From: "Leon Woestenberg" Subject: commit only journal entries older than commit period? Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 15:31:29 +0200 Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from wx-out-0506.google.com ([66.249.82.235]:7176 "EHLO wx-out-0506.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752449AbXEINb3 (ORCPT ); Wed, 9 May 2007 09:31:29 -0400 Received: by wx-out-0506.google.com with SMTP id h31so180599wxd for ; Wed, 09 May 2007 06:31:29 -0700 (PDT) Content-Disposition: inline Sender: linux-ext4-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-ext4.vger.kernel.org Hello all, this is something I have long wondered about but have been afraid to ask. When my system is chewing away on builds, the disk I/O write access pattern of my ext3 root filesystem (using CFQ, Intel SATA controller, hard disk) when visualized by GNOME System Monitor clearly shows a repetitive landscape of large peaks, 5 seconds apart, which not much activity inbetween. I understand that's due to the ex3 journal commit interval (defaults to 5 seconds). But why isn't the filesystem continuously committing only that part of the journal that is older than 5 seconds? I would then expect the write requests to be smoothened over time, which can only be good in terms of performance and low latency. Regards, -- Leon