From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Christopher Chan Subject: Re: Which version will be merged into mainline kernel? Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 17:34:59 +0800 Message-ID: <45583C43.5070904@netvigator.com> References: <194f62550610160250u265ef120lee3cf9a17266939f@mail.gmail.com> <454A596F.8070909@namesys.com> <194f62550611072321j1cd34205u55f3c121dcac7aac@mail.gmail.com> <200611081015.14320.biscani@pd.astro.it> <20061108102136.GS6012@schatzie.adilger.int> <4557E254.5060404@netvigator.com> <45582353.3070709@slaphack.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: list-help: list-unsubscribe: list-post: Errors-To: flx@namesys.com In-Reply-To: <45582353.3070709@slaphack.com> List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed" To: David Masover , reiserfs-list@namesys.com 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.