Today, support for metadata journaling has been added to NetBSD's implementation of the Berkeley Fast File System (FFS), eliminating the need for lengthy file system checks after a crash or power failure. Support for converting existing file systems to use the new journaling capabilities is provided as well. See the official announcement
for all the details.
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Member since:2008-07-15
It's not "quivering in limbo," but rather the filesystem's default state is to have neither softdep nor journaling enabled and, depending on certain partition setups, this actually does make sense. Take, for example, a secure partition for applications, intended to be mounted read-only, and the partition archive/image is already created. The only thing that you intend to do with that partition is mount it rw, extract the archive, then mount it read-only from then on. In this case, you'd want to leave both softdep and journaling turned off. Sure, it takes about five seconds to go into /etc/fstab and get rid of the option, but if you know you're going to use that partition for a specific use where you know you won't need them, why have them enabled at all to start? Also, NetBSD is not a hand-holding system, period. It assumes you know what you're doing, it's defaults are barebones. The idea is that if you need something, you know you need it and will enable it yourself, either during the installation process or afterwards. Given this, it only makes sense that neither softdeps nor journaling is used by default, as it's not the filesystem's default state.
Member since:2005-07-06
sbergman27 was talking about a default. The default is currently to have no journaling AND no soft updates. IMHO, that's a bad choice. Having a "safe" default protects data. The scenarios you explained are valid, but users who know what they are doing will know how to turn it of for those special cases, and since it's only a few seconds editing fstab...
But the installer should default to something that protects data. Period.
Member since:
2005-07-24
There should be a default. Quivering in limbo is not proper installer behavior.
Edited 2008-08-02 02:17 UTC