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Date:      Sat, 19 Sep 1998 20:24:09 +0200
From:      Eivind Eklund <eivind@yes.no>
To:        Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>
Cc:        Don.Lewis@tsc.tdk.com, current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: softupdates & fsck
Message-ID:  <19980919202409.40703@follo.net>
In-Reply-To: <199809191719.KAA10028@usr09.primenet.com>; from Terry Lambert on Sat, Sep 19, 1998 at 05:19:51PM %2B0000
References:  <19980919123143.36373@follo.net> <199809191719.KAA10028@usr09.primenet.com>

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On Sat, Sep 19, 1998 at 05:19:51PM +0000, Terry Lambert wrote:
> > > That you are seeing these problems implies that the bwrite ordering
> > > guarantees that the driver must provide (i.e., that the blocks will
> > > be written in the order requested, and that the writes will not
> > > return as completed until the data has been committed to the disk)
> > > are not being honored.
> > 
> > Given that most drives don't honour these guarantees [1] it may happen
> > even without a problem with the driver.
> > 
> > [1] This marks the point where somebody comes runing, waving standards
> > documents and becoming more and more red in the face, while I say
> > "Yes, I know they say the drives are supposed to - but in fact, the
> > drives don't actually *do* what they're supposed to."
> 
> They do if you set their options correctly and insure a holdup
> time after power failure, during which you will not engage in
> scheduling new writes.

Eh?  Without an UPS, I can't do that.

The problem is drives that don't honour the immediate-write flag,
returning before data is committed to disk anyway (done to get better
benchmarks).  I think there also is some problems with drives that
will re-order requests no matter what constraints you give it :-(


BTW: I didn't mean that this applied in this particular case, just
that this may become a problem when soft updates become fsck-less.

Eivind.

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