100 lines
4.0 KiB
TeX
100 lines
4.0 KiB
TeX
\section*{Preface}
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\markboth{Preface}{Preface}
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\label{preface}
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After the publishing of version 0.79.5, the project has been dormant for another half decade. As time has passed by, it is foreseeable that optical media will become extinct just like floppy discs did long ago. Still, it is important to preserve the contents of already existing optical media. Towards this end, we will maintain dvdisaster to keep it usable on current hardware and OS versions.
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We do not plan for a rapid release cycle. Neither will many new features be introduduced like it was at the beginning of the project. Instead, we will strive to fill in the missing gaps left over from the still open RS03 release cycle. Afterwards, dvdisaster shall be kept sound and complete as long as optical media are still in use.
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\bigskip
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{\em -- -- The dvdisaster development team, Spring 2021}
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\newpage
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\section*{Preface for version 0.79.5}
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Since the release of dvdisaster 0.79.3\footnote{Version 0.79.4 was never finished
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and released.}, nearly five years have passed.
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This was partly due to changed circumstances in its
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primary developer's life, but there was also a lot of
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coding going on behind the scenes. In comparison with its
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predecessor, dvdisaster 0.79.5 comes with lots of its
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internals being significantly reworked.
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\smallskip
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The most visible improvement of dvdisaster 0.79.5 is, of
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course, its multithreaded RS03 codec. While it takes
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about 62 minutes for protecting a 36 GiB image with RS02
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on a mid range PC,
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the same task is done with RS03 in less than 7 minutes
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using 6 processor cores on the same machine.
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On a high end server with at least 16 cores and very good I/O,
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this can be done in under a minute. That's quite an
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improvement.
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RS03 is ready for production use in the current release.
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Some non-essential features, especially reworking the
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adaptive reading for use with RS03 and multi-threaded
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RS03 decoding (media fixing) will be delivered with
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the following dvdisaster releases.
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\smallskip
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Other parts of the project had to be changed or even
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discontinued. A software project lives on development
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and continuous releases; else the
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project will eventually die. In this respect, dvdisaster
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was very endangered in the last few years.
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To prevent this from happening again, most effort
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is now directed into source code development;
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everything else is delegated or discontinued.
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Source code development basically means making
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the GNU/Linux version, which provides the code base
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for all other versions, and the FreeBSD and NetBSD ports,
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which are very easily derived from the GNU/Linux code.
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This is not the case for the Mac OS and Windows ports,
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which are, unfortunately, \tlnk{qa-discontinued-os}{discontinued} as of now.
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Another feature which has to go are the separate
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stable and development releases.
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Starting with this version, all dvdisaster releases
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are considered production quality, so there is no
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need for different branches anymore.
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\smallskip
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Maintaining the multi-lingual online documentation, which
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also served as the project home page, did also prove to
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be too time consuming. The project home page has
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been changed into a simple download platform for
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the project sources. It is now directed at package
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maintainers who will create and pass on binaries
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for the GNU/Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD distributions.
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The program documentation, which you are reading
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right now, is provided in PDF format which is much
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easier to author than the HTML version. The only
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language available is English. Most parts of this
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manual have been adapted from the old online
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documentation, so it still feels more like a website
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than a book. While hyperlinks are not as usable in PDF
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as in HTML, they have been kept in this document to
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stress that it is intended to be used as an online reference.
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So please do our environment a favour and do not print
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this manual. It is not meant to be read
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from front cover to back cover, anyways.
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\smallskip
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Okay, enough ranting already. May dvdisaster be helpful
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in protecting and recovering your valuable data,
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and thanks for using it!
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\bigskip
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{\em -- -- cg, August 2015}
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