Re: fdatasync() error in shred from coreutils-5.2.1 on AIX 5.2

[Albert Chin]

On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 10:35:37PM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
> Albert Chin <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > shred from coreutils-5.2.1 on an AIX 5.2 system. /dev/lv00 is a JFS volume:
> > ...
> >   /tmp/gshred: /dev/lv00: fsync: A system call received a parameter that is 
> > not valid.
> > ...
> >               if (fdatasync (fd) < 0 && fsync (fd) < 0)
> >
> > fdatasync(fd) is giving the error.
> 
> From the code, it appears that fdatasync and fsync are both failing,
> and that the error message is coming from fsync.  EINVAL means
> that fd "does not refer to a file on which this operation is possible".
> So I guess that AIX 5.2 JFS volumes don't support fsync.

According to the man page for fcntl:
  The fsync subroutine is unsuccessful if one or more of the following
  are true:

  ...

  EINVAL The file is not a regular file.

> If JFS is hostile to shredding, can't you shred the underlying disks
> instead?  With 'shred', you're better off the closer you get to the
> actual device.

We had a customer try with a disk device (/dev/hdisk1) and it gave the
same error. We used a JFS volume for testing to try to duplicate their
error.

-- 
albert chin (address@hidden)