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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.development.system Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.eng.convex.com!hermes.oc.com!news.unt.edu!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!jlemon From: jlemon@netcom.com (Jonathan Lemon) Subject: Re: The better (more suitable)Unix?? FreeBSD or Linux Message-ID: <jlemonDMttxH.JyJ@netcom.com> Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) References: <4er9hp$5ng@orb.direct.ca> <4fg8fe$j9i@pell.pell.chi.il.us> <311C5EB4.2F1CF0FB@FreeBSD.org> <4for2b$art@park.uvsc.edu> Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 17:00:52 GMT Lines: 74 Sender: jlemon@netcom22.netcom.com Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:13858 comp.os.linux.development.system:17425 In article <4for2b$art@park.uvsc.edu>, Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> wrote: >"Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.org> wrote: >] I don't think that the async-vs-sync metadata write issues are worth >] debating since the whole topic is truly too subjective for meaningful >] discussion. > >Bah Humbug. See other posts in this thread. > >When anyone claims some operating system component is not subject >to objective, mathematical analysis, they are mistaken. > >Objective, not subjective. > >] I would suggest instead simply trying sync vs async on your >] own system, being as (in)cautious as you care to be in the >] transition, and then post your experiences. People need >] concrete evidence here, not abstract debate. > >Anecdotal evidence is not evidence: > > "XXX OS has not crashed while I was using it, therefore > XXX OS never crashes" > Bah Humbug indeed. Since this was crossposted to c.o.l.d.s, I went over there to take a peek. Guess what I found? Not one, not two, but at least _three_ users who have had problems with ext2fs. Now, I'm _NOT_ claiming that this is an inherent problem with ext2fs, and it may not even have anything to do with the async/sync issue. But it is "concrete evidence" (Jordan's term) to refute the "anecdotal evidence" (Terry's term). -- Jonathan (clipped article follows) In article <4ftbnl$5os@news.lth.se>, <swmike@uplift.sparta.lu.se> wrote: >In article <u6spgfz6hv.fsf@moc>, <M.Luebbecke@tu-bs.de> wrote: >>In article <4foemt$mi6@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>, >> <sviznyuk@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> wrote: >>>In article [unknown], <sviznyuk@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> wrote: >>>I get this occasionally when I wipeout a large directory tree. I also >>>would like to know what is going on. It sounds like something is being >>>overzealous in the destruction of blocks. :( >> >>It is a bug. The filesystem after I rebooted appeared to be corrupted >>and I had to repair it with e2fsck v.0.5a from my non-ELF boot repair >>disk. For some reason the latest and greatest e2fsck v.1.02 >>didn't want to do the job and "politely" suggested to run it >>"manually". > >The same thing for me. I removed a 30Meg directory tree last night and blew >away my filesystem... *all* copies of the superblock were corrrupted. The >manual repair with e2fsck left me off with a unbootable machine. That hurts! Has happened to me twice that when I woke up in the morning I had loads and loads of zombie sendmail, logins and such. Can't do "df", only hangs the shell. I do a shutdown, it can't unmount ANY partitions. I boot, it says my / is corrupted, please run fsck manually. I boot single user, do a manual fsck of / and it complains about root super block corrupt, please use 8193. I do so, it goes on and finds files that are linked together and stuff. I press "y" on all options and it goes thru. All other partitions (6 of them) are ok, no complaints at all apart from the unclean umount of them. Luckily I save my / every night, so I'm going to keep that archive for future use if I fint any corrupt files. I'm running 1.3.57, with 152x scsi support (no scsi drives), 4 EIDE drives, P75 with 32 megs of ram. Upgraded Slack 2.2 to ELF and GCC 2.7.0. Apart from this problem, 1.3.57 has been very stable for me. Yeah, I use e2fs V1.02