From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1760698AbZC0Tnx (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:43:53 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1756309AbZC0Tne (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:43:34 -0400 Received: from srv5.dvmed.net ([207.36.208.214]:49708 "EHLO mail.dvmed.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755801AbZC0Tnd (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:43:33 -0400 Message-ID: <49CD2C47.4040300@garzik.org> Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:43:03 -0400 From: Jeff Garzik User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.21 (X11/20090320) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Linus Torvalds CC: Matthew Garrett , Alan Cox , Theodore Tso , Andrew Morton , David Rees , Jesper Krogh , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: Linux 2.6.29 References: <20090327051338.GP6239@mit.edu> <20090327055750.GA18065@srcf.ucam.org> <20090327062114.GA18290@srcf.ucam.org> <20090327112438.GQ6239@mit.edu> <20090327145156.GB24819@srcf.ucam.org> <20090327150811.09b313f5@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> <20090327152221.GA25234@srcf.ucam.org> <20090327161553.31436545@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> <20090327162841.GA26860@srcf.ucam.org> <20090327165150.7e69d9e1@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> <20090327170208.GA27646@srcf.ucam.org> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: -4.4 (----) X-Spam-Report: SpamAssassin version 3.2.5 on srv5.dvmed.net summary: Content analysis details: (-4.4 points, 5.0 required) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org 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