Re: [tlug] ResiserFS + sudden poweroff = problem

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "patrick" == patrick niessen <patrick.niessen@example.com> writes:

    patrick> But is not the point of the journaling filesystem that it
    patrick> can cope with this kind of situation without breaking?

No.  The point of the journaling filesystem is that journaling helps
to solve a number of efficiency and consistency problems, and this is
one of them.  The operative modifier is "help".

    patrick> Any way to ensure a clean restart without manual
    patrick> intervention?

    >> No.  There never is when you have a system with a single point
    >> of failure.  Some things aren't worth doing; this is one of
    >> them.

    patrick> Seems David suggested a way ...

I can't comment on it specifically since it hasn't reached me yet.
Did he post to the list, or send private mail?

However, if as your comments imply, you're really running a production
server with the system on the same partition as the volatile data,
yes, you should repartition immediately, and that should reduce the
probability of faults affecting the system dramatically.  You should
also put /var on its own separate partition.  It is probably possible
to mount / read-only, but beware /etc/mtab in particular, and there
may be other volatile files on /.  You definitely need to do something
about /tmp, maybe a permanent link to /var/tmp, or mount a tmpfs there.

Of course none of this is a guarantee, and it is (used to be?) sort of
assumed that a production system would be set up this way.


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