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Possible data loss in Ext4

Posted by Scott_Ruecker on · 4 comments
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A bug report posted in the bug tracker for the next version of Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) describes a massive data loss problem when using Ext4, the future standard file system for Linux, available as an option when installing Ubuntu 9.04. The report describes a crash occurring shortly after the KDE 4 desktop files had been loaded, resulting in the loss of all of the data that had been created, including many KDE configuration files.

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Comments (4)

This looks like the issue Ted Ts'o warned about on FOSDEM: http://lxer.com/module/newswire/lf/view/116126/#ext4
Gleaning from the Slashdot comments, the headline is misleading. The problem is a collision of ext4's longer commit interval, and KDE's practice of deleting config files before re-writing them on logout.
Not a bug, but you have to wonder about the wisdom of avoiding underlying performance improvement -- with the work and potential for compatibility issues and bugs that implies -- by stretching the commit interval too much.

For a more detailed follow-up, here is an essay from Ted T'so:

http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2009/03/12/delayed-allocation-an...

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