Re: Double sync required on ext3, Linux 2.4.x

[erich]

Pavel Roskin <address@hidden> wrote:

> I have had weird problems with GRUB several times, and now it seems that I
> have found the solution.  Maybe it's not complete, but worth applying
> nevertheless.

...

> Once I installed GRUB 0.91 over GRUB 0.90 with grub-install.  The system
> wouldn't boot.  I booted from a floppy and bound that /boot/grub/stage2
> has "0.90" in it.  In other words, the old stage2 was overwritten by the
> script, but the grub shell resurrected the old file!
> 
> Then I removed all files except device.map and menu.lst from /boot/grub/
> and ran grub-install.  It reported that it cannot find stage1.  However,
> the file was present when the script finished.

This patch you have is in general insufficient to fix this problem.

The problem is that journaled filesystems (ext3 & XFS both showed
this problem in different ways) return from "sync" before the metadata
has settled down, as their journal is considered stable storage.

I had a run-around with this on the list a few months ago now, and
have a partial patch that fixes it somewhat and tests to make sure
it is correct/retries appropriately without failing with an error.

I'm currently working on finishing my patch and testing it (it was
on my list of items to finish for 0.92).

--
    Erich Stefan Boleyn     <address@hidden>     http://www.uruk.org/
"Reality is truly stranger than fiction; Probably why fiction is so popular"