Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758897Ab2JKQit (ORCPT ); Thu, 11 Oct 2012 12:38:49 -0400 Received: from hapkido.dreamhost.com ([66.33.216.122]:37505 "EHLO hapkido.dreamhost.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1758266Ab2JKQir (ORCPT ); Thu, 11 Oct 2012 12:38:47 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: References: Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2012 11:38:06 -0500 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [sqlite] light weight write barriers From: Nico Williams To: General Discussion of SQLite Database Cc: Andi Kleen , linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, drh@hwaci.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1439 Lines: 32 On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 12:48 PM, Richard Hipp wrote: >> Could you list the requirements of such a light weight barrier? >> i.e. what would it need to do minimally, what's different from >> fsync/fdatasync ? > > For SQLite, the write barrier needs to involve two separate inodes. The > requirement is this: ... > Note also that when fsync() works as advertised, SQLite transactions are > ACID. But when fsync() is reduced to a write-barrier, we loss the D > (durable) and transactions are only ACI. In our experience, nobody really > cares very much about durable across a power-loss. People are mainly > interested in Atomic, Consistent, and Isolated. If you take a power loss > and then after reboot you find the 10 seconds of work prior to the power > loss is missing, nobody much cares about that as long as all of the prior > work is still present and consistent. There is something you can do: use a combination of COW on-disk formats in such a way that it's possible to detect partially-committed transactions and rollback to the last good known root, and backgrounded fsync()s (i.e., in a separate thread, without waiting for the fsync() to complete). Nico -- -- 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/