[iomatic]

Not the savant kind, either.

Torvalds pans Apple with 'utter crap' putdown - Technology - smh.com.au

Sorry, tuxedo fans.

[Chuckit]

Amazing, they manage to take a story where Torvalds' main comment about the Mac is that OS X is "much better" than its main competition and give it a negative spin.

[Tyre MacAdmin]

Well he's a bit right about HFS+ compared to something like ZFS... but as for the "computer upgrades" bit, that sounds like more of an attack on capitalism to me.

[Nodnarb]

Yeah, he says that Leopard is a much better system than Vista. He just doesn't like OS X's file system, because it's "utter crap" and "scary." (that's as far in depth as he explains his opinion).

He then goes on to say he thinks Linux is the best, followed by OS X, followed by Windows.

I don't get the obvious slant in that article title, when the writer kind of make himself look like an idiot through the rest of the article and actual quotes.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Wow. He makes BIll Gates look like a stud.

greg

[davidflas]

Originally Posted by ShortcutToMoncton 

Wow. He makes BIll Gates look like a stud.

greg

Damn Bill Gates and his rugged good looks!!

[::maroma::]

I wouldn't be surprised if Jobs agreed with him. I admittedly know next to nothing about file systems, but my brother is quite the opposite. He loves OS X but despises its file system. He lets me know whenever he can slip it into a conversation.

Also, weren't there rumors flying around recently about Apple looking at other file systems? Something about buying or licensing one or something. Maybe I smoked a little too much today?

[besson3c]

Torvalds is a damn fine programmer, highly respected...

A lot of low level Linux stuff *is* really good, arguably the best, and that is what Torvalds works on the most, so that is where his bias comes from.

[besson3c]

So, what is wrong with anything he's said in this article anyway? What makes him an idiot? What is your basis for your opinion?

[turtle777]

I agree with Torvalds, OS X file system is a crutch at best.

It hasn't been updated in ages, and does not do what a modern file system should do.

-t

[besson3c]

Yeah, I suspect that some of the higher level software service based stuff Apple has put in place (e.g. fsevents) might be better handled by a file system, if we had one that was up to the task... It has also been proven that HFS+ has some serious performance issues.

[Nodnarb]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

So, what is wrong with anything he's said in this article anyway? What makes him an idiot? What is your basis for your opinion?

I *think* the OP meant the writer of the article was an idiot. The journalist got the title "Torvald pans Apple with 'utter crap' putdown" out of those comments. At least that's what I'm surprised about by that article.

If that's not the OP's intentions, then my bad.

[Big Mac]

A nerd, perhaps. Lacking social skills, I suppose. But an idiot? I'd like to be an idiot of that caliber.

[OreoCookie]

He doesn't say anything that would make him `an idiot' here: he's right about the file system and I think we all agree that the next version of OS X will probably replace HFS+ with ZFS.

Furthermore, he criticizes something that -- from his perspective -- makes sense: he says, the OS should be invisible. If you think of the Linux kernel, this certainly is true, but that also holds of OS X' kernel of Vista's kernel. What you see is the GUI and its apps. If you're involved in kernel development, you might say such a thing, because that's the way you think.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Nodnarb 

I *think* the OP meant the writer of the article was an idiot.

No, th OP clearly meant Torvalds, and hence proved himself a true Apple fanboi w/o any technical understanding.

-t

[Eug]

So, I don't see what's wrong with Torvalds statements either (besides his obvious and expected Linux bias).

However, while I understand that a lot of geeks hate HFS+, I don't actually understand the details, because I'm not a disk format geek. Can someone explain in n00b-speak?

[EDIT]

Here's a blog on the subject. I remember reading it last year, but then forgot about it.

Machine Check Exception - Blog Archive - Why ZFS Matters to Mac Users

However, that only tells us that ZFS is way better than HFS+, and not why HFS+ is bad compared to other non-ZFS file systems.

[/EDIT]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

He doesn't say anything that would make him `an idiot' here: he's right about the file system and I think we all agree that the next version of OS X will probably replace HFS+ with ZFS.

We do? I remember very early on that a few people claimed this for Leopard, but Leopard is obviously still on HFS+. I was under the impression that such a migration wouldn't be easy, which is why we're still on HFS+. However, like I said, I'm a complete n00b on this subject so I'm just parroting what a few geeks here told me.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by iomatic 

Not the savant kind, either.

Torvalds pans Apple with 'utter crap' putdown - Technology - smh.com.au

Sorry, tuxedo fans.

So you're saying that just because someone who is inestimably better to comment on the quality of HFS+ in a programmer's perspective than any of us here thinks this proprietary, overly complex and somewhat arcane file system is "utter crap", that he's an idiot?

Ok, you can think that. But what are YOUR qualifications here? I'm a computer scientist by training...I don't make blanket and inflammatory statements about computing pioneers like that. Do you have the standing to do so?

[OreoCookie]

There are two major clues: first of all, one of Sun's big cheeses said in a presentation that Apple would use it in their upcoming release of OS X (Leopard). While this turned out to be false, Leopard does include ZFS support (it was built into pre-release versions and there is a download on Apple's developer site which installs basic ZFS support.

So these are two strong indications that Apple will switch from HFS+ to ZFS. ZFS would make a lot of things easier (in particular enhancements of Time Machine).

[IceEnclosure]

You guys remember when I met Torvalds' father when he dined at my restaurant? That was neat.

[CharlesS]

Torvalds is right - HFS+ is not a good file system in this day and age, and NTFS probably is quite a lot better. We probably would have had ZFS by now if not for Apple being distracted by the iPhone. I'm sure ZFS has got to be the file system by 10.6 at least.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

There are two major clues: first of all, one of Sun's big cheeses said in a presentation that Apple would use it in their upcoming release of OS X (Leopard). While this turned out to be false, Leopard does include ZFS support (it was built into pre-release versions and there is a download on Apple's developer site which installs basic ZFS support.

So these are two strong indications that Apple will switch from HFS+ to ZFS. ZFS would make a lot of things easier (in particular enhancements of Time Machine).

All this means is that OS X would get ZFS support. And it did.

That doesn't guarantee generalized ZFS use as the default though.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Eug 

All this means is that OS X would get ZFS support. And it did.

That doesn't guarantee generalized ZFS use as the default though.

He said "strong indiction", not guaranteed.

And he's right. Apple would not spend time on integration of this technology if this wasn't going in the general direction they'd wanna go.

-t

[Eug]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

He said "strong indiction", not guaranteed.

And he's right. Apple would not spend time on integration of this technology if this wasn't going in the general direction they'd wanna go.

Why not? It sounds like it's a great server file system option for example.

P.S. I'm not suggesting it would be a bad thing, and by the descriptions here it sounds like it could be a great thing for many of us actually. However, I'm just saying that a while back many were claiming that ZFS was gonna be the default file system for 10.5, and this kinda sounds like similar speculation.

In the meantime, I'm still waiting for resolution independence too.

[lpkmckenna]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

I agree with Torvalds, OS X file system is a crutch at best.

It hasn't been updated in ages, and does not do what a modern file system should do.

Not true: Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger: Page 7

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by lpkmckenna 

Not true: Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger: Page 7

Yeas, but what about this small little detail:

Originally Posted by John from Ars

The final, and perhaps most important limitation of Tiger's extended attribute implementation can also be seen as a feature. The extended attribute APIs exist only at the BSD layer. There are no Carbon, Cocoa, or even Core Foundation interfaces to them at this time. If an application wants to use extended attributes, it has to use the (decidedly low-level) BSD APIs.

Does OS X 10.5 have built in Carbon or Cocoa support ?

I have not heard that those extended attributes have been developed further.

-t

[lpkmckenna]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Does OS X 10.5 have built in Carbon or Cocoa support ?

Don't know, don't care. I was simply refuting your point.

I have not heard that those extended attributes have been developed further.

'Cause you're lazy. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: the Ars Technica review: Page 11

Time Machine is a perfect example of something that couldn't have been possible without Apple's constant refinement of HFS+. See: Time Machine and FSEvents at the Ars review.

[iomatic]

relax, y'all.

[Big Mac]

We're a passionate bunch. But you know that iomatic - your registration predates mine by a whole year.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by lpkmckenna 

Don't know, don't care. I was simply refuting your point.

'Cause you're lazy. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: the Ars Technica review: Page 11

Time Machine is a perfect example of something that couldn't have been possible without Apple's constant refinement of HFS+. See: Time Machine and FSEvents at the Ars review.

FSEvents actually disproves your point of constant HFS+ refinement, because it is not a part of HFS+, but a separate service that sits above the file system. FSEvents probably *should* be a part of the file system, but I don't think it is.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by iomatic 

relax, y'all.

Could you at least tell us whom you were calling an idiot in the thread title, so we know whether to agree with you or think you’re a dimwit?

[besson3c]

You know who else is an idiot? Hitler. Don't get me started!

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Does OS X 10.5 have built in Carbon or Cocoa support ?

Carbon and Cocoa make better use of extended attributes now (for instance, text documents can remember their encoding, so TextEdit doesn't have to guess), but neither has a special API to let you access extended attributes, as far as I've seen.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by lpkmckenna 

Time Machine is a perfect example of something that couldn't have been possible without Apple's constant refinement of HFS+. See: Time Machine and FSEvents at the Ars review.

It's also a perfect example of something that would work much, much better and more efficiently if it were running on ZFS rather than HFS+. If Time Machine were on ZFS, not only would your backup take up a lot less space on the disk, but it probably also wouldn't take 10+ minutes to back up 1 MB of data like the current implementation of Time Machine does.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

It's also a perfect example of something that would work much, much better and more efficiently if it were running on ZFS rather than HFS+. If Time Machine were on ZFS, not only would your backup take up a lot less space on the disk, but it probably also wouldn't take 10+ minutes to back up 1 MB of data like the current implementation of Time Machine does.

In fairness, I have a hunch that the ridiculously slow TM backup times are due to a bug, not an HFS+ problem. There is just no way in hell that picking out changed files from the FSEvents database and then copying those files over AFP (or any other file sharing protocol) should be this slow. About the only way it could is if it instead of getting this info from the database, actually compares each and every file on your system every hour.

If it is doing this due to a bug, I also wouldn't be surprised if Apple gave this task a very low CPU priority as to not affect non backup tasks. Have you tried renicing backupd?

[Big Mac]

Does anyone know if ZFS would support real Mac aliases (in addition to sym and hard links)?

[goMac]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

If Time Machine were on ZFS, not only would your backup take up a lot less space on the disk, but it probably also wouldn't take 10+ minutes to back up 1 MB of data like the current implementation of Time Machine does.

But that's my favorite thing about time machine!

"I'm sorry, I can't do the long complex task you assigned me. My Time Machine is still backing up so I can't move my laptop..."

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

In fairness, I have a hunch that the ridiculously slow TM backup times are due to a bug, not an HFS+ problem. There is just no way in hell that picking out changed files from the FSEvents database and then copying those files over AFP (or any other file sharing protocol) should be this slow. About the only way it could is if it instead of getting this info from the database, actually compares each and every file on your system every hour.

I think the thing that takes so long is making all those hard links, and then deleting all those hard links during the pruning process. I've noticed that the pre and post-backup thinning tends to take up the lion's share of the backup process on my machine. And when it stalls for 5 minutes in the middle of backing up 800 KB? It's gotta be that it's busy making all the hard links for the files that aren't getting backed up, and I'm not sure that it's fixable as long as we're using HFS+.

Given the way TM works, I think it's a decent guess that this was supposed to be running on ZFS, but the feature got scrapped for the sake of time. If we had ZFS, it could just use the snapshot feature and have those incremental backups done in seconds.

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Does anyone know if ZFS would support real Mac aliases (in addition to sym and hard links)?

Unfortunately, I'm told that even though Leopard is released, the ZFS stuff is still under the stupid NDA, so I can't answer that one. But if you have a developer account, you can try it out for yourself and see if it meets your liking.

[besson3c]

If HFS+ yaks that badly on creating hard links, it truly does suck. I do cpio creation of hard links on my FreeBSD server every night, and my disk I/O performance overall is nothing special It tears through an insane number of files very quickly.

[CharlesS]

Try making a script to run through one of those Time Machine backups and make a hard link to every file in them, and see how long it takes. You'll be sitting there for quite a while. It also bloats the absolute hell out of the directory structures to make as many hard links as are found on a typical Time Machine disk - my backup drive's catalog, allocation, and extents trees total 4.58 GB! And I can't even rebuild the directories to see if that would get cut down, because DiskWarrior won't work on a disk whose directories are larger than 4 GB, due to the fact that it wants to load the entire directories into memory and it's a 32-bit app.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Unfortunately, I'm told that even though Leopard is released, the ZFS stuff is still under the stupid NDA, so I can't answer that one. But if you have a developer account, you can try it out for yourself and see if it meets your liking.

That's okay Charles, I understand.

I assume you need a paid Developer account to access those resources, right?

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

I assume you need a paid Developer account to access those resources, right?

Sign up for a free account and look under "Mac OS X Server" and see for yourself.

[Big Mac]

Cool, many thanks to both of you.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

That's okay Charles, I understand.

I assume you need a paid Developer account to access those resources, right?

I'd be surprised if they were available to the free account, but it won't hurt to check.

[red rocket]

Could somebody explain Linus' suggestion that HFS+ makes OS X ‘worse to program for’ than Windows?

Why would the file system affect the difficulty level of writing apps for the OS?

[OreoCookie]

He refers to low-level programming, i. e. from the bottom-up perspective. Time Machine would be easier to implement with ZFS than with HFS+; also you would get additional functionality as well (e. g. notebook users can use Time Machine to roll back files without being connected to their external backup drive.

Plus, for certain applications Torvalds has in mind (say, large databases or so), filesystem performance actually matters. Avoiding bottlenecks makes things harder to program.

[Eug]

Can we change the thread title?

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Can we change the thread title?

Good idea. But I have no idea what would be a good title.

[Eug]

To maintain the negative tone of the title (), it could be called say...

Torvalds calls OS X's HFS+ "complete and utter crap".

[ghporter]

Done. Much clearer about the real subject.

[Dakar the Fourth]

I would have preferred "Sorry Tuxedo Fans"