LWN article: ext4 and data loss

[Greg Banks]

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

-- 
Greg Banks, P.Engineer, SGI Australian Software Group.
the brightly coloured sporks of revolution.
I don't speak for SGI.