Re: [PATCH] fs: Make write(2) interruptible by a fatal signal

From: Wu Fengguang
Date: Thu Dec 01 2011 - 07:34:33 EST


Hi,

How are we going to do with this patch?

> This patch makes write interruptible by SIGKILL.

Let me try to summarize the objective impacts of (not) merging this
patch, and would like to hear more opinions from experienced users.

- w/o patch

BEHAVIOR:
write(2) insists to complete even when the user really wants to stop it.

IMPACT:
It could be annoying to experience slow responses to "kill -9" when
it's a large write to a slow device, for example,

dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/nokia/zero bs=100M

- w/ patch

BEHAVIOR:
write(2) aborts quickly with possible partial write on SIGKILL

IMPACT:
The partial write might lead to data corruption somewhere, sometime
(the possibility is low but real) and bring trouble to some users.

Thanks,
Fengguang
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