Date:        Sat, 16 Mar 2002 23:07:43 -0800
    From:        Brian de Alwis <bsd@cs.ubc.ca>
    Message-ID:  <20020317070743.GB2747@slab.gascol.cs.ubc.ca>

  | Does that mean that a write operation can fail, but seem to
  | succeed (no failure error-code for the write(2))?  Or is because
  | many programs ignore the write(2) return-results?

Application writes, data goes to buffer cache (or UBC equivalent thereof),
write() returns, no error.

Sometime later, blocks are to be flushed to storage (NFS server in this case)
server doesn't answer, NFS client code retries a few times, and gives up.
Data discarded.

Application has long gone...

kre