xfs_repair of critical volume

[Stan Hoeppner]

Martin Steigerwald put forth on 12/4/2010 4:30 AM:
> Am Freitag 12 November 2010 schrieb Stan Hoeppner:
>> Michael Monnerie put forth on 11/12/2010 7:22 AM:
>>> I find the robustness of XFS amazing: You overwrote 1/5th of the disk
>>> with zeroes, and it still works :-)
>>
>> This isn't "robustness" Michael.  If anything it's a serious problem.
>> XFS is reporting that hundreds or thousands of files that have been
>> physically removed still exist.  Regardless of how he arrived at this
>> position, how is this "robust"?  Most people would consider this
>> inconsistency of state a "corruption" situation, not "robustness".
> 
> I think its necessary to differentiate here:
> 
> 1) It appears to be robustness - or pure luck - regarding metadata 
> consistency of the filesystem. I tend to believe its pure luck and that XFS 
> just stored the metadata on the other RAID arrays.
> 
> 2) XFS does not seem to have a way to detect whether file contents are 
> still valid and consistent. It shares that with I think every other Linux 
> filesystem instead BTRFS which uses checksumming for files. (Maybe NILFS as 
> well, I don't know, and the FUSE or the other ZFS port).

After re-reading my own words above again, I feel I a need to clarify
something:  I took exception merely to the description of "robustness"
being used in this situation.  I was not and am not being derogatory of
XFS in any way.  I love XFS.  Of all available filesystems (on any OS) I
feel it is the best.  That's why I use it. :)

In this scenario, other filesystems may have left the OP empty handed.
So, I guess XFS deserves deserves a positive attribution for this.  But,
again, I don't think "robustness" is the correct attribution here.

-- 
Stan