Re: data corruption/loss

[Seth Mos <knuffie@xxxxxxxxx>]

At 16:00 21-11-2001 -0500, Roger wrote:
> AH! i too am experiencing the same exact scenario!

It is a feature of XFS to which I admit needs polishing. The XFS experts 
are off for a week or so, maybe we can think up a way to go around this 
issue without mounting your FS with O_SYNC.

> i've been browsing the FAQ on this including the mailling list archives,
> but am having a heck of a time.

http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/faq.html#nulls

I just updated the FAQ to contain some updated items like quota support 
which just works.
It may need a bit of time to show up on the site though.

> this really looks like something that needs to be address since i'm
> seeing this quite often now on my box. (i've been tinkering for the past
> week on test scenarios which are causing some crashes..devfs..etc).

It's a bit less of an issue if the box doesn't make a regular nosedive.

> now, i'm loosing config/rc files left and right...over written by '@'
> characters etc.  actually, it's chocking on me everywhere.

You mean after hitting the power button? The journaling is provided to 
provide filesystem integrity and not data integrity. If you want that you 
could use ext3 in full data journaling mode. I don't know if this is 
slower/faster then running XFS mounted O_SYNC.

> if you find and hack that provides a solution, please advised.

There is none in the pipeline yet. It might be a valid item for the TODO list.
Personally I would like to have had it the other way around. Write the data 
first and do the metadata after it. This is somewhat oversimplified 
ofcourse and is not easily implemented.

Can anyone of the Irix people say if they can reproduce this under Irix as 
well?


--
Seth
Every program has two purposes one for which
it was written and another for which it wasn't
I use the last kind.