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From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.development.system
Subject: Re: The better (more suitable)Unix?? FreeBSD or Linux
Date: 13 Feb 1996 01:29:27 GMT
Organization: Utah Valley State College, Orem, Utah
Lines: 39
Message-ID: <4fophn$ahl@park.uvsc.edu>
References: <4er9hp$5ng@orb.direct.ca> <311250C2.2781E494@public.uni-hamburg.de> <strenDM7Gr4.Cn2@netcom.com> <DMD8rr.oIB@isil.lloke.dna.fi> <4f9skh$2og@dyson.iquest.net> <DMI5Mt.768@pe1chl.ampr.org>
NNTP-Posting-Host: hecate.artisoft.com
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:13671 comp.os.linux.development.system:17212
rob@pe1chl.ampr.org (Rob Janssen) wrote:
] In <4f9skh$2og@dyson.iquest.net> root@dyson.iquest.net (John S. Dyson) writes:
]
] >Linux is more vulnerable to filesystem problems due to the delayed writes
] >of metadata (and is the reason that FreeBSD is slower on file
] >create/delete benchmarks.)
]
] It seems to be very hard to get this misconception out of the BSD people's
] heads...
] Sync metadata writes may seem to improve things, but actually it just
] causes your fsck's to return no errors while the files are still
] corrupted. Not necessarily better.
You are confusing file system structure errors with file system
content errors.
File system content errors are the responsibility of an application,
unless you go to a log structured file system with user accessable
transaction tracking interfaces into the log to ensure implied
state across multi-file applications is also consistent.
File system structure errors are errors in synchronization of
metadata potential states. By allowing only a single binary
choice on state (by doing ordered metadata writes), you improve
recoverability of file system structure.
Sychronous writes are only one of several methods of ensuring
ordering.
I have explained the mathematics of this in another post in this
thread.
Terry Lambert
terry@cs.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.