background fsck considered harmful? (Re: panic: handle_written_inodeblock: bad size)

[Mikhail T.]

21.07.2010 16:15, Kirk McKusick написав(ла):
> Certainly disabling background fsck will eliminate that from your
> possible set of issues and may prevent a recurrance. It does mean
> that after a crash you will have to wait while your filesystems
> are checked before your system will come up. If your filesystems
> are below 0.5Tb that should be tolerable.
>
> The longer term solution is to use journaled soft updates when they
> become available in 9.0.
>    
We are about to ship 8.1 -- with background fsck enabled by default 
possibly causing problems requiring far more admin time (and involving 
real data-loss).

If the existing fsck can not be improved to properly fix the fs, when 
running in background mode, just as well as when it is running 
pre-mount, then, IMHO, it should not be enabled by default.

Crashes are quite rare and waiting once in a while for fsck to rumble 
through would be better, than to have some people enter into a vicious 
circle of mysterious panics (even if Jeremy's ongoing work makes them 
slightly less mysterious).

Respectfully yours,

    -mi