On Sun, 18 Jun 2000, Adv. Systems Design wrote:
> Some NT dude asked me why he never saw me
> defragmenting my Linux box amidst his NT farm, and I
> told him linux does not need to be
> defragmented...needless to say, the guy was visibly
> STUNNED!
>
> Although I must admit I do not know why (exactly), I
> think its because defragmentation is actually resolved
> in the scratch disk...this would explain why a power
> failure wreaks so much havok on a linux box (files are
> figuratively in an open state, and have not been
> comitted to disk).
>
> This is as I "imagine" it, so take my words with a
> grain of salt...
>
> --- José Luis Tinoco
>
The reasion power failure causes problems is that an open file does not
normaly get written to disk right away. Linux uses otherwise unused
memory for disk buffers, and normaly does writes when it can write
severial blocks at once, or when the file is closed. The exception to
this are things like log files where the way file access is done forses
the write to disk now. (You can also force writing the buffers now with
the sync command...) Linux isn't the only OS that has this problem. Most
modern OSs use delayed writes. Pull the plug on an NT system some time,
and watch the fun...
Mikkel
--
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
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