From: Ted Ts'o Subject: Re: Severe slowdown caused by jbd2 process Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2011 15:16:03 -0500 Message-ID: <20110124201603.GA5131@thunk.org> References: <1295620109.22802.1.camel@tybalt> <20110121143145.GB11313@dhcp231-156.rdu.redhat.com> <20110121235641.GM3043@thunk.org> <4D3A2EC6.3020700@shiftmail.org> <20110122013415.GN3043@thunk.org> <4D3B03FA.4040604@shiftmail.org> <4D3B66AB.6030102@shiftmail.org> <20110123051718.GA3237@thunk.org> <4D3C76BE.3090908@shiftmail.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: Josef Bacik , Jon Leighton , linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org To: torn5 Return-path: Received: from thunk.org ([69.25.196.29]:47198 "EHLO thunker.thunk.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751342Ab1AXUQM (ORCPT ); Mon, 24 Jan 2011 15:16:12 -0500 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4D3C76BE.3090908@shiftmail.org> Sender: linux-ext4-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 07:43:10PM +0100, torn5 wrote: > I thought it was possible via the completion notifications from the disk. > AFAIK if a disk is in NCQ mode it will return completion for a > command only when the write was really delivered to the platters. > While in non-NCQ mode the disk immediately returns completion and > caches the write. Is this correct? No, that's not correct. The completion notification from the disk is merely that the DMA has completed. It does not mean that the data has hit the platters. This is true in both NCQ and non-NCQ mode. You can disable the write cache (which is what I think you're thinking about), but the performance hit is pretty significant on standard HDD's. - Ted