Re: [PLUG] utils

[Lynn Bradshaw via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

I am a power user and pretty much never use rm. trash-cli is one of
the first things I install on a new system.

On Tue, Feb 8, 2022 at 2:08 PM Matt Mossholder via plug
<plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
>
> I think this is a simple matter of having a CLI equivalent of a GUI tool. Having both options is a good thing. If it works for your workflow, great. If not, you don't have to use it.  I can see it being a boon for new CLI users, even if power users aren't going to use it on a regular basis.  Power users might also have a use for it when remotely supporting GUI users (e.g. cleaning older trash items when the disk is full).
>
>      --Matt
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 8, 2022 at 9:08 AM Rich Freeman via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 10:12 PM Lynn Bradshaw via plug
>> <plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
>> >
>> > I obviously use a tool like Git when more power is needed but for some
>> > purposes, by analogy, if I were a farmer having troubles with rats, it
>> > would be adequate to use an air rifle rather than an M249 SAW for pest
>> > control. trash-cli is pretty much the same.
>> >
>>
>> So, git is useful for stuff like /etc where the files are small and
>> there is a lot of value in having VCS control over them.  There is a
>> package called etckeeper available for most distros that contains
>> hooks for most package managers to improve that workflow (it will
>> auto-commit any changes before doing another round of updates in case
>> you aren't keeping up with them, so that you don't go into etc and
>> find a gazillion modified files with no commit history).
>>
>> However, a big issue with git is that without a fair bit of hacking it
>> doesn't support actual permanent deletion, which makes it unsuitable
>> for general-purpose use.  Most people would benefit from snapshot-like
>> capability that gives them the ability to go back and recover from
>> errors for a reasonable period of time, without being locked into
>> having a browser Downloads folder that slowly consumes their entire
>> hard drive.
>>
>> I think the dream was that btrfs would have saved us a long time ago,
>> but that filesystem has been fraught with issues.  Sure, LVM sort-of
>> works but it isn't really a great solution (it seems more suited to
>> temporary snapshots for backups/etc than semi-persistent ones).  ZFS
>> works fine for the most part, but it has GPL-compatibility issues, and
>> doesn't really get as much care as it could as a result.
>>
>> I use zfs and it provides this capability nicely when combined with a
>> cron-driven script to manage snapshots (there are a bunch out there).
>> My large-scale storage is on lizardfs which also provides snapshots.
>> For the typical desktop distro though everything is on ext4 and the
>> best you can do with that is the trash can functionality or LVM.
>>
>> It isn't really the fault of snapshots, but I'll also note that if you
>> use a rolling-release distro like gentoo/arch/etc then snapshots on
>> your root filesystem do consume a significant amount of space as
>> everything turns over frequently.  For a release-based distro the
>> simple solution would be to just not snapshot that stuff since it is
>> pretty easy to recover.  With the read-only /usr concept you'd just
>> have a squashfs snapshot for that sort of thing.  Stuff like /var/lib
>> will also tend to need a lot of room for snapshots, though outside of
>> servers this tends to be small on most systems.
>>
>> --
>> Rich
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