dangerous situation with shutdown process

[Matthias Buelow]

"Kevin Oberman" <oberman at es.net> writes:

>I believe that the Windows solution to this problem is to put a really,
>really long delay between when the system is finished syncing and when
>the power is turned off. This might be the best solution for FreeBSD, as
>well, but it will irritate people.

The Windows solution is, apparently, to disable and immediately
re-enable the writeback-cache around a barrier. This will ensure the
cache being written out to the platters, even if the drive ignores a
flush command.

Of course I don't know this for certain but have to rely on observations
that others have made. See, for example:

http://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-kern/2002/12/09/0052.html

The long delay at shutdown would simply be a final safeguard in case
the drive also ignores disabling of the WC.

mkb.