Re: [PATCH 0/3] mm: Swap checksum

[Minchan Kim]

On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 8:19 AM, Cesar Eduardo Barros <cesarb@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Em 26-05-2010 19:45, Minchan Kim escreveu:
>>
>> On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 6:28 AM,<Valdis.Kletnieks@xxxxxx> Âwrote:
>>>
>>> On Thu, 27 May 2010 00:31:44 +0900, Minchan Kim said:
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 07:21:57AM -0300, Cesar Eduardo Barros wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> far as I can see, does nothing against the disk simply failing to
>>>>> write and later returning stale data, since the stale checksum would
>>>>> match the stale data.
>>>>
>>>> Sorry. I can't understand your point.
>>>> Who makes stale data? If any layer makes data as stale, integrity is up
>>>> to
>>>> the layer. Maybe I am missing your point.
>>>> Could you explain more detail?
>>>
>>> I'm pretty sure that what Cesar meant was that the following could
>>> happen:
>>>
>>> 1) Write block 11983 on the disk, checksum 34FE9B72.
>>> (... time passes.. maybe weeks)
>>> 2) Attempt to write block 11983 on disk with checksum AE9F3581. The write
>>> fails
>>> due to a power failure or something.
>>> (... more time passes...)
>>> 3) Read block 11983, get back data with checksum 34FE9B72. Checksum
>>> matches,
>>> and there's no indication that the write in (2) ever failed. The program
>>> proceeds thinking it's just read back the most recently written data,
>>> when in
>>> fact it's just read an older version of that block. Problems can ensue if
>>> the
>>> data just read is now out of sync with *other* blocks of data - instant
>>> data
>>> corruption.
>>
>> Oh, doesn't normal disk support atomicity of sector write?
>> I have been thought disk must support atomicity of sector write at least.
>
> It is called a "high fly write" (a write where the disk head was flying too
> high and the data did not get written at all). There are other causes than
> high fly writes for this, of course, but the symptom is the same: whatever
> you were trying to write was not written at all, and the old contents are
> still there.

It means that disk return _success_ even though data isn't written at
all on disk?

>
> The write is still atomic: it either did happen completely or did not happen
> at all (in this case, it did not happen at all). You *can* have a partial
> write (with a well-timed power loss, for instance), but the disk's own ECC
> will detect this as a corrupted sector and return an error on read.

Yes. still disk support atomicity as I expect.
Thanks.

>
> --
> Cesar Eduardo Barros
> cesarb@xxxxxxxxxx
> cesar.barros@xxxxxxxxx
>



-- 
Kind regards,
Minchan Kim
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