linux-kernel - Re: 2.6.36 io bring the system to its knees

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Message-ID: <20101110234352.GA22876@dastard>
Date:	Thu, 11 Nov 2010 10:43:52 +1100
From:	Dave Chinner <david@...morbit.com>
To:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:	Jens Axboe <axboe@...nel.dk>, dave b <db.pub.mail@...il.com>,
	Sanjoy Mahajan <sanjoy@...n.edu>,
	Jesper Juhl <jj@...osbits.net>,
	Chris Mason <chris.mason@...cle.com>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>, Pekka Enberg <penberg@...nel.org>,
	Aidar Kultayev <the.aidar@...il.com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>,
	Nick Piggin <npiggin@...e.de>,
	Arjan van de Ven <arjan@...radead.org>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>, Ted Ts'o <tytso@....edu>,
	Corrado Zoccolo <czoccolo@...il.com>,
	Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@...el.com>,
	Steven Barrett <damentz@...il.com>
Subject: Re: 2.6.36 io bring the system to its knees

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 07:59:10AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 5:32 PM, Dave Chinner <david@...morbit.com> wrote:
> >
> > Don't forget to mention data=writeback is not the default because if
> > your system crashes or you lose power running in this mode it will
> > *CORRUPT YOUR FILESYSTEM* and you *WILL LOSE DATA*.
> 
> You will lose data even with data=ordered. All the data that didn't
> get logged before the crash is lost anyway.
> 
> So your argument is kind of dishonest. The thing is, if you have a
> crash or power outage or whatever, the only data you can really rely
> on is always going to be the data that you fsync'ed before the crash.
> Everything else is just gravy.

I crash kernels tens of times every day doing filesystem testing.
With data=ordered I have not seen a corrupted root filesystem as a
result of normal testing and crashing as long as I can remember.
With data=writeback, I'll have corrupted root ext3 partitions in
under a day. Hardly what I'd call stable or something you'd want
to deploy in production.

Cheers,

Dave.
-- 
Dave Chinner
david@...morbit.com
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