Re: XFS filesystem corruption

[Stan Hoeppner <stan@hardwarefreak.com>]

On 3/8/2013 6:20 AM, Ric Wheeler wrote:
> On 03/08/2013 03:39 AM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
>> On 3/6/2013 5:12 PM, Ric Wheeler wrote:
>>
>>> We actually test brutal "Power off" for xfs, ext4 and other file
>>> systems. If your storage is configured properly and you have barriers
>>> enabled, they all pass without corruption.

I think you missed the context.  Please reread this:

>> Something that none of us mentioned WRT write barriers is that while the
>> filesystem structure may avoid corruption when the power is cut, files
>> may still be corrupted, in conditions such as any/all of these:

I made it very clear I was discussing file corruption here, not
filesystem corruption.  You already covered that base.  I was
specifically addressing the fact that XFS performs barriers on metadata
writes but not file data writes.

>> 1.  unwritten data still in buffer cache
> 
> This is true only for user data, not the file system metadata. We should
> always be able to drop power without seeing corruption (like the garbled
> ls output).
> 
>> 2.  drive caches are enabled
> 
> Write barriers will take care of drives with write cache enabled, as
> long as the hardware RAID card is not in the middle and misleading us.
> 
>> 3.  BBWC not working properly
> 
> This should not be a worry. If the battery (or in more modern cards,
> flash backed) is not working, a good card will flip into write through
> caching. Should be slow, but safe.
> 
> Note that the write cache state on the drives is still a question mark -
> that needs to be disabled normally.
> 
>>
>> If the techs are determined to hard cut power because they don't have
>> the time or the knowledge to do a clean shutdown, it may be well worth
>> your time/effort to write a script and teach the field techs to execute
>> it, before flipping the master switch.  Your simple script would run as
>> root, or you'd need to do some sudo foo within, and would contain
>> something like:
>>
>> #! /bin/sh
>> sync
>> echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
>> echo "Ready for power down."
>>
>> This will flush pending writes in buffer cache to disk, and assumes of
>> course that drive caches are disabled, and/or that BBWC, if present, is
>> functioning properly.  It also assumes no applications are still
>> actively writing files, in which case you're screwed regardless.  It's
>> not a perfect solution and there's no guarantee you won't suffer file
>> corruption, but this greatly increases your odds against it.
>>
> 
> For file system *metadata* consistency, you should not have to do this
> ever if the stack is properly configured.  The application data will
> still be lost.
> 
> Also, if there are active writers, this is inherently racy. A better
> script would unmount the file systems :)

Yes, a umount would be even better.

-- 
Stan

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