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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.
I personally think it should be perfectly OK to read and write hundreds of tiny files. Even thousands.
It is perfectly OK to read and write thousands of tiny files. Unless the system is going to crash while you're doing it and you somehow want the magic computer fairy to make sure that the files are still there when you reboot it. In that case, you're going to have to always write every single block out to the disk, and slow everything else down to make sure no process gets an "unreasonable" expectation that their is safe until the drive catches up.
Fortunately his patches will include an option to turn the magic computer fairy off.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.