Re: [MiNT] MiNT, CT60 and power off

[Frank Naumann <fnaumann@mail.cs.uni-magdeburg.de>]

Hello!

> My problem is not only due to the shutdown of the Hades, but
> I'm a programmer and I make various tests. The faintest
> problem with programs, that causes a reset, can lead to a disk
> crash. File check at booting is not a real progress. Cancel
> the file system cache is a much better solution in my case.

You can't cancel the cache completly as otherwise the filesystems are non
operational. Even the good old TOS use caches.

Most problems with spurious crashs and caches come from the write-back
caching strategy, e.g. the writeout of modified cache data is delayed to
reduce and optimize disk access. That's why where is running the write
back daemon that flush the cashes in regular intervals (default is 5
seconds if I remember correctly).

You can on the FreeMiNT integrated filesystem (that are FATFS, ext2-fs,
minix-fs) explicitly disable the wite back caching (in the mint.cnf and
for sure at runtime; and for every drive specially.

The TOSFS (this is the GEMDOS FAT filesystem from the original TOS) use
it's own caching and have the well known limitations. It's deprecated
and not inclued in 1.16 anymore.

Btw. the FATFS have write-back disabled on default (except you explicitly
enable it in the mint.cnf).

I hope this clarify some things (especially as I'm sure you and Draco
mixed TOSFS and FATFS together).

Then I'm interested to see if the idea from Thomas influence the
behaviour.


Ciao
   ...Frank

--
ATARI FALCON 040 // MILAN 060
-----------------------------------------
http://www.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/~fnaumann/
e-Mail: fnaumann@freemint.de