[snips]
On Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:40:02 +0100, Peter Köhlmann wrote:
> Ezekiel wrote:
>>>> A bug in *BETA* software. Instead of whining about this why don't you
>>>> freetards fix ext4 so that it doesn't keep trashing peoples data.
>>>
>>>
>>> Well, it does not. EXT4 does it correctly,
>>
>> So losing all of the changes and truncating multiple existing files to
>> zero bytes is doing it correctly?
>
> The *apps* are at fault.
I'd heard about this, but hadn't read anything about it - until now.
Indeed, it comes down to app developers relying on ext3's default of "5
seconds to flush" rather than explicitly flushing at sensible intervals.
As Ts'o points out, any file system makes a tradeoff between performance
and reliability; more advanced file systems such as Ext4 attempt to
maximize performance while letting the app "look after itself" - flush
when necessary to ensure the data is safe - because, after all, it is the
the app rather than the file system, knows best when it's time to do a
sync.
There is a sort of amusing side to this, though: app developers in Linux
are apparently so used to systems which just *do not crash* that they
don't sync their data - no need, if the system isn't going down any time
in the foreseeable future. :)
|
|
