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Apps That Rely On Ext3's Commit Interval May Lose Data In Ext4
cooper writes "Heise Open posted news about a bug report for the upcoming Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) which describes a massive data loss problem when using Ext4 (German version): A crash occurring shortly after the KDE 4 desktop files had been loaded results in the loss of all of the data that had been created, including many KDE configuration files." The article mentions that similar losses can come from some other modern filesystems, too. Update: 03/11 21:30 GMT by T : Headline clarified to dispel the impression that this was a fault in Ext4.
blame KDE! hahahahahahahahahaha
Now, if this affected twm, xterm, and emacs, well, I'd be quite pissed. But for now, I find this hilarious.
The file system isn't writing data it claims to have written, that means it's deliberately lying, which is different then a bug.
The "web 2.0" idea that being right most of the time doesn't cut it in the real world. People may put something more important then a tweet on a file system.
Optimize the reads all you want, but those writes better damn well happen before the calls that say data is written return.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
it deals correctly with files of any size. It just loses recent data
You work in marketing, don't you? Only an advertising weenie could actually speak those two phrases consecutively with a straight face.
If it loses recent data, under any conditions, it's bugged. Period. Full stop. End of line. Close tag.
Listen up. Here's exactly what is supposed to happen. I open() a file in the filesystem, creating it in the process. I write() one byte to it. I close() the file. The data is physically on disk within milliseconds.
OR ELSE THE FILESYSTEM IS BUGGED.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Wait, are you saying the crashing of an alpha level OS could cause data loss? I find this unfathomable.