Undocumented features

[hansen at pegasus.UUCP]

When I saw the note about the file sync'ing undocumented feature, I thought
"Great! The people we have working on databases may have seen this, but if
they haven't, I'll pass the note on to them." They're replies:

> Person A:
> 
> Person B will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is a bit we had
> already heard about.  It would be quite useful, except for one minor
> problem - it was put in for kernel use, and while it writes the data block
> synchronously, it does NOT write the inode before returning to the user.  It
> was too bad, we thought we had found something useful before Person B spent
> a few hours on the phone to [the USG UNIX people].
> 
> Person B:
> 
> Person A is correct about the utility (or lack thereof) of this feature.
> Thanks for the information though.

So BEWARE! If you use this "undocumented feature". There's a reason for it
being undocumented!

					Tony Hansen
					pegasus!hansen