[portawiki-discuss] fsync() and OS X

[Darren Tucker]

Peter Gutmann wrote:
> It seemed a bit odd (from the Apple guy's explanation) that only OS X was
> affected, you'd think that either (a) all OSes would experience terrible write
> performance or (b) all OSes would experience corruption.  Instead, depending
> on whether you use FSSYNC or not, it's only OS X that gets hit.  Very odd.

Seems to be driver dependant?  I found some messages on the linux-kernel 
list (from 2001) saying that Linux disabled the write cache in the driver.

If anyone feels like testing this (by running a test program and yanking 
a power cable): http://www.livejournal.com/users/brad/2116715.html

Generally we don't care about fsync but if you're interested then I've 
got a few systems I'm prepared to try it on :-)

-- 
Darren Tucker (dtucker at zip.com.au)
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     Good judgement comes with experience. Unfortunately, the experience
usually comes from bad judgement.