Soft Updates Help

[Chuck Swiger]

On Dec 1, 2006, at 4:12 PM, Sean Murphy wrote:
> I have read up on soft updates and have some questions.
>
> The way that I am understanding soft updates purpose is to allow  
> file systems to be mounted dirty after an unclean shutdown of the  
> system.  This will allow fsck to run in the background to restore  
> the consistency of the file system which is compared against a  
> snapshot of the system.  It also increases performance of heavily  
> written file systems by waiting to write the metadata of files and  
> directories until a more opportune time.
>
> I have questions about this.
>
> When is the snapshot taken, how often, do I have to do it or does a  
> program or kernel do it?

Snapshots are taken via mksnap_ffs; some other tools like fsck or  
dump also know how to create a snapshot.

> If this is a safe way to restore consistency why is it not used on /?

You could enable softupdates on /, but normally one does not as /  
does not contain files which are expected to change.

> If a file system is not heavily written to is it better not to use  
> soft updates?

Maybe.  I think that softupdates is a win in almost all circumstances  
from the standpoint of data consistency, short of fully syncronous  
data & metadata updates.

> How do I know when the background fsck is finished and if it was  
> successful?

Check the logfiles.

> Do I have to add anything to enable the backgound fsck?

At one point, there was an option in /etc/rc.conf, but it now  
defaults to being on:

% grep fsck /etc/defaults/rc.conf
fsck_y_enable="NO"      # Set to YES to do fsck -y if the initial  
preen fails.
background_fsck="YES"   # Attempt to run fsck in the background where  
possible.
background_fsck_delay="60" # Time to wait (seconds) before starting  
the fsck.

> When file systems are mounted dirty and our being used while the  
> backgound fsck is running on the file systems how does it prevent  
> files from being lost?

The background fsck is only capable of handling innocuous filesystem  
inconsistencies, and will fail with an error code if it encounters a  
more significant issue, in which case the system is obligated to  
perform the traditional fsck in the foreground.

-- 
-Chuck