On Fri, 2006-03-03 at 16:11 +0800, Denis Solovyov wrote: > Not completely sure, but it seems that making huge rsync'ed > partitions "noatime" (/etc/fstab) slightly helps as well.
That may help by reducing the amount of atime hits while rsync is scanning for files and reading files. For reference, traversing a directory (i.e. that which requires x permission) does not hit its atime, but listing its entries with readdir does. --- For those with a special interest in filesystems: There are more reasons than efficiency to like noatime! I firmly believe that "reading shouldn't write": reading a file should not change anything on the filesystem. Plus, atimes are not very useful. In my experience with computers, I have often wanted to know when a file was last modified but never when it was last read. Atimes have a very limited use as a way for one person to track when other people have read his/her files, but they have three limitations in this regard. They don't say _who_ read the file (probably more important than when), the owner of a file can set its atime arbitrarily (utime) or read it without hitting its atime (O_NOATIME), and they (somewhat incongruously) are updated only when the filesystem is mounted read-write. Anyone can disable atime tracking on his/her files by setting the A ext2 attribute with chattr(1); I have done so to my files on all Linux computers I use. At a higher level, the sysadmin, in deciding whether to offer atime tracking to those users who want it, chooses one of two alternatives: (1) let you track when others read your files or (2) let you read other files on the system without leaving a trace. As a user, I would much rather have ability #2, but maybe that's just me. Users that really want to track when others read their files should set up a fancier system with configurable capabilities backed by setuid. -- Matt McCutchen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hashproduct.metaesthetics.net/ -- To unsubscribe or change options: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/rsync Before posting, read: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
