Re: IO stats in /proc/partitions

[Thomas Zimmerman <thomas@zimres.net>]

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On 05-May 11:10, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> On Sun, 5 May 2002, Denis Vlasenko wrote:
> 
[snip] 
> As you can probably guess, this sort of thing is one of the issues that
> my "COUGAR" proposal corrects. I leave design issues to the designers,
> but one thing I insist on is that there *be* requirements --
> *documented* requirements -- and a *documented* and debated design
> *before* hacking the code into the kernel and making implementation
> decisions.

...and here is where you sliped the track. Linux is designed by those
who post patches and lobby for thier use. If something doesn't work for
you post *patches* that fix it. Complaints that you don't have time to
work around current code gets you nothing. 

As far as I can see, the reason that staticis now live in 
/proc/partitions is that there was code _submitted_ (the sar patches) 
to collect the staticis. If you have a better patch I, for one, would 
love to see it. I don't think IO statistics shareing /proc/partitons 
is great *design* but it was thought it would break the least tools 
out there. 
> 
> Of course, since I would be the designer of at least part of "COUGAR", I
> would be making some of those decisions. Unfortunately, I have limited
> time to work on "COUGAR" until maybe late July, so if someone wants to
> pick up some of the balls and run with them, I'm willing to unload them.
> (Apologies if my metaphor jars those of you who live where football is
> played without the use of hands :).
> 
> This is a process I highly recommend for performance-determining parts
> of Linux, like memory management and the scheduler. I know the memory
> management and scheduler gurus -- Rik, Andrea, Ingo and others -- *have*
> designs in their heads, *have* requirements that they're working to -- I
> just think we should be sharing and debating *those* on the list instead
> of just code and benchmark results.

Everyone loves the debate, but if no code is ever show all we get out of
it _is_ the debate. How many times has this happened on this subject
(widely taken as the /proc/* debate)? I've seen lots of hot air, but
little code.

Just my take,
Thomas Zimmerman

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