From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1765416AbXHDVEV (ORCPT ); Sat, 4 Aug 2007 17:04:21 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1760053AbXHDVEM (ORCPT ); Sat, 4 Aug 2007 17:04:12 -0400 Received: from mx3.mail.elte.hu ([157.181.1.138]:45370 "EHLO mx3.mail.elte.hu" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1759946AbXHDVEL (ORCPT ); Sat, 4 Aug 2007 17:04:11 -0400 Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2007 23:03:51 +0200 From: Ingo Molnar To: Alan Cox Cc: J??rn Engel , Jeff Garzik , Linus Torvalds , Peter Zijlstra , linux-mm@kvack.org, Linux Kernel Mailing List , miklos@szeredi.hu, akpm@linux-foundation.org, neilb@suse.de, dgc@sgi.com, tomoki.sekiyama.qu@hitachi.com, nikita@clusterfs.com, trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no, yingchao.zhou@gmail.com, richard@rsk.demon.co.uk, david@lang.hm Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/23] per device dirty throttling -v8 Message-ID: <20070804210351.GA9784@elte.hu> References: <20070804070737.GA940@elte.hu> <20070804103347.GA1956@elte.hu> <20070804163733.GA31001@elte.hu> <46B4C0A8.1000902@garzik.org> <20070804191205.GA24723@lazybastard.org> <20070804192130.GA25346@elte.hu> <20070804211156.5f600d80@the-village.bc.nu> <20070804202830.GA4538@elte.hu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20070804202830.GA4538@elte.hu> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.14 (2007-02-12) X-ELTE-VirusStatus: clean X-ELTE-SpamScore: -1.0 X-ELTE-SpamLevel: X-ELTE-SpamCheck: no X-ELTE-SpamVersion: ELTE 2.0 X-ELTE-SpamCheck-Details: score=-1.0 required=5.9 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=no SpamAssassin version=3.0.3 -1.0 BAYES_00 BODY: Bayesian spam probability is 0 to 1% [score: 0.0000] Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org * Ingo Molnar wrote: > noatime,nodiratime gave 50% of wall-clock kernel rpm build performance > improvement for Dave Jones, on a beefy box. Unless i misunderstood > what you meant under 'fraction of a percent' your numbers are _WAY_ > off. Atime updates are a _huge everyday deal_, from laptops to > servers. Everywhere on the planet. Give me a Linux desktop anywhere > and i can tell you whether it has atimes on or off, just by clicking > around and using apps (without looking at the mount options). That's > how i notice it that i forgot to turn off atime on any newly installed > system - the system has weird desktop lags and unnecessary disk > trashing. i cannot over-emphasise how much of a deal it is in practice. Atime updates are by far the biggest IO performance deficiency that Linux has today. Getting rid of atime updates would give us more everyday Linux performance than all the pagecache speedups of the past 10 years, _combined_. it's also perhaps the most stupid Unix design idea of all times. Unix is really nice and well done, but think about this a bit: ' For every file that is read from the disk, lets do a ... write to the disk! And, for every file that is already cached and which we read from the cache ... do a write to the disk! ' tell that concept to any rookie programmer who knows nothing about kernels and the answer will be: 'huh, what? That's gross!'. And Linux does this unconditionally for everything, and no, it's not only done on some high-security servers that need all sorts of auditing enabled that logs every file read - no, it's done by 99% of the Linux desktops and servers. For the sake of some lazy mailers that could now be using inotify, and for the sake of ... nothing much, really - forensics software perhaps. Ingo