Defrag vfat from Linux?

Александръ · 06-02-2011, 04:09 PM

Quote:

I'm curious what you're doing that you need to squeeze performance out of a decade old OS with a hard drive that's limited to 4GB of storage, but even with that limited capacity disk I/O is apparently a bottleneck for you.

I have a laptop, and do a lot that requires fast boot times + connection to network. For instance, to check e-mail between class, I must bring my computer to an Ethernet port, configure the network (depending on where I am), check e-mail, and go, usually with only a minute to do it in. Another example, I need to convert a TeX homework assignment to a PDF and print it by connecting it to the printer on the fly.

I mean, if I wanted to, say, play games or something, then my hardware is definitely fast enough, and I can afford an extra minute or two for the computer to boot up. But it's the do-it-between-classes things that are the bottleneck. I mean, ChromeOS is the ideal for speed, but it doesn't support half the functions I need to be able to do between classes. As it stands, with an (unfragmented) HIBERFIL.SYS and 4-GB SSD, my XP should be able to turn off within about 3 seconds, and turn back on within about 12 seconds: close enough for my needs. Having FAT32 made the speed about 5 and 27 seconds: still acceptable, but definitely not as good as FAT16. That's why an extra minute when turning off due to fragmentation of HIBERFIL.SYS makes such a big difference.

DragonWisard · 06-02-2011, 04:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Александръ

As it stands, with an (unfragmented) HIBERFIL.SYS and 4-GB SSD, my XP should be able to turn off within about 3 seconds, and turn back on within about 12 seconds: close enough for my needs. Having FAT32 made the speed about 5 and 27 seconds: still acceptable, but definitely not as good as FAT16. That's why an extra minute when turning off due to fragmentation of HIBERFIL.SYS makes such a big difference.

Are you shutting off and rebooting or using suspend/resume? I haven't bothered to time it, but my system is pretty quick to suspend/resume, probably close to or within your 3s/12s figure.

It's probably unrealistic, but some of newer ThinkPads claim to have up to 30 hours of battery life. You could just not shutdown at all. ;-)

Александръ · 06-02-2011, 04:39 PM

I don't quite remember what Windows Vista calls it, but in Windows XP it's called Hibernate (hence HIBERfil.sys). It's the one that doesn't use battery life when off. Yeah, I would keep my computer on standby, but the problem is that I am using a Toshiba, and their batteries as it stands only give about 1 hours of battery life: and running the computer on batteries noticeably reduces the battery life further. So in this case I guess it is a hardware issue: but it is a Toshiba problem, and I am not intending to change my whole computer just to allow it to have batteries with longer battery life.

TobiSGD · 06-02-2011, 04:41 PM

1. If you use FAT16 with 4GB partitions (which is a dirty hack) the block size goes up to 64KB, which is a waste of space if you have many small files.
2. FAT16 knows nothing about trim support,so I wouldn't run it on a SSD.
3. With a Slackware 32 bit installation my laptop suspends in 2 seconds and wakes up in 2 seconds, no need for a deprecated OS on a deprecated (at least for use on laptop/desktop), insecure (total lack of ownership/permissions) and wasteful (64KB blocksize)filesystem to have a fast system.

Александръ · 06-03-2011, 11:23 AM

DragonWisard:
Sorry, apparently I was wrong: the figures I gave are apparently for ShutDown / StartUp. The figures for Hibernate are about 4-5 sec. to hibernate, 2 sec. to resume. But for my purposes, Hibernation is sufficient, so apparently I overshot the optimization level I was aiming for.

p.s. it's really interesting how you chose your username thus: my username everywhere I signed up used to be DragonMaster, but then my church told me that in the Bible, Dragon is the old serpent, Devil, and so I needed to change my username. I still have the YouTube account with that name that I can no longer use because YouTube doesn't allow changing usernames... I noticed the username from the beginning, but I didn't think you were going to pop back in here, since the post was so old.

TobiSGD:
Thanks for your suggestion: but I hope you were not thinking that I kept my temp files on the FAT16 partition: in fact, I have a separate (slow) NTFS partition for my MikTeX and CYGWIN distributions, temp files (except when running performance intensive applications), word lists (for an application I wrote to study GRE words), &c..

Regarding your comment about trim: that is why I tried to arrange for most files on the FAT16 partition to be used only for reading. For instance, I modified the registry to keep the iconcache.db file from growing, &c. Of course it's not perfect: some applications insist on writing logs and .TMP files to the %SystemRoot% directory, but it's the best I can do.

Now then, about your SlackWare comment... what level of sophistication of mail rules does it allow? (that was my main reason for using XP over Linux) Does it support connecting to a wireless network via a WPA2 certificate? (I've been using wired internet while using Linux because it did not support that; even in XP I had to download a special update to allow use of WPA2 over WEP). Does it support Acrobat Reader? (the built-in reader did not work for certain PDFs I was viewing) Alternatively, if there is a site that describes the (standard) features of Slackware, you can point me to it: I couldn't find one when searching on Google. For instance, the site http://www.slackware.com/announce/13.0.php only described the new, "advanced" features of slackware. Thanks in advance.

DragonWisard · 06-03-2011, 11:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Александръ

DragonWisard:
Sorry, apparently I was wrong: the figures I gave are apparently for ShutDown / StartUp. The figures for Hibernate are about 4-5 sec. to hibernate, 2 sec. to resume. But for my purposes, Hibernation is sufficient, so apparently I overshot the optimization level I was aiming for.

For me Suspend (to RAM) is nearly instantaneous to suspend/resume where as Hibernate (to disk) takes a bit more time. But since I have a pretty good battery in my ThinkPad I usually use Suspend.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Александръ

Now then, about your SlackWare comment... what level of sophistication of mail rules does it allow? (that was my main reason for using XP over Linux)

I'm not sure what you mean by mail rules, but if you're talking about filters Thunderbird has some pretty good mail filtering. There are a lot of mail clients on Linux and most of them can be extended easily so if you can program you can create arbitrarily complex rules (beyond what is built in to the client).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Александръ

Does it support connecting to a wireless network via a WPA certificate? (I've been using wired internet while using Linux because it did not support that; even in XP I had to download a special update to allow use of WPA over WEP).

I have used WPA w/ certificates before. WiFi works pretty well in Linux these days.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Александръ

Does it support Acrobat Reader? (the built-in reader did not work for certain PDFs I was viewing)

Yes, you can get the slackbuild on SlackBuilds.org.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Александръ

Alternatively, if there is a site that describes the (standard) features of Slackware, you can point me to it: I couldn't find one when searching on Google. For instance, the site http://www.slackware.com/announce/13.0.php only described the new, "advanced" features of slackware. Thanks in advance.

Distrowatch.com would be a good resource.

This is actually my username from when I was in middle school and I just never got around to changing this account. I don't use this one much anymore either.

TobiSGD · 06-03-2011, 11:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Александръ

Now then, about your SlackWare comment... what level of sophistication of mail rules does it allow? (that was my main reason for using XP over Linux)

Isn't the "sophistication of the mail rules" dependent on the mail-client, not the OS?

Quote:

Does it support connecting to a wireless network via a WPA2 certificate? (I've been using wired internet while using Linux because it did not support that; even in XP I had to download a special update to allow use of WPA2 over WEP).

Worked in every distro out of the box I used in the last 3 years, if I understand that correct.

Quote:

Does it support Acrobat Reader? (the built-in reader did not work for certain PDFs I was viewing)

There is a Linux version for Acrobat Reader. I never use it.

Quote:

Alternatively, if there is a site that describes the (standard) features of Slackware, you can point me to it: I couldn't find one when searching on Google. For instance, the site http://www.slackware.com/announce/13.0.php only described the new, "advanced" features of slackware.

Slackware 13.0 is two versions behind, the current version is 13.37. What do you mean with standard features? It comes with two fully blown DEs, a couple of WMs, software for almost any purpose and you are able to install anything you want on it, as long as it is Linux software.

Александръ · 06-03-2011, 11:49 AM

DragonWisard:
Thanks for the information. Your comments were helpful. I have just one more question: what is a good e-mail client for having complex mail rules? Thunderbird just didn't cut it: it tried to "auto-optimize" (or whatever it was called) the mail rules for me, and it just failed pretty badly. Even with auto-adjustment turned off, though, its mail rules could not get nearly as sophisticated as the OExpress mail rules. If you have a suggestion which could outcompete OExpress, I would like to try it.

DragonWisard · 06-03-2011, 11:52 AM

I don't have very complicated filtering needs so I haven't looked into it much in the past.
Could you give us some examples of the kind of rules you use?

Александръ · 06-03-2011, 12:13 PM

Well, ideally I would like to be able to implement something like:
If the message body has the word Viagra, increment points by 10.
If the title contains "diploma" and the "To" line does not contains my University address, increment points by 8.
If the "CC" line contains precisely 1 "@BVUNet.net" address, decrease the points by 5.
If the "from" line contains my brother's e-mail, set Importance to 2.
If the points are more than 10 and Importance = 0, move to "Spam" folder.
If the points are between 5 and 10, set color to Red.
If Importance > 0, flag the message.

Of course, Outlook Express cannot implement those rules either, but it has outperformed any client I've used in Linux. Though then again, I'm not all that familiar with Linux clients.

P.s., if you look, my message was edited after you started responding to it... My University is apparently updating from WPA to WPA2 as of May 25th... which is not supported with XP SP1. So I guess I will definitely have to change if I wish to keep my wireless. Then perhaps SlackWare will be a system I consider, contingent on the mail rule question.

TobiSGD · 06-03-2011, 12:33 PM

I have not used it yet, but I think you can implement those rules with a spam filter like spamassassin.

Александръ · 06-03-2011, 12:54 PM

Alrighty then... I hope to try it out when I get the chance. Is 13.37 the version you recommend?

TobiSGD · 06-03-2011, 12:55 PM

Yep, was just released about a month ago.

DragonWisard · 06-03-2011, 01:21 PM

Ah, you meant spam filtering...

In my opinion that is best handled at the server, rather than the client. Some people create a local mail proxy to use server-side filtering techniques before it reaches the client application.

Александръ · 06-03-2011, 01:41 PM

So what do you suggest I do? Should I set up SlackWare, and my own proxy mail server (that I'll have to connect to different network connections depending on where I am, not suere if that has to do with anything). My server-side filtering is just terrible: I asked my ISP to turn it off for my account, and I have to live with it for my University (not turnable-off). My ISP gets about a 50% spam catch rate at the cost of about a 2% false positive rate: which is clearly not acceptable in any way. My University filter is even worse, since the spam on my University account is practically nonexistent. With my OExpress customized filter, I catch about 90% spam, and <.1% false positive rate: never mind the fact that the spam messages are not deleted, so I can still look through them if need be (i.e. to confirm that I received a message I should have received).