From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S264352AbTLBUin (ORCPT ); Tue, 2 Dec 2003 15:38:43 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S264373AbTLBUiL (ORCPT ); Tue, 2 Dec 2003 15:38:11 -0500 Received: from dci.doncaster.on.ca ([66.11.168.194]:48545 "EHLO smtp.istop.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S264352AbTLBUe5 (ORCPT ); Tue, 2 Dec 2003 15:34:57 -0500 To: Jeff Garzik Cc: Greg Stark , Mike Fedyk , Erik Steffl , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: libata in 2.4.24? References: <3FCBB15F.7050505@rackable.com> <3FCBB9F1.2080300@bigfoot.com> <87n0abbx2k.fsf@stark.dyndns.tv> <20031202055336.GO1566@mis-mike-wstn.matchmail.com> <20031202055852.GP1566@mis-mike-wstn.matchmail.com> <87zneb9o5q.fsf@stark.dyndns.tv> <20031202180241.GB1990@gtf.org> <87iskz9hp6.fsf@stark.dyndns.tv> <20031202190646.GA9043@gtf.org> <877k1f9e1g.fsf@stark.dyndns.tv> <20031202201649.GB17779@gtf.org> In-Reply-To: <20031202201649.GB17779@gtf.org> From: Greg Stark Organization: The Emacs Conspiracy; member since 1992 Date: 02 Dec 2003 15:34:56 -0500 Message-ID: <87vfoz7ybz.fsf@stark.dyndns.tv> User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Jeff Garzik writes: > Some IDE _and/or_ SCSI drives do not cache writes. For these drives, > the _absence_ of an OS flush-cache command still means your data gets > to the platter. In theory you could have an IDE drive that didn't cache writes, or a SCSI drive that did. Except in practice it seems all IDE drives cache writes by default and perform like dogs if they don't. And in practice all SCSI drives appear to not cache writes and perform fine. I guess my question is whether a new round of ATA drives will be coming out where you can turn off write caching and still get decent performance because the interface is more SCSI-like with deep enough queues. If so they'll probably disable write caching altogether, but if they don't the user could always do it. And if such a new round of ATA drives will be coming out, exactly what should I be watching for. SATA alone isn't enough, what featureset will this feature come along with? > The core problem is not issuing a flush-cache command, it sounds like. > The drive technology (wcache, or no) is largely irrelevant. Well issuing a flush-cache is a much bigger performance hit than merely not caching the writes in the first place. There could be lots of other writes to other files in the system. In fact it's likely there are lots of other writes to other files in postgres itself, most of the time it's only fsyncing the transaction log. -- greg