xfs
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: Does XFS do the right thing for MTA queues

To: Yusuf Goolamabbas <yusufg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Does XFS do the right thing for MTA queues
From: Steve Lord <lord@xxxxxxx>
Date: 30 Jul 2003 06:33:17 -0500
Cc: linux-xfs@xxxxxxxxxxx
In-reply-to: <20030730042524.12211.qmail@yusufg.portal2.com>
References: <20030730042524.12211.qmail@yusufg.portal2.com>
Sender: linux-xfs-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxx
On Tue, 2003-07-29 at 23:25, Yusuf Goolamabbas wrote:
> In general, MTA's like (qmail/postfix) and their authors assume the
> BSD ffs/softupdates semantics that fsync on a file also syncs the
> directory metadata (I think they want link/rename to be
> synchronous). This semantic is also provided by ext3 in 2 of its modes
> (ordered,data=journal). My question is
> 
> a) Does XFS provide similar semantics which would make it reliable as
>    a filesystem for MTA queue ?

If you do fsync on a file then the log will get pushed to disk - at
least upto the last transaction involving the inode you do fsync on.
This means that any transaction prior to that (such as a rename or
a link call) is also flushed to disk. So fsync does the right thing.

> b) Are there any mount options which one has to enable this behaviour
>    ?

Nope. If you are really paranoid, the wsync mount option makes almost
all transactions synchronous. 

> 
> Also, what's the version of XFS in the Alan Cox 2.4.22-pre6-ac1 kernel
> 

It is somewhat long in the tooth now, and probably has some issues
with the O_DIRECT path.

Steve



<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>