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Date:      Tue, 11 Jan 2011 15:50:07 -0500
From:      Boris Kochergin <spawk@acm.poly.edu>
To:        "C. P. Ghost" <cpghost@cordula.ws>
Cc:        freebsd-current@freebsd.org, d@delphij.net
Subject:   Re: why panic(9) ?
Message-ID:  <4D2CC27F.7040206@acm.poly.edu>
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTinzWR63aeAhwgwQAMX5-ghfHJ%2BEZ83xb8mH7Tj%2B@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <AANLkTi=OQbS-0jJx0YwZhM7xDWPLOkaYYZAYfESUEvvM@mail.gmail.com>	<4D2CBE45.90209@delphij.net> <AANLkTinzWR63aeAhwgwQAMX5-ghfHJ%2BEZ83xb8mH7Tj%2B@mail.gmail.com>

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On 01/11/11 15:37, C. P. Ghost wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 9:32 PM, Xin LI<delphij@delphij.net>  wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA256
>>
>> On 01/11/11 12:11, David DEMELIER wrote:
>>> Yes, why this function exists? There is no way to solve a problem
>>> without panic'ing? Is panic really needed? Imagine someone working on
>> [...]
>>
>> Panic is used to stop the kernel in an aggressive way when data damage
>> is detected and the damage is already beyond what the kernel can recover
>> from.
>>
>> The kernel can and should be made more robust but no, I don't think we
>> can totally eliminate panic().
> Exactly. One area where the kernel should be made more robust
> is UFS with disappearing disks (e.g. USB mounted file systems,
> or, as recently happened here with a loose external SATA cable).
> Panicing here is REALLY annoying. ;-)

Getting slightly off-topic here, but... there was progress made on this 
front a while ago. You can reliably detach at least USB storage with a 
mounted MSDOSFS or UFS filesystem without soft updates and not risk a 
system panic. There will be a panic if soft updates are enabled on UFS, 
however, at least as of my last test in 2010.

-Boris

>> Cheers,
>> - --
>> Xin LI<delphij@delphij.net>      http://www.delphij.net/
>> FreeBSD - The Power to Serve!          Live free or die
> -cpghost.
>



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