On Wed, 24 Apr 2002, Alan Cox wrote: > > used in the Sendmail deployments we do, as the Queues or mailstores can > > become corrupt, especially with the large Cache on today's controllers. > > EXT2 does not fsync or dirsync correctly, we had to place patches into > > 8.12 code base for this problematic issue (people that use EXT2 anyway). > > This is incorrect. Ext2 is strictly standards compliant here. Sendmail > at least used to make totally bogus assumptions about synchronous directory > updating. I'm suprised that you might not have fixed such code. > (Perhaps you have - I run exim because I want fast efficient mail > handling and a human readable configuration)
Whether or not it meets some standards these issues were problematic, and only on Linux, not BSD with Soft Updates, or the other likely suspects on Unix AIX etc. Whn I uncovered this, the Opensource group did make fixes specifically for Linux, it is in the release notes for 8.12 Quite standard with some mail systems, there are threads on this issue in the SpecBench area that handles Specmail. This was really when it came to a head for us. In fact Domino was rejected until they chattr or mounted EXT2 in -sync. >From my memory when I spoke to Claus and Greg here the ISV being required to make specific calls to a FS was hard to swallow. However, we did do this in 8.12 > > > EXT3 will have the same set of problems, infact I was just doing studies > > Also incorrect. See the documentation. Ext3 also follows the posix/sus > requirements and allows you to select additional ordering guarantees Humm, if you mean that you can mount EXT3 with options, then yes, but I rarely find folks that follow the "warning label". If you mean the forced fsync, yes, that too can be disabled, but I have not read wheter this is "wise" just saw in places that "you should still run fsync manually at times". This last area was specific to HA environments. > > As to reiserfs being very fast for very small files. It was certainly > designed to be , and Namesys are smart people. > Yes, smart, Hans just needs better PR for hot technology or maybe RH should put ReiserFS support in their installer then all the American's would use it, since we buy and use everything from Software to Wonder Bread on marketing & perception :~) Regards, Jon
