From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jul 26 18:18:22 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from green.homeunix.org (freefall.freebsd.org [216.136.204.21]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 59A7316A4CE; Mon, 26 Jul 2004 18:18:22 +0000 (GMT) Received: from green.homeunix.org (green@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by green.homeunix.org (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id i6QIILsE097198; Mon, 26 Jul 2004 14:18:21 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from green@green.homeunix.org) Received: (from green@localhost) by green.homeunix.org (8.12.11/8.12.11/Submit) id i6QIILj9097197; Mon, 26 Jul 2004 14:18:21 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from green) Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 14:18:21 -0400 From: Brian Fundakowski Feldman To: Scott Long Message-ID: <20040726181821.GB96815@green.homeunix.org> References: <1090718450.2020.4.camel@illusion.com> <200407251112.46183.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> <1090790611.4628.1.camel@illusion.com> <20040726152151.GC1473@green.homeunix.org> <20040726114142.E32601@pooker.samsco.org> <20040726175219.GA96815@green.homeunix.org> <20040726121005.D32601@pooker.samsco.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040726121005.D32601@pooker.samsco.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6i cc: current@freebsd.org cc: bugghy Subject: Re: magic sysrq keys functionality X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 18:18:22 -0000 On Mon, Jul 26, 2004 at 12:15:02PM -0600, Scott Long wrote: > On Mon, 26 Jul 2004, Brian Fundakowski Feldman wrote: > > On Mon, Jul 26, 2004 at 11:49:55AM -0600, Scott Long wrote: > > > On Mon, 26 Jul 2004, Brian Fundakowski Feldman wrote: > > > B> On Sun, Jul 25, 2004 at 09:23:36PM +0000, bugghy wrote: > > > > > Yeah but it sometimes "freezes" (no reboot) ... and I'd rather umount my > > > > > filesystems before rebooting. > > > > > > > > SoftUpdates guarantess that your file systems will not get corrupt. > > > > > > > > > > This isn't entirely correct. Softupdates guarantees that you won't get > > > corruption due to metadata pointing to invalid or stale data blocks. > > > That's not the same as guaranteeing that there won't be any corruption. > > > Write caching on the drive combined with an in-opportune power loss or > > > other failure can easily leave you with corrupt or incomplete metadata > > > and/or data blocks. A panic while metadata is being committed to disk can > > > also leave the metadata highly inconsistent and prone to corruption. > > > This isn't to say the SU is bad or that other strategies are necessarily > > > better, just that there are definite risks. > > > > If you just want to generalize it, you can say that "SoftUpdates > > guarantees that your file systems will not get corrupt due to just > > software errors." I don't particularly think not having UPS is a > > good idea, but those can fail, and even so the ordering is such > > that a truncated inode won't result in a truly corrupt filesystem, > > and the inode doesn't get written until its contents are written > > out. > > > > Also, hw.ata.wc really shouldn't default to 1. > > > > GAH! No, please don't start this war again! The last time that we tried > turning this off in a release (4.1 IIRC), were were plagqued by months of > earthquakes, plagues, and deaths of first-born youngsters. I 100% agree > that write caching in ATA is not compatible with data integrety, but the > ATA marketting machine has convinced us that cached+untagged speed is > better than uncached+tagged safety. C'est la vie, or so they say here. I think it would be prudent to add a nice fat "WARNING:" printf to the boot process. It's really not obvious that FreeBSD defaults to having your hard drives run "unsafely," even though it is usually faster. -- Brian Fundakowski Feldman \'[ FreeBSD ]''''''''''\ <> green@FreeBSD.org \ The Power to Serve! \ Opinions expressed are my own. \,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,\