LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Andrew Reid <andrew.reid@plug.cx>
  To  : Alan Kennington <akenning@topology.org>
  Date: 04 May 2001 09:30:24 +0930

Re: Official Release of Linux XFS

On 03 May 2001 16:48:43 +0930, Alan Kennington wrote:

> Question 1:
> It sounds like this means that a UPS is now of doubtful value,
> if one is using a UPS for the sole reason of preventing
> crash-time damage to file systems.
> Is that right?
> If that's true, I may have just wasted A$1350.

Pffft! A UPS does more than just protect the filesystem. What about
hardware protection? The UPS provides a level of power filtering. I'd
not ever trust a machine of value on the cruddy mains power. UPSs are
still _incredibly_ valuable.

> Question 2:
> Is XFS usable as the /boot file system?
> I found with ReiserFS on SuSE 7.1 that I couldn't really
> use ReiserFS for /boot. Maybe that was because the minimum
> size for a ReiserFS partition was 30 MB, or maybe there was
> some other reason. But then again, one doesn't write
> much to /boot anyway. So it doesn't matter...

If this screenshot of the system installer from SGI is anything to go
by, I'd say so.

http://freshmeat.net/img/screenshots/13880.jpg

> Back to question 1:
> My real point I'm getting at is:  how good a guarantee
> is there that you can turn off the power switch and
> hope to get your system going again?

There isn't one. Nothing is guaranteed. It's just more likely that your
system is going to recover without too many problems, and a lot faster
that fsck.

> I did this once with my Reiser file system, and trashed my
> /etc/rc.config file, which was currently being edited.

Like I said, there's no guarantees. Most editors that I know don't write
to the file as you type -- they save it in memory. If you use vi,
normally it creates a .filename.swp file. Restore it from there.

> I.e. sometimes a file system may recover without fsck etc.,
> but it might not be the file system you want!
> As a file system, it might be structurally correct, but it
> might be unbootable due to the files having the wrong contents.
> 
> I bet this info is in some FAQ somewhere, but life is short,
> and FAQs are long.

Netscape has a Find function, as do most browsers. (A-f).

   - andrew

-- 
Andrew Reid                   email: andrew.reid@plug.cx
                              www:   http://www.plug.cx
"If ignorance is bliss        phone: +61 401 946 813
 why aren't there more 
 happy people?"


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