this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Edit: including corruption of superblocks

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Yes there's always a chance corruption can happen from a hard power off, always keep reliable backups.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Corruption should be automatically detected and fixed. The operations will resume on bootup.

However I wouldn't push your luck.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

No, I don't thing scrubs / balances resume on boot up, they'd have to be started again.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Storage devices can fail at any time for any reason. Always have a backup.

Fwiw, I think BTRFS is better than ext4 and friends at actually detecting whether a block is corrupted or not.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

"Better" in the sense that it actually has the ability to check for corruption at all, as all metadata and data are checksummed.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

As long as the hardware functions as it should (e.g. respects barriers) and there is no software bug in the stack, no.

That's a highly unlikely scenario though. Make backups.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I had some kernel panics here and there... but the last one panic was fatal. Suddenly a lot of /usr/lib/lib.so files were empty and also X11 stopped working...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

As long as there are no problems with the btrfs code? Hahahahaha!! There are.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago

And also in any other filesystem's code or the block layers below the filesystem. As I said, unlikely scenario.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Since btrfs uses Copy on Write, as long as the data makes it onto disk in tact, any further btrfs operations on the data will be safe against sudden power loss. It might need the opportunity to repair some stuff once power is restored (scrub), but the data (and metadata) should still be there and recoverable, not left in some partial state that can't be resolved.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Hah. Tactfully copied to disk intact*

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

As a proud Orange pi zero 3 owner (which I'm using it as a "lab rat" by testing several things, including shutting it down like its a router)....? Nah.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

How's it been? I see mention of Orange Pi more frequently these days.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

They're objectively better than the Raspberry Pi in every way and are much more standard ARM devices than the weird boot process of the Raspberry Pi, so generally speaking, more OSes just work.

My Orange Pi 5 actually supports an open source EDK2 port so it can run any Aarch64 operating system that supports UEFI and ACPI or Device Tree which means almost every Linux distro, all the BSDs, Windows, and even more exotic and up and coming options.

I actually bought it to test my own OS development project specifically because it's one of the few ARM boards that supports the common boot and firmware standards.

On the Raspberry Pi 5 which I also have if you want to use anything other than their own officially supported Linux distributions (so far only Pi OS and Ubuntu) then you have to modify your kernel or bootloader to work with its wacky boot ROM, lack of UEFI or U-Boot, and somewhat non-standard Device Tree along with tons of undocumented peripherals.

Oh, and the Orange Pi has twice the number of cores. The RPi 5 has four Cortex A76 cores while the Orange has four Cortex A76 cores and four Cortex A55 cores in a big.LITTLE configuration.

Honestly, any of the Rockchip RK3588 or RK3588S boards are way better than a Raspberry Pi. At this point, the only thing Raspberry Pi has going for it over its major competitors is the fact that the brand itself isn't Chinese (although many of the boards are made in China).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

They’re objectively better

From what I heard, Orange Pi had lots of software problems for instance with drivers, and the quality of distros are not nearly as good as the official for Raspberry Pi.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

If all you want to run is their essentially proprietary spins of Linux then go overpay for a Raspberry Pi.

If you actually want freedom of choice for software and universally good driver support then ditch ARM and go for good old x86 based SBCs like the Radxa X4 which is in the same price range and has better performance while also being a completely standard Intel N series (formerly Celeron) based PC.

Shit like this is why I don't have high hopes for ARM based PCs no matter how hard Microsoft, Qualcomm, Nvidia, and MediaTek push for them. x86 and its ecosystem have basically perfected the formula for machines with standardized software interfaces and peripherals with the sole exception being GPUs which will always be a PITA on any platform.

Even if you want to only talk about Linux while the kernel itself may support a fuck ton of architectures all the rest of the software you might want to use is only guaranteed to work on x86. On everything else it may or may not work well and for proprietary stuff it may not even be ported to other architectures at all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

The Orange Pi 5 is a completely standard Rockchip RK3588S board. That SoC has complete driver support in Linux, and pretty good support on Windows as well.

I can't speak to any other Orange Pi products as that is the only one I have.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That SOC has a MALI GPU, and last I heard MALI drivers are flaky in Linux.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Meanwhile the Broadcom VideoCore is completely undocumented and only works with their kernels.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

software problems

Not having "out of the box" support does not make it a problem tho.

quality of distros

All distros are the same, considering they all run GNU/Linux and anyone can configure em at will.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago

Not having “out of the box”

Where did I say it should absolutely work "out of the box?" Compiling your own drivers can be OK too, but obviously less convenient.

All distros are the same,

No they are definitely not, there are huge differences in availability, quality, configuration and age of packaged software. And finally there are differences in security updates. Also the difference in hardware makes a difference in how well it's supported with drivers.

A general problem with Arm is that the GPU is poorly supported, and if you want stable drivers, you have tro use an old kernel.

Your response reeks of propaganda.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

It's pretty good. Even better than the raspberry pi 4 considering its performance and comically low power draw (It doesn't go over the 2W mark even with both cpu and gpu at 100%.). Other than that, it's perfectly usable, despise its lack of (out of the box) support.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I wonder, many SBCs are really just pulled from AC to be turned off right?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Crazy. Can you shut them down normally and then pull them out?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

You can but they’ll start right up in a second lol.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Theoretically, no.

In reality, possibly/yes!

What do you have?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Everyone saying it'll be fine is speaking theoretically. Practically I can attest to full and total file system corruption under this scenario.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Especially if you're using raid5 for multi disk.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago