Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1999 22:04:30 +0900 From: "Daniel C. Sobral" <dcs@newsguy.com> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Cc: jm7996@devrycols.edu, Konrad Heuer <kheuer@gwdu60.gwdg.de>, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD - A User's Point of View Message-ID: <36AB1A5E.35F73F4C@newsguy.com> References: <19990124171121.A36690@freebie.lemis.com> <Pine.BSF.4.05.9901240354030.215-100000@insomnia.local.net> <19990124201556.E36690@freebie.lemis.com>
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Greg Lehey wrote: > > > The Linux filesystem, or ext2fs, if I'm not mistaken by default caches > > writes to the disk. If the machine should suddenly go down, power > > failure, unexpected crash, etc..., this information doesn't make it back > > to the disk. I've known many a Linux user who has lost _entire_ file > > systems due to this. > > UFS does this too. Ext2fs in Linux defaults to full-async: data and metadata. This is much worse than ffs' default in FreeBSD, of metadata-sync + data-async. FreeBSD's ffs can be configured as full sync or full async, in addition to it's default behavior. AND, we now have softupdates. :-) Ok, ok, it has licensing issues... > I don't know if it's possible to turn it off in Linux. You can't turn > it off in UFS either. In fact, the manner in which disk writes are > cached is pretty central to FreeBSD's performance. You can turn it off in Linux, though I don't know if they have a "half-async" mode. As for FreeBSD, see above... :-) > I think you've made my point. This ``evil'' feature of ext2fs was > probably borrowed, at least in concept, from BSD's UFS. Nope, they default to full-async. That IS evil. If they don't have a half-async, which gives much better resistance to crash, that's evil too. -- Daniel C. Sobral (8-DCS) dcs@newsguy.com If you sell your soul to the Devil and all you get is an MCSE from it, you haven't gotten market rate. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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