Re: pre5 VM feedback..

Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
15 Jan 2001 19:20:51 -0800


In article <3A63B9E8.F7E850F@mandrakesoft.com>,
Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@mandrakesoft.com> wrote:
>Linus Torvalds wrote:
>> In article <3A63A9AE.345CBAF3@mandrakesoft.com>,
>> Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@mandrakesoft.com> wrote:
>> >$!@#@! pre6 is already out :)
>
>> Yes, and for heavens sake don't use it, [...]
>
>Too late... First and foremost, a correction: The VM data I posted was
>for pre1, not pre5. Here is the VM data from a freshly rebooted pre6,
>if that's worth anything: http://gtf.org/garzik/vm2/
>
>Hopefully pre6 will survive long enough to complete tulip testing :)

Careful, careful, careful.

The problem is that pre6 survives quite nicely, but because of the silly
typo in __mark_inode_dirty() it won't actually mark inodes dirty.
Unless you are actually using the newly integrated raiser-fs, in which
case you should be just peachy ;)

Note that the bug is not even noticeable under many loads - especially
if you have lots of memory. The inodes just get happily cached for a
long time. Which is why I could release a pre6, not even noticing that
it's strange and not writing out inode data to the disk.

With a gig of RAM, inodes tend to cache really well.

Now, I'm not saying your filesystem is toast. I'm just saying that if
you booted up in pre6, I'd suggest a quick reboot into a better kernel
might be a good idea (be a jock, and do a sync and just push the reset
button to force a proper fsck when it comes up - just in case).

(And yes, I renamed the pre6's really quickly, so you had to be unlucky
to see them.)

Linus
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