Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:00:42 -0400 | From | Jeff Garzik <> | Subject | Re: Linux 2.6.29 |
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Mark Lord wrote: > Ric Wheeler wrote: >> Mark Lord wrote: >>> Ric Wheeler wrote: > .. >>> The kernel can crash, and the drives, in practice, will still >>> flush their caches to media by themselves. Within a second or two. >> >> Even with desktops, I am not positive that the drive write cache >> survives a kernel crash without data loss. If I remember correctly, >> Chris's tests used crashes (not power outages) to display the data >> corruption that happened without barriers being enabled properly. > .. > > Linux f/s barriers != drive write caches. > > Drive write caches are an almost total non-issue for desktop users, > except on the (very rare) event of a total, sudden power failure > during extended write outs. > > Very rare.
Heck, even I have lost power on a plane, while a laptop in laptop mode was flushing out work. Not that rare.
> Yes, a huge problem for server farms. No question. > But the majority of Linux systems are probably (still) desktops/notebooks.
But it doesn't really matter who is what majority, does it? At the present time at least, we have not designated any filesystems "desktop only", nor have we declared Linux a desktop-only OS.
Any generalized decision that hurts servers to help desktops would be short-sighted. Robbing Peter, to pay Paul, is no formula for OS success.
Jeff
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