on Mon Feb 05, 2018 10:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
People are dying.
Entire ecosystems are collapsing.
We are in the beginning of a mass extinction.
And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth.
How dare you!
– Greta Thunberg
xenic
Posts: 1185
Joined: Sun Jun 19, 2011 12:06 am

Re: which Filesytem are you using ?

Post by xenic »

Raziel wrote: Shouldn't NGFS become the new "offical" AmigaOS4x FS?

Why not use it then, even tell users to avoid it?
Will it take the same road as the highly hyped JXFS, which has since been set to read-only because of unsolvable problems?

Just curious...
Incorrect statements removed.
Last edited by xenic on Wed Feb 07, 2018 11:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
AmigaOne X1000 with 2GB memory - OS4.1 FE
User avatar
tonyw
AmigaOS Core Developer
AmigaOS Core Developer
Posts: 1479
Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2011 1:36 pm
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: which Filesytem are you using ?

Post by tonyw »

I could turn off journalling, but you don't want that. You really don't. It's what makes the disk contents secure and prevents their becoming "invalidated".

NGFS is a journalling file system because all modern file systems are. There is no better way to ensure that the disk contents are consistent. Write operations are queued and executed by the file system at a high priority, although not synchronously with the calling Process. You are familiar with the old Amiga floppy behaviour, where Write operations always finished after a timeout? Most of the Writes were done immediately, but the last Write waited until the timeout before being executed. It's the same with SFS, JXFS, NTFS on Windows and EXT-3/4 on Linux. As a result, there is a short window (1 - 1.5 seconds) where Oddity could crash before it writes that last bit of data to disk. It doesn't freeze my machines - only Oddity crashes, leaving the file system to finish its work.

Oddity does crash from time to time, even when I haven't tried to play a video. Just having a video on a page with a "start" button in the middle of the picture is enough to break it sometimes. However, in all the years that I have been developing and using NGFS, I have never had an "invalidation" event (except back in the days when I was deliberately causing crashes to test the journalling code). I use nothing but NGFS on all my machines, just to force myself to eat my own dog food. If Oddity crashes before it can write its cookie file to disk and close the file, then some data is bound to be lost. Mind you, what is on the disk is correct, there is nothing to be corrected on the next boot.

FFS is obsolete because it was written for floppies and can never be made to run at a decent speed. It is no longer maintained nor supported by its author and even its check/repair utility Partition Wizard does not run on any A-Eon machines. SFS and its 64-bit version, JXFS, were provided (binaries only) for OS4 by their author, but that agreement was rescinded some time ago. In any case, the sources for the file systems and Partition Wizard were never provided, so again, they are all unmaintainable and unsupported.

I designed NGFS to become the replacement for FFS. That aim has been embraced by the rest of the developer team. NGFS has a good check/repair utility called NGFCheck. NGFCheck can perform read-only checks or repairs on any NGFS volume, on- or off-line. It can be run from a Shell, in batch mode from a script or as a Workbench utility with full GUI. All the sources for NGFS, NGFCheck and all the test programs are resident in the Hyperion repository where any developer can access or modify them. It can be maintained, supported and developed by anybody.

The version of NGFS that is provided with the X-5000 and A-1222 Install CDs is an early beta version. I have been fortunate to have people like xenic and others to provide bug reports to me, and I believe that all of those reported bugs have been fixed. I wish I could release the latest version of NGFS, but...
cheers
tony
User avatar
daveyw
Posts: 252
Joined: Mon Sep 12, 2011 7:44 pm

Re: which Filesytem are you using ?

Post by daveyw »

I use NGFS on all my HDD partitions that I created when I built my X5000 (on a Samsung SSD), except for 1 SFS2 partition for Odyssey and Timberwolf.

I also have a HDD that I ported from my A1XE that has SFS2 partitions, and a couple of external drives that I use for backups, also SFS2.
User avatar
broadblues
AmigaOS Core Developer
AmigaOS Core Developer
Posts: 600
Joined: Sat Jun 18, 2011 2:40 am
Location: Portsmouth, UK
Contact:

Re: which Filesytem are you using ?

Post by broadblues »

Programs like Odyssey require correct usuage management. You *should* shut it down the moment you finish using it, then restart it when you next need to browse. It's not stable enough to leave 20 tabs open on chrome on windows style browsing fest. (exageration for effect, but you know what I mean).

If SimpleMail can't manage it's folder indexes then probably replacing it with YAM is a good idea. YAM regenerates indices that out of date. It also writes index to disk periodically, and ofcourse at program shutdown. If like me you have upwards of 30,000 emails in your inbox it's best to close the program before rebooting where possible.
xenic
Posts: 1185
Joined: Sun Jun 19, 2011 12:06 am

Re: which Filesytem are you using ?

Post by xenic »

tonyw wrote: The version of NGFS that is provided with the X-5000 and A-1222 Install CDs is an early beta version. I have been fortunate to have people like xenic and others to provide bug reports to me, and I believe that all of those reported bugs have been fixed. I wish I could release the latest version of NGFS, but...
I can only say that the last experimental version has worked perfectly without the "write behind" and I've been using it for months now. I'd like to see some configurability to allow the user to decide how NGFS is used but that's up to you. Now that SFS seems to be seperated from OS4 it's great that you've developed NGFS so that we have a modern FS included with OS4. Keep up the good work and don't let my nit-picking bother you.
AmigaOne X1000 with 2GB memory - OS4.1 FE
User avatar
tonyw
AmigaOS Core Developer
AmigaOS Core Developer
Posts: 1479
Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2011 1:36 pm
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: which Filesytem are you using ?

Post by tonyw »

The version I gave you to test still has the "write-behind" and the journalling has not changed.

What DID change was that I fixed a bug: When Odyssey wrote to a part in the middle of its cookies file, NGFS saw that the file size did not change and forgot to Write the updated part. That bug was detected and fixed as a result of your report.
cheers
tony
xenic
Posts: 1185
Joined: Sun Jun 19, 2011 12:06 am

Re: which Filesytem are you using ?

Post by xenic »

tonyw wrote:The version I gave you to test still has the "write-behind" and the journalling has not changed.

What DID change was that I fixed a bug: When Odyssey wrote to a part in the middle of its cookies file, NGFS saw that the file size did not change and forgot to Write the updated part. That bug was detected and fixed as a result of your report.
In that case I apologize to everyone for incorrect statements about NGFS and to you for misrepresenting the current state of NGFS. Sorry.
AmigaOne X1000 with 2GB memory - OS4.1 FE
Post Reply