Linux don't care...

Say for example, Windows won't let you delete or back up an open file. Even if you wanted to easily create a snapshot of a volume and back up an open file in a consistent manner, it's not that easy.

Linux don't care...

In fact, a recent question I was asked in an interview pre-screening, was whether you can delete an in-use logfile and if that space is automatically marked free by the OS?

The answer to that is, no. On Linux, a file can be deleted when it's in-use. The file will disappear from the FS, but the handle to the file will remain open, and in fact, the application will continue to write to the file even when its hard link count is now exactly zero! That log file will actually appear in the /proc filesystem under that process' PID, in its list of open files. In order to actually delete the file you need to close the file handle. This is done in various ways depending on the application, but it can usually be triggered quite easily, and as a sysadmin, you should why and how you should do this.

UNIX expects you to be a competent and knowledgeable sysadmin, and this has the advantage of creating a very predictable environment with few exceptions to basic tenets laid out as a contract of sorts

I like that.

I like being treated like an adult.

Mac OS X filesystems, frustratingly lacking

I guess I'm a bit spoiled. Linux never leaves me hanging when I need to access a filesystem. Anything I throw at it--NTFS, FAT32, HFS+, ext2, ext3, XFS, ZFS.

The other day I was trying to help my sister install dual boot Ubuntu with Mac OS. Apple's disk utility couldn't seem to resize the main HFS+ partition, claiming that there wasn't enough free space (even though 12GB was available). I figured it was a system file in use, so it was off to burn a bootable OS X install DVD--because she's like everyone else and lost her original one. As an aside: Who ever saves these things? I'm still dreaming of the day a client answers, "Yes!" to the question, "Do you have the original install CDs?"

I had an ext3 formatted disk with the OS X .ISO file on it, and needed to use a Windows system that had a DVD-DL drive (the Mac OS X disk is 7.5GB). Even with some 3rd party ext3 utilities for OS X, I still could not read the ext3 partition. I gave up.

Just because it's based on Open Source, doesn't mean it's for geeks.

Mac OS X filesystems - Conspicuously lacking

I guess I'm a bit spoiled. Linux never leaves me hanging when I need to access a filesystem. Anything I throw at it--NTFS, FAT32, HFS+, ext2, ext3, XFS, ZFS.

The other day I was trying to help my sister install dual boot Ubuntu with Mac OS X Leopard (10.5). Apple's disk utility couldn't seem to resize the main HFS+ partition, claiming that there wasn't enough free space (even though 12GB was available). I figured it was a system file in use, so it was off to burn a 10.5 bootable DVD--because she's like everyone else and lost her original one. Who ever saves these things? I'm still dreaming of the day a client answers, "Yes!" to the question, "Do you have the original install CDs?"

I have an ext3 formatted disk with the OS X .iso file on it, and needed to use a Windows system that had a DVD-DL drive (the Mac OS X disk is 7.5GB). Even with the software from DiskInternals, couldn't get Windows to read the partition (the inode size was 256KiB instead of the 128 that Linux-Reader expected.) I had another Mac OS X install image on the Mac itself, but we find out that Mac OS X can only write FAT32, not NTFS, and with its 4GB filesize limit, it's impossible to copy the 7.5GB ISO to a flash drive. So the only filesystem you can use to copy 4GB+ files to other machines is HFS+!

Filesystems that support 4GB+ file sizes:

• Outgoing from Mac
• HFS+
• Outgoing from Windows
• NTFS
• Outgoing from Linux
• NTFS, ext2, ext3, xfs, HFS+ (journal disabled)

Look how flexible Linux is! I guess I thought that with its UNIX heritage, Mac OS X would have these extra filesystem drivers included "no charge", "for good will". Perhaps it's denial, as Apple has got its own little ecosystem you aren't supposed to stray from...

FYI, for $31USD, you can get NTFS for Mac, based on the GPL ntfs-3g software widely used in Linux. It may just be worth it. Personally, I'd just ditch Mac OS.