kconfig's file handling (was: XFS: how to NOT null files on fsck?)

[Tim Connors]

On Tue, 13 Jul 2004, Waldo Bastian wrote:

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> On Tue July 13 2004 13:05, Oswald Buddenhagen wrote:
> > heya,
> >
> > read the attachement first (put on your asbestos underwear first ;).
> > not exactly news to me, but somehow i never got to fixing it ...
>
> There is nothing to fix, we already use a tempfile + rename, it's in KSaveFile
> since 1999. Or just look with strace if you don't believe me. This Tim
> Connors guy shouldn't talk about things he obviously knows nothing about.

Sorry, I'm just basing the above on my *experience* with trying to unfsck
3 different peoples kde settings when the nfs server went down.

And since it was a controlled shutdown, there would have been no cache
worries, and the fact the kde corrupted itself points to having problems
within kde, not problems within a fs or nfs.

> As far as I can see the problem is that the filesystem writes out the meta
> data before the actual file data hits the disk which creates a period of time
> in which the on-disk state of the filesystem contains trashed files. I
> believe ReiserFS actually has an option to do things in a sane order so that
> it doesn't trash recently used files on an unclean shutdown.

Well, no other program I have ever used, which does the tempfile+rename
thing, has ever failed on me.

-- 
TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/
                  -o)
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