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Date:      Mon, 11 May 1998 19:36:45 -0500
From:      Karl Denninger  <karl@mcs.net>
To:        Kirk McKusick <mckusick@McKusick.COM>
Cc:        Ollivier Robert <roberto@keltia.freenix.fr>, julian@whistle.com, Luoqi Chen <luoqi@watermarkgroup.com>, current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Why Soft Updates are not a mount option
Message-ID:  <19980511193645.56745@mcs.net>
In-Reply-To: <199805112206.PAA28767@flamingo.McKusick.COM>; from Kirk McKusick on Mon, May 11, 1998 at 03:06:41PM -0700
References:  <9805100336.AA06453@watermarkgroup.com> <199805112206.PAA28767@flamingo.McKusick.COM>

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On Mon, May 11, 1998 at 03:06:41PM -0700, Kirk McKusick wrote:
> Soft Updates are set in the superblock with tunefs for several reasons:
> 
> 1) This is an interim measure during the testing phase of soft updates.
>    In the long run, they will always be used as the normal course of
>    events. I do not want legacy mount options lying around.

Uh, how do you do that with the current licensing system?  (ie: not everyone
can play)

> 2) The soft update code is not prepared to be turned on when the filesystem
>    is active. It currently has no code to find all files actively being
>    written and building up the necessary dependency information for them.
>    Writing such code is non-trivial and not a worthwhile exercise in my
>    opinion, especially given goal #1.
> 
> 3) Fsck uses different algorithms for cleaning up on filesystems run with
>    soft updates. It is much more reliable to have it check for the bit in
>    the superblock than it is to try and figure out whether the flag was
>    set when it was mounted. Also, the algorithms can only be used if the
>    filesystem was continuously run with soft updates throughout the time
>    that it was mounted. If it could be updated, that would somehow have
>    to be recorded.
> 
> 	Kirk McKusick

These points certainly appear to be legit, however.  But (1) concerns me.

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