> > In addition, big server boxes are usually not reading a huge *number* > of files per second. The place where you see this as a problem is (a) > compilation, thanks to huge /usr/include hierarchies (and here things > have gotten worse over time as include files have gotten much more > complex than in the early Unix days), and (b) silly desktop apps that > want to scan huge numbers of XML files or who want to read every > single image file on the desktop or in an open file browser window to > show c00l icons. Oh, and I guess I should include Maildir setups. > > If you are always reading from the same small set of files (i.e., a > database workload), then those inodes only get updated every 5 seconds > (the traditional/default metadata update sync time, as well as the > default ext3 journal update time), it's no big deal. Or if you are > running a mail server, most of the time the mail queue files are > getting updated anyway as you process them, and usually the mail is > delivered before 5 seconds is up anyway.
it's just one of those things that get compounded with journaling filesystems though..... a single async write that happens "sometime in the future" is one thing... having a full transaction (which acts as barrier and synchronisation point) is something totally worse. -- if you want to mail me at work (you don't), use arjan (at) linux.intel.com Test the interaction between Linux and your BIOS via http://www.linuxfirmwarekit.org - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
