Fsyncers and curveballs (the Firefox 3 fsync() problem) [LWN.net]

Users of the Firefox 3 beta have noticed that it can often bring the system to a temporary halt. For the curious, here is a clear description of the problem and what is being done to address it. "I think you can see where this is going: if there's a lot of data waiting to be written to disk, and Firefox's (sqlite's) request to flush the data for one file actually sends all that data out, we could be waiting for a while. Worse, all the other applications that are writing data may end up waiting for it to complete as well. In artificial, but not entirely impossible, test conditions, those delays can be 30 seconds or more. That experience, to coin a phrase, kinda sucks. Does it suck as much as file corruption wiping out your bookmarks after your computer (not Firefox) crashes? As you might imagine, opinions vary."

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