[geeks] Solaris 10 / OpenSolaris bits to be in next version of OSX

der Mouse mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA
Thu Aug 10 12:33:47 CDT 2006


>>> If, for example, a block didn't get written to disk half-way down
>>> the tree [...]
>> Maybe it's just me, but I'd *much* rather get a panic in that case
>> rather than silently using the redundant copy.  If my system is
>> silently failing to write data to disk, something is critically
>> wrong, whether hardware or software, and I'd much rather it crashed,
>> or at least failed the relevant drive out of service, than pretended
>> everything is fine.
> But which would you prefer:  Panic, go down, and lose the data, or
> transparently repair the data, keep running, and scream bloody murder
> to alert you about the failure?

I think I'd rather have a panic.  If something is silently failing to
write data to disk, I'd rather not even try to continue running.  It is
far too likely that that would just end up damaging things more,
especially given the relative chances of the bug being in the kernel
versus the disk drive.

Of course, if I were in an "every minute of downtime costs us $100,000"
environment, I might well feel differently - but even then, I'd rather
take the live one out of service and fail over to the backup, since
then corrupted data probably costs even more.

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