Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1761155AbZC0WcU (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Mar 2009 18:32:20 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751949AbZC0WcI (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Mar 2009 18:32:08 -0400 Received: from smtp1.linux-foundation.org ([140.211.169.13]:44122 "EHLO smtp1.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752767AbZC0WcG (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Mar 2009 18:32:06 -0400 Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:25:56 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds X-X-Sender: torvalds@localhost.localdomain To: Jeff Garzik cc: Matthew Garrett , Alan Cox , Theodore Tso , Andrew Morton , David Rees , Jesper Krogh , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: Linux 2.6.29 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <20090327051338.GP6239@mit.edu> <20090327055750.GA18065@srcf.ucam.org> <20090327062114.GA18290@srcf.ucam.org> <20090327112438.GQ6239@mit.edu> <20090327145156.GB24819@srcf.ucam.org> <20090327150811.09b313f5@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> <20090327152221.GA25234@srcf.ucam.org> <20090327161553.31436545@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> <20090327162841.GA26860@srcf.ucam.org> <20090327165150.7e69d9e1@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> <20090327170208.GA27646@srcf.ucam.org> <49CD2C47.4040300@garzik.org> <49CD4DDF.3000001@garzik.org> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (LFD 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1057 Lines: 26 On Fri, 27 Mar 2009, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > The values are: 0 = off, 1 = normal, 2 = full. Of course, I don't actually know that "off" really means "never fsync". It may be that it only cuts down on the number of fsync's. I do know that firefox with the original defaults ("fsync everywhere") was totally unusable, and that got fixed. But maybe it got fixed to "only pauses occasionally" rather than "every single page load brings everything to a screetching halt". Of course, your browsing history database is an excellent example of something you should _not_ care about that much, and where performance is a lot more important than "ooh, if the machine goes down suddenly, I need to be 100% up-to-date". Using fsync on that thing was just stupid, even regardless of any ext3 issues. Linus -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/