From owner-freebsd-current Fri Dec 6 11:10:39 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B98DF37B401 for ; Fri, 6 Dec 2002 11:10:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from dan.emsphone.com (dan.emsphone.com [199.67.51.101]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 33E2E43EA9 for ; Fri, 6 Dec 2002 11:10:38 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dan@dan.emsphone.com) Received: (from dan@localhost) by dan.emsphone.com (8.12.6/8.12.6) id gB6JARBo007697; Fri, 6 Dec 2002 13:10:27 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from dan) Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 13:10:27 -0600 From: Dan Nelson To: David Rhodus Cc: Archie Cobbs , Kirk McKusick , freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: backgroud fsck is still locking up system (fwd) Message-ID: <20021206191024.GA1646@dan.emsphone.com> References: <200212061839.gB6Id3Bn064745@arch20m.dellroad.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: X-OS: FreeBSD 5.0-RC X-message-flag: Outlook Error User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.1i Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG In the last episode (Dec 06), David Rhodus said: > Why does softupdates not get enabled on / , by default on the > install? Softupdates updates on-disk structures in the background, and background fsck cannot relink unreferenced files into lost+found, so you run the risk of losing both the original and backup copies of important files in case of a sudden reboot. Imagine you edited /etc/rc.conf, saved it, and 5 seconds later the system panic'ed. Because the default metadata flush time is 28 seconds, there's a pretty good chance that neither the new file or the original is in /etc after a reboot. I got bit by this three times before I learned my lesson. I have disable softupdates on /, and crank the softupdates delays down to 10/11/12 seconds to minimize the risk to my other filesystems. At least there are /var/backups and /boot/kernel.old which let you recover the really important files :) -- Dan Nelson dnelson@allantgroup.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message