On Sat, 3 May 2008, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
The suggestion is that fsync isn't really safe on Linux as it is currently implented.
The issue of needing to turn off underlying disk write caches under Linux is documented: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/interactive/wal-reliability.html
As for concerns about individual blocks not being written in order, as long as everything associated with a commit is done when the fsync returns that shouldn't be an issue for the PostgreSQL WAL implementation.
It is easier to shoot yourself in the foot than it should be on Linux, but it's possible to avoid that with care.
-- * Greg Smith gsmith@xxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD
