Re: [PATCH] 2.4.8-pre3 fsync entire path (+reiserfs fsync semantic

[Andrew Morton]

Matthias Andree wrote:
> 
> aren't we already at the point that ext3 fsync() flushes
> the corresponding dirents?

_any_ synchronous operation on ext3 has flushed _everything_
by the time it returns to the caller.  Every last little bit
is on disk.

This applies to fsync() against any file/dir, write() on an
O_SYNC file, any metadata operation or write() against a `chattr +S'
object, any metadata operation or write() against a `mount -o sync'
filesystem and msync().

The only exception is pageout of mmap'ed files - you'll need to
run msync() to guarantee that these are crashproofed.