From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263416AbTDSQtC (ORCPT ); Sat, 19 Apr 2003 12:49:02 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263417AbTDSQtC (ORCPT ); Sat, 19 Apr 2003 12:49:02 -0400 Received: from mail.ithnet.com ([217.64.64.8]:23312 "HELO heather.ithnet.com") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S263416AbTDSQtA (ORCPT ); Sat, 19 Apr 2003 12:49:00 -0400 Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2003 19:00:46 +0200 From: Stephan von Krawczynski To: Alan Cox Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Are linux-fs's drive-fault-tolerant by concept? Message-Id: <20030419190046.6566ed18.skraw@ithnet.com> In-Reply-To: <1050766175.3694.4.camel@dhcp22.swansea.linux.org.uk> References: <20030419180421.0f59e75b.skraw@ithnet.com> <1050766175.3694.4.camel@dhcp22.swansea.linux.org.uk> Organization: ith Kommunikationstechnik GmbH X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.8.11 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On 19 Apr 2003 16:29:36 +0100 Alan Cox wrote: > On Sad, 2003-04-19 at 17:04, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote: > > after shooting down one of this bloody cute new very-big-and-poor IDE > > drives today I wonder whether it would be a good idea to give the linux-fs > > (namely my preferred reiser and ext2 :-) some fault-tolerance. I remember > > there have been some discussions along this issue some time ago and I guess > > remembering that it was decided against because it should be the drivers > > issue to give the fs a clean space to live, right? > > Sometimes disks just go bang. They seem to do it distressingly more > often nowdays which (while handy for criminals and pirates) is annoying > for the rest of us. Putting magic in the file system to handle this is > hard to do well, and at best you get things like ext2/ext3 have now - > the ability to recover data in the event of some corruption, unless you > get into really fancy stff. Ok, you mean active error-recovery on reading. My basic point is the writing case. A simple handling of write-errors from the drivers level and a retry to write on a different location could help a lot I guess. > Buy IDE disks in pairs use md1, and remember to continually send the > hosed ones back to the vendor/shop (and if they keep appearing DOA to > your local trading standards/fair trading type bodies). Just to give some numbers: from 25 disk I bought during last half year 16 have gone dead within the first month. This is ridiculous. Of course they are all returned and guarantee-replaced, but it gets on ones nerves to continously replace disks, the rate could be lowered if one could use them at least 4 months (or upto a deadline number of bad blocks mapped by the fs - still guarantee but fewer replacement cycles). > Perhaps someone should also start a scoreboard for people to report dead > IDE drives by vendor ;) I sure have contribution to it. > Alan Regards, Stephan