Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 04:00:50 -0600 (CST) From: Lars Eighner <eighner@io.com> To: Alexander Bubnov <ab_fatal@mail.ru> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: three questions Message-ID: <20041130033104.O58624@goodwill.io.com> In-Reply-To: <41AC3ADD.7020904@mail.ru> References: <41AC3ADD.7020904@mail.ru>
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On Tue, 30 Nov 2004, Alexander Bubnov wrote: > Hi! > Could you answer my questions, please? > > 1) When I halt or reboot FreeBSD 5.3 I always receive following: > Syncing disks vnodes remaining... 4 3 3 1 1 0 done > > Is it OK? What does it mean? Yes, it is okay, and in fact is really necessary. Disk writes are very time consuming compared to writing to memory. So many times the system does not actually write to disk, but writes a memory image of the file. It keeps track of where the latest version of the file is in case, as often happens, it has something to do with the file it has just written (as a memory image). Eventually, of course, the file has to be written to disk, and in particular, since files in memory will be lost on powerdown or reboot, it is essential that the files on disk be brought into *sync* with the memory images at such times. If you have ever had a power outage when you are working on the computer, you may have noticed that you lost many "recent" changes you have made to files - (and in addition, may have mess in the filesystem requiring fsck). This is because the working versions of the files were not rendered to disk before the power went out. So, in short, syncing disks is a good thing. You can see man sync for information on the sync utility (not the one used for reboot) and references to other sync functions. Although the sync utility is does not set the whole system in complete order as for reboot, it is a good idea to run it if you are going to do something you suspect will crash the system. > 2) When I download something from the Internet for a long time (around 9 > hours) I always receive 3 strange letters (unfortunately, I deleted third > letter, sorry) from my OS (FreeBSD any versions), see below. What for? What > happen? Why do I receive them? So far as I can tell these are the normal periodic maintence reports. Do you usually power down the system when you are not using it? If so, that is why you do not get these reports on a regular basis. See /etc/crontab for when these reports are scheduled to run (and man 5 crontab if you have difficulty understanding crontab). It is not a matter of your downloading anything from the Internet, but that your system is up and running at the appointed times. As I say, I suspect you power down your system except when you have long downloads, and that is why you have come to associate long downloads with receiving the reports. > 3) I change resolution for consoles as vidcontrol -g 100x37 VESA_800x600 > green. Can I change rate? How to do it? I don't know what rate you mean. -- Lars Eighner eighner@io.com -finger for geek code- http://www.io.com/~eighner/index.html 8800 N IH35 APT 1191 AUSTIN TX 78753-5266
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