On Monday 10 October 2005 09:41, Tim wrote: > Tim (replied back about using a journalling file system): > >> I do, but during testing (where I've hit the reset button and pulled out > >> the power leads), I've seen warnings about not being shutdown properly > >> and fsck should be done on the drive. I don't know how much I can > >> ignore such warnings, and just carry on hoping for the best. > > Les Mikesell: > > Some drives buffer data internally so even the best attempts by > > the OS to sync at journal points might fail to record what it > > expects. That's the point of the warning. Normally replaying > > the journal will recover the filesystem to a consistent state > > although of course you still lose any unflushed data from > > working applications. > > There's two warnings. One that you ought to fsck, which often isn't > noticed quick enough before you can say "yes". And I'm yet to see it > make a difference if I do it or don't. Then there's the checking the > journals, which it does without any say so (thankfully that doesn't seem > to take forever). > > The only trouble I've noticed so far happened to be with a drive which I > discovered had hardware faults (later). So I don't know if the trouble > was due to my crashing the system, or just that the drive was knackered. > > >> It'd be better if there was no need to "recover", that the drive was > >> only being written to if you were actually saving data to it. > > > > Files need to be closed to be sure the applications have > > flushed all outstanding data. The system writes data to > > various logs all the time, so there will always be open > > files in a running system. > > Only on systems that do logging... Can it all be turned off? Presuming > a system where the owner couldn't understand a log to save their life, > what's the point of them? > > I'm thinking of two particular uses, here: > > 1. I have a friend who's completely computer illiterate, but can manage > to boot up and run a couple of programs. I grew really tired of Windows > repairs, and anti-malware updating, so I figured something more robust > is in order (has to be legal, too). > > 2. A display PC that people can look at information on (e.g. over an > intranet), that's not always supervised, and could handle hamfisted > abuse in its stride. Of course nothing will survive deliberate > sabotage, but that's another matter. This sounds like a good application for a linux kiosk. Google for "kiosk howto". without the quotes of course. Lots of good information and examples there. HTH, Tom >>>>> snip <<<<< -- Tom Taylor Linux user #263467 Federal Way, WA Iraq war: 1,955 US soldiers dead and counting
