Re: ext3-2.4-0.9.4

Rik van Riel
2001-07-30T16:28:22Z

On 30 Jul 2001, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote:

> The relevant standards (POSIX, SuS, etc.) provide no way to perform
> reliable transactions on a file system.
>
> BSD provides one solution, which is synchronous metatdata. (I am
> assuming modern BSDs already deal with the multiple-disk-block
> problem to make these transactions properly atomic. Is this
> assumption false?)
>
> Linux provides a different solution, which is fsync() on the
> directory.
>
> All MTAs, and other apps besides, currently use the BSD solution for
> reliable transactions.
>
> Is it really so absurd to ask Linux to provide efficient support of
> the BSD semantics as an option?

Yes. You could fix this issue in userland very easily,
it might even work with an LD_PRELOAD ...

Besides BSD softupdates and the various journaling
filesystems which are in use on other Unixen also
don't provide the 4.3BSD solution any more ...

regards,

Rik
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