From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265958AbUGIWAi (ORCPT ); Fri, 9 Jul 2004 18:00:38 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265970AbUGIWAi (ORCPT ); Fri, 9 Jul 2004 18:00:38 -0400 Received: from pimout3-ext.prodigy.net ([207.115.63.102]:35051 "EHLO pimout3-ext.prodigy.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265958AbUGIWAe (ORCPT ); Fri, 9 Jul 2004 18:00:34 -0400 Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 14:59:55 -0700 From: Chris Wedgwood To: L A Walsh Cc: Norberto Bensa , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: XFS: how to NOT null files on fsck? Message-ID: <20040709215955.GA24857@taniwha.stupidest.org> References: <200407050247.53743.norberto+linux-kernel@bensa.ath.cx> <40EEC9DC.8080501@tlinx.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <40EEC9DC.8080501@tlinx.org> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Fri, Jul 09, 2004 at 09:37:48AM -0700, L A Walsh wrote: > Even after multiple syncs, files edited within the past few days > will sometimes go mysteriously null. Good reason to do daily > backups as the backups will usually contain the correct file... I *never* see this even when beating the hell out of machines and trying to break things. I do see nulls in cases where the metadata was updated and the data didn't flush, that's supposed to happen. > Now if we could just come up with a reproducable test case...but > when I try to reproduce it, it doesn't. Grrr....it knows when I'm > scrutinizing!! :-) Use anything that handles dotfiles or configuration badly (ie. KDE), make some changes or just 'run it' for a bit. Every now something rewrites some files. Yank the power a few times and sooner or later you'll end up with problems under KDE certainly. Sane applications (MTAs like postfix for example) don't have this problem because they were written with more clue. If they did have this problem people would scream, because mail would get lost... and large mail servers might have tens of thousands of files moving about in-flight, much more strenuous that a few dot-files. --cw