turn on Journaling for HFS+ volumes in Mac OS X

[hm_murdock]

When you update to 10.2.2, you can have the super safe journaling feature of 10.2 server.

There's two ways. one way sucks, the other is cool. This is the cool way, because it makes your OS think that it's OS X server.

Open terminal and cd to /system/library/coreservices

then sudo cp systemversion.plist serverversion.plist

give it your password, and then go to the Apple menu and select "About this Mac" and you'll see a change. next, open Disk Utility and select your HD partition and you'll see a button that says "Enable Journaling" or something like that.

it's cool! do it because it is!

[rtgwbmsr]

That's awesome!

I'll try it when the update finishes "optimizing". It's been at it for like 10 mins. Is it supposed to take this long?

[Pantso]

quote:Originally posted by The_Muffin_Man/B0b:
That's awesome!

I'll try it when the update finishes "optimizing". It's been at it for like 10 mins. Is it supposed to take this long?

Cool option!    

Anyway, Muffin Man it took me about 10 minutes as well to optimize the system.

[rtgwbmsr]

FUCKING AWESOME!

I have a server on my archaic PowerBook and yooouuu dooonnn't!

Sorry      

BTW: Love the "Sys admin lecture" warning.

[ November 12, 2002: Message edited by: The_Muffin_Man/B0b ]

[Pantso]

I just found out an easier way to enable journaling (maybe that's the not so cool option Jimmy James was talking about).

As root type: "sudo diskutil enableJournal /" and you're done.  

[hm_murdock]

I actually think that it would be

sudo diskutil enableJournal /dev/rhd1

or whatever device your HD is... I think. the other way doesn't really do anything as far as I know.

It *is* easier, but not as cool. Several other utils also change when they think they're on OS X server, but I've yet to see the differences.

[Pantso]

quote:Originally posted by The Jimmy James X 10.3.6 / Bob:
I actually think that it would be

sudo diskutil enableJournal /dev/rhd1

or whatever device your HD is... I think. the other way doesn't really do anything as far as I know.

It *is* easier, but not as cool. Several other utils also change when they think they're on OS X server, but I've yet to see the differences.

I don't really know but this is what I got.

I'll try your advise as well.      

EDIT: Tried your advise and love it but HFS was already journaled. I like the extra button with the option to disable journaling as well as "About this Mac" info. I have a question though. Does this little "hack" really fool some apps into believing they're running on OS X server or just change the system info? I'm confused!   :confused:

[ November 12, 2002: Message edited by: Pantso ]

[Pantso]

The first things I've noticed after following Jimmy James's advise:

- My boot screen is gone but I can see the progress bar

- My login screen reads "Mac OS X Server". Cool!      

- My firewall settings are gone from System Preferences -> Sharing where they were before! I'm a little confused there. Any ideas?    :confused:  

I'll have to dig around a bit but all in all I'm impressed!

EDIT: To revert your system to its previous state, all you have to do is remove the "serverversion.plist" file from /System/Lbrary/CoreServices. Just a note..

[ November 12, 2002: Message edited by: Pantso ]

[hm_murdock]

Disk Utility is obviously fooled. I'm sure other things change, but it'll probably require some searching to find out what.

[CommonSense]

I hadn't read of the hack to fool the system into thinking it's OS X Server; I just know the CLI command.  (And yes, just putting "/" is sufficient; the OS figures out the exact mount point on its own.)

I see no speed difference on this lowly PowerBook G3/400 (Pismo), but that's a good thing -- they said to expect a 10-20% hit in disk access speed if you enabled journaling.  Fortunately, I've seen no change.

[hm_murdock]

only for heavy writing. it doesn't affect read time at all, and affects very little of the write time unless you do an install or something.

One problem I found though, is that when you restart, the splash screen is gone, because the OS X Server image doesn't exist! It's just black text and the progress bar on the blue background!

[Pantso]

quote:Originally posted by The Jimmy James X 10.3.6 / Bob:
One problem I found though, is that when you restart, the splash screen is gone, because the OS X Server image doesn't exist! It's just black text and the progress bar on the blue background!

That's exactly what I wrote a couple of posts above this one.    

Anyway, I haven't seen any impact on performance yet which is all in all a good thing. Oh and another thing: Have you used Software Update with this hack applied? Try it and you'll be presented with an option to upgrade to OS X server 10.2.2.