Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751545AbVJLUbz (ORCPT ); Wed, 12 Oct 2005 16:31:55 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751547AbVJLUbz (ORCPT ); Wed, 12 Oct 2005 16:31:55 -0400 Received: from artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz ([195.113.31.125]:65512 "EHLO artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751540AbVJLUby (ORCPT ); Wed, 12 Oct 2005 16:31:54 -0400 Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 22:31:52 +0200 (CEST) From: Mikulas Patocka To: Anton Altaparmakov Cc: Jeff Mahoney , Glauber de Oliveira Costa , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, ext2-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, hirofumi@mail.parknet.co.jp, linux-ntfs-dev@lists.sourceforge.net, aia21@cantab.net, hch@infradead.org, viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk, akpm@osdl.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] Use of getblk differs between locations In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <20051010204517.GA30867@br.ibm.com> <20051010214605.GA11427@br.ibm.com> <1129017155.12336.4.camel@imp.csi.cam.ac.uk> <434D6932.1040703@suse.com> <434D6CFA.4080802@suse.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1216 Lines: 28 >> But discarding data sometimes on USB unplug is even worse than discarding data >> always --- users will by experimenting learn that linux doesn't discard >> write-cached data and reminds them to replug the device --- and one day, >> randomly, they lose their data because of some memory management condition... > > And how exactly is that worse than discarding the data every time?!?!?!? Undeterministic behaviour is worse than deterministic. You can learn the system that behaves deterministically. If you know that unplug damages filesystem on your USB disk, you replug it, recheck filesystem and copy the important data again --- you have 0% probability of data damage. However, if damage on unplug happens only with 1/100 probability, will you still check filesystem and copy all recently created files on it? You forget it (or you wouldn't even know that damage might occur) and you have 1% probability of data damage. Mikulas > Best regards, > > Anton - 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/