More Zonkyness

Some time ago, I wrote about using new (for the time) partition tables to create a memory stick with 100 partitions; each with a mountable file system on. And decided the time was right to have another look to see if things have improved … or degraded. After all, things have moved on, and everything has been updated.

I also improved the creation script slightly :-

#!/bin/zsh

disk=/dev/sdb

parted $disk mklabel gpt
for x in {1..99}     
do
  echo Partition: $x
  parted -s $disk mkpart FAT $(($x * 100)) $((x * 100 + 99))
  sleep 0.2
  mkfs -t vfat -n DOOM${x} ${disk}${x} 
  sleep 0.2
done

And I used a zsh-ism – so shoot me.

The script ran fairly well, but :-

1. The load average shot up through the roof as copies of systemd-udevd started, worked, and closed.
2. Strangely the links in /dev/disk/by-label (and presumably elsewhere) kept disappearing and re-appearing. As if on each partition change to the disk, all of the disk’s devices were removed and re-created. This is probably not dangerous, but harmful to performance.
3. Given that I used sleep within my script, it is hard to criticise performance, but it did seem slow. However this is not an area worth optimising for.
4. Unlike last time, Linux did not refuse to create any file systems.

Now onto trying to stick the memory stick of doom into various systems…

Ubuntu 17.10

This was of course the machine I ran the script on initially.

This did not go so well, with the machine initially freezing momentarily (although it is a cheap and nasty laptop), apparently silently refusing to mount half the file systems, and “Files” (or Nautilus) getting wedged at 100% processor usage.

After some 10 minutes, Nautilus was still stuck with no signs of making any progress.

After I lost patience and restarted “Files”, it came up okay showing the mounted file systems and showing the file systems it had failed to mount. On one occasion the additional file systems were shown as unmounted (and could be mounted) and on another they were shown as mounted (even though they weren’t).

So both “Files” gets a thumb down for getting stuck, and whatever else gets a thumb down for trying and failing (silently) to mount all the file systems.

This is definitely a serious degradation from the previous try, although probably GNOME-specific rather than Linux-specific. Especially as a later mounted all the file systems from the command-line on a different system without an issue.

Windows 10

Windows 10 became unusually sluggish, although it may have been in the mysterious “we’ll run Windows update at the most inconvenient time possible” mode. It did attempt to mount the file systems, and failed miserably – it mounted the first set until it ran out of drive letters.

Which is just about understandable, as there aren’t 100 drive letters. However :-

1. Where was the message saying “There are 100 partitions in this silly USB stick. You can see the first 22; additional ones can be mounted within folders if there is important data on them.”.
2. Why is Windows still limiting itself with single letter device names? Okay it is what we’re used to, but when you run out of drive letters, start using the file system label – “DOOM99:”. Hell, I’d like all my removable disks treated that way under Windows.

As for the whole “ran out of drive letters, so don’t bother with the rest”, how many people are aware that drives can be mounted (as Unix does) in directories?

macOS 10.13 (OSX)

Oddly enough (but perhaps sensibly), macOS refused to have anything to do with the memory stick. Indeed it popped up a dialog suggesting initialising the disk, which is perhaps not particularly sensible with a disk that could contain data.

The “Disk Utility” happily showed the disk – increasing the size of the window inconveniently wide in the process – and happily indicated 99 partitions.

At the Terminal prompt, it was apparent that the operating system had created device files for each of the partitions, but for some reason wouldn’t mount them.

Summary

Inserting a “stick of doom” with 100 partitions on it into any machine is still a risky thing to do. It’s also a dumb thing to do, but something operating system developers should be doing.

Linux (or rather GNOME) performs significant worse this time around than previously, and my suspicions are that systemd is to blame.

But however bad Linux does, none of the operating systems actually do sensible things with the “stick of doom”. macOS arguably comes closest with refusing to have anything to do with the disk, but it also encourages you to reformat the disk without saying that it could be erasing data.

Ideally, a gooey would pop up a window listing the file system labels and ask you which you want to mount. That’s not even a bad idea for a more sensibly set up memory stick.

Pebble On Steel