Raid Across The Sd Cards, Potential For Speedup?


azmodean said:
As for filesystem, I'll probably be using ext2. All my systems are linux and all my drives are ext2 except the thumb drives I use for small data transfer, so being able to read the SD card on windows isn't an issue, which I think is the only reason to use fatXX. If there are better alternatives for use on SD cards I'd be glad to hear about it though.

With this open source driver for Windows, there's little reason to use FAT32 at all for SD cards you don't use anywhere but your Pandora/GP2X and home PC running Linux/Windows: http://www.fs-driver.org/

In fact, when Open2X comes out for the GP2X any day now, you'd be wise to use EXT3 on your SD cards, it is much more reliable than FAT32.
 
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Senor Quack said:
azmodean said:
As for filesystem, I'll probably be using ext2. All my systems are linux and all my drives are ext2 except the thumb drives I use for small data transfer, so being able to read the SD card on windows isn't an issue, which I think is the only reason to use fatXX. If there are better alternatives for use on SD cards I'd be glad to hear about it though.

With this open source driver for Windows, there's little reason to use FAT32 at all for SD cards you don't use anywhere but your Pandora/GP2X and home PC running Linux/Windows: http://www.fs-driver.org/

In fact, when Open2X comes out for the GP2X any day now, you'd be wise to use EXT3 on your SD cards, it is much more reliable than FAT32.


Do you really want a journaled file system like ext3 on an sd card or is that a typo?
 
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Sphinxter said:
Senor Quack said:
azmodean said:
As for filesystem, I'll probably be using ext2. All my systems are linux and all my drives are ext2 except the thumb drives I use for small data transfer, so being able to read the SD card on windows isn't an issue, which I think is the only reason to use fatXX. If there are better alternatives for use on SD cards I'd be glad to hear about it though.

With this open source driver for Windows, there's little reason to use FAT32 at all for SD cards you don't use anywhere but your Pandora/GP2X and home PC running Linux/Windows: http://www.fs-driver.org/

In fact, when Open2X comes out for the GP2X any day now, you'd be wise to use EXT3 on your SD cards, it is much more reliable than FAT32.


Do you really want a journaled file system like ext3 on an sd card or is that a typo?


Yep, I meant EXT3. Your choice. Ext3 will write more often, Ext2 is fine (both with noatime option)
 
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Senor Quack said:
Sphinxter said:
Senor Quack said:
azmodean said:
As for filesystem, I'll probably be using ext2. All my systems are linux and all my drives are ext2 except the thumb drives I use for small data transfer, so being able to read the SD card on windows isn't an issue, which I think is the only reason to use fatXX. If there are better alternatives for use on SD cards I'd be glad to hear about it though.

With this open source driver for Windows, there's little reason to use FAT32 at all for SD cards you don't use anywhere but your Pandora/GP2X and home PC running Linux/Windows: http://www.fs-driver.org/

In fact, when Open2X comes out for the GP2X any day now, you'd be wise to use EXT3 on your SD cards, it is much more reliable than FAT32.


Do you really want a journaled file system like ext3 on an sd card or is that a typo?


Yep, I meant EXT3. Your choice. Ext3 will write more often, Ext2 is fine (both with noatime option)


QUOTE
Access rights are not maintained. All users can access all the directories and files of an Ext2 volume. If a new file or directory is created, it inherits all the permissions, the GID and the UID from the directory where it has been created. There is one exception to this rule: a file (but not a directory) the driver has created always has cleared "x" permissions, it inherits the "r" and the "w" permissions only. See also section "What limitations arise from not maintaining access rights?".

The current version of the Ext2 file system driver does not maintain access rights. All users can access all the Ext2 volumes that a drive letter is created for. For example, if a drive letter has been created for an Ext2 volume, which is the root volume of a Linux installation, you can simply read and modify files such as /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow. User names are readable and passwords of these users can be quite easily cracked and modified!

Therefore the current Ext2 file system driver does not fit for installations which require restrictive rights policies. It should be sufficient for your computer at home, which is used by one or a few users only. Furthermore, you should create drive letters for a root volume of a Linux installation only if you know exactly what you are doing.




just because you *can* do something doesn't mean you should. Linux has 'user groups', and codes on the file system control what directory's can be read/written by which users. this driver essentially gives any user root privileges. this is bad because root can do ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING to the file system. including destroy your operating system. Becosue of these strict privileges its virtually impassable for Linux to get a virus. Unless you deliberative run it with sudo (super user do). now, say you get a bad viras while your root partition is mounted in windows, the viras is then free to do anything with the data on the partition.
by all mens mount your home partition if its absolutely nesoserry, but DO NOT mount your root partition with this driver.
 
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jffs2 and yaffs are probably better choices of journaled file systems on an SD card.
 
sindbad said:
jffs2 and yaffs are probably better choices of journaled file systems on an SD card.
Well, they would be if you actually had access to the underlying NAND chip... but... you don't, and that is what jffs2 and yaffs are for. Direct use with NAND chips, not SD cards.
 
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Hessiess said:
just because you *can* do something doesn't mean you should. Linux has 'user groups', and codes on the file system control what directory's can be read/written by which users. this driver essentially gives any user root privileges. this is bad because root can do ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING to the file system. including destroy your operating system. Becosue of these strict privileges its virtually impassable for Linux to get a virus. Unless you deliberative run it with sudo (super user do). now, say you get a bad viras while your root partition is mounted in windows, the viras is then free to do anything with the data on the partition.
by all mens mount your home partition if its absolutely nesoserry, but DO NOT mount your root partition with this driver.
I think you're very confused. Or I am. I'm often confused.
That quote was entirely in reference to the Windows EXT2 driver. It is not, in any way, a flaw with EXT2, but with Windows. The exact same "flaw" exists in the Windows filesystems. (I quote flaw because it's an arguable design decision to go one way vs the other)
Whether your card is FAT32, EXT2, EXT3, or FunkyFS2.0 (totally made that up) if you mount it you will risk a virus destroying the data. Period.
And this doesn't just affect mounting it in Windows, but Linux as well. Unless you make your entire card read only (which you may do, though it makes it hard to write data to it then ;) ) then mounting it will give the current user regular priveleges, ie: read/write. If you do have a virus, that virus can get and manipulate the data, regardless of whether you're on linux or windows.
With all this in mind, I'm still not sure what you're arguing is a bad idea to do, and what you're proposing would be better.
 
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i was mostly talcking about mounting your root partition of a linux install on your PC in windows using this driver, which would be equivalent to running
CODE
sudo chmod 777 -R /

on your Linux install, DO NOT RUN THIS COMMAND

QUOTE
Unless you make your entire card read only

this is the main difference between Linux and windows file systems, you don't have to make the whole partition reed only. Its possible to control what's executable/reed only on a per file basis. so you can make everything reed only except for files that *need* to be rightable and or executable.
 
Hessiess said:
i was mostly talcking about mounting your root partition of a linux install on your PC in windows using this driver, which would be equivalent to running
CODE
sudo chmod 777 -R /

on your Linux install, DO NOT RUN THIS COMMAND

QUOTE
Unless you make your entire card read only

this is the main difference between Linux and windows file systems, you don't have to make the whole partition reed only. Its possible to control what's executable/reed only on a per file basis. so you can make everything reed only except for files that *need* to be rightable and or executable.

Fair enough, but what files are you going to have write restrictions on? As a general use case, the ones I'm most keen to protect are the ones that regularly edit, making the whole point moot anyway. You can flag your binaries and whatnot as readonly, if you want, but if a virus wipes those out, is it a major loss? I should hope you have those backed up somewhere. My fear would be loss of save games and documents I'm currently working on, in which case they need write permissions anyway, and mounting them in Windows won't make a difference.
I'm sorry, but it seems like you're just trying to find a problem where it doesn't necessarily exist.
 
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Senor Quack said:
sindbad said:
jffs2 and yaffs are probably better choices of journaled file systems on an SD card.
Well, they would be if you actually had access to the underlying NAND chip... but... you don't, and that is what jffs2 and yaffs are for. Direct use with NAND chips, not SD cards.It seems I know little about SD cards. In that case, the overhead of any filesystem should be negligible.
 
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ext3 on one, FAT32 on the other. Currently use ext3 on a CF install of Debian and it's fine. Really fast, and especially quick at a journal recovery.
 
Sphinxter said:
I'd go with ext2 and keep my data longer.
It takes millions of write cycles these days to wear out NAND. It already has wear levelling, too, so no need for a fancy FS, EXT2 or 3 is fine. I am in a rush, otherwise I'd find it, but some googling can find you a site where a guy created a EXT3 filesystem on a Sony 1GB flash key. It took I think over 900,000 script erase-write-read cycles before it conked out, and even then you could still read your data, just not write anymore.
 
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