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Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 21:41:21 -0300 (BRT)
From: Rik van Riel <riel@conectiva.com.br>
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To: Adam Kropelin <akropel1@rochester.rr.com>
cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@zip.com.au>, lkml <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [patch 1/21] random fixes
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On Sun, 11 Aug 2002, Adam Kropelin wrote:

> fast IBM disk. Filesystem was ext3 in data=ordered mode. Test workload
> was an inbound (from the point of view of the system under test) FTP
> transfer of a 600 MB iso image. All test runs were from a clean boot
> with all unnecessary services shut down.

> machine stalled (FTP transfer halted, vmstat output paused, etc.). With
> 2.5.31-akpm, the stalls were about 3-4 seconds in length. With 2.5.31,
> the stalls were of the same duration, but slightly less frequent. With

Definately some writeout sillyness.  Why would we ever stop
writing pages to disk while a transfer is going on and then
suddenly decide to stall the system because pages are being
dirtied at a rate faster than we write them ?

If we can smooth out the writing we can keep the disks busy
all the time and should in theory perform better. I wonder
why Andrew made the writeout in 2.5 _more_ bursty ...

regards,

Rik
-- 
Bravely reimplemented by the knights who say "NIH".

http://www.surriel.com/		http://distro.conectiva.com/

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