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- Sisyphus (austin Caskie) Mac Os Update
When Apple announced their new file system, APFS, in June, I hustled to be in the front row of the WWDC presentation, questions with the presenters, and then the open Q&A session. I took a week to write up my notes which turned into as 12 page behemoth of a blog post — longer than my college thesis. Despite reassurances from the tweeps, I was sure that the blog post was an order of magnitude longer than the modern attention span. I was wrong; so wrong that Ars Technica wanted to republish the blog post. Never underestimate the interest in all things Apple.
In that piece I left one big thread dangling. Apple shipped APFS as a technology preview, but they left out access to one of the biggest new features: snapshots. Digging around I noticed that there was a curiously named new system call, “fs_snapshot”, but explicitly didn’t investigate: the post was already too long (I thought), I had spent enough time on it, and someone else (surely! surely?) would want to pull on that thread.
Slow News Day
(Mac OS X): Under Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6, the default JVM is 1.6, which is 64-bit. However, Java 1.6.020 does not work well. However, Java 1.6.020 does not work well. The issue is that the following stack trace appears. Sisyphus by Theo Koutz (2006; Z-code). IF Comp 2006: 39th place (tie) See: IFWiki. Emilian Kowalewski. Project Delta by Emilian Kowalewski (2008; MS-Windows). IF Comp 2008: 32nd place; See: IFDB, IFWiki. Trap Cave by Emilian Kowalewski (2009; Node-X; English and German). IF Comp 2009: 23rd place; See: IFDB, IFWiki. Cleopatra Kozlowski. Sisyphus, in Greek mythology, the cunning king of Corinth who was punished in Hades by having to repeatedly roll a huge stone up a hill only to have it roll back down again as soon as he had brought it to the summit. Learn more about Sisyphus in this article.
Every so often I’d poke around for APFS news, but there was very little new. Last month folks discovered that APFS was coming to iOS sooner rather than later. But there wasn’t anything new to play with or any revelations on how APFS would work.
I would search for “APFS snapshots”, “fs_snapshot”, anything I could think of to see if anyone had figured out how to make snapshots work on APFS. Nothing.
A few weekends ago, I decided to yank on that thread myself.
Prometheus
I started from the system call, wandered through Apple’s open source kernel, leaned heavily on DTrace, and eventually figured it out. Apple had shipped snapshots in APFS, they just hadn’t made it easy to get there. The folks at Ars were excited for a follow-up, and my investigation turned into this: “Testing out snapshots in Apple’s next-generation APFS file system.”
Snapshots were there; the APIs were laid bare; I was going to bring fire to all the Mac fans; John Siracusa and Andy Ihnatko would carry me on their shoulders down the streets of the Internet.
![Sisyphus (austin caskie) mac os download Sisyphus (austin caskie) mac os download](https://img.itch.zone/aW1hZ2UvMjQ0NDI1LzExNjY5MjcucG5n/original/pBwnUz.png)
Sisyphus
On the eve that this new piece was about to run I was nervously scrolling through Twitter as I took the bus home from work. Now that I had invested the time to research and write-up APFS snapshots I didn’t want someone else beating me to the punch.
Then I found this and my heart dropped:
Slides from the “Storing our digital lives: Mac filesystems from MFS to APFS” session at MacTech Conference 2016: https://t.co/uJJuqLL8n9
— Rich Trouton (@rtrouton) November 17, 2016 Upstander mac os.
Skim past the craziness of MFS and the hairball of HFS, and start digging through the APFS section. Slide 49, “APFS Snapshots” and there it is “apfs_snapshot” — not a tool that anyone laboriously reverse engineered, deciphering system calls and semi-published APIs — a tool shipped from Apple and included in macOS by default. F — .
Apple had secreted this utility away (along with some others) in
/System/Library/Filesystems/apfs.fs/Contents/Resources/
What To Do?
The article that was initially about a glorious act of discovery had become an article about the reinvention of the wheel. Conversely, vanishingly few people would recognize this as rediscovery since the apfs_snapshot tool was so obscure (9 hits on Google!).
We toned down the already modest chest-thumping and published the article this morning to a pretty nice response so far. I might have happier as an FAKE NEWS Prometheus, blissfully unaware of the pre-existence of fire, but I would have been mortified when the inevitable commenter, one of the few who had used apfs_snapshot, crushed me with my own boulder.
Posted on February 12, 2017 at 5:23 pm by ahl · Permalink
In: DTrace
In: DTrace
Albert Camus’ monumental philosophical work, The Myth of Sisyphus, is a series of essays in which Camus (1913 – 1960) makes sense of the human quest for order and meaning in an indifferent (and thus absurd) universe.
The fundamental subject of The Myth of Sisyphus is this: it is legitimate and necessary to wonder whether life has a meaning; therefore it is legitimate to meet the problem of suicide face to face. The answer, underlying and appearing through the paradoxes which cover it, is this: even if one does not believe in God, suicide is not legitimate.1.Try to ignore the fully-packed context of the word “suicide” in a mental health capacity; Camus means it as a philosophical question. Meaning, if the world is indifferent, should we too be indifferent to a meaningful life or even life itself?1
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a precocious human punished by the gods to push a boulder to the top of a mountain only to have it roll back down again. Camus looks at Sisyphus as a representative human: one engaged in endless mechanical and meaningless toil.
Although bound to this utterly ineffective (and harsh) existence, Sisyphus, Camus argues, was happy. Or rather, could be happy.
At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain.
It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. […] I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks towards the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than the rock.
It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. […] I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks towards the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than the rock.
Absurdity, argues Camus, is what the universe throws back when we try to impose meaning upon indifference.
We normalize the absurdity, i.e., we fail to see things as absurd, because we do not want to relinquish our sense of order, meaning, or control. We continue to believe we are responsible, reason will prevail, and life will be worth something.
Camus escorts his metaphor to modern day:
Rising, tram, four hours in the office or factory, meal, tram, four hours of work, meal, sleep and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, according to the same rhythm—this path is easily followed most of the time.2.One recalls Dorothy Parker’s poem “Philosophy”:
“If I should labor through daylight and dark,
Consecrate, valorous, serious, true,
Then on the world I may blazon my mark;
And what if I don’t, and what if I do?”
Parker’s simple lines flick the absurd in the ear.2
But one day the ‘why’ arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement […] Weariness comes at the end of the acts of a mechanical life, but at the same time it inaugurates the impulse of consciousness. It awakens consciousness and provokes what follows. What follows is the gradual return into the chain or it is the definitive awakening. At the end of awakening comes, in time, the consequence: suicide or recovery. In itself weariness has something sickening about it. Here, I must conclude that is good. For everything begins with consciousness and nothing is worth anything except through it.
“If I should labor through daylight and dark,
Consecrate, valorous, serious, true,
Then on the world I may blazon my mark;
And what if I don’t, and what if I do?”
Parker’s simple lines flick the absurd in the ear.2
But one day the ‘why’ arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement […] Weariness comes at the end of the acts of a mechanical life, but at the same time it inaugurates the impulse of consciousness. It awakens consciousness and provokes what follows. What follows is the gradual return into the chain or it is the definitive awakening. At the end of awakening comes, in time, the consequence: suicide or recovery. In itself weariness has something sickening about it. Here, I must conclude that is good. For everything begins with consciousness and nothing is worth anything except through it.
However, the happiness that Sisyphus might feel is not from the universe; it is from himself. Atop the mountain, his work is for naught, Sisyphus pauses, recognizes his suffering, accepts that is all there is, laughs at it, and thus achieves a self-consciousness worthy of his torment.
Sisyphus, the proletariat of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition; it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
Nothing matters except the awareness that nothing matters. In that awareness lies life’s meaning.
Who owns these scrawny little feet? Death.
Who owns this briskly scorched-looking face? Death.
Who owns these still-working lungs? Death.
Who owns this utility coat of muscles? Death.
Who owns these unspeakable guts? Death.
Who owns this briskly scorched-looking face? Death.
Who owns these still-working lungs? Death.
Who owns this utility coat of muscles? Death.
Who owns these unspeakable guts? Death.
[…]
Who is stronger than hope? Death.
Who is stronger than will? Death.
Stronger than love Death.
Stronger than life? Death.
Who is stronger than will? Death.
Stronger than love Death.
Stronger than life? Death.
from (“Examination at the Womb-Door” by Ted Hughes)
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At the end of his life, neurologist Oliver Sacks ruminated on leading a “universe-worthy” life. As did Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius two millennia earlier.3.Questioning one’s worth, regardless of the measurement, seems to be a late-in-life rite of passage. Read more in The Gifts and Grace of Old Age.3Hemingway, Orwell, and Steinbeck were also writers who appeared to stand tall or small owing to the gaze of some universe value.
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Somewhat conversely, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke believed that all answers lie within, a sentiment echoed by Hermann Hesse and Patti Smith.
Others seem to propose a balance of external and internal meaning by throwing themselves wholly into the universe, like poets Mary Oliver and Walt Whitman, novelist Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, and certainly Leonard Cohen.
However we feel about reason, fate, consciousness, and meaning, one thing from Camus’ reasoning is, I think, indisputable:
At his moment of consciousness, Sisyphus was atop the mountain finished with work and thus outside his work. He was in a pause.
Camus elaborates on this physical apartness from toil:
In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion; in order to serve men better, one has to hold them at a distance, for a time. But where can one find the solitude necessary to vigor, the deep breath in which the mind collects itself and courage gauges its strength?
Sisyphus (austin Caskie) Mac Os Update
As you contemplate your absurdity (or the world’s absurdity) or even as you resume your toil, I wish you a deep breath in which to collect your mind and gauge your strength.