Question about Cyrus, ext3, and Linux kernel 2.4.18 bug

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Fri, 11 Apr 2003, Michael Sims wrote:
> Quoting Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh at debian.org>:
> > That will kill your kernel (unless redhat did a major ext3 bughunt on their
> > 2.4.18). Don't do it. Switch to 2.4.21pre, or try using xfs.
> [...]
> The only reason that I thought this might already be fixed is that I saw a 
> couple of Red Hat errata kernels that mentioned ext3 bugs.  For example:

As I said, they might have fixed the issue, for all I know. What I do know
is that the vanilla Linus kernels before 2.4.21pre aren't safe.

> "A bug in the ext3 file system in the previous errata kernel for Red Hat
> Linux 7.1, 7.1K, 7.2, 7.3, and 8.0 has been discovered. The bug has the
> potential to cause data loss if the file system is used in the non-default
> 'full data journaling' mode."

That might be it.  Since the kernel didn't hang on you while you tested,
it is probably the issue that bombed my system...

> Of course this last one goes on to say that the bug "can only result in the 
> loss of recent writes when a file system is unmounted" so I don't believe it's 
> the same issue.

hmm... it was something dealing with mmap + journaled data.

> be mistaken) that I would have to compile a new kernel to use XFS since Red Hat 
> doesn't support it by default.

Even reiserfs should be better than ext2... and maybe even ext3 without
htree and journaled data.  ext3 w/ htree and journal=data is very fast.

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh