On Friday 14 November 2003 21:04, Henry Tang wrote:

Could someone tell me why or where i can get info on this

thanks henry

Quoting Bruce Marshall :

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On Friday 14 November 2003 14:43 pm, Henry Tang wrote:

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Does suse have a defrag program for hd like windows?

henry -------------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using Yu Creation Webmail powered by Horde IMP

Nope... Linux doesn't need one.... Windows does.

The SUSE Admin guide Appendix A is a good place to start. The short answer to your question is that the Microsoft filesystems throw the data on the drive pretty much anywhere, and Linux filesystems put a little thought (so to speak) into where data is placed on a drive. Same drawer, but in one, the socks are thrown in unfolded, and the other they are neatly folded and tucked in tightly. ;-) C.

The Saturday 2003-11-15 at 21:51 -0500, Jerry Feldman wrote:

file system drivers to make better decisions. In contrast, the Windows file systems are not buffered (in the sense of kernel buffers).

There are buffers in Dos, and it can do some read ahead, but certainly not to the extent of linux.

There is a historical reason for this. The Windows file systems were designed for floppy disk in an MS-DOS environment. The Unix and Linux file systems are designed for performance in a hard disk server environment. The advantage of the Windows unbuffered system is that in the event of a crash or if the system is turned off, the theory is that

There is another historical reason. MsDos was designed for a CPU with a maximum memory space of 1 megabyte (only 640K of them as ram) - in fact, the first PCs had about 64 Kbytes. There is no much place there for big disk buffers, nor probably for the extra coding needed :-) -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

The Sunday 2003-11-16 at 10:43 -0500, Jerry Feldman wrote:

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fact, the first PCs had about 64 Kbytes. There is no much place there for big disk buffers, nor probably for the extra coding needed :-)

While this is true, Unix likewise was developed on very small machines, but it was developed in a disk environment where MS-DOS was developed primarily in a floppy environment.

Unix was developed from Multics as a time sharing system where MS-DOS was developed as a single user environment. The real difference is in how Unix (and Linux) handle files. Even back in the 16 bit PDP11 days, Unix did have the buffering. While DOS did have buffering, as you mention, it was very limited.

If I'm not mistaken, those machines had litle RAM, but had some kind of memory swap to disk, or virtual memory systems. It was a more complete and complex design. The IBM PC was a "Personal" computer, much simpler. It could even work with no OS, with ROM basic, and an audio tape machine as storage! Also, dos/bios was not reentrant, meaning that there was no way to request saving two files simultaneously. Head movement planning had no interest, chunks were saved to disk inmediately, with the error result code given back to the caller right away (wich makes sense for a floppy). I think that agrees with what you say :-) -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

The Monday 2003-11-17 at 11:35 -0500, Jerry Feldman wrote:

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I think that agrees with what you say :-) Yes. The main difference: Unix/Linux from day 1 was multi-user/multi-tasking. DOS (from day 1 to 6.c) was single-user/single tasking. The appearance of DOS multi-tasking was via Terminate and Stay resident (TSR). DOS 7 was the first multi-tasking Microsoft DOS, but it was never officially released in the US, but was part of Windows95.

I know: I earned my beans as a Dos programmer for some time :-) And that is the very reason I liked Linux from the moment I first tried it: it did the things I always wanted Dos to do, but it didn't, like multitasking. Dos 5 or 6 (not sure) included a task manager shell that could run several programs, and switch between them - instead of using windows 3.x - but it was even more unstable than windows. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

The Wednesday 2003-11-19 at 16:45 -0500, Jerry Feldman wrote:

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Dos 5 or 6 (not sure) included a task manager shell that could run several programs, and switch between them - instead of using windows 3.x - but it was even more unstable than windows. There were commercial programs, like sidekick, that could give the appearance of multi-tasking.

Ah, yes. But the one I meant was part of the system, I mean, it was a MS app, and quite promissing... but not fully. A sophisticated task swapper. I'd have to boot up my other computer in dos 6 to check it, but I'm lazy :-)

However, DOS 5 and 6 were incapable of multi-tasking per se. It used a facility called Terminate and Stay Resident, where a task would tell DOS it was terminating, but not to free up its memory. That task would use some facility, such as an interrupt to gain control. However this was very dangerous, and the programmers had to jump through hoops to prevent from corrupting DOS. (I wrote an SNMP agent. Even calling time would cause DOS to hang.

I know. I once programmed a TSR, but mostly what I did was download most of a program, swapping itself to disk, and call another one. To do simple things like playing a background sound or printing at the same time as the user continued working needed hooking the timer interrupt, checking that dos wasn't busy (not reentrant) before reading the data from disk, etc. And I could never be sure that it wouldn't sometime crash: I just had to hope it didn't do it when showing to clients. Horrible. Brrr! (shudder) As I said, what I liked of Linux when I met it, was that it allowed me to do things that I always wanted to do, and that I knew "serious" computers did. But I don't program now for a living, so I can't say I can program in Linux. Too fast a target, also. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

CPM was multi-user, prior to MS-DOS. It certainly was, and it was ported to the 8086 environment as well as

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 16 Nov 2003 23:37:08 -0900 Stanley Long wrote: the 68000 environment. Later, it was DOSified (eg. DR-DOS). The Atari ST TOS was a version of this. - -- Jerry Feldman Boston Linux and Unix user group http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2-rc1-SuSE (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/uPfX+wA+1cUGHqkRAu+ZAJ9MidiZCoQNr4NAnE+96oAf6Gk/DQCfYAQW TmFval9LvZkb9z0XoY1s9+U= =kpKw -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 15:04, Henry Tang wrote:

Could someone tell me why or where i can get info on this

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Nope... Linux doesn't need one.... Windows does.

-------------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using Yu Creation Webmail powered by Horde IMP -- Ken Schneider unix user since 1989

I guess the first thing you need is glasses. Another poster answered your question. linux does not need to be defragged! linux user since 1994 SuSE user since 1998 (5.2)

On Friday 14 November 2003 20:04 pm, Henry Tang wrote:

Could someone tell me why or where i can get info on this

Because: A - Linux filesystems are Real Filesystems, hence more effective at avoiding fragmentation; B - Any which might occur has nowhere near the same effect of performance; C - The filesystem will sort itself out in the background as and when necessary. HTH Dylan -- Sweet moderation Heart of this nation Desert us not We are between the wars - Billy Bragg

On Friday 14 November 2003 12:04 pm, Henry Tang wrote:

Could someone tell me why or where i can get info on this

thanks henry

Quoting Bruce Marshall :

...

On Friday 14 November 2003 14:43 pm, Henry Tang wrote:

...

Does suse have a defrag program for hd like windows?

henry -------------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using Yu Creation Webmail powered by Horde IMP

Nope... Linux doesn't need one.... Windows does.

-------------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using Yu Creation Webmail powered by Horde IMP

It has to do with the manner in which Linux/Unix utilizes the file systems and manages the harddrive. Fragmentation in any file system on a hard drive can happen. But to the extent in which Windows fragments a harddrive verses the way a 'nix system (Linux, BSD, Unix, etc) the percentage is essentially irrelevant. From my experience fragmentation of a Linux systems is less then 1% in almost all instances I have experienced, and these is after a fairly long period of time and use. Therefore using a defrag program is essentially a waste of time - it would basically take less then a minute and you would see not noticable change or improvement. There is no fear of a fragmented file system and therefore the problems associated with this don't occur - such as cross linked files, etc. Cheers, Curtis.

On Friday 14 November 2003 17:52 pm, pheonix1t wrote:

Henry Tang wrote:

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Could someone tell me why or where i can get info on this

why don't you do your own research on this subject www.google.com is your friend :)

I thought I sent the following reply to the list, but it went direct... Anyway, here it is: On Friday 14 November 2003 15:04 pm, Henry Tang wrote:

Could someone tell me why or where i can get info on this

Google is your friend. Search for 'linux defrag' finds this: http://www.salmar.com/pipermail/wftl-lug/2002-March/000603.html

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thanks henry

Quoting Bruce Marshall :

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On Friday 14 November 2003 14:43 pm, Henry Tang wrote:

...

Does suse have a defrag program for hd like windows?

henry ------------------------------------------------------------------- - This message was sent using Yu Creation Webmail powered by Horde IMP

Nope... Linux doesn't need one.... Windows does.

-------------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using Yu Creation Webmail powered by Horde IMP

-- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + Bruce S. Marshall bmarsh@bmarsh.com Bellaire, MI 11/14/03 17:51 + +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Stockmayer's Theorem: "If it looks easy, it's tough. If it looks tough, it's damn well impossible."

But there is software available for linux to defrag ext2 and ext3 partitions. See http://www.oo-software.com/en/products/oodlinux/index.html On Friday 14 November 2003 23:51, pheonix1t wrote:

Henry Tang wrote:

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Does suse have a defrag program for hd like windows?

henry -------------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using Yu Creation Webmail powered by Horde IMP

linux doesn't need defragmenter....that's just for windows

Hi Folks, Sid is correct. Defrag for Linux is not needed; especially where the most modern file systems are concerned. Reiserfs and the other journaling FS's have no need of defraging. They are carefully designed to not create performanc robbing fragmentation in the first place. Remember that the M$ file systems are clap-trap revisions to a floppy filesys that was already ill equipted for the first Hard Disks, and completely incapable of managing Gigabyte size HDs. By the time M$/ME was common on 20 GB systems they quietly crippled "Defrag" in ME. PeterB p.s. did anyone notice the M$ and "BSA" logos at the bottom of the OO-Soft web page? On Saturday 15 November 2003 07:09 am, Sid Boyce wrote:

I couldn't find the "MORE INFORMATION" button on this site, perhaps there is no more information. This thread took me back years, I'd forgotten there was such a thing as fragmentation. I signed up and downloaded the program, ran alien -t on the RPM then checked the .tgz file. The README is in deutsch, says it's BETA and not guaranteed, but not much more - ich spreche klein deutsch. It's not needed and it's not going to fly. Even older filesystems such as UFS don't need a defragmenter and they handle very efficiently masses of data for customers who are usually pretty damn good at nailing down space useage and measuring performance of filesystems. On this - box "du -sm /" says 24538 MB used (by all files and directories), "df -m" says " 23049 MB used(total disk useage), there may be a descrepancy in the way the two tools gather information, but that's small beer. I know how it goes, a guy has only used Windows before, so he comes to Linux wondering where the Registry, Config.sys, defrag, autoexec.bat etc. have gone -- useless baggage in Linux-land -- a bit like heading to the Caribbean with a suitcase full of pullovers and winter clothing, oh yes -- and the ski gear. Regards Sid.

Marco Karsten wrote:

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But there is software available for linux to defrag ext2 and ext3 partitions. See http://www.oo-software.com/en/products/oodlinux/index.html

On Friday 14 November 2003 23:51, pheonix1t wrote:

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Henry Tang wrote:

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Does suse have a defrag program for hd like windows?

henry -------------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using Yu Creation Webmail powered by Horde IMP

linux doesn't need defragmenter....that's just for windows

-- Sid Boyce .... Linux Only Shop.

-- -- Proud to use SuSE Linux, since 5.2 Loving using SuSE Linux 8.2 MyBlog http://vancampen.org/blog/ Nothing is as perfect as a Cultured Diamond There was never any Blood on a Cultured Diamond --

On Saturday 15 November 2003 11:36 am, Dylan wrote:

On Saturday 15 November 2003 17:29 pm, Peter B Van Campen wrote:

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By the time M$/ME was common on 20 GB systems they quietly crippled "Defrag" in ME.

Can you elaborate...?

Cheers

Dylan

Sure. When W98 was getting stale and ME was being contemplated as a stopgap rel in place of M$s 'next Great Thing' which was running late, the drive makers and PC OEMs were beginning to supply very large HDs (10 and more GB). Customers with these systems running W98 (and later WME) were getting into trouble running DEFRAG from M$. It was getting into time and thrashing problems. More and more the OEMs and M$ support folks were talking to customers whose PCs were trashed while DEFRAGing. At first the support guys were suspicious of customers doing PORs or BRS ( Big Red Switch) while DEFRAG was still running, but the sheer number of calls regarding trashed systems was getting to be overwhelming. M$ made some signifigant changes to the DEFRAG in ME as a stopgap; they knew that moving their customer base to a sys with NTFS (which is similar to the modern linux FS's in so far as being resistant to fragmentation) was the ultimate answer to the problems caused by using a FS cludged from floppies all the way to 10+GB HDs. During this time I managed to get a copy of a 'reg-tool' that would actually DEFRAG a large multi GigB drive. The story I was told third hand was that some M$ developer 'boot-legged' it out of Redmond out of shame and outrage at company policy that dictated that the support reps were to not admit any M$ code probs, but to strongly imply customer inflicted damage. This tool was a "One Time Run Register Entry" that one would 'install' and at the next reboot the W98 or ME sys would properly DEFRAG each drive letter before any GUI was started. On my 30 GB HD this process takes over 6 hours!! Remember that the actual DEFRAG code that M$ used was written by a Scientology owened company; M$ got it as object-code only. They were forced by the German government to provide a way to remove the code entirely, because they could provide no documentation of what the code REALLY did when run. Anyway, watching DEFRAG thrash away on a W98 system was an eyeopener to me. I knew from my years with OS/2 and WARP that M$ owned rights to HPFS which is immune to fragmentation, and that their refusal to use it was only done to deprive IBM of the revenue and credit for it's (HPFSs) abilities. PeterB -- Proud to use SuSE Linux, since 5.2 Loving using SuSE Linux 8.2 MyBlog http://vancampen.org/blog/ Nothing is as perfect as a Cultured Diamond There was never any Blood on a Cultured Diamond --