Re: Linux 2.6.29

Pavel Machek
2009-03-29T14:46:38Z

On Sat 2009-03-28 12:53:34, Bodo Eggert wrote:
> Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
> > On Fri, 27 Mar 2009, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> >> Yes, some editors (vi, emacs) do it, but even there it's configurable.
> >
> > .. and looking at history, it's even pretty modern. From the vim logs:
> >
> > Patch 6.2.499
> > Problem: When writing a file and halting the system, the file might be lost
> > when using a journalling file system.
> > Solution: Use fsync() to flush the file data to disk after writing a file.
> > (Radim Kolar)
> > Files: src/fileio.c
> >
> > so it looks (assuming those patch numbers mean what they would seem to
> > mean) that 'fsync()' in vim is from after 6.2 was released. Some time in
> > 2004.
>
> Besides that, it's a fix specific for /journaled/ filesystems. It's easy to see
> that the same journal that was supposed to increase filesystem reliability
> is CAUSING more unreliable behavior.

Journaling is _not_ supposed to increase filesystem reliability.

It improves fsck time. That's it.

Actually ext2 is more reliable in ext3 -- fsck tells you
about errors on parts of disk that are not normallly used.
Pavel
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