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Message-ID: <20051208161525.88155.qmail@web34104.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 08:15:25 -0800 (PST)
From: Kenny Simpson <theonetruekenny@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: nfs question - ftruncate vs pwrite
To: Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no>
Cc: Peter Staubach <staubach@redhat.com>,
       linux kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
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--- Trond Myklebust <trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no> wrote:
> That is as expected. The ftruncate() causes an immediate change in
> length of the file on the server, and so reads will. In the case of
> pwrite(), that is cached on the client until you fsync/close, and so the
> server returns short reads.
> 
> > Since this is using the buffer cache (not opened with O_DIRECT), and since we know we are
> > extending the file... is it strictly necessary to read in pages of 0's from the server?
> 
> Possibly not, but is this a common case that is worth optimising for?

I am attempting to write a low-latency logger.  'Low' meaning a system call is too slow (measured
at 0.3 microseconds) for each message.  So I am trying to use the page cache to handle the
background scheduling of bulk writes to the server, and as an extra layer of reliability in the
event of a program crash.  The use of pwrite seems to be the best option at this time as spending
a few milliseconds for an ftruncate to a show-stopper.

I could also just write locally into a shared memory region, and have my own background copy to
the server, but this seems a bit wasteful when the page cache does most of this already, and can
optimize page-sized writes.

-Kenny


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