From owner-freebsd-stable Mon Aug 19 8:20:57 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0D5D837B400 for ; Mon, 19 Aug 2002 08:20:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from blackhelicopters.org (geburah.blackhelicopters.org [209.69.178.18]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6FED043E77 for ; Mon, 19 Aug 2002 08:20:52 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mwlucas@blackhelicopters.org) Received: from blackhelicopters.org (mwlucas@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by blackhelicopters.org (8.12.4/8.12.4) with ESMTP id g7JFKpcC014867; Mon, 19 Aug 2002 11:20:51 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from mwlucas@blackhelicopters.org) Received: (from mwlucas@localhost) by blackhelicopters.org (8.12.4/8.12.4/Submit) id g7JFKp0N014866; Mon, 19 Aug 2002 11:20:51 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 11:20:51 -0400 From: Michael Lucas To: Chris Pepper Cc: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Aur=E9lien_Nephtali?= , stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: root (/) not soft-updates by default ? Message-ID: <20020819112051.A14802@blackhelicopters.org> References: <20020819144928.GA6628@nebula.wanadoo.fr> <20020819105452.A14530@blackhelicopters.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: ; from pepper@reppep.com on Mon, Aug 19, 2002 at 11:03:09AM -0400 Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Well, originally, I had read the message, but not the subject, so I hadn't caught that this was root-only. :) Apparently at some time in the last couple of releases, soft-updates has become the default. I gather that the person who made this change expects every user to understand this intuitively, or that the overwhelming majority of FreeBSD users are running SCSI. :-( ata(4) has instructions on how to disable write caching, and if you do a search on IDE write caching and soft updates, you should get *lots* of messages about this issue. Also some stuff in tuning(7). On Mon, Aug 19, 2002 at 11:03:09AM -0400, Chris Pepper wrote: > At 10:54 AM -0400 2002/08/19, Michael Lucas wrote: > >Hello, > > > >Soft updates does not work well with IDE controllers with write > >caching enabled; you can cause data loss. > > > >Most IDE controllers ship with write caching enabled. > > > >We won't, by default, ship systems which have an unacceptable risk of > >data loss. :-) > > Okay, then I'll ask the next question. Why is this acceptable > on /usr, /var, or other mount points? My 'data' is likely to be > everywhere *but* /. > > If we should be disabling write caching on IDE installations, > can you point me to instructions for the procedure? I'd like to call > it out more in the docs. > > > Thanks, > > > Chris Pepper > > >On Mon, Aug 19, 2002 at 04:49:28PM +0200, Aurélien Nephtali wrote: > >> Hello, > >> > >> What is the reason that the mount point (by default, /) hasn't the flag > >> for soft-updates by default (during the installation), can I set it > > > without data lost ? > > -- > Chris Pepper: > Rockefeller University: -- Michael Lucas mwlucas@FreeBSD.org, mwlucas@BlackHelicopters.org http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/q/Big_Scary_Daemons Absolute BSD: http://www.AbsoluteBSD.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message