dangerous situation with shutdown process

[Lowell Gilbert]

Matthias Buelow <mkb at incubus.de> writes:

> Lowell Gilbert wrote:
> 
> >Well, break it down a little bit.  If an ATA drive properly implements
> >the cache flush command, then none of the ongoing discussion is
> 
> Are you sure this is the case? Are there sequence points in softupdates
> where it issues a flush request and by this guarantees fs integrity?

No, you're right.  I meant write completions, not cache flushes.
I don't know of any drives that do one properly and not the other, 
but they're certainly not the same thing.

> I've read thru McKusick's paper in search for an answer but haven't
> found any. All I've read so far on mailing lists and from googling
> was that softupdates doesn't work if the wb-cache is enabled.

On a lot of "ATA" drives that don't implement the spec properly.