kern/123908: panic: vinvalbuf: dirty bufs
Nejc Škoberne
nejc at skoberne.net
Thu May 22 21:50:03 UTC 2008
The following reply was made to PR kern/123908; it has been noted by GNATS.
From: =?ISO-8859-2?Q?Nejc_=A9koberne?= <nejc at skoberne.net>
To: bug-followup at FreeBSD.org
Cc: vwe at freebsd.org
Subject: Re: kern/123908: panic: vinvalbuf: dirty bufs
Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 23:43:17 +0200
Hi,
I really don't want to bother and waste your time. I will just briefly express my
humble opinion. To me, if kernel panics when I do something a regular user could
do by accident (i.e. unplug the USB stick while still mounted), this is worth fixing.
Is there really no other way for kernel to let the user know he did something stupid
than panicking? I understand this should be the behaviour when unplugging some more
"fixed" device like non-hotplug hard drive, RAM memory, or CPU :). But for USB sticks?
Were not they created for the purpose to be easily removable and portable? I also
understand that FreeBSD uses the same subsystem (if I understand correctly) for
USB devices as for SCSI devices (i.e. also SCSI hard drives), that's why we see USB
devices as /dev/da*.
On the other hand, the panic in this case doesn't happen when the user unplugs the USB
device while mounted, but when it is plugged back in after it was unplugged (while
mounted). Maybe you are saying that after doing something "prohibited" like unplugging
the USB stick when still mounted leaves the system (without the user being explicitly
notified?) in a completely unstable and undefined state (plugging the device back is, I
assume an always legal operation)? If so (since the system does not _yet_ panick when
the device is unplugged), then I guess the user should be somehow notified about this
condition so he can manually reboot the system and bring it back to a consistent and
defined state.
So what I don't know is: is this behaviour recognized as a bug at all? Or is it just
normal behaviour all users should live with?
Thanks for your time,
Nejc
More information about the freebsd-bugs
mailing list