Ok, I've seen this mentioned many times, and I just can't figure out what
soft update is.. can someone please enlighten me? :)

On Mon, 15 Nov 1999, Frank van der Linden wrote:

> I've brought Kirk McKusick's trickle sync + FFS soft update code into
> the main tree. It has had some moderate to heavy testing over the
> last month. I'm currently using it on the /usr filesystem and the
> filesystem containing all my sources on my main NetBSD development
> machine, and did not have a problem since I fixed the last known
> bug (2.5 weeks ago).
> 
> To use it, do the following:
> 
> 1. Update your sources.
> 2. Compile a new kernel with "options SOFTDEP" in your kernel config file.
> 3. Run the new kernel.
> 4. Install the new include files from sys/sys (i.e. at least do
>    cd /usr/src/sys ; make includes). To be safe, just install them all
>    (cd /usr/src ; make includes)
> 5. At least recompile libc, sbin/mount, sbin/fsck_ffs, sbin/tunefs, and
>    install them.
> 6. Run "tunefs -n enable /dev/rXd0x" to enable soft updates on the
>    filesystem(s) of your choice.
> 7. Remove "update=YES" from your /etc/rc.conf file. update(8) is no longer
>    needed. Its work is now done in a more sophisticated way by a kernel
>    thread.
> 8. Reboot
> 9. Have fun testing.
> 
> If you have any problems, please send PRs, or mail me, with as much
> detail as you can gather. Again, I haven't had any problem for a
> while now, and am running it on critical filesystems.
> 
> - Frank
> 

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