Messages in this thread |  | | | Date | Thu, 06 Jul 2006 11:12:47 -0400 | | From | Ric Wheeler <> | | Subject | Re: ext4 features |
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Tomasz Torcz wrote:
>On Sat, Jul 01, 2006 at 07:47:16PM +0200, Thomas Glanzmann wrote: > > >>Hello, >> >> >>>Checksums are not very useful for themselves. They are useful when we >>>have other copy of data (think raid mirroring) so data can be >>>reconstructed from working copy. >>> >>> >>it would be possible to identify data corruption. >> >> > > Yes, but what good is identification? We could only return I/O error. >Ability to fix corruption (like ZFS) is the real killer. > >
Having a checksum (or even a digital signature on a file) that lets us detect corruption is very useful since, in many cases, it allows us to flag the file as corrupt before it gets used.
In some cases, this is a big hint that you should restore it from backup (tape, other disk, etc).
I think that it is a generally useful thing even when not on a self correcting device,
ric
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