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Date:      Tue, 27 Nov 2001 22:17:13 -0800
From:      Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com>
To:        freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Extreme filesystem sloth
Message-ID:  <m1lmgrzfzo.fsf@reader.newsguy.com>

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Not really a fully laptop type question but maybe related I guess.

4.3-STABLE on a Toshiba 4005 (Pentium II 233mhz)

Let me preface these remarks with a comment to set the tone.
This is not an attempt at starting a religous war a la 
linux vs FreeBSD.

I suspect what I see is the result of poor or misguided configs on my
part but have no clue what things to look at.

I only run FreeBSD on my laptop, and lately only use it occasionally.
So I'm much more accustomed to Linux or Solaris machines that I run
much more frequently.  The linux machine really gets the vast bulk of
use.  It is a celeron 400mhz so that may be part of what I'm seeing
here.  But I think I've noticed this to be generally true over several
version changes beginning around 3.4. 

The FreeBSD OS seems to be markedly slower at some kinds of fs
activity.  Inparticular, deleting directories seems to be incredibly
and unreasonably slow.

A few examples here may be in order.
This is a directory full of mail messages.  One message to a file.
   du -sh dir_test
      3.3M dir_test  

   time rm -rf dir_test
   real 0m26.192s
   user 0m0.000s
   sys  0m0.201s

Almost half a minute... isn't that a little ridiculous?

The same chore on the linux (400mhz)

  $ time rm -rf dir_test

   real    0m0.048s
   user    0m0.000s
   sys     0m0.040s

I understand the FreeBSD fs is said to be more robust and secure.  But
I wonder if what I see is even normal.  It seems just too grindingly
slow.  Deleting a 2-300MB directory is a major time sinkhole.

Look at this.

A directory full of directories full of mail messages, some 94MB takes
what is really an obscenely long time to remove.

   du -sh mail_test
   94M mail_test

   time rm -rf mail_test
      real 8m52.891s
      user 0m0.199s
      sys  0m3.950s

Almost nine minutes...  Can that even be right.

Trying it again:

a little better but still awfully slow:

   rm -rf mail_test
      real   7m13.484s
      user   0m0.117s
      sys    0m3.080s



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