From owner-freebsd-current Mon Nov 17 12:56:12 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id MAA14006 for current-outgoing; Mon, 17 Nov 1997 12:56:12 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-current) Received: from phouka.oss.uswest.net (phouka.oss.uswest.net [204.147.85.48]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id MAA13998 for ; Mon, 17 Nov 1997 12:56:07 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from brett@phouka.oss.uswest.net) Received: from phouka.oss.uswest.net (localhost.uswest.net [127.0.0.1]) by phouka.oss.uswest.net (8.8.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id OAA19807; Mon, 17 Nov 1997 14:54:42 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <199711172054.OAA19807@phouka.oss.uswest.net> To: chuckr@Glue.umd.edu Cc: npp@neg-micon.dk, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: async fs? In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 17 Nov 1997 12:23:38 EST." <199711171723.MAA28442@earth.mat.net> Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 14:54:41 -0600 From: Brett Rabe Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Mon, 17 Nov 1997 12:23:38 EST, chuckr@Glue.umd.edu wrote: >On 17 Nov, Nicolai Petri wrote: >> I read something about mounting a drive in async mode, I wondered if this >> will give me a performance increase on my proxy server.. And is it possible >> to do it on all filesystems ?? >> >Are you aware that losing your system while you are running async is >usually fairly safe (often you lose no files, or if you were very busy >doing disk activity, maybe a few), but if you are mounted async, you >could possibly lose much, much more? It'll certainly increase >performance, but you'd better be willing to pay the price. Sure, you increase your risk of damage in the event of a system failure. But it's definitely worth it in certain cases. For example, I switch all of my news servers' spool filesystems -- spool only -- to async for the duration of the nightly expire. It dramatically speeds up the expire time, and the risk is acceptable. If I lose one news machine for the length of time it takes me to re-newfs and populate the machine... big deal. We've done this for nearly a year without ever experiencing a total failure of the filesystem. Once in that year the machine crashed during the expire, and aside from a rather lengthy fsck, everything recovered just fine. Brett --- Brett Rabe Email : brett@uswest.net Systems Administrator - !nteract Services Phone : 612.664.3078 600 Stinson Blvd. Pager : 612.613.2549 Minneapolis, MN USA 55413 Fax : 612.664.4770 If you aren't the lead dog, the view is always the same.