From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Feb 6 10:59:56 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from earth.backplane.com (earth-nat-cw.backplane.com [208.161.114.67]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D487937B491 for ; Tue, 6 Feb 2001 10:59:36 -0800 (PST) Received: (from dillon@localhost) by earth.backplane.com (8.11.1/8.9.3) id f16IxVv63887; Tue, 6 Feb 2001 10:59:31 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dillon) Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 10:59:31 -0800 (PST) From: Matt Dillon Message-Id: <200102061859.f16IxVv63887@earth.backplane.com> To: Andre Oppermann Cc: Poul-Henning Kamp , Charles Randall , Dan Phoenix , Alfred Perlstein , Jos Backus , freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: soft updates and qmail (RE: qmail IO problems) References: <35545.981478627@critter> <3A8047AB.D5B0FBB9@monzoon.net> Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG :Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: :> :> In message <5FE9B713CCCDD311A03400508B8B3013054E3F5D@bdr-xcln.is.matchlogic.com>, Charles Randall writes: :> >The qmail FAQ specifically recommends against soft updates for the mail :> >queue. :> > :> >http://cr.yp.to/qmail/faq/reliability.html#filesystems :> > :> >Is this incorrect? :> > :> :> It seems to indicate that qmail doesn't use fsync(2) as much as it should :> do. If that is true, then yes, softupdates would mean that a lot of things :> which qmail (mistakenly) think has been written are in fact not on the :> disk. : :Qmail uses fsync() *very* extensivly! I know pretty well, I wrote :the qmail-ldap patch. (avail on http://www.nrg4u.com). : :PS: Poul, have you got my email from yesterday night? : :-- :Andre I did a quick search of the qmail site but couldn't find an email address to report the FAQ issue to. If QMail calls fsync() in a reasonable manner, then softupdates is perfectly safe and the QMail FAQ needs to be updated to recommend softupdates rather then disrecommend it. -Matt To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message