Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:39:17 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:39:07 -0400 Received: from neon-gw.transmeta.com ([209.10.217.66]:5643 "EHLO neon-gw.transmeta.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:38:56 -0400 Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 12:37:00 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds To: Richard A Nelson cc: Subject: Re: ext3-2.4-0.9.4 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Original-Recipient: rfc822;linux-kernel-outgoing On Thu, 26 Jul 2001, Richard A Nelson wrote: > > In looking at the synchronous directory options, I'm unsure as to > the 'real' status wrt fsync() on a directory: > 1) Does fsync() of a directory work on most/all current FS? Modulo bugs, yes. Now, there's another issue, of course: if you have an important mail-spool on some of the less tested filesystems, I would consider you crazy regardless of fsync() working ;). I don't think anybody has ever verified that fsync() (or much anything else wrt writing) does the right thing on NTFS, for example. > 2) Does it work on 2.2.x as well as 2.4.x? Yes. However, there may be performance issues. As with just about anything, we didn't start optimizing things until it became a real issue, and in some cases at least historically the filesystems fell back on just doing a whole "fsync_dev()" if they had nothing better to do. I think later 2.2.x kernels (ie the ones past the point where Alan took over) probably have the fsync() optimizations at least for ext2. Linus - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/