Jan Kara wrote: > On Tue 05-02-08 10:07:44, Al Boldi wrote: > > Jan Kara wrote: > > > On Sat 02-02-08 00:26:00, Al Boldi wrote: > > > > Chris Mason wrote: > > > > > Al, could you please compare the write throughput from vmstat for > > > > > the data=ordered vs data=writeback runs? I would guess the > > > > > data=ordered one has a lower overall write throughput. > > > > > > > > That's what I would have guessed, but it's actually going up 4x fold > > > > for mysql from 559mb to 2135mb, while the db-size ends up at 549mb. > > > > > > So you say we write 4-times as much data in ordered mode as in > > > writeback mode. Hmm, probably possible because we force all the dirty > > > data to disk when committing a transation in ordered mode (and don't > > > do this in writeback mode). So if the workload repeatedly dirties the > > > whole DB, we are going to write the whole DB several times in ordered > > > mode but in writeback mode we just keep the data in memory all the > > > time. But this is what you ask for if you mount in ordered mode so I > > > wouldn't consider it a bug. > > > > Ok, maybe not a bug, but a bit inefficient. Check out this workload: > > > > sync; > > > > while :; do > > dd < /dev/full > /mnt/sda2/x.dmp bs=1M count=20 > > rm -f /mnt/sda2/x.dmp > > usleep 10000 > > done : : > > Do you think these 12mb redundant writeouts could be buffered? > > No, I don't think so. At least when I run it, number of blocks written > out varies which confirms that these 12mb are just data blocks which > happen to be in the file when transaction commits (which is every 5 > seconds). Just a thought, but maybe double-buffering can help? > And to satisfy journaling gurantees in ordered mode you must > write them so you really have no choice... Making this RFC rather useful. What we need now is an implementation, which should be easy. Maybe something on these lines: << in ext3_ordered_write_end >> if (current->soft_sync & 1) return ext3_writeback_write_end; << in ext3_ordered_writepage >> if (current->soft_sync & 2) return ext3_writeback_writepage; << in ext3_sync_file >> if (current->soft_sync & 4) return ret; << in ext3_file_write >> if (current->soft_sync & 8) return ret; As you can see soft_sync is masked and bits are ordered by importance. It would be neat if somebody interested could cook-up a patch. Thanks! -- Al - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html