From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 13739 invoked from network); 13 Dec 2020 02:59:04 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 13 Dec 2020 02:59:04 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id EB92793D82; Sun, 13 Dec 2020 12:59:02 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C5A4793D37; Sun, 13 Dec 2020 12:58:40 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 714B593D37; Sun, 13 Dec 2020 12:58:38 +1000 (AEST) Received: from outgoing.mit.edu (outgoing-auth-1.mit.edu [18.9.28.11]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 1B94493D29 for ; Sun, 13 Dec 2020 12:58:37 +1000 (AEST) Received: from callcc.thunk.org (pool-72-74-133-215.bstnma.fios.verizon.net [72.74.133.215]) (authenticated bits=0) (User authenticated as tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU) by outgoing.mit.edu (8.14.7/8.12.4) with ESMTP id 0BD2wV0H026740 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256 verify=NOT); Sat, 12 Dec 2020 21:58:32 -0500 Received: by callcc.thunk.org (Postfix, from userid 15806) id A6421420136; Sat, 12 Dec 2020 21:58:31 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2020 21:58:31 -0500 From: "Theodore Y. Ts'o" To: Jon Steinhart Message-ID: <20201213025831.GF575698@mit.edu> References: <20201209165854.GK52960@mit.edu> <20201213010743.GE575698@mit.edu> <202012130156.0BD1ufbY2698480@darkstar.fourwinds.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <202012130156.0BD1ufbY2698480@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Subject: Re: [TUHS] Were cron and at done at the same time? Or one before the other? X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" On Sat, Dec 12, 2020 at 05:56:41PM -0800, Jon Steinhart wrote: > > My two cents here is that the problem with the evolution of linux is that > many, many people are adding new stuff while the existing stuff is decaying. > Sure, the kernel is pretty stable, but user land is a mess where one has a > choice of many versions of everything, each of which is broken in a different > way. My engineer's perspective is that the overcomplexity from lack of > architecture is resulting in reliability and maintenance issues. There are areas that are broken, but I suspect you're remember the past with rose colored classes. I remember plenty of bugs and short-comings in BSD and commercial Unix systems in the late 80's and early 90's. They tended to show up for people who used those systems in ways that were a bit off the beaten path compared to the more common cases; but isn't that always the case? > And, if you can actually make a better file system, please go for it, you're > a better person than me. I've looked that that code, and it's huge, has no > clearly defined entry and exit points, and is undocumented. While I've been > too busy to deal with stuff, I found some minor bugs and a possible big > performance improvement just from trying to read the code. Did you report those bugs and potential performance improements? Feedback is always gratefully accepted. As far as documentation is concerned, it's not perfect, but it's certainly not completely undocumented: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/filesystems/index.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/filesystems/ext4/index.html Again, I suspect that you're remember the past with rose-colored classes. BSD FFS's fsck (or for that matter, fsck's from any of the commercial Unix systems that I was able to see soures for) didn't have regression test suites. Ext2/3/4 was one of the first file system fsck's that I'm aware with that was created with a regression test suite from the very beginning. And all of the major file systems in Linux are developed using a very large library of functional and stress tests: https://thunk.org/gce-xfstests https://thunk.org/android-xfstests https://github.com/tytso/xfstests-bld/blob/master/Documentation/kvm-xfstests.md Was there anything like this during the "good old days"? I sure don't remember anything like this when I started with BSD 4.3 back in the late 80's... - Ted