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Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 09:36:30 +0100
From: Helge Hafting <helgehaf@aitel.hist.no>
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To: Bruno Diniz de Paula <diniz@cs.rutgers.edu>
CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: How to bypass buffer caches?
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Bruno Diniz de Paula wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I've sent some messages about using O_DIRECT to read files, but I
> suppose that is not possible using 2.4 kernel and ext2. So I was
> wondering which other alternatives I have to bypass the buffer cache of
> the kernel.

You don't say why you need this.  I recommend that you
simply don't use a filesystem - use a partition like
/dev/hda5 without a filesystem and read/write diskblocks
to and from it.

Without a filesystem you decide what data goes in what disk block,
and of course no fs cache gets in the way.

Transfering data between a range of blocks on a partition
and a ordinary file is easy - use the dd command.

file->partition
dd if=yourfile of=/dev/hdaX bs=4096 seek=<number of first block you want
to use> 

partition->file
dd if=/dev/hdaX of=yourfile bs=4096 skip=<number of first disk block you
want copied> count=<total number of blocks>


Helge Hafting
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