Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 17 Aug 1999 22:08:02 +0000 | From | Richard Dynes <> | Subject | sync / disk write / fsck related question |
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Hello,
When I moved up from Linux 2.1.xxx/RH 5.2 to now 2.3.11/ RH 6.0, I noticed something odd:
Now when my test platform crashes (due to stuff I'm doing ;), on reboot often the disk would appear to be in a coherent state, but from an earlier point of view, sometimes hours (?!) precrash. Disk amnesia. Edits would be gone, object files would no longer exist, etc. Sometimes a file would be trashed. I became more serious about checking in things I wanted to keep to a network CVS repository.
Previously in 2.1.xxx I _never_ had to manually run fsck after a crash. I didn't loose data often either. Maybe I was lucky, maybe the linux gods were smiling on me, but I did a lot of reboots, and the only cost was the automated fsck on boot.
Now I get to run fsck on the disk far more frequently, maybe once a month, post crash. Now I know that's still far cry from NT, where I can loose the _disk_ _each_ crash, but who wants that as a standard?
I assume that there has been some change (either within the kernel or in the RH 6.0 distro I have) which no longer causes dirty pages to be written out unless there's a specific reason to, eg running sync. I know that there's been a bunch of changes in the disk io area, around 2.3.9 as I recall, merging buffer and page table / cache functions.
Or perhaps I've got something mis-configured.
Is there a way (other than croning sync) to limit my exposure on disk writes?
What was the rational for the change if one was intended?
Thanks.
-Richard
-- Richard Dynes rdynes@varcom.com
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