LWN article: ext4 and data loss

[Eric Sandeen]

Greg Banks wrote:
> Eric Sandeen wrote:
>> It's simple.  Want your data safe on disk?  fsync.  There's not a lot
>> more to it than that.  (and if fsync hurts perf too much, re-think how
>> you are storing your data)
>>
>> Filesystems can hack around some heuristics to try to make unsafe apps
>> safer, but in the end, it's the app's job to make sure a buffered write
>> hits permanent storage when it matters.
>>   
> 
> Stewart Smith has a highly entertaining presentation on this very topic.
> 
> http://www.linux.org.au/conf/2007/talk/278.html
> 

and

http://www.flamingspork.com/talks/2007/06/eat_my_data.odp

In hindsight, http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Filesystems/reiserfs.html is
entertaining, too ;)

-Eric