Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Clemens Eisserer]

Hello,

Will reiser-4.0 or reiser-4.1 be merged into mainline kernel, I ask
because I am quite interrested in trying out the compression plugin.

Sorry about what happend in the last few days :-/

lg Clemens

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Clemens Eisserer]

Hi again and thanks for the response,

> > Will reiser-4.0 or reiser-4.1 be merged into mainline kernel, I ask
> I don't know, why it should be merged partially.
> I.e. "all or nothing".
I thought that compression belongs exclusivly to reiser4-4.1, and
maybe because of stability issues only reiser4-4.0 will maybe merged.
Great to hear to maybe soon get the full power at once :-)

> If you want to try out in the latest -mm kernel,
> then we will send you the setup.
I am currently really busy - I've just started university. But I would
be happy if I would be allowed to ask for help again in a few weeks
:-)

Btw. Is there anything new about includion into mainline? I read
somewhere that first 2.6.19 was the goal but now it is 20 or 21. Is it
now more or less a predictable thing, only when exactly is still open
or can kernel devs still change their opinion?

lg Clemens

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Maciej Sołtysiak]

Hello Clemens,

Tuesday, October 17, 2006, 11:14:33 PM, you wrote:
> somewhere that first 2.6.19 was the goal but now it is 20 or 21. Is it
> now more or less a predictable thing, only when exactly is still open
> or can kernel devs still change their opinion?
It is largely up to Andrew Morton. I trust him and I think that when
he says r4 is ready, it is ready. Andrew keeps knows that there are
both sides of the story here and he does his best to push r4 into
mainline while keeping to it that the code adhers to requirements
and guidelines stated by kernel developers.

I belive r4 is soon to be merged, if not in december/january then surely
before easter. (would be a good xmas present,hehe)

Regards,
Maciej

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Clemens Eisserer]

Hi,

> If you want to try out in the latest -mm kernel,
> then we will send you the setup.

I'll setup my laptop within the next days and will compile the latest
-mm kernel.
Could you send me the "setup", please? (Do you mean the kernel-setup,
or a howto?)

Thanks a lot in advance, lg Clemens

Btw. a very last question about compression: Will the disk-cache held
in RAM be also compressed? Would be great for machines with slow disk,
little RAM but fast processor... (e.g. my laptop ;) )

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Clemens Eisserer]

Hello,

> ok, a bit later
No need to hurry ;)

> both compressed and decompressed data are cached, it means that
> cryptcompress file requires  *(2-R) more memory then usual file
> (R - compression ratio)
Oh ... thats a drawback. It means the performance advantage
compression will do will be destroyed at least partially :-/ However I
am sure there are fine reasons to do so (or the current VFS design
forces to do so) and I also don't understand the background.
I am happy with what I get :-)

> What is hardware configuration of your laptop?
Its a Northwood-P4-2.6ghz with a very slow (Hitachy?) drive:
 "Timing buffered disk reads:   48 MB in  3.08 seconds =  15.59 MB/sec"

Thanks a lot for this great FS, lg Clemens

Btw. If you send me the setup - this could be seen as support service ;)
Would it help Reiser4 development if I pay the 25$ - or is the locked?

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Clemens Eisserer]

Hi again,

> How much RAM?
512mb, DDR1 "PC2700"

> Thanks, but the status of this account seems to be unclear
Ok, then I'll wait till there are other ways to donate.

Thanks a lot, Clemens

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Clemens Eisserer]

Hello again,

Thanks a lot for all the help, well ... I now use reiser4 as root-partition :-)

Everything works ok and I haven't seen any crashes or compatibility
problems, simply wonderful :-). If something bad happens I'll let you
know ;)

However performance is so-and-so, the system was faster with ext3,
although I compiled the kernel with "-O3 -march=pentium4
-mtune=pentium4 -mno-sse -mno-sse3". Booting the system into KDE takes
about twice the time, although I have to admit I was using another
harddrive - I now use a 60GB/4200RPM instead an 40GB/4200RPM which
both show quite the same hdparm-results,
I use the lzo1 plugin (default ccreg40).

Are there some settings (or ext3 optimizations) in FC6, or could it be
that some of my kernel-settings slow things down for FC6 (the same
compiled kernel-binary was already used for ext3). The
reiser4-partition is mounted with "noatime".

These are some features I could imagine causing problems:
* Inotify
* Adaptive file readahead + hit feedback + fine grained readahead aging
* Timer with 1kHz
* Readahead-script of the distribution

Thanks a lot, lg Clemens

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Francesco Biscani]

On Wednesday 08 November 2006 08:21, Clemens Eisserer wrote:
> Hello again,
>
> Thanks a lot for all the help, well ... I now use reiser4 as root-partition
> :-)
>
> Everything works ok and I haven't seen any crashes or compatibility
> problems, simply wonderful :-). If something bad happens I'll let you
> know ;)
>
> However performance is so-and-so, the system was faster with ext3,
> although I compiled the kernel with "-O3 -march=pentium4
> -mtune=pentium4 -mno-sse -mno-sse3". Booting the system into KDE takes
> about twice the time, although I have to admit I was using another
> harddrive - I now use a 60GB/4200RPM instead an 40GB/4200RPM which
> both show quite the same hdparm-results,
> I use the lzo1 plugin (default ccreg40).
>
> Are there some settings (or ext3 optimizations) in FC6, or could it be
> that some of my kernel-settings slow things down for FC6 (the same
> compiled kernel-binary was already used for ext3). The
> reiser4-partition is mounted with "noatime".
>
> These are some features I could imagine causing problems:
> * Inotify
> * Adaptive file readahead + hit feedback + fine grained readahead aging
> * Timer with 1kHz
> * Readahead-script of the distribution

I think the slow performance you're experiencing are caused by the fsync() 
call not being well-optimized in reiser4. I've commented out the function in 
fs/buffer.c, and I'm having much better performance on my / partition.

HTH,

  Francesco

-- 
Dr. Francesco Biscani
Dipartimento di Astronomia
Università di Padova
biscani@pd.astro.it

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Andreas Dilger]

On Nov 08, 2006  10:15 +0100, Francesco Biscani wrote:
> I think the slow performance you're experiencing are caused by the fsync() 
> call not being well-optimized in reiser4. I've commented out the function in 
> fs/buffer.c, and I'm having much better performance on my / partition.

I don't think this can be advocated as a real solution to performance
problems.  This can mean data loss for some applications like email that
expect "fsync return" to mean "this data is safely on disk".  May as well
say "I improved the performance of my backups by writing to /dev/null".

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
Principal Software Engineer
Cluster File Systems, Inc.

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Jindrich Makovicka]

On 11/8/06, Clemens Eisserer <linuxhippy@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello again,
>
> Thanks a lot for all the help, well ... I now use reiser4 as root-partition :-)
>
> Everything works ok and I haven't seen any crashes or compatibility
> problems, simply wonderful :-). If something bad happens I'll let you
> know ;)
>
> However performance is so-and-so, the system was faster with ext3,
> although I compiled the kernel with "-O3 -march=pentium4
> -mtune=pentium4 -mno-sse -mno-sse3". Booting the system into KDE takes
> about twice the time, although I have to admit I was using another
> harddrive - I now use a 60GB/4200RPM instead an 40GB/4200RPM which
> both show quite the same hdparm-results,
> I use the lzo1 plugin (default ccreg40).
>
> Are there some settings (or ext3 optimizations) in FC6, or could it be
> that some of my kernel-settings slow things down for FC6 (the same
> compiled kernel-binary was already used for ext3). The
> reiser4-partition is mounted with "noatime".
>
> These are some features I could imagine causing problems:
> * Inotify
> * Adaptive file readahead + hit feedback + fine grained readahead aging
> * Timer with 1kHz
> * Readahead-script of the distribution

noatime and nodiratime mount options can also improve Reiser4 performance a lot.

better solution for the fsync problem is a library like
http://ftp.die.net/pub/qmail-tools/libnosync.c , which can be used
only when needed.

-- 
Jindrich Makovicka

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Clemens Eisserer]

Hi again,

> > I think the slow performance you're experiencing are caused by the fsync()
> > call not being well-optimized in reiser4. I've commented out the function in
> > fs/buffer.c, and I'm having much better performance on my / partition.
>
> I don't think this can be advocated as a real solution to performance
> problems.  This can mean data loss for some applications like email that
> expect "fsync return" to mean "this data is safely on disk".  May as well
> say "I improved the performance of my backups by writing to /dev/null".

To be honest I don't really know what fsync does (I guess it forces
something to be written or something like this) and if yes - why it
gets called that often.
However am I wrong or is fsync mostly calles by applications writing
data, whereas starting xorg+kde is mostly a read job?

Thank you for your patience, lg Clemens

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Clemens Eisserer]

Hi again,

Don't know what its worth:
I disabled readahead completly and now KDE starts almost as fast as on EXT3.

lg Clemens

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Clemens Eisserer]

sorry, my last message was not really clear:

I didn't change the kernel, I just disable the preload-scripts
executed by fedora.
I first tried to inlucde the whole KDE stuff but found it to be even
slower so I disabled them completly and now everything works fine :-)

I guess this could be maybe because of the reduced space available for
caching in RAM, because compressed and uncompressed data is cached.

lg Clemens

2006/11/9, Clemens Eisserer <linuxhippy@gmail.com>:
> Hi again,
>
> Don't know what its worth:
> I disabled readahead completly and now KDE starts almost as fast as on EXT3.
>
> lg Clemens
>

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Danny Milosavljevic]

Hi,

On Wed, 08 Nov 2006 03:21:36 -0700, Andreas Dilger wrote:

> On Nov 08, 2006  10:15 +0100, Francesco Biscani wrote:
>> I think the slow performance you're experiencing are caused by the fsync() 
>> call not being well-optimized in reiser4. I've commented out the function in 
>> fs/buffer.c, and I'm having much better performance on my / partition.
> 
> I don't think this can be advocated as a real solution to performance
> problems.  This can mean data loss for some applications like email that
> expect "fsync return" to mean "this data is safely on disk".  

I've never understood this kind of attitude some MTAs have. Usually the
hardware would make sure that stuff doesn't disappear (UPS, powered RAM,
harddisk condenser) and not some weird software workaround that complicates
and slows down everything.

The only possibility one could still lose mail when having proper
hardware failsafes would be if the kernel had a bug and crashed (and that's
so bad, it doesn't really warrant any working around it).

But maybe that's just me.

cheers,
  Danny

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

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On Sat, 11 Nov 2006 15:14:18 GMT, Danny Milosavljevic said:
> I've never understood this kind of attitude some MTAs have. Usually the
> hardware would make sure that stuff doesn't disappear (UPS, powered RAM,
> harddisk condenser) and not some weird software workaround that complicates
> and slows down everything.

I've never understood this kind of attitude some filesystems have. Usually
the hardware would make sure that stuff doesn't disappear, and not some
weird software workarounds like journalling or write barriers that
complicate and slow down everything.

Now as you were saying?


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Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Christopher Chan]

Danny Milosavljevic wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Wed, 08 Nov 2006 03:21:36 -0700, Andreas Dilger wrote:
> 
>> On Nov 08, 2006  10:15 +0100, Francesco Biscani wrote:
>>> I think the slow performance you're experiencing are caused by the fsync() 
>>> call not being well-optimized in reiser4. I've commented out the function in 
>>> fs/buffer.c, and I'm having much better performance on my / partition.
>> I don't think this can be advocated as a real solution to performance
>> problems.  This can mean data loss for some applications like email that
>> expect "fsync return" to mean "this data is safely on disk".  
> 
> I've never understood this kind of attitude some MTAs have. Usually the
> hardware would make sure that stuff doesn't disappear (UPS, powered RAM,
> harddisk condenser) and not some weird software workaround that complicates
> and slows down everything.
> 
> The only possibility one could still lose mail when having proper
> hardware failsafes would be if the kernel had a bug and crashed (and that's
> so bad, it doesn't really warrant any working around it).

Ever used DOS with smartdrv? smartdrv gave a performance boost by 
storing recently touched files in memory and writing to disk later. This 
is called a disk cache. You would be explicitly told to NOT just turn 
off the computer each time smartdrv was loaded. You had to first clear 
the cache and then you could power off the box otherwise you would lose 
any data sitting in the cache that had not been flushed.

All current Unices have disk cache capabilities built-in and the only 
way to bypass the disk cache for those applications that needed to have 
their data definitely written to disk and not sitting the cache was the 
fsync and fsyncdata calls.

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Christopher Chan]

David Masover wrote:
> Christopher Chan wrote:
>> Danny Milosavljevic wrote:
> 
>>> The only possibility one could still lose mail when having proper
>>> hardware failsafes would be if the kernel had a bug and crashed (and
>>> that's
>>> so bad, it doesn't really warrant any working around it).
>> Ever used DOS with smartdrv? smartdrv gave a performance boost by
>> storing recently touched files in memory and writing to disk later. This
>> is called a disk cache. You would be explicitly told to NOT just turn
>> off the computer each time smartdrv was loaded. You had to first clear
>> the cache and then you could power off the box otherwise you would lose
>> any data sitting in the cache that had not been flushed.
> 
> Which means that, if you have proper hardware failsafes, you will only
> lose data if you don't properly clear the cache before shutting down
> (which Linux shutdown scripts will do for you), or if there's a crash.
> I'm sure many people used smartdrv without problems, and appreciated the
> performance boost.

Which is why data important software use fsync/fsyncdata to minimize 
data loss from crashes.

> 
> Moral of the story: Data loss is a Bad Thing. Those who would give up
> essential data safety for a little temporary performance deserve
> neither. (With apologies to Ben Franklin.)
> 
> And while reading this, it's important to keep in mind that I do not
> practice what I've just preached. I'm addicted to the performance, and I
> could probably argue the other side just as effectively. Besides, at
> least on my experimental/gaming rig, I like a little adrenaline in my
> admin work!
> 

Try arguing why you lost thousands of mails when the box crashed and 
justifying it.

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Danny Milosavljevic]

Hi,

On Mon, 13 Nov 2006 17:34:59 +0800, Christopher Chan wrote:

> David Masover wrote:
>> Christopher Chan wrote:
> [...smartdrv...]

Yeah, smartdrv was nice :)

[...]
> Try arguing why you lost thousands of mails when the box crashed and 
> justifying it.

Oh. Good point.

So the bad case is:
1. mails are tiny
2. RAM cache is big
3. cache doesn't get flushed to disk for 1000s of mails
4. crash happens seldomly, but severely :)
-> 1000s of mail lost by the crash

Now I see :)

cheers,
  Danny

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Danny Milosavljevic]

Hi,

On Sat, 11 Nov 2006 14:28:42 -0500, Valdis.Kletnieks wrote:
[...]
> I've never understood this kind of attitude some filesystems have. Usually
> the hardware would make sure that stuff doesn't disappear, and not some
> weird software workarounds like journalling or write barriers that
> complicate and slow down everything.
> 
> Now as you were saying?

Hehehe. Well, you turned it all around... insightful :)


While we are at it:

I take it that this is the reason journalling support is only picking up
now: the disks are so big that even in the unlikely event that some of the
hardware failsafes fail, one just cannot fsck all the disks completely
anymore, ever.

So the choice is really 'borked once, borked forever' / 'journal it and at
least somehow get it back online without fscking /
copying-to-new-disks-if-at-all-possible for 5 days straight'.

cheers,
  Danny

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Christopher Chan]

> While we are at it:
> 
> I take it that this is the reason journalling support is only picking up
> now: the disks are so big that even in the unlikely event that some of the
> hardware failsafes fail, one just cannot fsck all the disks completely
> anymore, ever.

Only picking up now??

reiserfs was the first filesystem available for Linux with journaling 
support. NTFS for Windows had it a long time ago. Other Unix's had 
journaling a long time ago too.

FreeBSD, Solaris and the other BSD's had another theory for file system 
reliability and speed implemented under softupdates a long time ago too.

journaling support has been late on Linux. Everything seems to be late 
on Linux. Real-time support, preemptive support...

> 
> So the choice is really 'borked once, borked forever' / 'journal it and at
> least somehow get it back online without fscking /
> copying-to-new-disks-if-at-all-possible for 5 days straight'.

No. Choices are: sync only (no write caching), turn on softupdates if 
supported, turn on various degrees of journaling if supported or async 
only (who cares?)

If you have fsync/fsyncdata available, databases, mtas and other 
software should not care less how the filesystem is mounted.

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Christopher Chan]

> So the bad case is:
> 1. mails are tiny
> 2. RAM cache is big
> 3. cache doesn't get flushed to disk for 1000s of mails
> 4. crash happens seldomly, but severely :)
> -> 1000s of mail lost by the crash
> 
> Now I see :)

:). So fsync/fsyncdata takes care of those rare crashes which is why 
mail servers should rarely lose mail. I say should because the journal 
mode available/used affects fsync/fsyncdata too.

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Christopher Chan]

>> Which is why data important software use fsync/fsyncdata to minimize 
>> data loss from crashes.
> 
> If (and only if) you actually read and accepted the paragraph you're 
> quoting there, the point is that using fsync and fdatasync on these is 
> kind of like doing bad block relocation in software, when the hard disk 
> is already doing it for you. There are situations where it's useful, but 
> mostly, it's just a performance drain without a point.

You have no idea what fsync/fsyncdata does. They cannot be compared to 
bad block relocation at all. That is an apples to oranges comparison.

> 
> I don't necessarily agree with this point of view, but there you go.
> 
>>> could probably argue the other side just as effectively. Besides, at
>>> least on my experimental/gaming rig, I like a little adrenaline in my
>>> admin work!
>>>
>>
>> Try arguing why you lost thousands of mails when the box crashed and 
>> justifying it.
> 
> There aren't thousands of mails on my experimental dev/gaming rig. Also, 
> it hasn't crashed in a month or two (I seem to have upgraded/hacked my 
> way out of its last major crasher), and it's running all kinds of 
> experimental stuff. Sure, individual programs crash from time to time 
> (especially my hacks), but that's irrelevant to the fsync discussion.

I was not referring to your gaming rig. Did you say that you don't use 
fsync for your production boxes?

> So, as far as I can tell, this mailserver (that I'm sending this from 
> right now), which is amd64/reiser4/no_fsync, hasn't lost a single 
> message. And I don't even have an APM on it (although that reminds me, I 
> need to buy one now, as in, "tomorrow" now.)

Heh. Just wait till you get a crash shortly after a write with fsync 
disabled.

> 
> Anyway, are we done here? I don't think I disagree with your points, 
> maybe just your absolutism.

Ha! Got tell that to a bank or any body who uses a database to store 
important data. Hans knows what he is doing providing data guarantee 
with fsync. I was very surprised when I heard all those reports about 
zero data loss on reiser4 boxes after a crash. Now I have an idea why.

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Clemens Eisserer]

Hi there,

First of all this discussion is about ... well isn't it of topic here at all?

> journaling support has been late on Linux. Everything seems to be late
> on Linux. Real-time support, preemptive support...
Yes Linux is late on everything because things are done when there is
_real_ demand for it. I don't see a problem with that ;-)

lg Clemens

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Christopher Chan]

> So, you have to have a way to insure data integrity beyond flushing it 
> to disk. Flushing it to disk is just a bit of unneeded integrity, that 
> costs a little bit of performance, and would probably save your ass in 
> one or two edge cases, but those cases shouldn't normally happen, and if 
> you're properly prepared for the hardware failing, you're properly 
> prepared for those edge cases, also.

fsync costs a lot of performance. Disk I/O is orders of magnitude off 
RAM. Anyway I guess you are smarter than Hans then since you obviously 
feel that his use of fsync is a bit of unneeded integrity.

> 
> 
> Anyway, this rant went on longer than I wanted it to, but since I've 
> brought it down to a question of economics, I don't really know the 
> answer. I do think, however, that arguing always for or against fsync is 
> absolutist and ultimately wrong.

Obviously we should take this question of fsync to its creator and all 
those who use it since they are all crippling their software 
implementing this dreadful useless function and actually making use of it.

> 
> 
>>> Anyway, are we done here? I don't think I disagree with your points, 
>>> maybe just your absolutism.
>>
>> Ha! Got tell that to a bank or any body who uses a database to store 
>> important data. Hans knows what he is doing providing data guarantee 
>> with fsync.
> 
> Yes, he's providing warm fuzzies for the banks. What are the banks doing 
> about hard disk failure? Remember, fsync only guarantees the data was 
> successfully written to a physical media -- it doesn't guarantee the 
> data will still be there when you want to go read it.

How could I ever forget that banks use unreliable media?

> 
> I won't speculate on Hans' opinions on whether fsync is really a good 
> design decision -- at least, not without him able to respond.

You don't have to. He did not create fsync and so you don't have to 
worry about whether fsync is a good design decision.

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Christopher Chan]

David Masover wrote:
> Christopher Chan wrote:
>> Anyway I guess you are smarter than Hans then since you obviously
>> feel that his use of fsync is a bit of unneeded integrity.
> 
> I'm not going to respond to this until you phrase it in a way which
> doesn't gossip about Hans. Unless something has changed, Hans is still
> unable to communicate on this list, so it's entirely unfair for either
> of us to put words in his mouth as long as he isn't here to defend himself.

Look, the reason why reiser4 uses fsync is to guarantee data and 
filesystem integrity which from what I have heard is far better than 
that of ext3 which is at the moment the leader in this regard.

> 
>>> Anyway, this rant went on longer than I wanted it to, but since I've
>>> brought it down to a question of economics, I don't really know the
>>> answer. I do think, however, that arguing always for or against fsync
>>> is absolutist and ultimately wrong.
>> Obviously we should take this question of fsync to its creator and all
>> those who use it since they are all crippling their software
>> implementing this dreadful useless function and actually making use of it.
> 
> I'm sorry, did I say it was useless?  And I quote:
> 
> "arguing always for OR AGAINST fsync is absolutist and ultimately wrong."
> 
> I'm not saying fsync is always the wrong choice, either. I'm simply
> saying it isn't always the right one.

When ANY piece of software be it a database, mta or a filesystem wants 
to know that what was written is safe on disk, it uses fsync, end of 
story. NO filesystem worth its salt will not not use fsync or fsyncdata 
when its come to the part of wanting a guarantee that data/metadata has 
been written to disk.

> 
> And no, I'm not impressed by what the majority thinks. On a larger
> scale, the majority thinks Windows is their only real option, and that
> computers are inherently unstable and insecure, and that software
> engineers will never listen to them and always make it their fault.

The majority really have no choice. Most of the software they need are 
on Windows. If Linux had come out earlier or GNU had a viable working 
solution earlier or they had got more exposure, Unix might have been the 
dominant desktop OS instead of DOS/Windows/M$. I do not believe the 
majority chose to think Windows is their only real option. You can put 
in something else and they will happily use it until they find out they 
cannot use 'necessary software that runs on Windows only' and then they 
switch back. If you look at how Apple has been rather successful with 
their desktops/laptops you can see that some people are prepared to dump 
Windows for what it is, a piece of unstable and insecure crap.

Open source too has to share part of the blame when it comes to the desktop.

> 
> If you're going to debate this, please try to debate it with just you
> and me. You shouldn't need to invoke Hans-who-isn't-here, or every
> software engineer in the past 20 years. If your point is really that
> solid, it should stand on its own, without you having to intimidate me
> about how stupid I am for questioning established practices.

If you had brought up a solid point against fsync instead of completely 
irrelevant comparisons and sticking to your faulty points then I won't 
have bothered pointing out that you are being stupid for questioning 
established practices without grounds.

> 
> I'd rather drop the debate, because, as I said, we mostly agree.

I am not sure we do. Until you drop the fsync is unnecessary for data 
integrity part, we don't.

> 
>> How could I ever forget that banks use unreliable media?
> 
> So how do they deal with that issue? (Or are you being sarcastic?)
> 
> Obviously, fsync won't save them, so how do they deal with it?

Come on, David, stop acting like some ignorant admin. Media problems are 
migitated by having redundant failovers available.

> 
>>> I won't speculate on Hans' opinions on whether fsync is really a good
>>> design decision -- at least, not without him able to respond.
>> You don't have to. He did not create fsync and so you don't have to
>> worry about whether fsync is a good design decision.
> 
> He could have as easily removed it, the way I patched it out. Pretended
> to implement it, but simply have a stub that always returns success.

Heh. Did you know that there was a time that Linux pretended to sync 
when it did not actually do it? The result? fsck, fsck, fsck

> 
> He certainly has opinions about whether fsync is a good idea, why he
> wants reiser4 to have better fsync performance, and many other things
> that we should not discuss in his absence.

The only way you can get better fsync performance is to use RAID under 
the filesystem or do full journaling on a NVRAM block device. Get this 
through your head. fsync is not written/created by Hans. fsync was 
already part of the Unix 98, Unix 95, 4.3BSD and SVID 3 APIs. (see 
http://www.unix.org/apis/1.r.html) I doubt very much that Hans has any 
opinions whatsoever on a standard API call. So you can stop the Hans is 
not here nonsense.

> 
> Until Hans is back on the list, any email which says anything about
> Hans' opinions or intelligence is no better than teenage gossip. Please,
> stop acting like a high-school girl.
> 
> 

Ooh, where did I say anything about Hans' opinions or intelligence?

Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel?

[Clemens Eisserer]

Only a fool argues against a fool ;)