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Date:      Thu, 13 Feb 2003 15:51:48 -0800
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>
To:        David Schultz <dschultz@uclink.Berkeley.EDU>
Cc:        Brooks Davis <brooks@one-eyed-alien.net>, Darren Pilgrim <dmp@pantherdragon.org>, Matthew Emmerton <matt@gsicomp.on.ca>, Daxbert <daxbert_news@dweebsoft.com>, Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com>, Heinrich Rebehn <rebehn@ant.uni-bremen.de>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Why is there no JFS?
Message-ID:  <3E4C2F94.8964A74D@mindspring.com>
References:  <045401c2d2db$f9d45c30$0a0aa8c0@dweebsoft.com> <20030212225631.GA10375@HAL9000.homeunix.com> <005801c2d2eb$aa5fae60$1200a8c0@gsicomp.on.ca> <3E4ADDDE.5040208@pantherdragon.org> <3E4B138F.26E32E75@mindspring.com> <20030212210721.A9481@Odin.AC.HMC.Edu> <20030213051952.GA11572@HAL9000.homeunix.com> <3E4B467B.4DCF6D5@mindspring.com> <20030213074449.GA12084@HAL9000.homeunix.com> <3E4BA1D2.E259308@mindspring.com> <20030213191356.GA14560@HAL9000.homeunix.com>

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David Schultz wrote:
> Thus spake Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>:
> > In other words, if it would have worked with soft updates turned
> > off, then it will work with soft updates turned on.
> 
> My point was that a busy disk that is nearly 100% full will
> probably experience intermitted ``disk full'' errors anyway,
> so it suffices to simply deal with cases such as
> 'rm -rf foo && immediately create lots more files', which
> softupdates does handle in -CURRENT.

I think the problem that was specifically mentioned, with regard
to / (after a lot of assumptions) was a file replacement which had
to delete an old file and make room for a new one.

I do this all the time, by replacing the kernel and all modules,
and keeping "one behind", e.g. rm x.old; mv x x.old; cp blah x.


This fails on a soft updates system because the deletion is not
actually done to the point of the space having been recovered,
before the copies are started.


> > IMO, this is not the reason for them being off on /; the real
> > reason is as I've stated: sysinstall expects the common case to
> > be an initial install, not operations after the initial install,
> > and so does not turn it on by default.
> 
> The original reason was due to the possibility of installworld
> failing, due to the case described above not being handled
> particularly well in FreeBSD 4.X.  Sysinstall is perfectly happy
> with creating a root FS with softupdates enabled.  If someone
> wants to bother changing the default for what little difference it
> might make in installworld/installkernel times, I would support it.

Eh.  I don't think it's that useful, but sysinstall in any mode
other than "create the FS in the first place/new install" is not
really going to have a lot of opportunity to do that bit flip.

The most common way I use sysinstall is to NFS mount a CDROM image
off some machine, get the sysinstall image that matches the CDROM
image, and copy it to /tmp (this is a bitch; the sysinstall image
should be made available by itself on distribution CDROMs; as it
is, you have to vnconfig, copy a file off it, and vnconfig again,
and copy a file off that, to get the sysinstall program).

It's about the only way you can upgrade a rackmount machine with
a serial console and no floppy or CDROM drive on it (you need a
non-serial console to use the Intel PXE crap to netboot).

-- Terry

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