dangerous situation with shutdown process

[Paul Mather]

On Mon, 2005-07-18 at 16:35 +0200, Matthias Buelow wrote:
> Oliver Fromme <olli at lurza.secnetix.de> writes:
> 
> >buffers to disk.  While it is doing that, it displays the
> >number of remaining buffers, with increasing time intervals
> >between them.  If there are still buffers left after a
> >certain number of intervals without change, the kernel
> >gives up.
> 
> Why is it doing this? Can't it just enumerate the buffers and write
> them, one by one?

Why would that necessarily be more successful?  If the outstanding
buffers count is not reducing between time intervals, it is most likely
because there is some underlying hardware problem (e.g., a bad block).
If the count still persists in staying put, it likely means whatever the
hardware is doing to try and fix things (e.g., write reallocation) isn't
working, and so the kernel may as well give up.

You can enumerate the buffers and *try* to write them, but that doesn't
guarantee they will be written successfully any more than observing the
relative number left outstanding.

Cheers,

Paul.
-- 
e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

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