ext3 file losses?

I'm not sure where you heard that ext3 in journal mode is slow. It's
actually pretty decent--I've been using it in this mode for a while and
overall it "feels" faster than the other two modes.

I would suggest that you read the "Advanced filesystem implementor's guide"
at IBM developerWorks. It was written by Daniel Robbins, of Gentoo, and
its 13 parts cover a variety of filesystems in fairly good detail. The
parts that deal with ext3 (part 7 & 8) are here:

[url]http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-fs7/[/url]
[url]http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-fs8.html[/url]

Stu

ivo welch wrote:
[color=blue]
> in ordered mode, ext3 filesystem, it seems to me that I once lost
> files from /usr/lib/* that I had not touched (write) in weeks during a
> crash.
>
> I believe that ext3 guarantees that files do not have stale blocks in
> them, which is nice. I wonder whether this means that there are
> scenarios in which ext3 can rearrange files somehow, and after the
> crash, just to make sure, it deleted any dubious /usr/lib/* files.
>
> My quandary is simple: I like the idea of journaling, and I also like
> the idea of (ext2) filesystem consistency checks (for other events).
> I want absolutely minimal chance of existing files disappearing, but
> do not care as much that the files I was just writing to may not
> survive a crash.
>
> unfortunately, ext3 in true journal mode slows to just about half
> writing speed (too much), and I seem to have lost files in ordered
> mode, if I am not hallucinating. (ext2 seemed very stable, even after
> crashes.) Am I hallucinating about file losses?
>
> advice appreciated.
>
> /iaw[/color]