[Philip Martin] > If we had such a flag in fsfs.conf (Stefan suggests > "eat-my-data=yes") the code could write all the same data in the same > order but avoid making any flush calls thus allowing the OS to order > physical writes for optimum speed.
Given the main use case is a distinct svnadmin operation, we could just recommend the 'eatmydata' binary (I'm guessing this is what Stefan was thinking of when he suggested that option name) which uses an ELF preload trick to transparently disable syscalls like fsync() and fdatasync(). http://packages.debian.org/sid/eatmydata https://launchpad.net/libeatmydata It apparently works on Linux and Solaris. Don't know if that's enough coverage for general interest. Anyway, on Debian at least, you can then run eatmydata svnadmin load -q /tmp/dumpfile ... Given this more general solution that IMO sysadmins should have in their toolbox anyway, I'm +1 on publicising it a bit more, and -0 on reimplementing it in svnadmin/libsvn_repos/libsvn_fs. Peter