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Message-Id: <20110408105602.bb8f1b49.akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2011 10:56:02 -0700
From: Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
To: Steve Rago <sar@...-labs.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Allow O_SYNC to be set by fcntl(F_SETFL)
On Fri, 08 Apr 2011 13:39:16 -0400
Steve Rago <sar@...-labs.com> wrote:
> > I wonder if we should sync the file when someone sets O_SYNC this way.
> > If we don't then there is a period during which we have an fd which has
> > O_SYNC set, but it has pending unwritten data. An O_SYNC fd should
> > never be in such a state!
>
> Why not?
Because it's inconsistent. An O_SYNC fd never has outstanding writeout.
Except for in this one new and special time window between a setfl()
and the next write().
It's not a big deal, but it's somewhat ugly and merits thinking about.
> If I write something in non-synchronous mode, then change the file descriptor to synchronous mode, I should
> not make any assumptions about what was written prior to this point. If I care that much, I'll call fsync.
Well. You can call fsync() after every write() too.
> All that
> matters is that the operating system honors the contract as specified by the system call API.
There's a lot more to it than that. Things like
quality-of-implementation and principle-of-least-surprise. We used to
have a particular relationship between an O_SYNC fd and the state of
the inode which it represents. With this patch, that relationship no
longer holds.
As I say: not a big deal IMO, but it should be aired and thought about.
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