From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 0/3] Stop clearing uptodate flag on write IO error
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:49:39 -0800
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To: "Ted Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>, Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
	Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
	linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
	Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>,
	Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	Edward Shishkin <edward@redhat.com>
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On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 1:47 PM, Ted Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
>
> So how does XFS decide whether a write should fail and shutdown the
> file system, or just "try forever"?

Why would it bother? XFS tends to be a filesystem that you'd only use
for core files in environments where you have a system manager that
knows what he is doing. So there, maybe "try forever" is the right
thing to do.

Things are a bit different with some random unreliable USB stick FAT32
filesystem that just died on you, with a normal user that just removes
the thing or doesn't even notice that the stick is now dead. There the
"try forever" is totally the wrong thing to do.

                            Linus