# crash proof / recovery from power loss 3 messages from 2009-06-23 to 2009-06-25. Participants: Sascha Silbe, Jakub Narebski, Martin Langhoff. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/19911 ## Sascha Silbe, 2009-06-23 21:05 Subject: crash proof / recovery from power loss Message-ID: <20090623210556.GB31015@twin.sascha.silbe.org> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20090623210556.GB31015%40twin.sascha.silbe.org ``` Hi! I'm going to use git as a back end for the Sugar data store / Journal. [1] One thing I'm worried about is how it's going to behave if a crash (e.g. power loss - no corruption) occurs. What can happen in such a case? Is it always recoverable and if so, how? [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Version_support_for_datastore CU Sascha -- http://sascha.silbe.org/ http://www.infra-silbe.de/ ``` ## Jakub Narebski, 2009-06-25 13:11 Subject: Re: crash proof / recovery from power loss Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/m37hz0xxuq.fsf%40localhost.localdomain In-Reply-To: <20090623210556.GB31015@twin.sascha.silbe.org> ``` Sascha Silbe writes: > I'm going to use git as a back end for the Sugar data store / > Journal. [1] > > One thing I'm worried about is how it's going to behave if a crash > (e.g. power loss - no corruption) occurs. > What can happen in such a case? Is it always recoverable and if so, how? > > > [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Version_support_for_datastore In Git all operations are atomic. In most cases Git uses the following 'trick': it first downloads/saves/creates data, and only then automatically update information that it is available. So crash would result in some unreachanble objects, which would go away on prune. In some cases Git uses locks to ensure atomicity. I don't know what happens with locks after a crash... -- Jakub Narebski Poland ShadeHawk on #git ``` ## Martin Langhoff, 2009-06-25 13:31 Subject: Re: crash proof / recovery from power loss Message-ID: <46a038f90906250631k5e702f66g50a6e60db8bab856@mail.gmail.com> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/46a038f90906250631k5e702f66g50a6e60db8bab856%40mail.gmail.com In-Reply-To: <20090623210556.GB31015@twin.sascha.silbe.org> ``` On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 11:05 PM, Sascha Silbe wrote: > I'm going to use git as a back end for the Sugar data store / Journal. [1] > One thing I'm worried about is how it's going to behave if a crash (e.g. power loss - no corruption) occurs. > What can happen in such a case? Is it always recoverable and if so, how? Git is outrageously good in keeping things sane. On that front, you won't see any problems. Now... there is one area where it will hurt lots: storing large binary blobs. Git assumes that every file is very small in comparison with available physical memory. - Sugar utilities already can create files larger than available memory. Think Record.xo, etoys, etc. - Many sugar target platforms are _very_ memory constrained. XO-1 being the prime example. Lots of what git does would be good in the Journal. But some of the core assumptions are not well matched. There are some tunables in git that might help. And maybe you can sidestep the harder corners of the problem by having a threshold, and handling large files separately. hth, m -- martin.langhoff@gmail.com martin@laptop.org -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ```