Re: Sysinstall automatic filesystem size generation.

From: Chuck Swiger (cswiger_at_mac.com)
Date: 08/30/05

  • Next message: Dan Nelson: "Re: pcap and gig speeds." 
    Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 18:48:00 -0400
To: Matthias Buelow <mkb@incubus.de>

    Matthias Buelow wrote:
    > Chuck Swiger wrote:
    >> Yet you seem willing to spend time discussing the matter...?
    >
    > Because it's somewhat of my pet peeve and I always see the mantra-like
    > repetition of the argument that "you have to disable the write-back
    > cache if you want any safety at all",

    No, there are other possible solutions which have been mentioned.

    I reiterate my question: have you tried adjusting the syncer sysctl's and
    seeing whether FreeBSD is more stable in the event of a power failure?

    [ ... ]
    >>>One often sees the "softupdates" argument being fielded by FreeBSD
    >>>advocates, typically against Linux users with journalled fs, on web
    >>>forums, usenet and other less authoritative (and knowledgable)
    >>>places of discussion, and it is often presented as if it were some
    >>>kind of magic bullet that makes filesystem corruption impossible.
    >>
    >>"Often?" Strawman test: can you point out 3 examples by message-id or URL?
    >
    > A Google search finds them quickly:
    >
    > http://www.heise.de/ix/foren/go.shtml?read=1&msg_id=7335045&forum_id=70615
    > (german, argument is that "softupdates is at least a match for a
    > journalled fs"),
    >
    > http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2003-June/009967.html
    > ("FS + SoftUpdates is much better than journaling!")
    >
    > http://aussatz.antville.org/topics/HowTos/
    > (german, argument is "1. practically nothing can break when power
    > goes out", and even that you can switch off the machine without any
    > problems, except for losing the files that have been written to in
    > the last seconds. Of course no mentioning of disk cache or any
    > sophistication whatever.)

    Conclusion: if you're looking for unbridled FreeBSD advocacy on these lists or
    in the FreeBSD documentation, you've found very little. A one-line post from
    2003: gosh, someone expressed a strong opinion, and even that was promptly
    followed up with:

    > FFS+SU does have the disadvantages that a full fsck is still needed
    > (run in the background), and you risk losing the last `sysctl
    > kern.metadelay` seconds worth of files written just before a crash.

    ...by Dan Nelson.

    I'm going to skip the rest of the monologue and the Dubai Nad al-Sheba golf
    club as well, but thanks anyway. 

    -- 
-Chuck
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