Re: ext4 features

Trond Myklebust
2006-07-07T14:56:34Z

On Thu, 2006-07-06 at 23:16 -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:

> In most cases you don't care and would be using locking if you did. The
> old value was valid when you read it, the new value is valid, and if
> data is changing in 2us and the change matters, you can't process the
> data before it changes again (or at least may change).

Wrong! The NFS cache consistency model (close-to-open cache consistency)
requires you to be able to revalidate the cache on open() whether or not
you are using posix locking. In fact, most alternatives to posix locking
(for instance dotlocking, which is frequently used by email
applications) rely heavily on this.

See for instance http://nfs.sourceforge.net/#faq_a8

Trond