[9fans] fossil+venti continuous disk activity

[9fans] fossil+venti continuous disk activity

[Skip Tavakkolian]

this is my first attempt at installing plan9 with fossil+venti fs.
after rebooting, i noticed continuous disk activity.  is this normal?

for comparison, i reinstalled with just fossil, and don't see this
behavior.

Re: [9fans] fossil+venti continuous disk activity

[Russ Cox]

> this is my first attempt at installing plan9 with fossil+venti fs.
> after rebooting, i noticed continuous disk activity.  is this normal?
>
> for comparison, i reinstalled with just fossil, and don't see this
> behavior.

sure.  fossil is archiving your file system into venti.

russ

Re: [9fans] fossil+venti continuous disk activity

[David Leimbach]

On 3/23/06, Skip Tavakkolian <9nut@9netics.com> wrote:
> this is my first attempt at installing plan9 with fossil+venti fs.
> after rebooting, i noticed continuous disk activity.  is this normal?
>
> for comparison, i reinstalled with just fossil, and don't see this
> behavior.
>
>
>

Does your disk controller support DMA?  I've found that's a huge help
when dealing with venti.  My last experience with it was so much
better when I turned DMA on.

Re: [9fans] fossil+venti continuous disk activity

[veritosproject]

A similar thing happened to me, I installed it with no problems, but
then when I ran "fshalt" it essentially locked up and ran my hard
drive for like ten minutes straight.  Is this OK?

On 3/23/06, Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com> wrote:
> > this is my first attempt at installing plan9 with fossil+venti fs.
> > after rebooting, i noticed continuous disk activity.  is this normal?
> >
> > for comparison, i reinstalled with just fossil, and don't see this
> > behavior.
>
> sure.  fossil is archiving your file system into venti.
>
> russ
>
>

Re: [9fans] fossil+venti continuous disk activity

[Russ Cox]

> A similar thing happened to me, I installed it with no problems, but
> then when I ran "fshalt" it essentially locked up and ran my hard
> drive for like ten minutes straight.  Is this OK?

sounds about right.  venti is slow.

russ

Re: [9fans] fossil+venti continuous disk activity

[veritosproject]

Ok thanks...back to pure fossil then.

On 3/23/06, Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com> wrote:
> > A similar thing happened to me, I installed it with no problems, but
> > then when I ran "fshalt" it essentially locked up and ran my hard
> > drive for like ten minutes straight.  Is this OK?
>
> sounds about right.  venti is slow.
>
> russ
>
>

Re: [9fans] fossil+venti continuous disk activity

[Ronald G Minnich]

veritosproject@gmail.com wrote:
> Ok thanks...back to pure fossil then.

why? venti gives you essentially an infinite backup. Is that of no value
to you?

ron

Re: [9fans] fossil+venti continuous disk activity

[Gabriel Diaz]

Hello

don't give it away too fast.

It is slow in the snapshot time ( people usually makes
those at 5am or so :) )

But it is a great life saver (as kenfs is).

having snapshots of your work is a very nice feature.
and recovering a destroyed fossil from it is pretty easy.

give it a try :-D

gabi


On 3/23/06, veritosproject@gmail.com <veritosproject@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok thanks...back to pure fossil then.
>
> On 3/23/06, Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com> wrote:
> > > A similar thing happened to me, I installed it with no problems, but
> > > then when I ran "fshalt" it essentially locked up and ran my hard
> > > drive for like ten minutes straight.  Is this OK?
> >
> > sounds about right.  venti is slow.
> >
> > russ
> >
> >
>

Re: [9fans] fossil+venti continuous disk activity

[andrey mirtchovski]

> Ok thanks...back to pure fossil then.
>

venti is slow only for the first push, because it's pushing your
entire OS on it. things improve a lot from there on. i have a venti
system that has been running for three and a half years now and never
felt slow.

Re: [9fans] fossil+venti continuous disk activity

[Charles Forsyth]

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it doesn't write to venti except when doing an archive snapshot,
and even during that time fossil itself should respond to requests.

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From: veritosproject@gmail.com
To: "Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs" <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] fossil+venti continuous disk activity
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2006 09:22:52 -0800
Message-ID: <6dcbe5980603230922p5115dc97i55b888505dfbf0a6@mail.gmail.com>

Ok thanks...back to pure fossil then.

On 3/23/06, Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com> wrote:
> > A similar thing happened to me, I installed it with no problems, but
> > then when I ran "fshalt" it essentially locked up and ran my hard
> > drive for like ten minutes straight.  Is this OK?
>
> sounds about right.  venti is slow.
>
> russ
>
>

Re: [9fans] fossil+venti continuous disk activity

[andrey mirtchovski]

On 3/23/06, Charles Forsyth <forsyth@terzarima.net> wrote:
> it doesn't write to venti except when doing an archive snapshot,
> and even during that time fossil itself should respond to requests.
>

not always. on big dumps (> 3 gigs for my system) fossil will
eventually block all requests and the system will become unresponsive.
for example, one will be able to open a new rio window on a terminal,
but rio will block trying to exec /bin/rc...

that was back in 2003, things may have improved significantly since then :)

Re: [9fans] fossil+venti continuous disk activity

[Skip Tavakkolian]

> it doesn't write to venti except when doing an archive snapshot,
> and even during that time fossil itself should respond to requests.

how do people deal with this on their laptops? have another venti
tall americano while venti finishes.

Re: [9fans] fossil+venti continuous disk activity

[Russ Cox]

sorry, i should have said more.

locking up for 10 minutes straight is not common behavior,
but in the scenario you described, it's to be expected.
fossil was in the middle of archiving its first snapshot
to disk.  let's call that 250MB.  the distributed venti is
robust but quite slow -- four long disk seeks per
write if you are running index and arenas on the same disk.
on a single disk i expect around 1-3GB/hour.  so 10 minutes
for that 250MB is entirely within the ballpark.

as forsyth noted, during archive snapshots fossil usually
does respond to requests, but you explicitly told it not to
by running fshalt.  it didn't finish halting until the archive
was done.  i suppose halt could stop the archiver and
let it pick up again later.  but it doesn't.

russ

Re: [9fans] fossil+venti continuous disk activity

[Gabriel Diaz]

Hello

I see the first snap as another install step, after that, i only know
about venti when fossil crash ( and that is not usual these days) or
when reading archived with yesterday&friends.

gabi


On 3/23/06, Skip Tavakkolian <9nut@9netics.com> wrote:
> > it doesn't write to venti except when doing an archive snapshot,
> > and even during that time fossil itself should respond to requests.
>
> how do people deal with this on their laptops? have another venti
> tall americano while venti finishes.
>
>

Re: [9fans] fossil+venti continuous disk activity

[Gabriel Diaz]

helllo

i have seen that too in this year.

gabi


On 3/23/06, andrey mirtchovski <mirtchovski@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/23/06, Charles Forsyth <forsyth@terzarima.net> wrote:
> > it doesn't write to venti except when doing an archive snapshot,
> > and even during that time fossil itself should respond to requests.
> >
>
> not always. on big dumps (> 3 gigs for my system) fossil will
> eventually block all requests and the system will become unresponsive.
> for example, one will be able to open a new rio window on a terminal,
> but rio will block trying to exec /bin/rc...
>
> that was back in 2003, things may have improved significantly since then :)
>

Re: [9fans] fossil+venti continuous disk activity

[veritosproject]

>why? venti gives you essentially an infinite backup. Is that of no value
>to you?

No, I just play around with Plan 9.  I don't actually use it as my
main OS.  So I don't really have anything to back up.

Re: [9fans] fossil+venti continuous disk activity

[Charles Forsyth]

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but surely it's one of the slightly unusual things to play with.

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From: veritosproject@gmail.com
To: "Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs" <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] fossil+venti continuous disk activity
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2006 10:12:05 -0800
Message-ID: <6dcbe5980603231012r1c07ba1au9a7b7f8be80b1ec2@mail.gmail.com>

>why? venti gives you essentially an infinite backup. Is that of no value
>to you?

No, I just play around with Plan 9.  I don't actually use it as my
main OS.  So I don't really have anything to back up.