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From: jhenders@bogon.com (John Henders)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Linux vs FreeBSD disk io performance
Date: 17 Oct 1996 04:59:01 -0700
Organization: Bogon Research
Lines: 23
Message-ID: <545725$8t2@stdismas.bogon.com>
References: <86g23ey1uc.fsf@romulus.ihosteng.priv.no>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.development.system:33627 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:29442
In <86g23ey1uc.fsf@romulus.ihosteng.priv.no> Ivar Hosteng <ivarh@romulus.ihosteng.priv.no> writes:
After doing this try the df command or a ls -l
>on both systems. On the FreeBSD system I barly notice that something
>is going on. The linux systems feals realy clumsy. This is on the same
>machine.
>Can someone explain this different behaviour?
Yes, it's a "feature" of the gnu ls that linux uses as the system df
command. Gnu df sync's the disk before stat'ing it, so linux has to
flush all the pending disk buffers. Obviously, during something like a
news expire, this flush can take a long time.
There was a patch posted a long time ago to remove this behaviour from
df but I can't remember where or when.
--
Artificial Intelligence stands no chance against Natural Stupidity.
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