[$] PostgreSQL's fsync() surprise

Developers of database management systems are, by necessity, concernedabout getting data safely to persistent storage. So when the PostgreSQLcommunity found out that the way the kernel handles I/O errors could resultin data being lost without any errors being reported to user space, a fairamount of unhappiness resulted. The problem, which is exacerbated by theway PostgreSQL performs buffered I/O, turns out not to be unique to Linux,and will not be easy to solve even there.