Re: ReiserFS / 2.4.6 / Data Corruption

[Christoph Hellwig <hch@caldera.de>]

On Mon, Jul 30, 2001 at 03:41:16PM -0700, Kip Macy wrote:
> How does compiling in debug infrastructure protect the user's data? By
> making the file system so slow that he won't use it? :-)

The <<reiserfs debugging code>> isn't debugging code in a strict sense.
It mostly it consists of sequences in the form of:

 (sometimes there is also code that the documentation states as deadlock-
 avoidance, why it is not enabled without _CHECK defined is left as
 exercise to the reader)

#ifdef CONFIG_REISERFS_CHECK
	if (condition_that_should_not_happen)
		reiserfs_panic (sb, "some_obscure_error_code");
#endif

This way the system stops with a indication of the failing component
instead of silently corrupting disk contents.  As reiserfs maintains
a log the recovery from that panic shouldn't take that long either.

(On the other hand I've seen some reiserfs systems that destroyed their
 disk contents while trying to recover.  That's a reason why I still
 can't recomend using reiserfs for anything but /tmp, test machines
 or proxy caches).

	Christoph

-- 
Of course it doesn't work. We've performed a software upgrade.