Comment 62 for bug 601299

Revision history for this message
Manuel Gysin (manuel-gysin) wrote :

Summary after some years where this problem exists:

The btrfs developers are aware of this problem, but they will not fix it. Why? They standpoint is clear and simply, dpkg and many other application uses and relay on fsync, but fsync is no POSIX standard and really a bad way to provide the integrity of file operations. So the btrfs develops will not fix the behavior of btrfs itself.

So on the other hand the dpkg developers pointing to btrfs and are not fixing the bug, while it's working with other file systems.
This is a dead end situation, nobody is going to change anything because both sides are telling the other side made a mistake.

Ubuntu as one of the big distributors should take steps to fix this. Write a patch which makes dpkg works without fsyncs (eatmydata is no solution!) and adopt the btrfs idea with the rename of files.

Else we hit in some near time the point that debian based distributions are not fully compatible with new file systems like btrfs.
On the other hand when Ubuntu is not fixing this, the btrfs support should be completely removed! At the current state debian based distributions are not working with btrfs in a usable way.

Links:
https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Talk:FAQ
https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php?title=FAQ
http://old.nabble.com/Bug-635993%3A-dpkg-is-very-slow-with-btrfs-filesystem-td32185922.html