From: Olaf van der Spek <olafvdspek@gmail.com>
Subject: Atomic non-durable file write API
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2010 13:03:42 +0100
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Hi,

Since the introduction of ext4, some apps/users have had issues with
file corruption after a system crash. It's not a bug in the FS AFAIK
and it's not exclusive to ext4.
Writing a temp file, fsync, rename is often proposed. However, the
durable aspect of fsync isn't always required and this way has other
issues.
What is the recommended way for atomic non-durable (complete) file writes?

I'm also wondering why FSs commit after open/truncate but before
write/close. AFAIK this isn't necessary and thus suboptimal.

Greetings,

Olaf