On Mon, 4 Nov 2002, Robert Ian Smit wrote: > I was surprised that this issue took down the system on Linux. > I understand, as nate explained, that hardware errors will always > result in trouble but I expected the kernel to react differently. > (Or is this a limitation of x86 or the issue you mention?)
FWIW, I'm skeptical of Nate's claim that excessive I/O errors must bring down the system. I'm certainly not a kernel hacker, but I see no reason why the kernel couldn't do what it does in other roughly analogous situations: decide that the stream is bad and effectively turn it off, either by killing the process or by redirecting the stream to /dev/null or something like that. The whole point of a robust, threaded, multitasking architecture is supposed to be that isolated errors *don't* bring down the system. > > Perhaps using a cdrom is not a good idea on a production system. > Thankfully the crash happened on my desktop which is the least > critical of all my systems. > > Is it recommended procedure to transfer files over the network > instead of using a cdrom/cdrw drive for critical systems? > I've never heard anything of the sort. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Andrew J Perrin - http://www.unc.edu/~aperrin Assistant Professor of Sociology, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] * andrew_perrin (at) unc.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
