Re: fsync vs open_sync

Were you upset by my message ? I'll try to clarify.

> I understood from your email that you are a Windows haters

Well, no, not really. I use Windows everyday and it has its strengths. I
still don't think the average (non-geek) person can really use Linux as a
Desktop OS. The problem I have with Windows is that I think it could be
made much faster, without too much effort (mainly some tweaking in the
Disk IO field), but Microsoft doesn't do it. Why ? I can't understand this.

>> in Linux. You can write 10000 files in one second and the HDD is still
>> idle... then when it decides to flush it all goes to disk in one burst.
>
> You can not trust your data in this.

That's why I mentioned that it did not relate to database type
performance. If the computer crashes while writing these files, some may
be partially written, some not at all, some okay... the only certainty is
about filesystem integrity. But it's exactly the same on all Journaling
filesystems (including NTFS). Thus, with equal reliability, the faster
wins. Maybe, with Reiser4, we will see real filesystem transactions and
maybe this will translate in higher postgres performance...
>
>> I've had my computers shutdown violently by power failures and no
>> reiserfs problems so far. NTFS is very crash proof too. My windows
>> machine bluescreens twice a day and still no data loss ;)
>
> If you have the BSOD twice a day then you have a broken driver or broken
> HW. CPU overclocked ?

I think this machine has crap hardware. In fact this example was to
emphasize the reliability of NTFS : it is indeed remarkable that no data
loss occurs even on such a crap machine. I know Windows has got quite
reliable now.