From: Peter Zijlstra Subject: Re: [ext3][kernels >= 2.6.20.7 at least] KDE going comatose when FS is under heavy write load (massive starvation) Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 14:30:58 +0200 Message-ID: <1177677058.28223.11.camel@twins> References: <1177660767.6567.41.camel@Homer.simpson.net> <20070427013350.d0d7ac38.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <698310e10704270459t7663d39dp977cf055b8db9d2a@mail.gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Andrew Morton , Mike Galbraith , LKML , Linus Torvalds , Jens Axboe , "linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org" To: Marat Buharov Return-path: Received: from amsfep17-int.chello.nl ([213.46.243.15]:43670 "EHLO amsfep12-int.chello.nl" rhost-flags-OK-FAIL-OK-FAIL) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755750AbXD0MbE (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Apr 2007 08:31:04 -0400 In-Reply-To: <698310e10704270459t7663d39dp977cf055b8db9d2a@mail.gmail.com> Sender: linux-ext4-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-ext4.vger.kernel.org On Fri, 2007-04-27 at 15:59 +0400, Marat Buharov wrote: > On 4/27/07, Andrew Morton wrote: > > Aside: why the heck do applications think that their data is so important > > that they need to fsync it all the time. I used to run a kernel on my > > laptop which had "return 0;" at the top of fsync() and fdatasync(). Most > > pleasurable. > > So, if having fake fsync() and fdatasync() is pleasurable for laptop > and desktop, may be it's time to add option into Kconfig which > disables normal fsync behaviour in favor of robust desktop? Nah, just teaching user-space to behave themselves should be sufficient; there is just no way kicker can justify doing a fdatasync(), I mean, come on its just showing a friggin menu. I have always wondered why that thing was so damn slow, like it needs to fetch stuff like that from all four corners of disk, feh! Just sliding over a sub-menu can take more than a second; I mean, it _really_ is just faster to just start things from your favourite shell. No way is globally disabling fsync() a good thing. I guess Andrew just is a sucker for punishment :-)