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Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 16:59:29 -0500
From: Brian Gerst <bgerst@didntduck.org>
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Subject: Re: Linux should better cope with power failure
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"Richard B. Johnson" wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 19 Mar 2001, Brian Gerst wrote:
> [SNIPPED...]
> 
> >
> > At the very least the disk should be consistent with memory.  If the
> > dirty pages aren't written back to the disk (but not necessarily removed
> > from memory) after a reasonable idle period, then there is room for
> > improvement.
> >
> 
> Hmmm. Now think about it a minute. You have a database operation
> with a few hundred files open, most of which will be deleted after
> a sort/merge completes. At the same time, you've got a few thousand
> directories with their ATIME being updated. Also, you have thousands
> of temporary files being created in /tmp during a compile that didn't
> use "-pipe".
> 
> If you periodically write everything to disk, you don't have many
> CPU cycles available to do anything useful.

Note the key words "reasonable idle period".  It was stated elsewhere
that this is the case already so it is a moot point.

--

				Brian Gerst
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