GNU bug report logs - #22768
Crash safety

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Package: gzip;

Reported by: Yanyan Jiang <jiangyy <at> outlook.com>

Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2016 16:02:02 UTC

Severity: normal

Merged with 22770

Done: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>

Bug is archived. No further changes may be made.

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From: Antonio Diaz Diaz <antonio <at> gnu.org>
To: 22768 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Yanyan Jiang <jiangyy <at> outlook.com>
Subject: bug#22768: Crash safety
Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2016 12:34:32 +0100

Paul Eggert wrote:
> Thanks for reporting the problem. It's annoying that gzip must invoke 
> fsync, as that's way overkill compared to the write-ordering that is 
> needed and fsync will slow gzip down, but I don't see any safe and 
> reasonably portable alternative

I 100% agree.

I am considering a different approach for lzip; adding a new option, say 
'-y, --fsync', to call fsync when acting in-place. This provides safety 
to those needing it without slowing down the work of everybody else. 
Especially of those (de)compressing a lot of replaceable files in-place.

(Ddrescue provides the option '-y, --synchronous' because calling fsync 
by default is too slow).

What do you think?
This bug report was last modified 9 years and 74 days ago.

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