barrier and commit options?

[Eric Sandeen]

Christian Kujau wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Jan 2009, Nicolas KOWALSKI wrote:
>> I know I may loose the last 30 seconds of "work" (it's just a home
>> server), but is the filesystem at risk (corruption, whatever, ...) with
>> these mount options ?
> 
> No, why would it? If certain mount options would make a filesystem prone 
> to corruption I'd consider this a bug.

Well, that's not exactly true.  Turning off barriers, depending on your
storage, could lead to corruption in some cases.  Mounting with
data=writeback can expose stale data, which could even be a security issue.

But as long as you make these decisions consciously, they may fit your
needs.

>  So apart from losing a few more 
> seconds of work in case of an error, the fs should be fine.

This part is correct, barriers on and longer commit time should not
affect filesystem consistency / integrity.

-Eric

> C.