On Tue, 6 Feb 2001, Mike Silbersack wrote:
> 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 ...
>
> Well, the various qmail programs do seem to fsync (though I'm
> not sure if it's in the right places.)
> ftp://elektroni.ee.tut.fi/pub/qmail_linux_metadata_message :
> 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.
Pre-softupdate BSD semantics, apparently. Doesn't sound like
the smartest thing to do when you want a reliable MTA...
> 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.
If djb could be considered to take things like reliability
and the SMTP specification into account, and not just
security, then qmail would have the potential to be a pretty
decent mailer.
As it is, I can only recommend people to go with something
like postfix, Exim or zmailer ...
regards,
Rik
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