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From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
To: "Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>
Cc: git@vger.kernel.org, tytso@mit.edu,
	Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>,
	Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
	linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 1/2] sha1-file: fsync() loose dir entry when core.fsyncObjectFiles
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2020 09:16:05 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20200917131605.GC3024501@coredump.intra.peff.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20200917112830.26606-2-avarab@gmail.com>

On Thu, Sep 17, 2020 at 01:28:29PM +0200, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:

> Change the behavior of core.fsyncObjectFiles to also sync the
> directory entry. I don't have a case where this broke, just going by
> paranoia and the fsync(2) manual page's guarantees about its behavior.

I've also often wondered whether this is necessary. Given the symptom of
"oops, this object is there but with 0 bytes" after a hard crash (power
off, etc), my assumption is that the metadata is being journaled but the
actual data is not. Which would imply this isn't needed, but may just be
revealing my naive view of how filesystems work.

And of course all of my experience is on ext4 (which doubly confuses me,
because my systems typically have data=ordered, which I thought would
solve this). Non-journalling filesystems or other modes likely behave
differently, but if this extra fsync carries a cost, we may want to make
it optional.

>  sha1-file.c | 19 ++++++++++++++-----
>  1 file changed, 14 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

We already fsync pack files, but we don't fsync their directories. If
this is important to do, we should be doing it there, too.

We also don't fsync ref files (nor packed-refs) at all. If fsyncing
files is important for reliability, we should be including those, too.
It may be tempting to say that the important stuff is in objects and the
refs can be salvaged from the commit graph, but my experience says
otherwise. Missing, broken, or mysteriously-rewound refs cause confusing
user-visible behavior, and when compounded with pruning operations like
"git gc" they _do_ result in losing objects.

-Peff

  reply	other threads:[~2020-09-17 13:20 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 52+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2018-01-17 18:48 [PATCH] enable core.fsyncObjectFiles by default Christoph Hellwig
2018-01-17 19:04 ` Junio C Hamano
2018-01-17 19:35   ` Christoph Hellwig
2018-01-17 20:05     ` Andreas Schwab
2018-01-17 19:37   ` Matthew Wilcox
2018-01-17 19:42     ` Christoph Hellwig
2018-01-17 21:44   ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2018-01-17 22:07     ` Linus Torvalds
2018-01-17 22:25       ` Linus Torvalds
2018-01-17 23:16       ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2018-01-17 23:42         ` Linus Torvalds
2018-01-17 23:52       ` Theodore Ts'o
2018-01-17 23:57         ` Linus Torvalds
2018-01-18 16:27           ` Christoph Hellwig
2018-01-19 19:08             ` Junio C Hamano
2018-01-20 22:14               ` Theodore Ts'o
2018-01-20 22:27                 ` Junio C Hamano
2018-01-22 15:09                   ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2018-01-22 18:09                     ` Theodore Ts'o
2018-01-23  0:47                       ` Jeff King
2018-01-23  5:45                         ` Theodore Ts'o
2018-01-23 16:17                           ` Jeff King
2018-01-23  0:25                     ` Jeff King
2018-01-21 21:32             ` Chris Mason
2020-09-17 11:06         ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2020-09-17 11:28           ` [RFC PATCH 0/2] should core.fsyncObjectFiles fsync the dir entry + docs Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2020-09-17 11:28           ` [RFC PATCH 1/2] sha1-file: fsync() loose dir entry when core.fsyncObjectFiles Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2020-09-17 13:16             ` Jeff King [this message]
2020-09-17 15:09               ` Christoph Hellwig
2020-09-17 14:09             ` Christoph Hellwig
2020-09-17 14:55               ` Jeff King
2020-09-17 14:56                 ` Christoph Hellwig
2020-09-17 15:37                   ` Junio C Hamano
2020-09-17 17:12                     ` Jeff King
2020-09-17 20:37                       ` Taylor Blau
2020-09-22 10:42               ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2020-09-17 20:21             ` Johannes Sixt
2020-09-22  8:24               ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2020-11-19 11:38                 ` Johannes Schindelin
2020-09-17 11:28           ` [RFC PATCH 2/2] core.fsyncObjectFiles: make the docs less flippant Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2020-09-17 14:12             ` Christoph Hellwig
2020-09-17 15:43             ` Junio C Hamano
2020-09-17 20:15               ` Johannes Sixt
2020-10-08  8:13               ` Johannes Schindelin
2020-10-08 15:57                 ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2020-10-08 18:53                   ` Junio C Hamano
2020-10-09 10:44                   ` Johannes Schindelin
2020-09-17 19:21             ` Marc Branchaud
2020-09-17 14:14           ` [PATCH] enable core.fsyncObjectFiles by default Christoph Hellwig
2020-09-17 15:30           ` Junio C Hamano
2018-01-17 20:55 ` Jeff King
2018-01-17 21:10   ` Christoph Hellwig

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