Re: Corrupted/unreadable journal: reiser vs. ext3

[Sam Vilain <sam@vilain.net>]

On Thu, 13 Feb 2003 00:12, Adam Goryachev wrote:
> I can conceive of a few things that *might* be the right thing in
> various circumstances:
>
> A) Immediately re-mount the drive read-only, and wait for the sysadmin
> to either re-mount rw or to do some other data recovery/repair
>
> B) Immediately dis-mount the drive and wait
>
> C) OK, I tried to write to sector 1324 so lets just try each consecutive
> available sector until it doesn't return an error (possibly marking the
> sectors bad/used as we go)
>
> D) Just return an error to the application

Or a mixture...

C) with a max limit of, say 5 attempts, then D).  And then, later if it 
gets `really bad', where most I/O operations are failing, then A).

But I'd consider it acceptable behaviour for bounds check exceptions (ie, 
unreported filesystem corruption) or situations where you have lost a 
large amount of really critical structural information to invoke B).  Much 
better than an Oops.

Whoever made that statement about the hard disk head crashing... now that's 
certainly a laughable suggestion; a hard disk continuing after a head 
crash.  If anything, my experience with disks has been that if they start 
failing, you have to sort things out sooner rather than later.
-- 
Sam Vilain, sam@vilain.net

  You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come
in contact with a new idea.
JOHN NUVEEN