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Re: less data lost, more fs corruption

To: Steve Lord <lord@xxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: less data lost, more fs corruption
From: utz lehmann <xfs@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 02:52:22 +0100
Cc: linux-xfs@xxxxxxxxxxx
In-reply-to: <200102132359.f1DNxB716755@jen.americas.sgi.com>
References: <xfs@s2y4n2c.de> <200102132359.f1DNxB716755@jen.americas.sgi.com>
Sender: owner-linux-xfs@xxxxxxxxxxx
User-agent: Mutt/1.2.5i
Steve Lord [lord@xxxxxxx] wrote:

> > the first 6-8 test succeeded.
> > i cycled the tests without clean shutdowns between (hmmm maybe one or two).
> > 
> > then i made only one sync. after reboot some files differ. same problem,
> > size is ok, but no extents. the number of differs are small.
> 
> 
> Have you tried this with ext2?

no. shoud i?

> OK the real issue here is that sync is not really doing sync, the sync system
> call is starting I/O, but not waiting for it to complete. At least two syncs
> are probably necessary for this scenario right now. If you wait a few seconds
> there will be a kernel initiated sync anyway. And as Ananth pointed out,
> there are some bits of I/O which will take a couple of passes to get 
> triggered.
> 
> Obviously we cannot immediately flush everything to disk or performance
> would tank. The issue with XFS in this area has always been that the
> inode size gets out to disk in advance of the file data. You are looking
> at a consistent filesystem, it just has data missing! This is why xfs_check
> does not complain. 

ok, when the return of sync means "writing data to disk will done" instead
"writing data to disk is done" then the fix works.

btw: with 3 syncs and reset in less than a second lost data is seen.

is this on irix the same? sometimes i found those no extend files on irix
after a crash.


utz

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