Re: Speed up installation: activate eatmydata-udeb by default and include eatmydata package in /pool
On Tue, Apr 06, 2021 at 05:35:19PM -0400, Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z wrote:
> Pardon my ignorance.
> I could not resist to answer to this proposal.
>
> I read this page: https://www.flamingspork.com/projects/libeatmydata/
>
> It looks like it is not good idea to use it for critical information.
>
> However, your results show that it would be relevant to include
> such package into the first ISO, if it is not so big, of course.
> It sounds like a good idea to speed up the instalation process
> for some cases.
>
> But, I would not enable it by default. If the package really
> behaves as its name suggests,
> I would not risk every user
> of Debian to have a faulty installation. What would happen
> if someone wants to install Debian an suddenly, the installer
> eats some data it shouldn't have.
>
> Even if it does not access wrong places, in the worst case
> you could have installed an ill OS and don't notice
> it will someday fail, and not gracefully.
>
> My humble opinion is that it should be available to use,
> but not enabled by default.
The only time eatmydata does any harm is if the system looses power or
resets during the install since the data isn't constantly flushed to disk
to maintain a consistent state. During an install, there is nothing of
value on the system yet, so doing everything as quickly as possible and
then when everything is done, then you issue a sync command to ensure
everything is flushed to disk saves a ton of time with no risk at all
(in fact since the install takes less time, the changes of a power
interruption happening during the install is lowered).
In no way does eatmydata make it possible for the data of the resulting
install to be corrupt. As long as the filesystem is cleanly unmounted
or flushed before you reset, you are fine. That should already happen
by the fact the install does a clean reboot at the end.
Using it on a normal system is a different story since anything you modify
while using it could be lost in case the system is reset unexpectedly,
but since the install has no user data, there is nothing to risk.
So when the page says to not use when you care about the data, that
is correct. But a fresh install is entirely made of stuff you don't
care about, until it is completely done, then you care. Using it for
running testsuites where everything is just temporary data also makes
sense to speed that up. If you are editing something real, don't use it.
--
Len Sorensen
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