Re: ext3-2.4-0.9.4

Christoph Hellwig
2001-07-26T15:03:00Z

In article <20010726164516.R17244@emma1.emma.line.org> you wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Jul 2001, Rik van Riel wrote:
>
>> An MTA which relies on this is therefore Broken(tm).

> MTAs rely on TRULY, ULTIMATELY AND DEFINITELY SYNCHRONOUS directory
> updates, nothing else.

And thus they are broken, all caps don't make that less true.

> And because they do so, and most systems have them,

"and most systems have them"...

> MTAs do NOT care how the file system is internally managed, they only
> rely on the rename operation having completed physically on disk before
> the "my rename call has returned 0" event. They expect that with the
> call returning the rename operation has completed ultimately, finally,
> for good, definitely and the old file will not reappear after a crash.

So they rely on undocumented and non standadisized semantics of some
implementations. I'd call this buggy.

Christoph

--
Whip me. Beat me. Make me maintain AIX.