On Wed, Jul 18, 2007 at 11:54:19AM -0700, Kris Moore wrote: > That being said, I think it would be a good idea to at least have the > kernel / HAL or some process maybe warn the user that they should > unmount the USB disk first, to prevent data loss at minimum. But I think > this can be improved, so you don't have to deal with an entire system > panic :P When that happens you gotta reboot, fsck, and run the risk of > something really being corrupted on the drive :(
So there's two issues here: 1) Kernel panics when a device (regardless of type (USB, SATA, etc.)) is removed from the system with filesystems mounted, 2) Concern over data loss when device is removed. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, Windows addresses #2 by marking all filesystems on USB storage devices (thumb drives, HDDs, etc.) as synchronous (e.g. mount -o sync). The impact is slow I/O, but it's safe. It seems like we'd be able to implement such a transparent "feature" into the subsystem where filesystems mounted from USB devices would use synchronous I/O (mount -o sync). I don't know how this would be coded, since there would have to be some way to figure out a physical device type (USB mass storage devices show up as /dev/daXXX). Providing an override option for those who know what they're doing, (umount /mnt then physically remove device) would be nice too. This would alleviate concerns over data loss, would it not? -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB | _______________________________________________ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
