Re: ext3-2.4-0.9.4

Chris Mason
2001-07-30T00:34:01Z

On Sunday, July 29, 2001 01:53:48 PM +1200 Chris Wedgwood <cw@f00f.org>
wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 28, 2001 at 08:03:37PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
>
> Ext3 I believe so, Reiserfs I would assume so but Hans can answer
> definitively
>
> Reiserfs does not, nor are creates or unlink operations synchronous.
>
> For MTAs it just happens to work: if you fsync the way transactions
> are written means the metadata for the dirtectories is written as part
> of the transaction --- but I think this is a quirk and not by design?
>
> Chris?

Correct, in the current 2.4.x code, its a quirk. fsync(any object) ==
fsync(all pending metadata, including renames).

There is a transcation tracking patch floating around out there that makes
reiserfs fsync/O_SYNC much faster by only committing the last transaction a
given file/dir was involved in. I had sent this to alan just after 2.4.7
came out, but it looks like I need to resend.

Anyway, during a rename, this patch updates the inode transaction tracking
stuff so an fsync on the file should also commit the directory changes.
But, that isn't something I really intend to advertise much, since the
accepted linux way is fsync(dir).

-chris