On Tue, 6 Feb 2001, Rik van Riel wrote:
> The system call used to guarantee this is fsync (and friends?);
> if qmail doesn't use it but makes assumptions that aren't true
> on any decent OS out there ...
>
> regards,
>
> Rik
Well, the various qmail programs do seem to fsync (though I'm not sure if
it's in the right places.) In any case, this link seems to throw some
light on the situation:
ftp://elektroni.ee.tut.fi/pub/qmail_linux_metadata_message
Now, I have no clue if this is correct or not, but the core of the
explanation given on that page seems to be:
---
So what is this all about? qmail relies on the BSD semantics of immediate
update of directories on the disk when link(), unlink(), open() and
rename() calls are used. But Linux writes them to the disk asynchronously.
My library loaded before libc changes those calls to do the corresponding
directory writes too. Then qmail should be reliable against power outages
also in Linux.
---
So, does anyone know if that is a correct assertion to make, and if
softupdates does indeed break it?
Mike "Silby" Silbersack
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