Re: synchronous mounts

[Andrew Morton <akpm@zip.com.au>]

Jeff Garzik wrote:
> 
> As it stands, it seems like redefining 'sync' to sync less data than is
> currently done is not only changing current behavior, but providing less
> to users overall.
> 

Persuasively argued.  You appear to have your wish, as this
patch was merged in -pre5.

A `dirsync' option does make sense though, for the reasons which
Stephen outlined.

The whole handling of synchronous operations needs a rip-up-and-rewrite
anyway.  We're currently holding onto a stack of locks while waiting
for the disk to spin round and round.  It's a great scalability bottleneck
for multiple threads doing things in the same directory.   This is
something I shall look at when the kernel versions turn odd.

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