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Re: IDE write cache and journaling file systems

To: Nic Doye <nic@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: IDE write cache and journaling file systems
From: Simon Matter <simon.matter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 11:36:47 +0200
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Nic Doye schrieb:
> 
> On Fri, 2002-04-19 at 21:18, Eric Sandeen wrote:
> > On Fri, 2002-04-19 at 10:35, Mark M. Barrios wrote:
> >
> > > today I had a real powerfailure and after the box was back up again I lost
> > > all of the settings in GNOME, everything went back to its default
> > > settings, I cant say if the config files were corupted or had 0 sizes.
> > >
> > > is this because these applications are not compatible with XFS? or
> > > because of my hardware? or is this a needed feature/bug fix not yet in XFS
> > > code?
> >
> > Well, it should not be a compatibility issue...  gnome seems to be
> > particularly susceptible to this, it seems that our sync behavior may
> > not be quite right.
> >
> > On the other hand, with a metadata journaling filesystem, there is no
> > guarantee against data loss when the system crashes or is switched off.
> > We do need to be sure that we deal with it as gracefully as possible
> > though, and I'll see if I can get a reproducible case going.
> 
> FWIW, my laptop loses all my gnome settings when I do a
> Desktop->Logout->Shutdown via the menu panel every time.
> 
> This behaviour only started when I did a reinstall (to put an MS OS on
> it too) and then lazilly set it up to have 2 XFS partitions (/boot + a
> massive /) whereas previously it had my usual 8ish XFS partitions.$

You did not tell us which kernel you're on.
Anyway, if it's the "remount readonly bug" I could explain it like this:
Before you had /home on a separate partition and this one was unmounted
on reboot and therefore all data was cleanly written to the disk.
Now your /home is on the / partition and therefore on reboot your /home
is remounted readonly and this could leave to data loss if your kernel
is affected by this bug. Just put a 'sleep 40' in the halt script before
root gets remounted readonly and try it.

-Simon

> 
> So my theory is that:
> 1) it's something to do with "it being a laptop" (slow disk/odd
> controller)
> 2) gnome keeps files open for writing which are unnecessary
> 3) having a (stupidly) big partition (takes longer to sync?)
> 
> Any theories gratefully received. Any testing you want done...
> 
> nic



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