Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Peter Humphrey <peter@××××××××××××.uk>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Ruby is borked on my system
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 09:25:46
Message-Id: 200579866.zSIDzg9407@wstn
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Ruby is borked on my system by Neil Bothwick
1 On Friday 27 June 2014 21:58:23 Neil Bothwick wrote:
2 > On Fri, 27 Jun 2014 12:39:29 -0400, covici@××××××××××.com wrote:
3 > > > Some months ago I found myself wondering why I had ruby on this box
4 > > > at all. A little poking around revealed that the only thing that
5 > > > needed it was thin- provisioning. Once I'd added -thin to my USE
6 > > > flags and recompiled lvm2 I could get rid of ruby altogether.
7 > > >
8 > > > This won't suit everybody, I know, but maybe it's worth considering.
9 > >
10 > > What exactly does this do -- is it for a thin client or something?
11 >
12 > No, it's an LVM feature. It's one of those "if you don't know what it is
13 > you don't need it" type features so I don't understand whey it is enabled
14 > by default in the ebuild.
15
16 It's a daft name, too, IMO. "Over-commit" would be better.
17
18 > Thin volumes in LVM use only the space they need, so the space you
19 > allocate to them, so you can create volumes with a total size greater
20 > than the available disk space.
21
22 ...and although I dare say some installations may need it, and know how to
23 manage the risk, I certainly don't want to wake up one day to find I've
24 overflowed my partitions, so I ditched it as soon as I found it. Enough things
25 go bump in the night as it is, without adding to them needlessly.
26
27 Result: ruby-coloured peace.
28
29 It's even worse than you said, Neil; on this ordinary KDE box* with 943
30 packages installed, thin-provisioning in lvm2 is the only thing that needs
31 ruby. So not only is it a "you don't need it" feature, it brings in layers of
32 complexity and head-scratching for ordinary mortals, quite out of proportion
33 to the "benefits".
34
35 * Well, ordinary apart from using two disks in software RAID-1 and LVM, that
36 is.
37
38 --
39 Regards
40 Peter