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RE: DB corruption of first day of subversion

From: Mark <mark_at_msdhub.com>
Date: 2004-11-12 00:10:09 CET

I'm not a BDB advocate, and I think that FSFS will become the default in
some future version. It's even been said that FSFS is faster. My point was
simply that the volume of email about BDB vs the volume of email about FSFS
may be simply related to the ratio of users, and the volume of email about
BDB repo "corruption" may overstate the problems that might exist. For
example, this thread will get counted against the stability of the BDB
backend, when it seems likely that it was a hardware problem.

It's the evil you know versus the evil you don't.

Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: Greg Goodrich [mailto:ggoodrich@medinotes.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2004 1:39 PM
To: users@subversion.tigris.org
Subject: Re: DB corruption of first day of subversion

Mark wrote:

>Nearly all "corruption" issues with BDB are permissions issues that are
>easily avoided by following the documentation's instructions and easily
>corrected.
>
The key word of that prior sentence is "Nearly". Do permission issues
cause corruption in BDB? Evidently. Is that the only cause? Most
likely not. Are the rest caused by an outdated version of BDB? Not
likely all of them.

>Of the rest, almost all is caused by running outdated versions of
>BDB, esp 4.1 on OSX, and running BDB databases on network filesystems.
>
>Maybe FSFS is more highly stable, but it's got nowhere the exposure of the
>BDB FS, so judging the backends by search hits on this list for corruption
>isn't a super good idea.
>
>
Maybe not, but it should make you take note, and wonder if you'll be in
the same boat one day.

As I see it, it seems that the BDB advocates are trying to sell people
on a piece of equipment that is evidently very good and robust, but if
you happen to hit the wrong button at the wrong time, the thing
explodes. I think there is something inherently bad about that. Most
people don't desire to be BDB experts, and if it takes that much
understanding to make the thing work properly, then is it really worth
it? I tried to stay out of this thread (as I've done on many other
threads), but just couldn't resist. My config, other than the backend
switch to FSFS, did NOT change, yet I've had NO problems once switching
to FSFS. I couldn't even get converted over to Subversion using BDB,
and we've been successfully using it for about a month now using FSFS,
without issue. It is like someone telling me: "Trust me, if you walk
across those red hot coals the right way, they won't burn you!!!". I'll
simply walk around them.

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Received on Fri Nov 12 00:13:08 2004

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