Tracker in Edgy?

[John Richard Moser]

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Jamie McCracken wrote:
> John Richard Moser wrote:
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>>
>>
>>
>> Jamie McCracken wrote:
>>> David Nielsen wrote:
>>>> tor, 29 06 2006 kl. 16:14 +0100, skrev Jamie McCracken:
>>>>
>>>>> Tracker will be better integrated in Gnome in the near future with
>>>>> Rhythmbox (using tracker to find music files and smart playlists) and
>>>>> Epiphany (using Tracker's first class bookmarks/history objects)
>>>>> integrating with it
>>>> That sounds ace, now if it could index tomboy notes as well it would
>>>> really make my day.
>>> Its on my to do list.
>>>
>>> The optimal solution is to get Tomboy (at least optionally) to store its
>>> notes in tracker's db (anything in the DB is auto indexed without the
>>> need to write any code!) rather than indexing externally like Beagle
>>> does.
>>>
>>
>> Storing everything in one dbfile is a bad idea.  When that dbfile dies,
>> everything dies with it.
>>
>> I would rather be able to track external objects like .desktop files
>> than store them in one big database.
> 
> well you will have both with tracker's database as a cache
> 

Ah, so double the space usage.

>>
>>> This is even more important for bigger things like emails as if they
>>> were stored in tracker's db it would save tons of disk space. (1GB of
>>> emails would take about 1.2GB in tracker's database (the index size is
>>> about 20%-25% of the size) compared to 1GB mbox file + 1GB of text +
>>> 0.2GB of indexes if done externally)
>>
>> I've never corrupted an mbox file but it could happen.  I always thought
>> a BDB or Sqlite would have been better but those can get ripped too.
> 
> the embedded mysql has automatic repair and recovery - it is  a lot
> safer than either of those. Most people dont know how to repair text
> based stores like mbox so the fact its text based is academic and any
> self healing system would be the best choice.
> 

Yeah, usually.  I said I always thought those would be better mainly
because they're transactional and will not corrupt due to interruptions
during writing.  You can still kill the file on the file system,
truncate it, etc.

> You will never get corruption on journalised file systems from power
> cuts as all updates on them are atomic. (the windows registry fiasco
> where it got corrupted if power was lost would never occur on a proper
> journalised FS)

Want a bet?  I've seen JFS kill all of /usr; I've seen XF86Config get
portions of Xorg.0.log in it on ReiserFS (how did THAT happen?!); and
I've seen XFS and EXT3 straight truncate files that were in the middle
of being resized when the power drops.

My worry is the database may be growing and suddenly get truncated to
half its size or just thrown out by the file system.  Even journaled
file systems will sometimes not know quite what to do; but they'll know
what needs fixing right off.  They don't magically complete anything you
do; they just clean up the file system by repairing meta-data, which may
involve truncating files, freeing blocks, and unlinking.

This is an inherent hazard of having files that change size.  As long as
you're making changes in-place, the file system is probably not going to
have meta-data (besides mtime and atime, which are journaled perfectly)
being rewritten; however, when a file is being resized, you can 1) wind
out truncating it; 2) wind out deleting/unlinking it; or 3) wind out
filling it with zeroes (if the FS doesn't know the original size or
allocated blocks, it should fill it with zeroes to avoid leaking
previously deleted, possibly privileged data).

> 
> also mysql has an excellent reputation with regards to the integrity of
> its databases.
> 

I've heard exactly the contrary (MySQL can be easily shredded by a
single power drop, and its recovery routines don't work most of the
time); but I haven't seen a problem myself.  Like I said, I'm more
worried about the underlying file system interacting with the database.

> Any risk to data is pretty much negligible (IMO).

I'd rather meta-data about notes, e-mails, and music files be stored in
the database anyway, rather than actual copies of the e-mails, notes,
and music files.  At least as an option.  .desktop files are all
meta-data, they'd essentially become cached copies anyway; other things
like e-mails can be isolated.

> 

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