Linux, why do you keep disappointing me?
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Johannes Linkels wrote:
The lesson: it is not Linux which is disappointing, it is the n-th order derivative which tried to "improve" on functionality or safety.
I can't disagree with that. My point was, I was looking forward to *dedicating* a machine to using Linux for a specific task. TrueNAS is *very* well regarded in the community. Yet it fell short enough that it put the kibosh on that project. Obviously Linux != TrueNAS. But to me it still came across as another missed opportunity.
I understand. And you are right in expecting better performance. Unfortunately people are lured into using one of those specialized distros because it is "easier". Well, maybe it is for the unprepared user. I am running everything for which is a special distro on a general purpose Debian server. And true, I don't have fancy web interfaces. The problem with reviews or comments is mostly that most products are easy to use, beautiful and perform very well as long as nothing goes wrong. The quality is in the solution is when you are able to recover from a seemingly total disaster. No one ever reviews that, if you are lucky someone posts such a recovery when it happened and if possible. I don't want to land in a Windows-vs-Linux discussion, but Windows and Microsoft products are an order of magnitude more powerful, beautiful and easier to use. Until something goes wrong and then there are exactly zero recovery options except re-install and restore. All Linux solutions working toward a better (as in easier) experience run the risk of moving into that direction.
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I thought I'd finally have a reason to have *a* machine running some version of Linux on bare metal, and not in a VM. But nope, still found some show-stopper that sent me right back to Windows. I bought a 5-bay USB-C hard drive enclosure. I thought I'd dedicate a machine to run TrueNAS, and put some of my smaller(-ish)/retired drives to use again in a software RAID configuration. Apparently I had silly expectations. Software RAID over a USB connection is "just not reliable enough", so TrueNAS doesn't support it. Only one of the drives is showing up in the web-based admin UI. Supposedly you *can* drop to a command prompt and build the drive pool from there, but (a) they strongly recommend against it and (b) if you subsequently keep using the admin UI to manage it, you risk breaking things. And "breaking things", when it comes to a RAID configuration, usually means very, very bad things. So that's a non-starter for me. I thought I had done my homework; people rave about TrueNAS; it's described as professional-grade, yet user-friendly and (bonus) open-source. I had come to the understanding you could throw just about anything at it, and it'll work. But reality is, 10 minutes after a fresh install, this is where I found myself. Yet puny, crappy Windows sees all drives, and its decades old Disk Manager will dutifully create a software RAID out of them without a complaint, or warning. I want to like Linux. I really do. I want to run it on a system and have it be useful. I've installed dozens of distributions on VMs, but still haven't found enough of a use for any of them to have an actual physical machine committed to running it natively. I thought this would be my way in. But no, it knows better than me and won't let me do it. I thought that was Apple's thing. [/rant]
Ummm with all due respect... TrueNAS is not based on GNU/Linux. It's based on FreeBSD. Different systems and different kernels, different drivers and so on. So even if it is an open source project... it's not a GNU/Linux distro. Therefore GNU/Linux did not disappoint you yet.
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Member 13301679 wrote:
In *my* experience, I appreciate software that warns me about using a mechanism that will lose my data.
Will, vs could. You have to put things into context. Do you want to be c*ckblocked altogether, or be *warned* about something that might happen but then *decide for yourself* whether something's worth the risk to you or not? I prefer the latter. I understand not everyone would.
Well, okay, if you want to take the risk, fine. But that's not what you did, is it? You called the risk aversion silly. We all have different risk thresholds. Using the word "silly" to describe the experts' view of this risk is ... well, how would you categorise that? Especially in light of the fact that for all the really risky stuff, avoiding Windows is considered good practice. IOW, when you are disagreeing with people who have demonstrated more competence than yourself in a particular domain (The TrueNAS devs, and just about everyone who uses Linux over Windows for reliability), it might be wise to refrain from immature behaviour.
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I've found that when Linux works well, and it detects everything on its own on the first attempt, it's great. It's when these things fail and you have to fix them yourself that Linux still to this day completely falls apart. Sysadmins will roll their eyes at this, but that's just it, they're sysadmins, they spent the time already to figure these things out. What's the average guy to do? If someone still insists on having that Year of Linux, it still has a long way to go to be consumer-friendly.
Is it not necessary to learn basic problem-fixing skills not only in LINUX but any OS you are interested in. You don't have to be a sysadmin to enjoy your chosen OS. Thanks and don't lose hope!!!
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I thought I'd finally have a reason to have *a* machine running some version of Linux on bare metal, and not in a VM. But nope, still found some show-stopper that sent me right back to Windows. I bought a 5-bay USB-C hard drive enclosure. I thought I'd dedicate a machine to run TrueNAS, and put some of my smaller(-ish)/retired drives to use again in a software RAID configuration. Apparently I had silly expectations. Software RAID over a USB connection is "just not reliable enough", so TrueNAS doesn't support it. Only one of the drives is showing up in the web-based admin UI. Supposedly you *can* drop to a command prompt and build the drive pool from there, but (a) they strongly recommend against it and (b) if you subsequently keep using the admin UI to manage it, you risk breaking things. And "breaking things", when it comes to a RAID configuration, usually means very, very bad things. So that's a non-starter for me. I thought I had done my homework; people rave about TrueNAS; it's described as professional-grade, yet user-friendly and (bonus) open-source. I had come to the understanding you could throw just about anything at it, and it'll work. But reality is, 10 minutes after a fresh install, this is where I found myself. Yet puny, crappy Windows sees all drives, and its decades old Disk Manager will dutifully create a software RAID out of them without a complaint, or warning. I want to like Linux. I really do. I want to run it on a system and have it be useful. I've installed dozens of distributions on VMs, but still haven't found enough of a use for any of them to have an actual physical machine committed to running it natively. I thought this would be my way in. But no, it knows better than me and won't let me do it. I thought that was Apple's thing. [/rant]
I am not sure "who is on first" AKA to whom to blame, so this is probably not Linux issue...but here it comes... I like to use "gparted:" but it appears to have TIMING issue with multiple partitions and anything ( disk ) large that 100 GB... Then it keeps "scanning" , (usually) ALL devices , after minor change is made to one device.... As I am saying - it is hard to "blame" ( stupid ) behavior... PS ...and it does not do "mount"...
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Well, okay, if you want to take the risk, fine. But that's not what you did, is it? You called the risk aversion silly. We all have different risk thresholds. Using the word "silly" to describe the experts' view of this risk is ... well, how would you categorise that? Especially in light of the fact that for all the really risky stuff, avoiding Windows is considered good practice. IOW, when you are disagreeing with people who have demonstrated more competence than yourself in a particular domain (The TrueNAS devs, and just about everyone who uses Linux over Windows for reliability), it might be wise to refrain from immature behaviour.
Member 13301679 wrote:
You called the risk aversion silly.
You've flipped my intent around. I didn't claim any of what TrueNAS is doing is silly. I wrote (literally, check it again) *I* had silly expectations. That's not quite the same. I wasn't questioning their wisdom, I was in fact questioning *mine*; the rest of my message was written to explain how I was mistaken. Try to read it again in that context.
Member 13301679 wrote:
it might be wise to refrain from immature behaviour.
All I'd say is that coming this close to name-calling is immature behaviour.
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Is it not necessary to learn basic problem-fixing skills not only in LINUX but any OS you are interested in. You don't have to be a sysadmin to enjoy your chosen OS. Thanks and don't lose hope!!!
sunday udegbu wrote:
Is it not necessary to learn basic problem-fixing skills not only in LINUX but any OS you are interested in
True, and I wish people just didn't give up so easily and then just call me instead to solve their problems.
sunday udegbu wrote:
You don't have to be a sysadmin to enjoy your chosen OS
I thought operating systems were supposed to disappear in the background so you can focus on what it is you're trying to do. "Enjoying your chosen OS" isn't something that rates very high on the average PC user's list of fun things to do. It's a means to an end, and shouldn't be getting in the way. To re-iterate (rephrase?), it's just that the problem-fixing skills have to be way higher with Linux than it is for Windows. I know plenty of people I wouldn't describe as technical by any means, but have been able to figure things out on their own because of how commonly the same problems occur again and again on Windows, and there's plenty of articles that have been written by now describing how to fix things that even these not-so-great people can follow. You might find some how-to's as well with Linux. But add on top of that the fact that you have hundreds of distributions to introduce many more variables, and the odds that someone's fix will be applicable to your particular environment (or that you'll be able to adapt it to your environment) start to diminish substantially.
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Ummm with all due respect... TrueNAS is not based on GNU/Linux. It's based on FreeBSD. Different systems and different kernels, different drivers and so on. So even if it is an open source project... it's not a GNU/Linux distro. Therefore GNU/Linux did not disappoint you yet.
Well if you wanna get nitpicky, TrueNAS Core is based on FreeBSD, while TrueNAS Scale is based on Debian. I didn't bring these up because that particular point was entirely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Are you under the impression the results I got would've been different had I been using one vs the other? If not, then again, it wouldn't have changed the discussion.
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I understand. And you are right in expecting better performance. Unfortunately people are lured into using one of those specialized distros because it is "easier". Well, maybe it is for the unprepared user. I am running everything for which is a special distro on a general purpose Debian server. And true, I don't have fancy web interfaces. The problem with reviews or comments is mostly that most products are easy to use, beautiful and perform very well as long as nothing goes wrong. The quality is in the solution is when you are able to recover from a seemingly total disaster. No one ever reviews that, if you are lucky someone posts such a recovery when it happened and if possible. I don't want to land in a Windows-vs-Linux discussion, but Windows and Microsoft products are an order of magnitude more powerful, beautiful and easier to use. Until something goes wrong and then there are exactly zero recovery options except re-install and restore. All Linux solutions working toward a better (as in easier) experience run the risk of moving into that direction.
Johannes Linkels wrote:
The problem with reviews or comments is mostly that most products are easy to use, beautiful and perform very well as long as nothing goes wrong.
What I'll point out here is that nothing went "wrong"; it went exactly as it's supposed to. My scenario is just not supported. *That* is the part that was not brought up in any discussion I read when doing my homework. In hindsight, I would've expected that to be pretty high on the list of things TrueNAS can or cannot do. And based on my search results (when trying to understand why only one drive was being picked up), I'm not the only one to have made that mistake, as there seems to be plenty of people finding out the same only after the fact. It's as if every discussion on the topic was just taking for granted I knew things I did not know. Hence my remark about me "having silly expectations" (which some people seem to have taken issue with, but that's another story).
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There are a couple of things that I think need some clarification. First is that you may be mistaking Windows' willingness/ability to accept whatever drives you want to throw at it as an endorsement that what you're doing is a good idea and will perform well (both speed-wise and data integrity-wise). IMHO, that's an incorrect assumption. TrueNAS will do what you want it to do but it will not endorse it as a good idea (from a data-integrity and performance POV) because it's not. People use TrueNAS for its performance, stability, data-integrity and the UI on top of it which makes it really easy to create a reliable setup. If TrueNAS isn't letting you do something easily, that should be a sign that what you're doing isn't a good idea for a super stable, reliable and performant system. In that light, it's more of a guardrail that is intended to give you pause before hopping over it. I think Unraid might be more of what you're looking for. One of its strengths and key selling points is that it will take whatever disks you throw at it and add them to your storage. It's also got a nice UI that makes things pretty easy to do. As long as you understand that throwing whatever kind of disks you want into your storage pool without concern for their age, quality, storage capacity, etc. is generally not going to be as reliable from a data-integrity standpoint as what you would get with better drives of matching storage capacity you'll be fine. For many use cases, that's sufficient. As long as you make sure that anything that you absolutely can't lose is backed up you should be good. The second thing that I think needs some clarification is that TrueNAS (or FreeNAS as it used to be called) isn't Linux. It is based on FreeBSD (a Unix flavor). While both Unix and Linux support the Posix standard, they are separate operating systems with different capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses. BTW, Unraid is based on Linux (specifically the Slackware distro). The fact that there are a ton of different Linux distros can definitely be overwhelming; it was for me when I first got started. However, I've come to view it more as giving me the ability to evaluate different things and pick the best tool for the job. I'm not stuck with taking a "jack of all trades" approach like Windows often takes. I use both Linux and Windows as daily drivers both on bare metal and VM. Both are stable and performant. It's taken me more time to read and learn about the various Linux distros but it has
That's a *great* discussion and I thank you for writing down your thoughts. Couple of things:
greyseal96 wrote:
first is that you may be mistaking Windows' willingness/ability to accept whatever drives you want to throw at it as an endorsement that what you're doing is a good idea
Sorry, in case I didn't make it clear, I fully realize that Windows being more permissive and let you go ahead with it doesn't mean any of it *is* a good idea. I had already come to that conclusion. The distinction I was trying to make is that TrueNAS blocked me altogether. Windows makes no such attempt. But again, making that choice is left to the user (understanding risks and all).
greyseal96 wrote:
generally not going to be as reliable from a data-integrity standpoint as what you would get with better drives of matching storage capacity you'll be fine
Where does that leave JBOD systems, I wonder? I didn't invent the acronym, so surely the idea has enough merit that people use such systems.
greyseal96 wrote:
TrueNAS (or FreeNAS as it used to be called) isn't Linux. It is based on FreeBSD (a Unix flavor).
Someone else also brought that up, and I hadn't, because my end results would've been the same: TrueNAS Core is based on FreeBSD. TrueNAS Scale is based on Debian. I would've pointed out which I tried, if I had been under the impression the outcome would've been different.
greyseal96 wrote:
The fact that there are a ton of different Linux distros can definitely be overwhelming;
I'm not terribly worried about that; one of my part-time hobbies is to hunt down random distribution ISOs and try to get them running in VMs. I'm looking at my collection right now, and the root folder stands at 607GB worth individual ISOs alone.
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Of course this sort of thing happens, I wouldn't pretend otherwise. When some of fundamental things don't work as they should, there's only so many versions of Windows out there; you're likely to find someone who's gone through this already and work out a solution. The sheer number of Linux distributions makes it downright impossible to find someone who's got the same problem, with the same hardware, *and* happens to be using the same OS version so *his* solution is also applicable in your case.
This! I had an issue with the wireless bridge I had plugged into the Linux Mint box that runs our TV. Easiest/cheapest solution I could find was to try installing a usb wireless NIC. Mint never saw it, couldn't find the proper driver... Finally replaced the bridge and things are working again so a little more money solved the issue. Linux works for me about the same as Mac. If it works it is solid, if something goes wrong I am lost. Still looking to replace Windows on all the machines at work though, maybe someday...
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Well if you wanna get nitpicky, TrueNAS Core is based on FreeBSD, while TrueNAS Scale is based on Debian. I didn't bring these up because that particular point was entirely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Are you under the impression the results I got would've been different had I been using one vs the other? If not, then again, it wouldn't have changed the discussion.
Debian does have older packages especially Debian Stable. FreeBSD I'm not sure because I've never used it so I assume perhaps there are differences between packages maintained by a distro vs getting the latest upstream code and just compiling it and packaging it. Again I don't know how FreeBSD uses upstream code or what are their patching and maintaining policies so this is just an assumption and I could be wrong. If you're using TrueNAS Scale then you're correct. If you're just using TrueNAS Core then there is a possibility that my statement holds true. Not trying to be nitpicky or difficult just making observations that might have some bearing in the discussion at hand. I also think that perhaps you might want to look for alternative ways of making this work for you. I don't know how TrueNAS (Core Scale or any other branch of it) handles USB External storage devices but you could make a folder and subfolders and mount each of your USB Storage Devices in those subfolders. It's not as elegant or polished as the Windows approach but it's just as functional.
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I thought I'd finally have a reason to have *a* machine running some version of Linux on bare metal, and not in a VM. But nope, still found some show-stopper that sent me right back to Windows. I bought a 5-bay USB-C hard drive enclosure. I thought I'd dedicate a machine to run TrueNAS, and put some of my smaller(-ish)/retired drives to use again in a software RAID configuration. Apparently I had silly expectations. Software RAID over a USB connection is "just not reliable enough", so TrueNAS doesn't support it. Only one of the drives is showing up in the web-based admin UI. Supposedly you *can* drop to a command prompt and build the drive pool from there, but (a) they strongly recommend against it and (b) if you subsequently keep using the admin UI to manage it, you risk breaking things. And "breaking things", when it comes to a RAID configuration, usually means very, very bad things. So that's a non-starter for me. I thought I had done my homework; people rave about TrueNAS; it's described as professional-grade, yet user-friendly and (bonus) open-source. I had come to the understanding you could throw just about anything at it, and it'll work. But reality is, 10 minutes after a fresh install, this is where I found myself. Yet puny, crappy Windows sees all drives, and its decades old Disk Manager will dutifully create a software RAID out of them without a complaint, or warning. I want to like Linux. I really do. I want to run it on a system and have it be useful. I've installed dozens of distributions on VMs, but still haven't found enough of a use for any of them to have an actual physical machine committed to running it natively. I thought this would be my way in. But no, it knows better than me and won't let me do it. I thought that was Apple's thing. [/rant]
Well, just look at the bright side. Linux prevented you from doing a silly thing. A really silly one. Using old, used drives in a RAID, any form of RAID is simply a bad idea. It's data loss waiting to happen. Even on Windows, as you have no way to recover any data from the drives if something goes south with that array. As far as Linux on real hardware goes, I never had a problem with video. My Linux development box is a Dell laptop with a 1600x900 display and that works just perfectly fine in Linux Mint 21.2. Some times temporarily hooking up a second, external monitor no problem either. The only problem I really had in the last decade or so was with some Intel WiFi NIC drivers, mainly when I tried to use Fedora a few years back. But again, under Mint, no problem at all.
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Well, just look at the bright side. Linux prevented you from doing a silly thing. A really silly one. Using old, used drives in a RAID, any form of RAID is simply a bad idea. It's data loss waiting to happen. Even on Windows, as you have no way to recover any data from the drives if something goes south with that array. As far as Linux on real hardware goes, I never had a problem with video. My Linux development box is a Dell laptop with a 1600x900 display and that works just perfectly fine in Linux Mint 21.2. Some times temporarily hooking up a second, external monitor no problem either. The only problem I really had in the last decade or so was with some Intel WiFi NIC drivers, mainly when I tried to use Fedora a few years back. But again, under Mint, no problem at all.
Well obviously RAID isn't a backup. I'm not too worried about losing anything on that RAID setup. I already have 2 separate sets of backups of my main data set. All I wanted to do with this is create an extra backup set, by using drives I've retired. These drives have less than a few dozens hours on them - I used them to do my previous backups, but have outgrown them as my data set has increased in size. They've been powered on only when the actual backups were taking place, which occurred anywhere between once a week and once a month.
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I thought I'd finally have a reason to have *a* machine running some version of Linux on bare metal, and not in a VM. But nope, still found some show-stopper that sent me right back to Windows. I bought a 5-bay USB-C hard drive enclosure. I thought I'd dedicate a machine to run TrueNAS, and put some of my smaller(-ish)/retired drives to use again in a software RAID configuration. Apparently I had silly expectations. Software RAID over a USB connection is "just not reliable enough", so TrueNAS doesn't support it. Only one of the drives is showing up in the web-based admin UI. Supposedly you *can* drop to a command prompt and build the drive pool from there, but (a) they strongly recommend against it and (b) if you subsequently keep using the admin UI to manage it, you risk breaking things. And "breaking things", when it comes to a RAID configuration, usually means very, very bad things. So that's a non-starter for me. I thought I had done my homework; people rave about TrueNAS; it's described as professional-grade, yet user-friendly and (bonus) open-source. I had come to the understanding you could throw just about anything at it, and it'll work. But reality is, 10 minutes after a fresh install, this is where I found myself. Yet puny, crappy Windows sees all drives, and its decades old Disk Manager will dutifully create a software RAID out of them without a complaint, or warning. I want to like Linux. I really do. I want to run it on a system and have it be useful. I've installed dozens of distributions on VMs, but still haven't found enough of a use for any of them to have an actual physical machine committed to running it natively. I thought this would be my way in. But no, it knows better than me and won't let me do it. I thought that was Apple's thing. [/rant]
I worked as a dev on Windows for 20 years. I found it was pretty good by Windows 7 and Windows 10. 3 years ago, I switched to Linux Mint. There was a bit of a learning curve, but now, I couldn't be happier! I'm running multi-monitor dev workstation. My productivity is though the roof. Since then I installed Linux on 50 different machines with 0 issues (some servers with RAID too). I only have 1 Windows machine left, which I am about to decommission. Then this year I got a new contract, I have to work with my customer's Surface Windows 10 computer. I'm not going to say what I REALLY think about it, but: It's full of bugs, looks like crap, multi-monitory only half work, and updates... I was a Windows users, but now: Windows, why do you keep disappointing me? The point is, there is a learning curve, but for most things I believe Linux has surpassed Windows now.
Christian Lavigne