Re: Sync option destroys flash!

[Zan Lynx <zlynx@acm.org>]

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On Fri, 2005-05-13 at 13:17 -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Fri, May 13, 2005 at 12:20:06PM -0400, Michael H. Warfield wrote:
> >	I'm also going to file a couple of bug reports in bugzilla at RedHat
> > but this seems to be a more fundamental problem than a RedHat specific
> > problem.  But, IMHO, they should never be setting that damn sync flag
> > arbitrarily.
> 
> No they certainly should not, but it may have something to do with
> making life easier for kde/gnome desktops and automatic mount/umount of
> media.  Dumb idea still, but that happens sometimes.

Err, no, the sync flag is a wonderful idea.  I use sync on jump drives
(although I won't now that I've read about this problem) because I can
copy a file to it and as soon as the green light stops flashing I can
yank it out without bothering to click or type anything to "eject" it.
Requiring "eject" on removable media is a dumb idea.

Perhaps FAT updates could be cached and delayed until some # of ms after
the last write.

Turning the sync flag off and adjusting the values
in /proc/sys/vm/dirty_* would have the same effect, but would change it
on all devices, not just removables.

Maybe we need a way to set dirty_* per block device?
-- 
Zan Lynx <zlynx@acm.org>

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