Re: Linux 2.6.29

[Jeff Garzik]

Linus Torvalds wrote:
> So the fact is, "people should always use fsync" simply isn't a realistic 
> expectation, nor is it historically accurate. Claiming it is is just 
> obviously bogus. And claiming that people _should_ do it is crazy, since 
> it performs badly enough to simply not be realistic.
>
> Alternatives should be looked at. For desktop apps, the best alternatives 
> are likely simply stronger default consistency guarantees. Exactly the 
> "we don't guarantee that your data hits the disk, but we do guarantee that 
> if you renamed on top of another file, you'll not have lost _both_ 
> contents".

On the other side of the coin, major desktop apps Firefox and 
Thunderbird already use it:  Firefox uses sqlite to log open web pages 
in case of a crash, and sqlite in turn sync's its journal as any good 
database app should.  [I think tytso just got them to use fdatasync and 
a couple other improvements, to make this not-quite-so-bad]

Thunderbird hits the disk for each email received -- always wonderful 
with those 1000-email git-commit-head downloads... :)

So, arguments about "people should..." aside, existing desktops apps 
_do_ fsync and we get to deal with the bad performance :/

	Jeff


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