[Metakit] Metakit bug, could be critical

[Jack Diederich]

On Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 01:18:52AM +0100, Jean-Claude Wippler wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> It looks like there is a scenario in which Metakit can damage a  
> datafile on commit (for a certain interpretation of "damage", see  
> below):
> 
> - the file is growing, i.e. needs to be extended
> - there is an error in the very first write
>   (could be, perhaps: disk full)
> - some subsequent write succeeds
>   (if the disk full condition ends, even briefly)
> - the file is closed and re-opened
> 
[snip]
> 
> Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

So many other things go horribly wrong when a disk is full I
don't think you can be faulted for this one.  I recently had a
linux partition go read-only due to a hardware problem.  It was
my /var/ partition and many daemons started refusing connections
for the sole reason that they couldn't write to their log files!

-Jack