Re: fsync reliability

On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 11:55 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> The traditional standard is that the filesystem is supposed to take
> care of its own metadata, and even Linux filesystems have pretty much
> figured that out.  I don't really see a need for us to be nursemaiding
> the filesystem.  At most there's a documentation issue here, ie, we
> ought to be more explicit about which filesystems and which mount
> options we recommend.

I think it would be illuminating to shine upon this conversation the
light of some actual facts, as to whether or not this can be
demonstrated to be broken on systems people actually use, and to what
extent it can be mitigated by the sorts of configuration choices you
mention. Neither Simon's comments nor yours give me any clear feeling
as to how likely this is to cause problems for real users, nor how
easily those problems can be mitigated.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company