On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 8:19 AM, Cesar Eduardo Barros <cesarb@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Em 26-05-2010 19:45, Minchan Kim escreveu: >> >> On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 6:28 AM,<Valdis.Kletnieks@xxxxxx> wrote: >>> >>> On Thu, 27 May 2010 00:31:44 +0900, Minchan Kim said: >>>> >>>> On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 07:21:57AM -0300, Cesar Eduardo Barros wrote: >>>>> >>>>> far as I can see, does nothing against the disk simply failing to >>>>> write and later returning stale data, since the stale checksum would >>>>> match the stale data. >>>> >>>> Sorry. I can't understand your point. >>>> Who makes stale data? If any layer makes data as stale, integrity is up >>>> to >>>> the layer. Maybe I am missing your point. >>>> Could you explain more detail? >>> >>> I'm pretty sure that what Cesar meant was that the following could >>> happen: >>> >>> 1) Write block 11983 on the disk, checksum 34FE9B72. >>> (... time passes.. maybe weeks) >>> 2) Attempt to write block 11983 on disk with checksum AE9F3581. The write >>> fails >>> due to a power failure or something. >>> (... more time passes...) >>> 3) Read block 11983, get back data with checksum 34FE9B72. Checksum >>> matches, >>> and there's no indication that the write in (2) ever failed. The program >>> proceeds thinking it's just read back the most recently written data, >>> when in >>> fact it's just read an older version of that block. Problems can ensue if >>> the >>> data just read is now out of sync with *other* blocks of data - instant >>> data >>> corruption. >> >> Oh, doesn't normal disk support atomicity of sector write? >> I have been thought disk must support atomicity of sector write at least. > > It is called a "high fly write" (a write where the disk head was flying too > high and the data did not get written at all). There are other causes than > high fly writes for this, of course, but the symptom is the same: whatever > you were trying to write was not written at all, and the old contents are > still there. It means that disk return _success_ even though data isn't written at all on disk? > > The write is still atomic: it either did happen completely or did not happen > at all (in this case, it did not happen at all). You *can* have a partial > write (with a well-timed power loss, for instance), but the disk's own ECC > will detect this as a corrupted sector and return an error on read. Yes. still disk support atomicity as I expect. Thanks. > > -- > Cesar Eduardo Barros > cesarb@xxxxxxxxxx > cesar.barros@xxxxxxxxx > -- Kind regards, Minchan Kim -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxx For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href