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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!network.ucsd.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!kithrup!sef
From: sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: Take out fs cache!
Message-ID: <1992Jul17.101759.1119@kithrup.COM>
Date: 17 Jul 92 10:17:59 GMT
References: <ndadocs@sgi.sgi.com>
Organization: Kithrup Enterprises, Ltd.
Lines: 20

In article <ndadocs@sgi.sgi.com> rpw3@rigden.wpd.sgi.com (Rob Warnock) writes:
>Of course, you'll kill write performance for things that change a lot,
>like directories when you're unpacking a "tar" or "cpio" archive, but
>the filesystem will be "safer".

Directory writes occur synchronously.  Someone (M. Ohta, I think) presented
a paper at UseNIX a couple of years ago in which he created a /tmp
filesystem by disabling synchronous writes for directores, and thus got a
speedup.  He did not recommend doing this for a filesystem you did not mind
losing after a boot 8-).

Because of that, doing a sync() more often won't affect creating, renaming,
or unlinking files/directories, except that everything else will be slow as
well.

-- 
Sean Eric Fagan  | "My psychiatrist says I have a messiah
sef@kithrup.COM  |  complex.  But I forgive him."
-----------------+              -- Jim Carrey
Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others.