10.2.2 this Week?

[MacRumors]

Resexcellence (http://www.resexcellence.com/) postedd a small tidbit:


We do not deal in rumors at ResExcellence so I will make this quick... Rumor has it that an update to Jaguar will be coming this week. ;)

[gandalf55]

that would be most excellent! wonder what it will bring ?!?!

[medea]

I can only hope this is true.:p What could the possible fixes be?

[Arcady]

Originally posted by medea
I can only hope this is true.:p What could the possible fixes be?

Fixed booting problem with 1GHz PowerBook G4.... :cool:

[CheekyGit]

I used BeOS 5 a few years ago. I thought it was cool. It would be interesting to see how journeling would affect OS X. Can't wait..:D

[Kid Red]

I think I read that in order to use the journaling you need to wipe and reinstall after formatting? If so, it's not gonna catch on right away.

[reyesmac]

Cool, another technology to slow down my system.:rolleyes: Seriously though, will this update disable the ability for the iBook to do monitor spanning, or how about disabling quartz extreme on non-authorized systems? Do Apple updates usually get rid of usefull hacks?:confused:

[Falleron]

Any updates are welcome. I have no complaints with Jaguar. Some applications like Virtual PC need to be sorted out. However, Jaguar is solid.

[gandalf55]

Journaling is supposed to be "off" by default. I don't know exactly who this kind of file system will benefit the most - but I think for the majority of us, we won't be using it. So no slow down.

About Quartz... I don't know how I feel about that. Either your system supports it or it doesn't. It's the vid card. So I imagine if you can't support it, your system won't slow down by its abscence... merely those who can use it get a nice speed bump.

[shadowfax]

it seems that quartz extreme is a way to speed up what OS X does. it offloads the CPU if you have a compatible GPU; if you don't, however, it still sends the operations the GPU would do in quartz extreme to your G4/G3, so it does slowdown your system not to have quartz extreme. eye candy can't be turned off in OS X by default. you have to hack it. i dunno why Apple is like that, but they are. it shouldn't bother people with radeons and whatnot though...

[Hemingray]

Originally posted by Shadowfax
i dunno why Apple is like that, but they are. it shouldn't bother people with radeons and whatnot though...

I have a fair idea. To "encourage" all of us early adopters of the New World macs to upgrade to Apple's latest and greatest offerings. But I'll be waiting another year or so, thanks anyway Apple. ;)

[Arcady]

Originally posted by Shadowfax
it seems that quartz extreme is a way to speed up what OS X does. it offloads the CPU if you have a compatible GPU; if you don't, however, it still sends the operations the GPU would do in quartz extreme to your G4/G3, so it does slowdown your system not to have quartz extreme. eye candy can't be turned off in OS X by default. you have to hack it. i dunno why Apple is like that, but they are. it shouldn't bother people with radeons and whatnot though...

That's not quite true. Quartz Extreme offloads the Quartz layer to your GPU, yes. But it does not make a system with an older video card "slower" than it was under 10.1.5. In fact, because of other improvements in 10.2, things are still faster even without a QE supported video card.

BTW, you can run QE on an unsupported video card by using a hack, as long as you have at least 16MB VRAM and a Radeon or better. The poster above wondered if this update will break the hack. Knowing Apple, it is not out of the question. After all, they tried to break the ROM in the B&W G3 so it would not run with a G4 ZIF installed. Sometimes Apple can be evil... :rolleyes:

[voyagerd]

build 6f15 is current

[shadowfax]

That's not quite true. Quartz Extreme offloads the Quartz layer to your GPU, yes. But it does not make a system with an older video card "slower" than it was under 10.1.5. In fact, because of other improvements in 10.2, things are still faster even without a QE supported video card.

ahhh, my bad. that's what i meant, more or less. but it would slow your system down not to have it. as in, i am arguing from the theoretical standpoint of *having* QE.... it is slower not to have it. but yeah, 10.2 has enhanced Quartz rendering to speed things up even without a GPU.

my point was that the system does the same work without QE. it's just done in a different way, by the CPU, which, IMO, is not too cool for performance

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by Shadowfax


ahhh, my bad. that's what i meant, more or less. but it would slow your system down not to have it. as in, i am arguing from the theoretical standpoint of *having* QE.... it is slower not to have it. but yeah, 10.2 has enhanced Quartz rendering to speed things up even without a GPU.

my point was that the system does the same work without QE. it's just done in a different way, by the CPU, which, IMO, is not too cool for performance

I think you are still partially missing the point. There was nothing added with 10.2 that slowed down any systems. In fact every system that can support OSX and even some that shouldn't saw a speed increase. Quartz Extreme is just an addon to offload some work from the CPU to a graphics card. Windows has been doing this for a year or two I think.

What I would like to see in 10.2.2 is a fix for these on going permission problems.

On another note I see no advantage with Journaling for the average user.

[shadowfax]

nah, i was quite aware that across the board, no matter what you have, jaguar is an improvement. i am just saying that not having having it does slow you down as compared to having it. this is obvious, because your system runs faster when you have it... the notion that Jaguar is an improvement whether or not you have a QE compatible card is outside the socope of my argument.

that journaling FS sounds pretty useless unless you want to restore your system in a snap... how much does that affect capacity? i mean, if you are keeping track of all those system states, doesn't the "log" build up? hardware performance decrease aside, how much extra space will this take?

[markiv810]

To use JFS we would need complete 10.2.2 cd the software upgrade I don't think would help much in that direction, as I tried it already. Is it possible to change the file system of the partition while I am running Jaguar on the same partition?

[scem0]

I might be mistaken, but is this not the update that causes a 10% speed decrease with a payoff of better security or something. I like the better security, but a 10% speed decrease isn't quite as cool ;) . Macs are already slow enough, a speed decrease is exactly what we don't need. Oh well, I hope it is worth the download. :)

[stukoch]

Amazing how all of you whiners who were yapping your little mouths off when Apple had the gall to charge us for a major upgrade, have all gone quite. Why are none of you now thanking Apple for implementing a major feature in a free upgrade? Apple could have (and maybe should have) waited until Pinot (10.3) to implement this, but they chose not to be greedy and get the best features out to us as soon as possible.

I, for one, happen to be very appreciative. Thank you Apple, again.

-Stu

[arn]

Originally posted by scem0
I might be mistaken, but is this not the update that causes a 10% speed decrease with a payoff of better security or something. I like the better security, but a 10% speed decrease isn't quite as cool ;) . Macs are already slow enough, a speed decrease is exactly what we don't need. Oh well, I hope it is worth the download. :)

I think it's a 10% speed decrease for disk operations

arn

[scem0]

Originally posted by arn


I think it's a 10% speed decrease for disk operations

arn

Well, that is good. I was thinking it would slow down everything. That wouldn't have been good. This update is going to be better then I thought :D. It doesn't really apply to me, since I got a PC, but I still own a mac. Oh well. :rolleyes:

[tychay]

This has been hashed over many times, but the claim, "10% hit in performance due to journalling" probably only comes during times when your computer has to write to disk (Caveat: this can be all the time if you have very little RAM and your swap partition is journalled (??), also there are disk writes during reads if the filesystem is logging last access times). That's when the journalling code kicks in since it has to write to the transaction journal before writing the file.

Having just rebuilt my hard drive after a destroyed extents file (my cat has suddenly figured out that pawing the silver button for 5 seconds turns off the machine), I for one can appreciate journalling.

Actually, the press has done such a horrible job of reporting, I can't actually be sure of anything. I've seen all the errors below committed in various discussions of "Elvis":

A file system cannot be made journalling without reformatting the hard drive. False: Red Hat's ext3 FS can be upgraded from the standard ext2 without reformatting.
A journalled filesystem means the drive cannot be read by a OS that doesn't support it (i.e. OS9 or OS10<10.2.2). False: you can mount ext3 partitions as ext2.
Journalling is always slower than not-journalling. False: It could be made faster in busy filesystems because it can be used to spread disk writes over time (compare ReiserFS performance to ext2).
Journalling means less disk space because it has to keep a transaction log. False: ReiserFS can squeeze many small files into a single block.
Journalling only speeds rebooting. False: As my cat has shown, /sbin/fsck -y (which is what is executed during bootup and by Disk Utility) doesn't always restore the file system to a sane state.
Journalling is only for reliability. False: Besides performance reasons. A new FS means you could fix things on FS-related tasks like file size (minimum blocks size and mazimum file size), disk size, access control, hot backups, and I/O rate. All of which are found in high performance journaled file systems like SGI XFS and IBM JFS.
Journalling is only for servers or large disk arrays. False: People said similar things about pre-emptive multitasking and memory protection.


Now you won't have everything. Given Apple's history I'd bet that they'd worry more about the reliability and compatibility and less about the performance gains of journalling, so it will probably be modelled closer to the way ext3 rides on top of ext2 than as a high-performance file system like ReiserFS.

Take care,

terry

[shadowfax]

thanks, that was highly informative!

so (sorry i am not an OS X user yet... i have used mandrake linux and redhat some (md-linux somewhat more extensively) OS X uses a swap disk like all other linux? that seems like it would make a journalling system worth it (assuming you wouldn't (and why would you?) format the swap as a journalling file system. i mean, then it's only seriously slowing you down when you install big things, or download/save large files.

so since you can mount ext3 as ext2, what happens when you use the ext3 as ext2? i would assume it wouldn't keep up it's journalling, if ext2 doesn't support that. so does it just not log transactions when it's mounted as ext2? how does that come into play when you mount it again as ext3 and everything is moved around from your ext2 session (provided it can indeed not journal in ext2)?

all in all, though, we never turn our nose up at features like this. even if you'll never use it, it's good to know you can just in case.

[tychay]

Originally posted by Shadowfax
thanks, that was highly informative!

OS X uses a swap disk like all other linux?

No. OSX does not use a swap partition, though it can be made to have a separate partition for swap (http://www.resexcellence.com/hack_html_01/09-14.01.html). My guess is Apple's design philosophy is such that they traded performance gains (due to partitioning) for simplicity in management. This leads me to believe Elvis will do the same (not be designed around performance).

format the swap as a journalling file system. i mean, then it's only seriously slowing you down when you install big things, or download/save large files.

Actually you don't want to use a journaled FS for swap, since swap is effectively volatile (gets wiped during a reboot). In the case of Linux, it uses a special FS just for swap which is really neat--for instance, if you create two swap partitions on different hard disks, then Linux will "stripe" the swap space making the effective speed of swap twice as fast (if using IDE drives, you'll need to connect those disks to separate controllers to see a gain).

so since you can mount ext3 as ext2, what happens when you use the ext3 as ext2? i would assume it wouldn't keep up it's journalling, if ext2 doesn't support that. so does it just not log transactions when it's mounted as ext2? how does that come into play when you mount it again as ext3 and everything is moved around from your ext2 session (provided it can indeed not journal in ext2)?

I don't use ext3, so I can't say. When mounted as ext2, the transaction log is not written to. When mounted again as ext3, it must first be unmounted. Thus the journalling (crash protection) is reenabled. Red Hat sacrifices the speed and disk space efficiency gains journalling can give for compatibility and a performance hit. BTW, think of journalling as a record of differences from the last successful transaction, not as a "diary" of every transaction that has occurred on the computer, so the "everything moved around" is not an issue.

Sorry I can't explain better because I don't rightly know myself. Hopefully better minds than me will do so.

terry

[markiv810]

After upgrading to 10.2.2, how do I change file format then. I have 10.2.2 beta I cannot do the change to JFS without erasing and re-installing. I need some suggetions on that, as I would like to have JFS.

[shadowfax]

(assuming you wouldn't (and why would you?) format the swap as a journalling file system.)

added on the missing parenthesis there. sorry about that confusion. yeah, i knew that would be dumb to partition your swap as JFS, but i had no idea that linux used a special swap partition format. that's totally awesome. too bad OS X doesn't have that yet.. but i guess you could make a little 500 MB-1 GB partition and format it as a normal FS and tell OS X to put its swap there?

i have windows XP, and it crashes when i try to entirely move the swap to my second drive. i can set aside space on my second drive for virtual memory," but i still have to have a swap file on the C:\ drive. it really annoys me; it rather helped to use my second drive as the scratch disk for photoshop. the idea of having an entirely separate partition (or disk, that would really rock) for swap is really cool. almost as cool as the idea of having 2 GB of RAM and never needing to use the swap. lol.

[tychay]

Originally posted by markiv810
After upgrading to 10.2.2, how do I change file format then. I have 10.2.2 beta I cannot do the change to JFS without erasing and re-installing. I need some suggetions on that, as I would like to have JFS.

I said that Apple could make Elvis so that the upgrade can be done without repartitioning, not that Apple actually did that. If the rumors of the BFS's Giampaolo working on it are true, it implies that Elvis is a more radical change to the filesystem than a ext3-like hack--too radical for a seemless update.

Also consider that the introduction of the XServe may manipulate some Apple design considerations around enterprise (XServe RAID?) needs instead of individual ones.

By the way, If you are working with 10.2.2 beta, you're under an NDA ;), so any suggestions will have to wait for the release. I'd check out MacOS X hints on that day.

[tychay]

Originally posted by Shadowfax


i guess you could make a little 500 MB-1 GB partition and format it as a normal FS and tell OS X to put its swap there?

Yes, you can do this right now, in an earlier post I linked an article that explains how to do this. The only caveat is that if you update to Jaguar, you have to restore this partition.

[shadowfax]

just finished reading through it. i hope that the new PB i get comes with an OS 9 disk so i can partition out a 500 MB... that sounds like such a cool idea. i remember striping my swaps on RH lol. what fun. stupid XP...:(

[foniks2020]

Originally posted by Shadowfax
just finished reading through it. i hope that the new PB i get comes with an OS 9 disk so i can partition out a 500 MB... that sounds like such a cool idea. i remember striping my swaps on RH lol. what fun. stupid XP...:(

If you don't mind reinstalling the OS in the beginning you don't need to have OS 9... and really I don't remember being able to do RE-partitioning in 9 either. Just use the Disk Utility to partition your drive... I'm sure there is one on the 10.2 installer disk.

[foniks2020]

From what I've read recently one of the biggest advantages of a journaling FS is for laptops.

Apparently some people don't pay attention to the warnings or like to hotswap their batteries very slowly and end up corrupting their drive. With a JFS you can gracefully recover from these mishaps and according to all the info it is only a potential for %10 performance hit on disk speed I/O.

[Allsorts]

Originally posted by markiv810
After upgrading to 10.2.2, how do I change file format then. I have 10.2.2 beta I cannot do the change to JFS without erasing and re-installing. I need some suggetions on that, as I would like to have JFS.

Well, if you have 10.2.2 you should be under an NDA...

Anyway, there was a screenshot of the new Disk Utility showing the JFS option going round. So I'd guess that either Disk Utility has an option to enable journaling on a HFS+ disk, or you could try it's command line companion "diskutil".

[DaveGee]

Originally posted by foniks2020
With a JFS you can gracefully recover from these mishaps and according to all the info it is only a potential for %10 performance hit on disk speed I/O.

Since journaling only really kicks in when you WRITE something to the disk.. I think (dunno for sure) that the 'speed hit' (if any) would only happen when you were writing something to the disk... Since that's when the jorunal would need to be updated.

I think too many people are taking that 10% figure as gospel... For most of us I'd be shocked if you even notice it.

Not that it matters cause from what I hear it'll be 'in' 10.2.2 but you'll need to use the command line to turn it on (it'll be off by default) and only 10.2.2 Server will have a 'gui' (ala Disk Utility - server version) option to turn it on or off.

As far as 'best for laptops' heh... it's quite clear you don't have to support the same kind of people I do... (700+ Macs where I work) Trust me when I say this... Jorunaling WILL BE GOOD for me... VERY VERY GOOD! :D

Dave

[Mirage_]

I've been using 10.2.2 (build 6F6) for a few weeks, and it fixed my disc copy/superdrive trouble ;) Hopefully apple will release the final this week!

And yeah, QE=Bigger speed increase if you've got the hardware. I've got my old Rage 128, and my Radeon 9000 in my G4, and you can defintely tell the difference between the monitor that is running on the Radeon vs the Rage 128 :) QE is good.

[tychay]

Originally posted by foniks2020


I don't remember being able to do RE-partitioning in 9 either.

My bad, I meant that you may have to reedit some of your config files that may have been overwritten by Jaguar. This is true for nearly all changes to /System and /etc that you do. I read that the process involves editing /etc/rc and /etc/fstab. I'd be suprised if a Jaguar upgrade doesn't rewrite the former (or if it does rewrite the latter).

The "need OS9 to move swap" myth probably came about when old versions of Disk Utility had problem creating smaller partions.

BTW, I may be all wrong, I don't keep swap in a separate partition (yet). If I were to do this on my notebook, this is what I'd do:
[list=1]
Connect your notebook to your desktop by firewire.
Hold down a T key when starting up your notebook to mount it as a HD on yoru desktop.
Use Carbon Copy Cloner (or similar) to clone your notebook HD to another HD.
Repartition your HD with Disk Utility locating the swap partition at the front of the disk.
Clone your HD back.
Edit the /etc/fstab and /etc/rc.
Check to see these files haven't been overwritten after every OS update.
[/list=1]

Take care,

terry

[dramazon]

I hope that this upgrade solves the problems with 10.2 not working with HP laserjet 4 and 5.

[nixd2001]

Originally posted by DaveGee

I think too many people are taking that 10% figure as gospel... For most of us I'd be shocked if you even notice it.


Sounds very sensible. I'm sure it's not going to be as simple as everything is 10% slower. Maybe something like each file chunk written requires an additional journal write? If so, then the %age overhead is very dependent upon the chunks being written. Etc.

[tychay]

Originally posted by dramazon
I hope that this upgrade solves the problems with 10.2 not working with HP laserjet 4 and 5.

HP seems to think that this support is already built into Mac OS X 10.2 (http://www.hp.com/cposupport/printers/support_doc/bpm35003.html).

If that doesn't work why not try a HPIJS (http://www.linuxprinting.org/macosx/hpijs/) built for Mac OS X from CUPS, ESP Ghostscript and foomatic.

I can't comment more since I haven't had access to an HP 4 or 5 series LP since 1999.

Take care,

terry

[tychay]

Originally posted by tychay
I've seen all the errors below committed in various discussions of "Elvis":

On rereading my post, I realize the biggest myth spread was the one on the original article which was:


Journalling keeps a snapshot of the system allowing administrators to see a history of file updates. False: Journalling logs the disk operation action as meta data (note to mac users, this is different from file meta data such as type/creator). It would be silly to write the entire data to disk twice! After the write transaction is complete, the meta data is removed from the jounal. This also means that journalling is not 100% foolproof, but it does mean that on a crash it is still easy to return the file system to a "sane" state (just check the journal).


Sometimes I wonder what people are smoking...

[8thDegreeSavage]

About 10.2.2 being released this week......






nope.

[wdlove]

This week has past & no 10.2.2! :(

[dramazon]

Originally posted by tychay


HP seems to think that this support is already built into Mac OS X 10.2 (http://www.hp.com/cposupport/printers/support_doc/bpm35003.html).

If that doesn't work why not try a HPIJS (http://www.linuxprinting.org/macosx/hpijs/) built for Mac OS X from CUPS, ESP Ghostscript and foomatic.

I can't comment more since I haven't had access to an HP 4 or 5 series LP since 1999.

Take care,

terry

Apple admits that 10.2 has developed a problem with some HP printers, and has provided links to a patch, but it doesn't seem to work for me. the info from apple (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107029)

[Kid Red]

I think that's the last time resexcellence gets into rumors, lol.

[MacBandit]

10.2.2 tomorrow?

http://www.apple-x.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=84&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

According to this article on AppleXnews. It is known that there will be an Apple press release event tomorrow. This has been commonly accepted to be the release time for the Powerbooks/iBooks. They could use this event to release 10.2.2 also and make a big deal out of it. This would make a lot of sense because Jaguar is dropping out of press and advertising and it's time to get it back into the limelight if even for a moment.

[JonaGold]

I hope that the dvd playback quality of my geforce 2mx will be improved with a new driver.... it really sucks right now

[XxflipperxX]

I was having stuttering, start/stop, momentary pauses on a 60 cycle pattern, using monitor spanning with Quartz and the 16MB Radeon card in a Ti-Book. [This occured in Screen savers, iTunes visuals,but not DVD or QT playback]

After loading the Radeon upgrade that came from a developer's seed of 10.2.2 the entire stutter thing has vanished.

It seems obviously connected to the two monitors 'splitting' the 16MB, which only allotted 8MB to each, violating the 16MB minimum for Quartz usage. Somehow they have papered over that 'glitch'... Still wish i could upgrade to 32 or 64, but i'll take the 'patch'. Thanks Apple

[pelby]

[COLOR=seagreen]Anyone know when 10.2.2 is finally going to make an appearance?

[XxflipperxX]

Originally posted by pelby
[COLOR=seagreen]Anyone know when 10.2.2 is finally going to make an appearance?

The rumors are varying, I heard it might be this week, but the week's over... so, who knows, there's already a lot of work being done on 10.2.3. I expect the next release any day now.

[pelby]

10.2.2 is out.

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by pelby
10.2.2 is out.


Thanks. Bastard beat me to it.:D

[shadowfax]

does that thing let you make your own JFS or does it just support the format?