At Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:09:44 -0500 (EST), Mouse
<mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost> wrote:
Subject: Re: Lost file-system story
>
> They _can_ be repaired...some of the time. When they can, it is
> because, by coincidence, it just so happens that the stuff that got
> written produces a filesystem fsck can repair.
That's totally irrellevant.
Possibilities other than zero or one are not useful in manual pages, and
they are only useful to an end user as a very last resort -- equivalent
to calling out the army to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
For all useful intents and purposes any probablity of irreparable damage
of greater than zero is, for the end user, and for all planning purposes,
as good as a probability of one. Plan to use "newfs" and "restore" after
every crash and you'll be OK. Plan otherwise and you will eventually be
disappointed.
> That's not how I feel about it when I've lost a filesystem. I'll take
> a filesystem with a nonzero probability of recovering something useful
> from over one that guarantees to trash everything any day (other things
> being equal, of course).
Heh. Yup, there are those of use who will find it a challenge to see
just how much we can recover from a damaged file system no matter how
useful the outcome may be.
You don't put that in the manual page though, and you never give the end
user that expectation (unless it's already too late for them and they've
got yolk all over their face).
--
Greg A. Woods
Planix, Inc.
<woods%planix.com@localhost> +1 250 762-7675 http://www.planix.com/
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