> I've been trying to find out whether to enable soft updates or not, and > I have not really seen any reason not to, other than that it is not > enabled by default.
Pros: * Improved performance * Faster recovery latency after a crash * Can handle a security problem that can occur (AFAIK) in bare FFS (see http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/openbsd/2006-06/1045.html) Cons: * Less tested than bare FFS * More complex than bare FFS * Disk space is not immediately released (problematic during ugrades) I think the "disabled by default" solution is fine: if a user knows what he's doing (i.e. knows the pros and cons) he can enable them manually, disabling them on upgrades or other circumstances if required. By default, a well tested and less complex FS, with the default BSD semantics (for example, synchronous directory metadata updates, expected by programs like some MTAs) is provided. The solution adopted by other systems, such as FreeBSD, is to enable them on all non-root partitions. PS: A note in the FAQ saying that all the previous concerns are meaningless if an IDE HD write cache is enabled would be nice.
