[CJefferson]

This talk totally failed to properly discuss the issues of the various kinds of fsync, instead (it seems to me) just making a selection of vague comments. That is a shame, as really properly understanding file integrity is a really important issue, which is very easy to get very wrong.

When ext4 came out, I remember a large number of apps losing data, as the metadata and 'normal data' caches can get out of order, meaning that:

Write file B. Rename B -> A.

Can result (after a crash) in A being empty, as the rename can occur before the contents of B are actually written.

[Swannie]

Agreed. These slides are like "Disks are not memory 101". I'd hope the talk went into more details.

After an hour or so reading semi-related material I have an understanding that goes beyond these basics :-/