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From: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
To: "Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>
Cc: git@vger.kernel.org, tytso@mit.edu,
	Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>,
	Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
	linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 2/2] core.fsyncObjectFiles: make the docs less flippant
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2020 16:12:57 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20200917141257.GB27653@lst.de> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20200917112830.26606-3-avarab@gmail.com>

>  core.fsyncObjectFiles::
> +	This boolean will enable 'fsync()' when writing loose object
> +	files. Both the file itself and its containng directory will
> +	be fsynced.
> ++
> +When git writes data any required object writes will precede the
> +corresponding reference update(s). For example, a
> +linkgit:git-receive-pack[1] accepting a push might write a pack or
> +loose objects (depending on settings such as `transfer.unpackLimit`).
> ++
> +Therefore on a journaled file system which ensures that data is
> +flushed to disk in chronological order an fsync shouldn't be
> +needed. The loose objects might be lost with a crash, but so will the
> +ref update that would have referenced them. Git's own state in such a
> +crash will remain consistent.

While this is much better than what we had before I'm not sure it is
all that useful.  The only file system I know of that actually had the
above behavior was ext3, and the fact that it always wrote back that
way made it a complete performance desaster.  So even mentioning this
here will probably create a lot more confusion than actually clearing
things up.

> ++
> +This option exists because that assumption doesn't hold on filesystems
> +where the data ordering is not preserved, such as on ext3 and ext4
> +with "data=writeback". On such a filesystem the `rename()` that drops
> +the new reference in place might be preserved, but the contents or
> +directory entry for the loose object(s) might not have been synced to
> +disk.

As well as just about any other file system.  Which is another argument
on why it needs to be on by default.  Every time I install a new
development system (aka one that often crashes) and forget to enable
the option I keep corrupting my git repos.  And that is with at least
btrfs, ext4 and xfs as it is pretty much by design.

> +However, that's highly filesystem-dependent, on some filesystems
> +simply calling fsync() might force an unrelated bulk background write
> +to be serialized to disk. Such edge cases are the reason this option
> +is off by default. That default setting might change in future
> +versions.

Again the only "some file system" that was widely used that did this
was ext3.  And ext3 has long been removed from the Linux kernel..

  reply	other threads:[~2020-09-17 19:56 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 52+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2018-01-17 18:48 [PATCH] enable core.fsyncObjectFiles by default Christoph Hellwig
2018-01-17 19:04 ` Junio C Hamano
2018-01-17 19:35   ` Christoph Hellwig
2018-01-17 20:05     ` Andreas Schwab
2018-01-17 19:37   ` Matthew Wilcox
2018-01-17 19:42     ` Christoph Hellwig
2018-01-17 21:44   ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2018-01-17 22:07     ` Linus Torvalds
2018-01-17 22:25       ` Linus Torvalds
2018-01-17 23:16       ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2018-01-17 23:42         ` Linus Torvalds
2018-01-17 23:52       ` Theodore Ts'o
2018-01-17 23:57         ` Linus Torvalds
2018-01-18 16:27           ` Christoph Hellwig
2018-01-19 19:08             ` Junio C Hamano
2018-01-20 22:14               ` Theodore Ts'o
2018-01-20 22:27                 ` Junio C Hamano
2018-01-22 15:09                   ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2018-01-22 18:09                     ` Theodore Ts'o
2018-01-23  0:47                       ` Jeff King
2018-01-23  5:45                         ` Theodore Ts'o
2018-01-23 16:17                           ` Jeff King
2018-01-23  0:25                     ` Jeff King
2018-01-21 21:32             ` Chris Mason
2020-09-17 11:06         ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2020-09-17 11:28           ` [RFC PATCH 0/2] should core.fsyncObjectFiles fsync the dir entry + docs Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2020-09-17 11:28           ` [RFC PATCH 1/2] sha1-file: fsync() loose dir entry when core.fsyncObjectFiles Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2020-09-17 13:16             ` Jeff King
2020-09-17 15:09               ` Christoph Hellwig
2020-09-17 14:09             ` Christoph Hellwig
2020-09-17 14:55               ` Jeff King
2020-09-17 14:56                 ` Christoph Hellwig
2020-09-17 15:37                   ` Junio C Hamano
2020-09-17 17:12                     ` Jeff King
2020-09-17 20:37                       ` Taylor Blau
2020-09-22 10:42               ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2020-09-17 20:21             ` Johannes Sixt
2020-09-22  8:24               ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2020-11-19 11:38                 ` Johannes Schindelin
2020-09-17 11:28           ` [RFC PATCH 2/2] core.fsyncObjectFiles: make the docs less flippant Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2020-09-17 14:12             ` Christoph Hellwig [this message]
2020-09-17 15:43             ` Junio C Hamano
2020-09-17 20:15               ` Johannes Sixt
2020-10-08  8:13               ` Johannes Schindelin
2020-10-08 15:57                 ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2020-10-08 18:53                   ` Junio C Hamano
2020-10-09 10:44                   ` Johannes Schindelin
2020-09-17 19:21             ` Marc Branchaud
2020-09-17 14:14           ` [PATCH] enable core.fsyncObjectFiles by default Christoph Hellwig
2020-09-17 15:30           ` Junio C Hamano
2018-01-17 20:55 ` Jeff King
2018-01-17 21:10   ` Christoph Hellwig

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