Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 26 Dec 1998 02:59:29 +0100 | From | ralf@uni-kobl ... | Subject | Re: scary ext2 filesystem question |
| |
On Fri, Dec 25, 1998 at 11:42:57AM -0500, Mirian Crzig Lennox wrote:
> I was reading a book on filesystem design, and came across the > following scary quote: > > "The main difference between ext2 and FFS is that ext2 makes no > guarantee about consistency of the file system or whether an operation > is permanently on the disk when the file system call completes.
Wrong. The above is by default only true for metadata, not data. BSD does sync metadata writes; current flavours can be configured to do this async. Ext2 on the opposite defaults to async metadata writes and can be configured to sync metadata writes.
Neither principle can guarantee the consistence of metadata in case of a crash. Which makes the dispute which principle is more reliable an excellent area for flame wars. Fact is that async updates perform better.
Ralf
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
| |