Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752824AbZAEDWT (ORCPT ); Sun, 4 Jan 2009 22:22:19 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752089AbZAEDWI (ORCPT ); Sun, 4 Jan 2009 22:22:08 -0500 Received: from acsinet12.oracle.com ([141.146.126.234]:17992 "EHLO acsinet12.oracle.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752082AbZAEDWH (ORCPT ); Sun, 4 Jan 2009 22:22:07 -0500 To: Pavel Machek Cc: Rob Landley , kernel list , Andrew Morton , tytso@mit.edu, mtk.manpages@gmail.com, rdunlap@xenotime.net, linux-doc@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: document ext3 requirements From: "Martin K. Petersen" Organization: Oracle References: <20090103123813.GA1512@ucw.cz> <200901041349.49906.rob@landley.net> <20090104225545.GF1913@elf.ucw.cz> Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:20:52 -0500 In-Reply-To: <20090104225545.GF1913@elf.ucw.cz> (Pavel Machek's message of "Sun\, 4 Jan 2009 23\:55\:45 +0100") Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.2 (gnu/linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Source-IP: acsmt706.oracle.com [141.146.40.84] X-Auth-Type: Internal IP X-CT-RefId: str=0001.0A090209.49617C98.0122:SCFSTAT928724,ss=1,fgs=0 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1002 Lines: 26 >>>>> "Pavel" == Pavel Machek writes: Pavel> Does this sound like a fair summary? Pavel> Sector writes are atomic (ATOMIC-SECTORS) Pavel> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I'd just like to point out that the all-or-nothing hardware sector atomity thing is -- to a large extent -- a myth. It is mostly true on SCSI class devices because various UNIX, RAID array and database vendors have spent many years leaning very hard on the drive manufacturers to make it so. But it's not a hard guarantee, you can't get it in writing, and it's not in any of the standards. Hybrid drives with flash had potential to close that particular loophole but those appear to be dead in the water. -- Martin K. Petersen Oracle Linux Engineering -- 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/