Re: [PATCH 0/7] OMFS filesystem version 3

[Szabolcs Szakacsits <szaka@ntfs-3g.org>]

On Mon, 14 Apr 2008, Anton Altaparmakov wrote:

> > I consider this as a benefit for FUSE file systems. An unloadable kernel
> > module results reboot which is much more intrusive.
> 
> Kernel modules don't become "unloadable" unless there is a bug.  

That's exactly what I meant. The majority of the system crashes are due to 
kernel drivers.

> The "kill -9" can happen inadvertently even without any bugs in the FUSE 
> or the FUSE-fs. 

Not really. And if so then distros solve it, as some of them already did 
(e.g. during system shutdown). 

> > The OOM killer can be configured and if the fs still uses too much memory
> > then probably it's better to be killed/restarted with journaling support.
> > The important here would be the kernel finally fixing the non-sync behavior
> > when it clams to do so (see recent kernel threads).
> 
> You don't get the point.  Any process in the system can be using too much
> memory and trigger the OOM killer even when the FS is behaving just fine...

Actually you missed when I wrote "the OOM killer can be configured".

FUSE is a new thing which sometimes requires non-conventional thinking and 
minor adjustments here and there. These works are ongoing for some years 
now.
 
> I never said it was a FUSE problem!  It is a ntfsmount/ntfs-3g problem.  At
> least a few years ago someone was trying to use ntfsmount (or ntfs-3g I can't
> remember if you had already forked it then) on a 32MiB RAM embedded ARM box
> and he was running OOM when trying to list directories due to the ntfs/fuse
> implementation.  In the kernel ntfs driver that does not happen.

Listing a directory with over 100k files can be still an ENOMEM problem 
using 32 MB RAM but of course it's solvable. Nobody was interested so far.

	Szaka

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