dangerous situation with shutdown process

[Oliver Fromme]

Matthias Buelow <mkb at incubus.de> wrote:
 > Oliver Fromme <olli at lurza.secnetix.de> writes:
 > > buffers to disk.  While it is doing that, it displays the
 > > number of remaining buffers, with increasing time intervals
 > > between them.  If there are still buffers left after a
 > > certain number of intervals without change, the kernel
 > > gives up.
 > 
 > Why is it doing this? Can't it just enumerate the buffers and write
 > them, one by one?

I don't think that the boot() function in kern_shutdown.c
can do that.  It has got nothing to do with the syncing
business itself.  It can only trigger the syncing (similar
to the sync(8) tool), which basically means performing a
vfs_sync with flag MNT_NOWAIT for every mounted filesystem.
Then it has to wait for the appropriate kernel process to
do its job.  See the source.

I don't think there's an easy way to change that.  If you
see such a way, I'd suggest you code it up and use send-pr.

Best regards
   Oliver

-- 
Oliver Fromme,  secnetix GmbH & Co KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing
Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author
and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way.

"Python tricks" is a tough one, cuz the language is so clean. E.g.,
C makes an art of confusing pointers with arrays and strings, which
leads to lotsa neat pointer tricks; APL mistakes everything for an
array, leading to neat one-liners; and Perl confuses everything
period, making each line a joyous adventure <wink>.
        -- Tim Peters