[arch-general] Adding new partition to system from unpartitioned space - any reason to not use ext4??

Christos Nouskas nous at archlinux.us
Wed Jan 13 11:27:04 EST 2010


Thomas Bächler wrote:
> Am 07.01.2010 18:26, schrieb David C. Rankin:
> > the create the filesystem. With ext4 now available, is there any
> > reason I shouldn't go ahead and create the filesystem as ext4? It

> Delayed allocation might lead to data loss of recently created or
> overwritten files in case of power failure or system freeze. The most
> common case of overwriting files in badly written programs has been
> worked around in ext4, but theoretically it might still happen
> (witnessed by a file with size 0 after power loss or otherwise unclean
> shutdown).

 Kind of late response, but I strongly agree with Thomas. I've had my 
share of truncated files after unclean shutdowns (every single time), some 
kernel modules being among the victims. If you decide to decide to use 
ext4, then it's almost mandatory to use the 'nodelalloc' mount option, 
unless you're positive that unclean shutdowns are unlikely in your setup 
or you don't care about lost data.


-- 
X.


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