Is BSD really significantly more efficient than Linux? The anecdotes here seem almost unbelievable.
Why and how we’re migrating many of our servers from Linux to the BSDs
191–200 of 237 posts
Re: Why and how we’re migrating many of our servers from Linux to the BSDs
#192I use Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD all for fun, learning, and profit(the first two). At the very least it is nice to make acquaintance with at least one BSD because it will probably expand your knowledge on Linux in ways you wont be able to anticipate. For example, FreeBSD got me into kernel development, full system debugging, network stack development, driver development, and understanding how the whole kit f…
I also still use FreeBSD on my NAS. But after many years, the desktop experience was pretty sad and made me switch to Windows + Linux for my hardware tinkering. On one side, the lack of manpower shows in many places, unfortunately. I'm talking modern WiFi, GPU support, or power-save mechanisms. On the other side, many Open Source projects only support Linux and getting their projects to compile + run on FreeBSD was a pain, too.
I mean, in addition to what kev009 mentioned, FreeBSD has so many great things to offer: For example, a full-featured "ifconfig" instead of ip + ethtool + iwconfig. Or consistent file-system snapshots since like forever on UFS (and ZFS, of course). I never understood how people in a commercial setup could run filesystem-level backups on a machine without that, like on Linux with ext4. It's just asking for trouble.
So, I'm happy to see this thread about FreeBSD here! Maybe we can make the Open Source scene a bit more diverse again with regards to operating systems…
Re: Why and how we’re migrating many of our servers from Linux to the BSDs
#193I really wanted to give a try to FreeBSD... because I thought it was linux from "better" times... and then I saw they are tied to the tons of similar gcc extensions... and then I say to myself "why bother since it has the same major compiler dependency issue", better try to fix linux code base or start from there.
It doesn’t, though? Gcc doesn’t even ship oob, the project itself uses clang, and almost all packages are also compiled with the system c/c++ toolchain.
Re: Why and how we’re migrating many of our servers from Linux to the BSDs
#194> The largest failure was with btrfs — after a reboot, a 50 TB filesystem (in mirror, for backups) simply stopped working. No more mounting possible. Data was lost, but I had further backups. The client was informed and understood the situation. Within a few days, the server was rebuilt from scratch on FreeBSD with ZFS — since then, I haven’t lost a single bit. As someone who admins a lot of btrfs, it seems very unli…
Why do people use btrfs and similar filesystems for production use? They are by no means dumpster fires. But the internet is littered with stories of "X happened, then I realized Y & that I wasn't getting my data back"
The internet is littered with imbeciles who omit their own blunders.
Re: Why and how we’re migrating many of our servers from Linux to the BSDs
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook (well, Meta, I guess) is famously a big user and developer of btrfs. It seems to work just fine for them.
> Facebook (well, Meta, I guess) is famously a big user and developer of btrfs. It seems to work just fine for them I really, really, really wish people would STOP with the whole "it works for $SilconValleyCorp so it must work for me" or "$SiliconValleyCorp does it, so I must". It only leads to disappointment in the case of the former and wholly un-necessary over-engineering in the case of the latter. (a) You do not…
Look, I simply highlighted a major user of btrfs. Sorry if you have some complex emotions about them. But for some reason, I doubt you'd say the same thing when someone mentions Netflix using FreeBSD.
>(a) You do not know how or where Facebook use BTRFS
Their engineering team has posted a few of their use cases.
>(c) Facebook probably employ the guy who invented BTRFS and an army of kernel developers on top of that .... how much in-house support do you have for BTRFS ?
Uh, about as much as any other file system? Those changes and improvements are upstreamed to the kernel anyway. It's not like Facebook has some sort of special version of btrfs they are using.
>As far as I am concerned, the fact that they STILL have not fixed RAID5 in BTRFS says everythng you need to know.
As far as I know, the issue with RAID5 in btrfs is highly complex and it would take quite a bit of dedicated effort to make it work. I suppose it's a architectural shortcoming of btrfs. But then again, it's RAID5, a/k/a something only shoestring hobbyists really care about. Hence why no one is bothering to make it work in btrfs.
At the end of the day, btrfs is perfectly fine for home users and workstations. ZFS beats it out on servers, that's fine. Traditional filesystems are not the end-all be-all of storage anymore. No one has made a better ZFS because the industry has moved on to things Ceph, vSAN, AzureHCI, etc.
Re: Why and how we’re migrating many of our servers from Linux to the BSDs
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's the single most unreliable untrustworthy filesystem I've used in the 21st century. I think the “experiences differ widely” point makes sense with this comment too. Synology uses btrfs on the NAS systems it sells (there’s probably some option to choose another filesystem, but this is the default, AFAIK). If it were to be “the most unreliable untrustworthy filesystem” for many others too, Synology would’ve (or s…
Synology only uses btrfs in single-disk mode and implements RAID-1 functionality using its own patched version of mdadm to side-step the gotchas of native btrfs raid1.
What 'gotchas' exactly?
Re: Why and how we’re migrating many of our servers from Linux to the BSDs
#197Re: Why and how we’re migrating many of our servers from Linux to the BSDs
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
The UI generally quite stable and well documented, which is awesome. They also have things like `rpm` in ports that you can install. Why? Because you can enable linux binary compatibility[0] and run linux binaries on it (this implements the linux kernel interface, it's not a VM/emulator). It's also backward compatible with its own binaries back to FreeBSD 4 (circa 2000). Though you may not need that as the ports/pack…
Thanks. I have been thinking about it for a while, but have never made the leap to using it. Mostly I am running pretty small and simple servers, and do not really need Linux style containers.
That is the sweet spot for any of the BSDs. FreeBSD has the most of pretty much everything so it's my usual recommendation, but you could probably get along with Net and Open too which have their own charm.
Re: Why and how we’re migrating many of our servers from Linux to the BSDs
#199I use Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD all for fun, learning, and profit(the first two). At the very least it is nice to make acquaintance with at least one BSD because it will probably expand your knowledge on Linux in ways you wont be able to anticipate. For example, FreeBSD got me into kernel development, full system debugging, network stack development, driver development, and understanding how the whole kit f…
What sort of projects did you do to get into network stack and driver development on BSD?
I worked at a large service provider and had to fix bugs and improve performance in TCP/IP and Intel Ethernet drivers. I ended up really enjoying it so it became a hobby and consulting gig as well.
Re: Why and how we’re migrating many of our servers from Linux to the BSDs
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it will probably expand your knowledge It really just fragments my knowledge to be honest. Say "I gotta get things done". Get me to a terminal. You've got Mac OS command line flags, GNU, BSD. Great. Then it's some kind of asinine config to interact with some piece of software, all to achieve "generally the same thing", just a different way/flavor. I really don't see the benefits.
It’s like driving a car. Most people can drive without needing to understand the internals, and it’ll still get them from point A to B. But just like some people enjoy diving deep into car mechanics, others enjoy understanding the intricacies of software. For me, that deeper knowledge is an advantage. It helps me quickly evaluate tradeoffs between databases, debug at the OS level, or dismiss a library still relying o…
Yes, and if you are a powertrain engineer (allegory for system developer) you'd benefit from knowing a variety of technologies in the automotive industry to be able to adapt to market conditions. If you are a heavy equipment mechanic (allegory for operator), knowing Cummins, Cat, and Detroit engines would be expected. For some reason computing professionals tend to be a lot more tribal and gravitate toward monoculture.