At 5:38 PM -0600 3/7/07, Callum Lerwick wrote: >Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; > protocol="application/pgp-signature"; > boundary="=-NBtm2jjVAXM9+NXgmKWn" > >On Wed, 2007-03-07 at 12:55 -0500, Tony Nelson wrote: >> Microsoft already addressed that issue in WinXP, which has fancy hooks to >> the disk defragmenter so that there isn't much seeking when booting WinXP >> (it does take several days until the defrag happens). So I agree with >> Callum, and also dunno WTR MS is thinking. >> >> Probably readahead adopting what MS did in WinXP would be most effective >> but would also violate the most MS patents, as well as requiring hooking >> into the filesystem rather more than is wanted. Something like UnionFS >> might work without patent issues, if it could use a file instead of a hard >> partition. > >I don't see how they could patent defragging a disk. Lets not get crazy >here. ext3 does a decent job of not fragmenting files unnecessarily, can >we really gain much more than the current readahead solution? ... You don't understand the brilliance of what they did. They "refragment" the disk so that all disk I/O during boot is sequential, no matter what file is being read or what part of that file. This Microsoft paper seems relevent: _Fast System Startup for PCs Running Windows_. Look at the section "Prefetching": <http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/6/1/161ba512-40e2-4cc9-843a-923143f3456c/Fast%20System%20Startup%20for%20PCs%20Running%20Windows.doc> AIUI, WinXP doesn't prefetch whole files, but only the parts that would have been fetched anyway. Note that reading this paper won't increase Fedora / Redhat patent exposure, as it dosen't explicitly say which things are patented, though I expect that all of them are, so using any of them would be risky even without reading the paper. -- ____________________________________________________________________ TonyN.:' <mailto:tonynelson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> ' <http://www.georgeanelson.com/> -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
