Hope they will keep the pace

Good stuff, I've long been a Sparc fan.

@scottalanmiller said in UNIX: Switching Users with su:

@Grey said in UNIX: Switching Users with su:

Pop quiz: why do you need the dash with su?

That was in the original article.

And I quoted you without quoting you..... see what I did there, I switched a few words :P

That list makes hardware RAID sound safer than ZFS, which is probably not quite true. But is the case is that the average implementation of hardware RAID is quite a bit safer than the average implementation of ZFS software RAID. Hardware RAID "handles everything for you" protecting you from most bad decisions. ZFS leaves all the nitty gritty details up to you which makes it super, duper easy to mess something up and leave yourself vulnerable. This is exacerbated by the Cult of ZFS problem and loads of misinformation swirling about its use. So the average person using ZFS is not even remotely prepared for what is needed to use it safely.

Some problems that we see people have when using ZFS without fully understanding storage:

Believing that ZFS doesn't use RAID (this is extremely common.) Believing that RAIDZ is magic, rather than a brand name, and that normal RAID concerns do not apply. So we often see people implement RAID 5 in reckless, insane situations using "it's RAIDZ" as an excuse as if RAIDZ isn't just RAID 5 - literally just a brand name for RAID 5. Treating common features common to all RAID systems as "unique" and believing that ZFS has feature after feature of protection that makes the need to protect against storage failure unnecessary. Not understanding hot swap and blind swap differences and creating systems that they do not know how to address should a drive fail. Believing that ZFS being magic is not at risk from power loss and failing to protect caches from power issues - something that they are not normally used to dealing with as hardware RAID does this for you. Not understanding the CPU and memory needs of ZFS, especially with features like dedupe and RAIDZ3. Ignoring common RAID knowledge and thinking that using ZFS means not using mirroring technologies.

@JJoyner1985 said in UNIX: What Is a Tarball:

So, do you think the reason I am seeing a lot more gzip in use with tarballs is due to the familiarity of gzip and the negligible difference in the compression between it and bzip2? Basically, bzip2 doesn't make enough of an improvement with sufficient regularity to entice people to move away from gzip, or is there some other benefit to gzip that my training material hasn't covered?

That's correct. The difference between the two is generally small enough that people are not concerned. And lots of systems still don't have bzip2 installed by default so if you want scripts or whatever to work universally you often use gzip because you know that it is always there and predictable.

Sure, mentioned it only for completeness.

Thanks!

Youtube Video

As long as it is "almost" boring, it is still exciting!

@matteo-nunziati said in Open Storage Operating Systems for SAM-SD:

what a mess...

Windows desktops are loaded with software that you are only limited as to how you can use it by EULA as well.

I loved SunOS, Solaris, and OpenSolaris, but after the Oracle buyout all of the Sun equipment has been slowly replaced and has gone away for the most part, and with the important features being ported to other OSes like FreeBSD, there's not much of a real reason to use OpenSolaris or its babies. Having said that though, I'm put off by the name OpenIndiana, it just sounds really stupid to me, and I don't think I could ever install something like that without flat out denying it if anyone asked. It just makes me think "that's the best name you could come up with, huh? Not even anything remotely related to the Sun or stars or anything..." (I realise the origin comes from a project name, but sticking with it was a mistake, so in a sense I guess I should say "So, couldn't come up with anything at all?")

The FreeNAS community really shows just how important it is to avoid products like FreeNAS. It's built on good tech, but the issues are that the community is horrible, only tiny non-storage expert shops use it and it is broadly misunderstood. FreeNAS doesn't make any of the technology, they just repackage it. So the vendor and their community all lack the basic knowledge of what they have and the stuff that they repeat just gets worse and worse.

If this was the FreeBSD community, talking about the same technologies, the answers and approaches would be completely different. Enterprises use FreeBSD every day. They do not use FreeNAS. Once you limit yourself to a "non-expert" product, the idea of using a community for assistance causes a breakdown in dangerous ways.

@scottalanmiller said:

NTG started using network UPS in 2000. APC SmartUPS supported that even way back then.

I've asked for an OK for funds to purchase a model that can support up to 1800 watts, something like a desktop model that can attach to the network, and allow for Solaris systems to detect they are on battery and shutdown without my interaction. Tripplite is getting back with me, hopefully it's not overly expensive.