[OpenAFS-devel] Re: The ihandle sync thing

[chas williams - CONTRACTOR]

On Thu, 28 Mar 2013 10:14:09 -0500
Andrew Deason <adeason@sinenomine.net> wrote:

> On Thu, 28 Mar 2013 08:04:45 -0400
> chas williams - CONTRACTOR <chas@cmf.nrl.navy.mil> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 27 Mar 2013 17:19:07 -0400
> > Chaskiel Grundman <cg2v@andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
> > 
> > > Just because ext3 (in ordered mode) does something doesn't mean it's
> > > correct or something you should count on. If you don't
> > > fsync/fdatasync, there is no guarantee your data is on the media or
> > > ever will be on the media.
> 
> Doesn't pdflush guarantee this? That something doesn't stay around in
> memory forever.

On a modern Linux, yes.  On other operating systems, I don't know.  I
imagine Solaris has something but off the top of my head I have no idea
its behavior with regard to ufs and timely flushing of dirty pages.

Given the plethora of filesystems and platforms supported by OpenAFS, it
is perhaps best to be conservative with regard to the defaults and let
savvy admins shoot themselves in the foot instead of doing it for them.