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Blocklist-Update.sh

Blocklist-Update.sh is a script that I wrote to manage blocklists from bluetack etc to be used in conjunction with Transmission torrent downloader in Linux/MacOS. The script can be taylored to work with Qbittorrent as well, but the placement of the blocklists means you'd have to redirect the blocklist to go somewhere locally manageable as Transmission uses its own blocklist directory in .config. I believe there are about 10 lists there now. It works well for my needs. It can be ran weekly using crontab in standard user profile.  To download:  blocklist-update.sh To download the others:  Github
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VARIOUS FILE-SYSTEMS AND BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THEIR DIFFERENCES

Almost every device today has some sort of preferred file-system that it works with. A lot of the common file-systems do some form of logging(journaling) to record events that effect the stability of the file-system. This has benefits. If one were troubleshooting reasons for a recent failure, it might be easy enough to look in the logs. There are a few exceptions to this, however. Older Windows systems for instance. Windows has gotten better with their choice of file-systems and structure, but this wasn’t alwas the case. Windows is also very well known for almost monthly having to have some sort of maintenance rendered on the host machine. Linux makes things a lot easier in that the file-system is well structured and like is organized with like content across the drive. This makes for faster read times and less fragmentation as a result. Below are a few common file-systems and a bit of information about each one.

Btrfs
Linux has a lot of different file-systems on which to build a system, btrfs is only one of them. Btrfs is a file-system that uses a clever technique developed by Oracle to help improve stability known as copy-on-write. Copy-on-write is a form of shadowing which duplicates file writes in a file-system to prevent data loss. COW can also be used in all levels of system management. File-systems like so many other aspects of operating systems utilize bits of code in the Kernel to perform their actions so this can also apply to memory management as well. Btrfs appears to be under active development by an array of companies, but no one really gives it a lot of use in a corporate setting. Btrfs compresses every file so that it takes less space and improves performance on a drive running it. Btrfs utilities are usually installed via a separate package called btrfs-progs.

ext
Ext was the first wave of what is known as the Extended File System. The Extended File-system was a step up from the earlier file-systems at the time. It exceeded the Minix file system and could handle bigger file-system sizes. This file-system doesn’t offer journaling and had issues with fragmentation. This was one of the first truly Linux file-systems and shares a developer with the other versions. Originally released to the public in 1993, it was a step in the right direction.

ext2
Ext2 is a file-system used specifically in Linux. Ext2 is a non-journaling file-system. Ext2 can potentially increase performance by minimizing writes. This is good on smaller storage devices such as flash drives, etc. This might also be good for SSD’s, however, this means that the file-system doesn’t log anything that happens to it, this could lead to a bit of difficulty in troubleshooting. Ext2 was a default for Linux distributions for a while, until ext3 came a long. The file-system is built around similar principles found in the BSD operating system which used the Berkley Fast File System.

ext3
A prodigy to the earlier versions of extended file systems, this file-system offered something that the previous offers did not. This version journaled everything that happened to the file-system, this helped with troubleshooting and aimed to help with some issues with data loss and or fragmentation. Ext3 was meant to be compatible with ext2 to the extent that one could convert ext2 to ext3 with ease. It also allowed for a great size overall file-system. This file-system came along in circa 2001.

ext4
The ext4 file-system was another range extender over ext3. Ext4 similarly allowed for journaling, but increased the possible size of the file-system to an exabyte(1024Petabytes). Ext4 offers more performance improvements in the way of E4rat. E4rat is like preload(more about this in a future article), that reads ahead and loads frequently accessed data or parts of the file-system. This allows for faster boot times among other things. This only works on mechanical drives though. Ext4 is customisable and tuneable. Ext4 does offer defragmentation tools, but these are hardly ever needed. The ext4 file-system is still widely popular today among linux users.

ReiserFS
ReiserFS was a file-system created by Hans Reiser and distributed circa 2001. ReiserFS was touted to be slightly faster when handling smaller files than ext and its later iterations. Reiser was criticized, however, for its issues with corruption. If a file-system was corrupted, fixing the file-system could cause more corruption. This was unfavorable. There was also the normal operations occasionally causing data corruption as well. All in all, it was a good try, but this still pales in comparison to ext.

Reiser4
A follow up attempt at redemption for ReiserFS with its corruption issues, this file-system was still more suited for smaller file-system areas. This file-system can cause CPU spiking, this is probably not for you.

ZFS
Touted as being the answer to data corruption and performance issues, this file-system is proprietary, this makes it completely unhelpful to the every day person. It also does not come packaged in the Linux Kernel by default. ZFS is still offered to Arch users, however, if you have a support question, you’re kinda on your own there. Such is the way of Proprietary items. You might have to pay Oracle for a ticket.

FAT/16
An older file-system for Windows systems. Fat 16 uses FAT or File Allocation Table to determine where every file is, and Fat 16 specifically takes up 16 bit cluster sizes in sector addresses, this was one reason for the 16. Fat 16 didn’t really offer to be stored on larger devices than did Fat12 which came before. FAT16 was used primarily on older DOS systems around 3.0. FAT itself was primarily made for floppy disks. Had a 2GB file-system size range.

FAT32
This file-system was a workaround for the 16bit cluster limit in FAT16 and for the limitations to file system size found in earlier versions. FAT32 is still used today on flash drives to be more universally compatible with Windows and Linux. FAT32 also had its day on Dos and Windows XP computers. This file-system developed by the same authors of the earlier versions at Microsoft and they still ran into space problems as storage devices grew larger. To battle this, NTFS was born as was EXFAT.

EXFAT
EXFAT is a file-system similar to FAT16 and FAT32, however, it can support larger storage capacities and thus is geared more towards SD cards and any device which can access them. Unlike the older FAT32, EXFAT was created to allow for more than the alloted limits. It was created by Microsoft and is still proprietary. The file-system functions similarly to NTFS.

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