Razor's Linux Progress

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Originally Posted by Master Razor

What does Microsoft basic data means?

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It's a catch-all description for a GPT partition whose specific GUID is used by Windows and which contains one of the file systems Windows supports, although technically speaking neither is a requirement.

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L.E. 2
I copied the VMs from the NTFS disk to my linux disk and they worked! Same performance.
Just to be clear, in my system I have 3 disks: 1 SSD linux, 1 SSD windows NTFS, 1 data drive NTFS.
Running VMs from NTFS is very slow, but running them from linux disk works fine.
Why is this?!

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Uh, this explains it. Unlike most file system drivers, NTFS-3G runs in userspace instead of the kernel. This makes it slower and less efficient (copy something big to an NTFS partition and check the CPU usage in top) and I'm afraid nothing can be done about that. The performance hit is especially noticeable with low-end routers and OpenWrt, you're lucky if you can read at 2 MB/s.

I want to format my data drive to linux fs. Can anyone recomend me a good file system for an all-purpose mechanical hdd (as in data drive, download drive, and sometimes run some small VMWare VMs)? I'm thinking of using either ext4 , xfs or brtfs but not sure wehich one to choose.

Until you're familiar with the ins and outs of "queer" file systems like XFS, ZFS, btrfs or Reiser, stick with ext4. It's mature, meant for general purpose usage and support is almost universal. Make sure to research what the superblock and tune2fs are.

I finally fixed VMWare's sloweness today. It was never about the filesystem but a misconfiguration from VMWare. Here's the fix for future reference:
Open the .vmx file inside your VM's directory and add the following at the end of file:

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MemTrimRate = "0"
mainmem.backing = "swap"
sched.mem.pshare.enable = "FALSE"
prefvmx.useRecommendedLockedMemSize = "TRUE"

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Make sure you also add a black line at the end.

If I spend weeks on such issues I will never be done. It's not just Linux learning, it's also application debuging and reconfiguration. On this particular issue I oscilated for days between CPU, RAM, and HDD only to find that it's because of the application itself. */*$@#*@$
I also solved another issue which bugged me for years!! The .vmx file will be overwritten when restoring snapshots. Never understood why the*/ty*5 were my changes never saved.

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Originally Posted by Master Razor

I also solved another issue which bugged me for years!! The .vmx file will be overwritten when restoring snapshots. Never understood why the*/ty*5 were my changes never saved.

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I guess that's by design, as this is how snapshots are supposed to work.

I don't think so. A snapshot refers to the contents of the virtual machine and not it's external settings (ie. VMWare settings).

Is there any difference between Windows NTFS and Linux NTFS format? Say If I have a disk and format a disk in Linux and then use it on Windows, will I get any issues like corruption, data loss, compatibility issues? My thinking is they are different (proprietary vs open source variant?) What do you think?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Master Razor

I finally fixed VMWare's sloweness today. It was never about the filesystem but a misconfiguration from VMWare. Here's the fix for future reference:
Open the .vmx file inside your VM's directory and add the following at the end of file:

Quote:

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MemTrimRate = "0"
mainmem.backing = "swap"
sched.mem.pshare.enable = "FALSE"
prefvmx.useRecommendedLockedMemSize = "TRUE"

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Make sure you also add a black line at the end.

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Oh, nice! These are the performance tweaks I always apply to my virtual machines (in addition to not allowing VMware to swap any guest memory to the host system's swap in the preferences). Good to know at least some of them actually make a difference :wgrin:

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scsi0.virtualDev = "pvscsi"
ethernet0.virtualDev = "vmxnet3"
mem.hotadd = "FALSE"
mainMem.useNamedFile = "FALSE"
MemTrimRate = "0"
prefvmx.useRecommendedLockedMemSize = "TRUE"
MemAllowAutoScaleDown = "FALSE"
sched.mem.pshare.enable = "FALSE"
prefvmx.minVmMemPct = "100"
mainMem.partialLazySave = "FALSE"
mainMem.partialLazyRestore = "FALSE"

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On Windows guest systems, disabling mem.hotadd gets rid of Plug & Play memory modules in the device manager. Note that not all systems support the PVSCSI disk controller or the VMXNET3 network adapter, but they're the best choices for those that do. Also, if you set the same variable more than once in the VMX file, the virtual machine won't start, so be careful with duplicate lines.

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If I spend weeks on such issues I will never be done. It's not just Linux learning, it's also application debuging and reconfiguration. On this particular issue I oscilated for days between CPU, RAM, and HDD only to find that it's because of the application itself. */*$@#*@$
I also solved another issue which bugged me for years!! The .vmx file will be overwritten when restoring snapshots. Never understood why the*/ty*5 were my changes never saved.

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No one said it would be easy, but don't let that discourage you. No one becomes an instant expert, you'll pick these things up as you go, as with everything else.

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Originally Posted by Master Razor

Is there any difference between Windows NTFS and Linux NTFS format? Say If I have a disk and format a disk in Linux and then use it on Windows, will I get any issues like corruption, data loss, compatibility issues? My thinking is they are different (proprietary vs open source variant?) What do you think?

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For the sake of clarity, there is no "Linux NTFS format". The file system is the same one no matter which OS you use it with.

Secondly, NTFS is a Microsoft trade secret, and its workings aren't officially documented anywhere. Much work has gone into reverse engineering it to achieve the decent degree of support we have right now, but not everything is done the same exact way Windows does it (see https://www.tuxera.com/community/ntf...#usedfreespace onwards; this FAQ also happens to explain some of the things we've talked before), and there is still missing functionality. As I recall, handling permissions requires lots of work, EFS is not supported, the $LogFile is not completely understood, and the ability to do real NTFS error checking under Linux is minimal, so if you suspect there are errors in your volume, you're going to have to run CHKDSK under Windows.

(Sounds bad? On 2006, there was no read/write support at all, and read-only access not only wasn't available out of the box, but was so hard to set up. I was essentially locked out of my Windows files while playing with Ubuntu and Debian.)

I'm not sure I follow. A reverse engineered piece cannot be as good as the original, correct? How can we know whether this is the same?

Also, an additional question:
I have this external drive formatted as NTFS which is bootable. It runs grub4dos and I need this drive to be contiguous, having no fragmentation. In windows, for every file copy/move operation I used to copy the entire drive, format the device and then copy the data back. Do I still have to do this in linux? Will it still fragment the drive?

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Originally Posted by Master Razor

I'm not sure I follow. A reverse engineered piece cannot be as good as the original, correct? How can we know whether this is the same?

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Given that it's such a complex file system (it still has compatibility features for DOS and OS/2!), the Linux implementation will likely never be complete. The important thing is that pretty much all of the expected functionality is there.

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Originally Posted by Master Razor

Also, an additional question:
I have this external drive formatted as NTFS which is bootable. It runs grub4dos and I need this drive to be contiguous, having no fragmentation. In windows, for every file copy/move operation I used to copy the entire drive, format the device and then copy the data back. Do I still have to do this in linux? Will it still fragment the drive?

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Interesting question. I would expect behavior to be the same, but haven't tested it personally. This guide seems to confirm it, by recommending the use of tar to basically do exactly what you mentioned and thus "defragment" an NTFS volume. There is a userspace defragmenter called shake, but it essentially follows the same principle: read files, delete them, then recreate them in a contiguous space.

I would like to understand something my linux instructor said at my workplace: I don't use Debian because it is very vulnerable to malware. And then said something about the root account that is being used on a regular user account.. Do you know anything about this? AFAIK this refers to the fact that uBuntu (which the most popular Debian-based OS) does not have the root account enabled, this by default, and you get root priviledges with your user account via sudo. Could it also refer to the fact that debian is less secure than other distros? I honestly don't know what to make of what he said.

Me neither. The "stable" branch of Debian is known for sticking to old but tried and true software builds, making it attractive for those who desire, well, stability - but it still receives security updates. Ubuntu's approach to root privileges has some security advantages, but to say not using it makes you "very vulnerable to malware" is a stretch.

Or perhaps he dislikes Debian for using systemd, which is probably smart =]

Debian vs Slackware, what do you think? I like Slackware myself, and plan to move to it in the near future. The only reason I chose Suse is because it is somewhat close to Slackware and has great hardware support (ie. I don't have to mess around with os when installing a device). I had to start with something somewhat easier. But I like Suse as well, a lot more than Ubuntu.