Return to BSD News archive
Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.questions:16950 comp.os.linux.advocacy:2624 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msunews!gmi!zombie.ncsc.mil!news.mathworks.com!newshost.marcam.com!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!csusac!csus.edu!news.ucdavis.edu!library.ucla.edu!zephyr!ia.mks.com!border.com!uunet.ca!uunet.ca!io.org!nobody From: cbbrown@io.org (Christopher B. Browne) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions,comp.os.linux.advocacy Subject: Re: Best platform for INN server? Date: 5 Mar 1995 15:34:05 -0500 Organization: Internex Online (io.org) Data: 416-363-4151 Voice: 416-363-8676 Lines: 39 Message-ID: <3jd77t$f9g@ionews.io.org> References: <199503020229.SAA11325@kitana.org> <MICHAELV.95Mar3212204@MindBender.HeadCandy.com> <1995Mar5.161801.26168@wavehh.hanse.de> <3jd3n7$q9@sundog.tiac.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: nudge.io.org In article <3jd3n7$q9@sundog.tiac.net>, Rick Kelly <rmk@tiac.net> wrote: >Martin Cracauer (cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de) wrote: >: > Final question: what's the use of "safe filesystems" if the hardware >: > itself isn't safe? Who do you think you're kidding? If the harddisk >: > crashes on you (or even gets just one bad sector) you won't be safe even >: > if you write *everything* synchronously. So why take the performance >: > hit? (yes, I know about RAID etc, and I don't care. I don't have that >: > kind of hardware, and I don't think most people here wanting a "safe" >: > filesystem do either). > >Somewhere there is a wonderful world with electricity that never fails. > >I guess it must be Finland. > >We have a fairly large newsfeed where I work. Owing to the availability >of hardware, I am forced to keep the newspool, /usr/local/news, and all >other news related data on one large hard disk. With asynchronous writes >I would be forced to recreate the news system every time the power went >out, or if there were a spike or brownout. How much would it cost to install a UPS big enough to handle that? If it's a relatively small box (e.g. - 250W), then the *proper* answer is to put on a $300 UPS, which ought to solve both of those problems. Supposing spikes are costing you big bucks in terms of service outages, $1000 worth of power "management" hardware is liable to pay for itself very quickly. I'm not ridiculing the idea of synchronizing writes, but just suggesting that it's worth looking for other solutions. In particular, if the problem is caused by bad power, then the best solution is *likely* to have something to do with fixing the power problem, not with changing the way you manage data. It's a far more direct solution. -- Christopher Browne - cbbrown@io.org Fatal Error: Found [MS-Windows] System -> Repartitioning Disk for Linux...