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Date:      Sat, 12 Jul 1997 18:21:03 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Simon Shapiro <Shimon@i-Connect.Net>
To:        Chuck Robey <chuckr@glue.umd.edu>
Cc:        freebsd-SCSI@FreeBSD.ORG, filo@yahoo.com, dg@root.com
Subject:   Re: problems with reboot
Message-ID:  <XFMail.970712182103.Shimon@i-Connect.Net>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.970712151441.28420C-100000@Journey2.mat.net>

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Hi Chuck Robey;  On 12-Jul-97 you wrote: 

...

> > Under normal operation, it generates the SCSI ``ALLOW MEDIA REMOVAL'',
> > which the DPT blocks until it is done flushing and invalidating.
> > I personally never have this problem on any of our machines, but...
> 
> Is this always safe?  I've had some instances where a umount call simply
> hung, and never returned.  I think they were either nfs or msdos mounts
> that gave this trouble, but the umount call could not be kill'ed, and
> making shutdown wait?  Would halt still work, as an emergency measure?
> I know the FSs that were hung wouldn't be closed, but at least my ufs FSs
> would be clean.

Network Failure system is a special case (i AM being nice :-);
It is supposedly stateless and the mount is a client and thus not governing
physical I/O.  a shutdown can (should) probably force a umount.  Even on a 
local system, a forced umount is OK.  It is a FS issue.  But if the fs 
layer calls a function that by definition blocks, it is ``none of the
caller's business'' how/what the callee does and how long it takes.
To assume anything on the nature if a callee's internals is not a good
idea.  Here we have a live exapmple (why it is a bad idea).

Simon



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