UFS2 Journaling implementation detail

[Ivan Voras]

>  Ivan, thanks for the links. What I mean is configure
>  journaling via gjournal(8) for the UFS file system.

Just follow the example in gjournal(8) :)


>  I have following questions in this regard:
>
>  1. "Pawel (pjd) has reimplemented gjournal with hooks
>  in the file system code so it can properly do file
>  system journaling." -
>  http://wiki.freebsd.org/gjournal)
>
>  So, the gjournal is a Journaled File System which can
>  be used against file system corruptions in the event
>  of power failure or system crash?

No, gjournal is a layer below the file system (think of it as a
virtual disk drive) that does journalling. You need to create a file
system on top of gjournal. Pawel added some necessary integration for
UFS.

>  2. "Unfortunately, gjournal cannot replace a
>  journaling filesystem. At least, a fsck is still
>  needed on the journaled device/filesystem after a
>  crash." -(http://wiki.freebsd.org/gjournal)
>
>  Is it now confirmed that gjournal does not require
>  fsck after a power failure or system crash?

Yes, this is old information. The current gjournal implementation
works without fsck.

>  3. "To ensure that data is stored on the data
>  provider, the gjournal sync command should be used
>  after calling sync(2)." - gjournal(8)
>
>  Who should issue this command? user manually?

I don't think so. I think this is also old information. There are some
hard drives and controller that don't support BIO_FLUSH (which could
theoretically need the above commands) but you are notified about
these drives on boot.

>  4. "Size should be chosen based on provider's load,
>  and not on its size.  It is not recommended to use
>  gjournal for small file systems" - gjournal(8)
>
>  So how do I know what should be the size of the
>  journal before it is created?

Theoretically, there's a fairly complex calculation based on your disk
drive capacity and journal delay time, but unless you are using fast
server-class drive, 1 GB should be enough for the journal.

>  Does it log anywhere if the journal size is too small
>  for the system load?

Yes, you'll get a system panic in this case. Yes, it's a bad solution,
complain to Pawel :)

>  5. "Some UFS implementations avoid journaling and
>  instead implement soft updates: they order their
>  writes in such a way that the on-disk file system is
>  never inconsistent, or that the only inconsistency
>  that can be created in the event of a crash is a
>  storage leak. To recover from these leaks, the free
>  space map is reconciled against a full walk of the
>  file system at next mount." -
>  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journaling_file_system)
>
>  So the disadvantage of Soft Update is it is necessary
>  to run fsck after reboot in event of a crash or power
>  failure?

Yes. The advantage is that practically, the data is as safe as with journalling.

>  6. On the same hard disk for various BSD partitions,
>  is it possible to use both Soft Update and gjournal,
>  Eg. Soft Update for / , gjournal for /usr?

Yes, but it doesn't make much sense to do it this way. It won't crash
but there are no benefits to it.

Note also that you can't add a gjournal-supported journal on existing
file systems without using external journals. In other words: if you
already created all your file systems and don't have any free space on
the drive to create additional partitions, you can't use gjournal.

>  7. In, gjournal label [-fhv] [-s jsize] dataprov
>  [jprov]
>
>  What is the unit of the size?

Whatever you want it to be, for example "1M" means megabyte.