[arch-general] 2 recommendations needed for installing Arch Linux
Hi :) I'm new to the list. I already received some hints from another Arch Linux mailing list. Sorry that my mail is formatted in HTML. When I tied to restore the distro I used before from a backup for the billionth time, I made a mistake and accidentally deleted originals and backups from ext4 partitions. Currently I'm even unable to boot any from my other Linux installs, so I'm using a Parted Magic live CD, resp. the web mailing thingy from my provider. I'll switch to Arch Linux because for my needs, audio productions, it could be easier to keep it stable than it is for other distros. I've got two questions. 1. What is a safe FS, that can be recovered? Ext4 seemingly isn't such a FS. The FS also should be usable for audio productions. Security regarding to multiple user usage, web access, server usage etc. are unimportant for a DAW. 2. For my main Linux I always prefer to use 64-bit architecture, but 32-bit architecture compatibility is needed. Is there something I should take care about when installing Arch Linux? Cheers! Ralf
No idea about the filesystems but on 32-bit architecture, you shouldn't have any problems. Arch is using a different repository for 32-bit software under 64-bit machines called 'multilib'. You only need to enable that and you will be fine. On 6 December 2011 15:08, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@alice-dsl.net> wrote:
Hi :)
I'm new to the list.
I already received some hints from another Arch Linux mailing list.
Sorry that my mail is formatted in HTML. When I tied to restore the distro I used before from a backup for the billionth time, I made a mistake and accidentally deleted originals and backups from ext4 partitions. Currently I'm even unable to boot any from my other Linux installs, so I'm using a Parted Magic live CD, resp. the web mailing thingy from my provider.
I'll switch to Arch Linux because for my needs, audio productions, it could be easier to keep it stable than it is for other distros.
I've got two questions.
1. What is a safe FS, that can be recovered? Ext4 seemingly isn't such a FS. The FS also should be usable for audio productions. Security regarding to multiple user usage, web access, server usage etc. are unimportant for a DAW.
2. For my main Linux I always prefer to use 64-bit architecture, but 32-bit architecture compatibility is needed. Is there something I should take care about when installing Arch Linux?
Cheers!
Ralf
-----Original Message----- From: arch-general-bounces@archlinux.org on behalf of Thanasis Georgiou Sent: Tue 12/6/2011 14:20 [snip] Arch is using a different repository for 32-bit software under 64-bit machines called 'multilib'. You only need to enable that and you will be fine. --- Thank you :) so there are no issues with e.g. the no-cost proprietary lightscribe apps using 64-bit Arch Linux?! I don't need 32-bit support especially for my DAW, since I'm not using Windows VSTs. OTOH I never was lucky that I wasn't able to get the proprietary KORG nano KONTROL app run under wine. Tried this for 64-bit installs only. Regards, Ralf PS: Reading the Internet recovering removed files from ext3 seems to be less problematic, than doing this from ext4. So I perhaps will install Arch to ext3 and join another list to restore my lost data.
On 07/12/11 03:15, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: arch-general-bounces@archlinux.org on behalf of Thanasis Georgiou Sent: Tue 12/6/2011 14:20 [snip] Arch is using a different repository for 32-bit software under 64-bit machines called 'multilib'. You only need to enable that and you will be fine.
---
Thank you :)
so there are no issues with e.g. the no-cost proprietary lightscribe apps using 64-bit Arch Linux?! I don't need 32-bit support especially for my DAW, since I'm not using Windows VSTs. OTOH I never was lucky that I wasn't able to get the proprietary KORG nano KONTROL app run under wine. Tried this for 64-bit installs only.
Regards,
Ralf
PS: Reading the Internet recovering removed files from ext3 seems to be less problematic, than doing this from ext4. So I perhaps will install Arch to ext3 and join another list to restore my lost data.
I regularly use lightscribe to label CD/DVD, the apps installed from AUR and work fine in arch64 here.
-----Original Message----- From: arch-general-bounces@archlinux.org on behalf of Thanasis Georgiou Sent: Tue 12/6/2011 14:20 [snip] Arch is using a different repository for 32-bit software under 64-bit machines called 'multilib'. You only need to enable that and you will be fine. --- Thank you :) so there are no issues with e.g. the no-cost proprietary lightscribe apps using 64-bit Arch Linux?! I don't need 32-bit support especially for my DAW, since I'm not using Windows VSTs. OTOH I never was able to get the proprietary KORG nano KONTROL app run under wine. Tried this for 64-bit installs only. Regards, Ralf PS: Reading the Internet recovering removed files from ext3 seems to be less problematic, than doing this from ext4. So I perhaps will install Arch to ext3 and join another list to restore my lost data.
Pardon, that email thingy from my provider is a PITA. I'll use a Linux MUA ASAP.
Man, since ext4 was born, all I heard about it was good... Regarding data integrity: http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Ext4-data-loss-explanations-and-worka... But my advice is to mount a RAID arrange. That would be bulletproof. Never made one, but I think's it's all BIOS level; not archlinux. If you're still willing to try distros, I think it will interest you: http://www.musix.org.ar/en/index.html Regards, Nicolás
Am 06.12.2011 15:24, schrieb Nicolás Adamo:
But my advice is to mount a RAID arrange. That would be bulletproof.
No, it wouldn't. Deleting a file on RAID still means it's gone.
Never made one, but I think's it's all BIOS level; not archlinux.
Also not true. There is real hardware RAID, BIOS "fakeraid" and software RAID. The first one is expensive. The last two require setup inside Arch.
-----Original Message----- From: arch-general-bounces@archlinux.org on behalf of Thomas Bächler Sent: Tue 12/6/2011 15:34 Am 06.12.2011 15:24, schrieb Nicolás Adamo:
But my advice is to mount a RAID arrange. That would be bulletproof.
No, it wouldn't. Deleting a file on RAID still means it's gone. +++ Exactly, as I've written before, I run "rm", so a RAID wouldn't improve anything. Ext3 instead of ext4 might improve something?! I already run latest Parted Magic live CD and I still have to try one tool.
On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 3:49 PM, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@alice-dsl.net> wrote:
Ext3 instead of ext4 might improve something?!
It is true that ext3 has existed for longer than ext4. However, most testing is now probably done on ext4, so I wouldn't expect ext4 to be more buggy than ext3. The real difference is that ext4 allows you to mount your partitions with optimizations that might cause more dataloss on a powerfailure than what the standard ext3 options would. I'd rather change the mount options for ext4 than move to ext3. Cheers, Tom
Am 06.12.2011 15:49, schrieb Ralf Mardorf:
[...] I run "rm", so a RAID wouldn't improve anything. Ext3 instead of ext4 might improve something?!
Generally, running 'rm' on a file means it's gone. It's the specification of 'rm'. Expecting something different means you're doing something wrong. If you want to undelete, you need some kind of log-based filesystem with rollback support. None of the ext* family can do that, and never could. The ext3/4 undelete tools are hacks, based on luck.
On Tue, 06 Dec 2011 17:08:46 +0100 Thomas Bächler wrote:
Generally, running 'rm' on a file means it's gone. It's the specification of 'rm'.
Sort of, more so on SSDs but it's just harder to reconstruct because SSDs writes are spread out as sectors get worn out much quicker. For speed, /bin/rm just removes the reference in the partition table which is why it takes ages to write but a second to delete, leaving the data and allowing it to be overwritten later which could be in a second or possibly never. It is less likely to be overwritten on unix with partitions and a dedicated swap rather than on windows with a growing pagefile. The only rm command that makes the data gone that I know of is OpenBSDs rm with option -P, which overwrites 3 times.
Am 06.12.2011 17:22, schrieb Kevin Chadwick:
On Tue, 06 Dec 2011 17:08:46 +0100 Thomas Bächler wrote:
Generally, running 'rm' on a file means it's gone. It's the specification of 'rm'.
Sort of, more so on SSDs but it's just harder to reconstruct because SSDs writes are spread out as sectors get worn out much quicker. For speed, /bin/rm just removes the reference
I'm not talking about implementation, but about specification. There is no guarantee that the file is gone, and there is also no guarantee that it can be recovered. If you run 'rm', you should expect the file to be gone for good - because that is what can happen according to the specification. Re: SSDs: File systems like ext4 can run discard commands that will tell the SSD firmware that the data is no longer needed - so even though the data is still there, the place on the SSD where the data resides is no longer associated with the logical "block" where they were. If you read that block, the SSD firmware may simply return a bunch of zeroes. Recovering data in this case requires raw access to the flash memory itself (which modern SSDs won't grant you).
On 06-12-2011 14:49, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: arch-general-bounces@archlinux.org on behalf of Thomas Bächler Sent: Tue 12/6/2011 15:34
Am 06.12.2011 15:24, schrieb Nicolás Adamo:
But my advice is to mount a RAID arrange. That would be bulletproof.
No, it wouldn't. Deleting a file on RAID still means it's gone.
+++
Exactly, as I've written before, I run "rm", so a RAID wouldn't improve anything. Ext3 instead of ext4 might improve something?!
I already run latest Parted Magic live CD and I still have to try one tool.
When you delete something from a filesystem then you should expect it to be gone, it will only be recoverable by chance or luck. Ext4 is an evolution of ext3 so recovering deleted files shouldn't be much different, on the other hand, day to day usage can benefit from using ext4 over ext3. Give testdisk a try, it might not be able to recover everything though, depending on what you've done to the fs after you deleted the files. -- Mauro Santos
-----Original Message----- From: arch-general-bounces@archlinux.org on behalf of Mauro Santos Sent: Tue 12/6/2011 17:51 Give testdisk a try, it might not be able to recover everything though, depending on what you've done to the fs after you deleted the files. +++ Thank you everybody for your replies. Somebody asked what happened. As root I wanted to run rm -r /media/path/to/a/partition I made 2 typos, one of the typos was a space behind /media rm -r /media /path/to/a/partition When I noticed the space I directly pushed Ctrl+C, but my SATA drives seem to be very fast. After that accident I directly remounted the drives to read only, all recovery trials should be done read only too. Anyway, now or tomorrow I'll install Arch and perhaps next week, I'll try to recover the data again. Cheers! Ralf
-----Original Message----- From: Ralf Mardorf Sent: Tue 12/6/2011 23:43 perhaps next week, I'll try to recover the data again. +++ PS: Then I perhaps will reply to some other hints and questions. Again, thank you all for the help. Btw. regarding to audio I never noticed latency of the HDDs neither with ext3 nor with ext4.
On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 11:43 PM, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
As root I wanted to run rm -r /media/path/to/a/partition
This is not safe to do anyway. If I understand you well you were trying to remove an empty folder that was a mount point before ? Then use "rmdir" instead of "rm -r". It will accept to remove the directory only if empty which is the safe behavior you want in that case. -- Cédric Girard
-----Original Message----- From: arch-general-bounces@archlinux.org on behalf of Cédric Girard Sent: Wed 12/7/2011 00:11 To: General Discussion about Arch Linux Subject: Re: [arch-general] 2 recommendations needed for installing ArchLinux On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 11:43 PM, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
As root I wanted to run
This is not safe to do anyway. If I understand you well you were trying to remove an empty folder that was a mount point before ? Then use "rmdir" instead of "rm -r". It will accept to remove the directory only if empty which is the safe behavior you want in that case. +++ Thank you Cédric :) I didn't know rmdir. I need to correct myself it was rm -r /media/path/to/a/folder to delete the contend of a folder. In media there were two partitions mounted. One partition with backups and audio productions and another where I restored Debian from a backup that was some days old. After I restored Debian I wanted to delete /home and /user/src and then replace it from a younger backup. I should have remounted the backup partition read only. But my steps where, backup a broken Debian, restore Debian by an older backup and then get some data from the new backup. There might be sync commands that also avoid such mistakes, but I'm using tar, cp, rm, since sync commands need to much effort to learn the usage. ;) Ralf
On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 12:29 AM, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@alice-dsl.net>wrote:
I'm using tar, cp, rm, since sync commands need to much effort to learn the usage
rsync is indeed quite complex to master with all its options. But you may start from a safe basic set of options like "-av" and expand your knowledge as needed from here. Anyway, I think we are getting OT but it is always interesting to analyze our workflow and see what can be improved after a mistake. -- Cédric Girard
-----Original Message----- From: arch-general-bounces@archlinux.org on behalf of Cédric Girard Sent: Wed 12/7/2011 00:39 Anyway, I think we are getting OT but it is always interesting to analyze our workflow and see what can be improved after a mistake. +++ The bad of the story is, that I stopped the old habit to burn copies of my backups to unsafe light media. Ok, DVD-RAM is safe, but a PITA and even for unsafe DVD R or RW we'll become DJs to burn split archives, since wasting of resources became a law. "Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster." - Wirth's law Since I started with 6502, 6510 Assembler I have another taste regarding to usage of RAM, hard realtime etc. ... I'm a dino, not willing to suite to the tool I'm using, my habit is that the tool needs to fit to my needs. I won't change my workflow, I'll get a removable HDD, e.g. an USB HDD to backup my backups. :D 0.02, Ralf
-----Original Message----- From: arch-general-bounces@archlinux.org on behalf of Ralf Mardorf Sent: Wed 12/7/2011 02:30 -----Original Message----- From: arch-general-bounces@archlinux.org on behalf of Cédric Girard Sent: Wed 12/7/2011 00:39 Anyway, I think we are getting OT but it is always interesting to analyze our workflow and see what can be improved after a mistake. +++ The bad of the story is, that I stopped the old habit to burn copies of my backups to unsafe light media. Ok, DVD-RAM is safe, but a PITA and even for unsafe DVD R or RW we'll become DJs to burn split archives, since wasting of resources became a law. "Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster." - Wirth's law Since I started with 6502, 6510 Assembler I have another taste regarding to usage of RAM, hard realtime etc. ... I'm a dino, not willing to suite to the tool I'm using, my habit is that the tool needs to fit to my needs. I won't change my workflow, I'll get a removable HDD, e.g. an USB HDD to backup my backups. :D 0.02?, Ralf +++ PS: I'll test rsync, but a removable HDD also will protect (better) against lightning strikes, since a type 3 SPD won't protect if your house doesn't feature a type 1 and 2 SPD.
On 12/06/2011 11:34 AM, Thomas Bächler wrote:
Am 06.12.2011 15:24, schrieb Nicolás Adamo:
But my advice is to mount a RAID arrange. That would be bulletproof. No, it wouldn't. Deleting a file on RAID still means it's gone.
Never made one, but I think's it's all BIOS level; not archlinux. Also not true. There is real hardware RAID, BIOS "fakeraid" and software RAID. The first one is expensive. The last two require setup inside Arch.
:P Still learning :)
-----Original Message----- From: arch-general-bounces@archlinux.org on behalf of Nicolás Adamo Sent: Tue 12/6/2011 15:24 Man, since ext4 was born, all I heard about it was good... Regarding data integrity: http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Ext4-data-loss-explanations-and-worka... +++ Hi Nicolás :) I still try to recover the data and I'll read all links. Thank you. --- But my advice is to mount a RAID arrange. That would be bulletproof. +++ RAID for a DAW means much devices = too much noise for a home studio. I should have made backups to 2 devices and only one backup device should be mounted when working. If I rm files by a RAID, what would be different? --- http://www.musix.org.ar/en/index.html +++ I suspect that for my needs a distro would be useful, that allows me to configure my DAW for my needs and then has less tendencies to break things when installing upgrades. Prebuilt DAWs don't fit to my needs. Well known major distros tend to become more worse than I heard about Windows tend to be. A harmless example, I don't like to be forced to use PulseAudio. Debian testing doesn't, but after a while they tried, so I needed to build dummy packages. There are much more worse things, but I won't spoil the list with this issues. Cheers! Ralf
C Anthony On Dec 6, 2011 8:48 AM, "Ralf Mardorf" <ralf.mardorf@alice-dsl.net> wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: arch-general-bounces@archlinux.org on behalf of Nicolás Adamo Sent: Tue 12/6/2011 15:24
Man, since ext4 was born, all I heard about it was good... Regarding data integrity:
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Ext4-data-loss-explanations-and-worka...
+++
Hi Nicolás :)
I still try to recover the data and I'll read all links. Thank you.
---
But my advice is to mount a RAID arrange. That would be bulletproof.
+++
RAID for a DAW means much devices = too much noise for a home studio. I should have made backups to 2 devices and only one backup device should be mounted when working. If I rm files by a RAID, what would be different?
---
http://www.musix.org.ar/en/index.html
+++
I suspect that for my needs a distro would be useful, that allows me to configure my DAW for my needs and then has less tendencies to break things when installing upgrades. Prebuilt DAWs don't fit to my needs. Well known major distros tend to become more worse than I heard about Windows tend to be. A harmless example, I don't like to be forced to use PulseAudio. Debian testing doesn't, but after a while they tried, so I needed to build dummy packages. There are much more worse things, but I won't spoil the list with this issues.
Cheers!
Ralf
On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 9:32 AM, C Anthony Risinger <anthony@xtfx.me> wrote:
C Anthony
^^^^^ whoops ... fat fingered that somehow while thumbing thru new messages :-o ...
On Dec 6, 2011 8:48 AM, "Ralf Mardorf" <ralf.mardorf@alice-dsl.net> wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: arch-general-bounces@archlinux.org on behalf of Nicolás Adamo Sent: Tue 12/6/2011 15:24
Man, since ext4 was born, all I heard about it was good... Regarding data integrity:
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Ext4-data-loss-explanations-and-worka...
+++
Hi Nicolás :)
I still try to recover the data and I'll read all links. Thank you.
how did you "accidentally" delete? if the disk wasn't written to afterwards, the data is still *technically* there, but linking it back together sounds like a real chore :-(
---
But my advice is to mount a RAID arrange. That would be bulletproof.
+++
RAID for a DAW means much devices = too much noise for a home studio. I should have made backups to 2 devices and only one backup device should be mounted when working. If I rm files by a RAID, what would be different?
I can't imagine it'll be all that loud. i run a 2x2TB RAID1 (md/softraid) array for my local server using dense/"green" disks (5900rpm) and believe me, the disks are dwarfed by everything else (eg, fans ;-) your "mount one at a time" scheme won't really help you ... what if your disk dies since the last backup? RAID lets you replace a disk in real-time/on-line and gives a noticeable read performance boost ... what's too lose? off-site backups are still a good thing.
---
http://www.musix.org.ar/en/index.html
+++
I suspect that for my needs a distro would be useful, that allows me to configure my DAW for my needs and then has less tendencies to break things when installing upgrades. Prebuilt DAWs don't fit to my needs. Well known major distros tend to become more worse than I heard about Windows tend to be. A harmless example, I don't like to be forced to use PulseAudio. Debian testing doesn't, but after a while they tried, so I needed to build dummy packages. There are much more worse things, but I won't spoil the list with this issues.
regardless of distro you'll just have to work it into youre needs. Arch will let you do this pretty well, but you'll just have to stay on top of incoming changes ... such is life i suppose :-) Pulseaudio works fantastic for the use cases it was designed for (which fulfills 95% of people's needs), but if it doesn't work for you, you can suspend it and let JACK or whatever take control as needed. -- C Anthony
On Tue, 6 Dec 2011 09:51:17 -0600 C Anthony Risinger wrote:
but linking it back together sounds like a real chore
A cinch with tools like testdisk unless it's been overwritten, in which case it would need to be worth >£1000 to recover it in a cleanroom. I always save copies of my documents as text too as text can be read and found as text on a disk, even fragments ;-).
On Tue, 6 Dec 2011 14:08:21 +0100 "Ralf Mardorf" wrote:
When I tied to restore the distro I used before from a backup for the billionth time, I made a mistake and accidentally deleted originals and backups from ext4 partitions.
Have you tried testdisk to recover the data. An arch package is available and it supports ext4. You shouldn't run the OS from the disk your recovering from as you may overwrite the lost data. This bootdisk comes with testdisk ready to go and won't touch your disk. http://www.sysresccd.org/ Kc
On 6 December 2011 21:08, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@alice-dsl.net> wrote:
Hi :)
I'm new to the list.
I already received some hints from another Arch Linux mailing list.
Welcome to Arch Linux :)
Sorry that my mail is formatted in HTML. When I tied to restore the distro I used before from a backup for the billionth time, I made a mistake and accidentally deleted originals and backups from ext4 partitions. Currently I'm even unable to boot any from my other Linux installs, so I'm using a Parted Magic live CD, resp. the web mailing thingy from my provider.
When I tell some people that I use plain text, I am made aware that it's already 2011 :D
I'll switch to Arch Linux because for my needs, audio productions, it could be easier to keep it stable than it is for other distros.
Here I'll give you just one page to read: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pro_Audio
I've got two questions.
1. What is a safe FS, that can be recovered? Ext4 seemingly isn't such a FS. The FS also should be usable for audio productions. Security regarding to multiple user usage, web access, server usage etc. are unimportant for a DAW.
There are 3 things you're probably thinking or recalling. In the early days of ext4 there were some issues with data _loss_. That is not to be confused with intentional data _removal_. Either way, those early days are long gone, and I can't remember the last time I had actually lost data. In fact, this system has gone through harsh treatments including forced halts during intensive disk operations. Potent disaster, but I have not lost anything. The other issue is with regards to data _recovery_. Ext4 is by design a tad bit different from ext3, and any data recovery tool which can work with ext2/3 needs some additional work to support ext4 [1]. TestDisk can help with NTFS, FAT and ext2 for quick recovery of files for which metadata still exists, but not so with ext3 or ext4. For that, you'd need to "carve out" data. PhotoRec will get you the most relevant files, but you can take a look at Foremost if you want to recover even older ones. At the end of the day, however, as Thomas has mentioned, you can only hope. The last and probably least of your concerns is (or should be) whether the FS is suitable for audio production. Ext-based filesystems have the lowest latency, aside from JFS which beats them all. However, there is no empirical data to prove that this disk-level latency has any adverse effects on realtime audio/video in reality. You should purchase a fast HDD if disk latency is a concern at all. Better yet, get an SSD so you eliminate seek time entirely (best for sampling).
2. For my main Linux I always prefer to use 64-bit architecture, but 32-bit architecture compatibility is needed. Is there something I should take care about when installing Arch Linux?
Cheers!
Ralf
[1] http://computer-forensics.sans.org/blog/2010/12/20/digital-forensics-underst... -- GPG/PGP ID: C0711BF1
participants (11)
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C Anthony Risinger
-
Cédric Girard
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Kevin Chadwick
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Mauro Santos
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Nicolás Adamo
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Ralf Mardorf
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Ray Rashif
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Ross Hamblin
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Thanasis Georgiou
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Thomas Bächler
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Tom Gundersen