Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932441AbVJLVQo (ORCPT ); Wed, 12 Oct 2005 17:16:44 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932254AbVJLVQo (ORCPT ); Wed, 12 Oct 2005 17:16:44 -0400 Received: from locomotive.csh.rit.edu ([129.21.60.149]:62575 "EHLO locomotive.unixthugs.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932389AbVJLVQn (ORCPT ); Wed, 12 Oct 2005 17:16:43 -0400 Message-ID: <434D7DD3.40706@suse.com> Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 17:19:15 -0400 From: Jeff Mahoney User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (X11/20050715) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Mikulas Patocka Cc: Anton Altaparmakov , 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 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> In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 0.92.1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2068 Lines: 50 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Mikulas Patocka wrote: >>> 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. I agree that dependability is important, but so important that we keep the absolute worst case scenario for all cases because it could happen occasionally? We can warn the user that removing media without umounting /ejecting it may cause data loss and prompt them to reinsert the media. If they don't reinsert the media soon enough (for any reason, including the availabilty of memory) we can inform them that data loss may have occured and that they should attempt to recover the file system. - -Jeff - -- Jeff Mahoney SUSE Labs -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFDTX3TLPWxlyuTD7IRApliAJ4+8+OGhzKXlfkgx67lfDJioBeqngCgmF66 HOTsI39yyNUTL4H7KP9ZM38= =WTcy -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- - 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/