Error Message

[Andrew Bennetts]

John Arbash Meinel wrote:
[...]
>
> I still don't understand how the file could be empty. We create it in 
> another directory, write to it, and then rename the directory into place.

Some filesystems will write metadata to disk before file contents.  For example,
I think this might be possible with ext3 with the “journal=writeback” option.
So it seems plausible to me that a system crash at the wrong moment on certain
systems will cause this.

The combination of “system crash at the wrong moment” and “on certain
systems” is probably about as rare as reports of this problem, so therefore I
must be right ;)

-Andrew.