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Date:      Fri, 2 Oct 2009 10:17:24 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Richard Mahlerwein <mahlerrd@yahoo.com>
To:        freebsd-performance@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: A specific example of a disk i/o problem
Message-ID:  <969908.40235.qm@web51006.mail.re2.yahoo.com>

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>From: Dieter <freebsd@sopwith.solgatos.com>=0A>Subject: Re: A specific exa=
mple of a disk i/o problem=0A>To: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org=0A>Date: =
Friday, October 2, 2009, 1:07 AM=0A>=0A>Updated demo, just to make sure:=0A=
>=0A># big_file is larger than main memory, on same disk as man (/usr)=0A>t=
ime man de=A0=A0=A0 =A0=A0=A0 # get baseline time for man command without >=
competing i/o=0A>cat big_file > /dev/null=A0=A0=A0# flush man command and d=
ata from memory=0A>cat big_file > /dev/null &=A0# generate i/o, attempt to =
use up bottleneck=0A>time man de=A0 =A0=A0=A0 # see how much longer man tak=
es with competing >i/o=0A=0ATrying it on something that surely will have i/=
o issues: PIII 500 w/ 60 GB PATA drive and 128 MB RAM.  Blank minimal insta=
ll + man pages right now.  I'm trying with a "file /etc/" command instead o=
f trying to reliably time man... It seems the file command always hits the =
disk.  This should also make any sort of "flushing" unecessary, shouldn't i=
t?=0A=0Aliebnitz# uname -a=0AFreeBSD xyz 7.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE #0=
: Fri May  1 08:49:13 UTC 2009     root@walker.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr=
/src/sys/GENERIC  i386=0A=0Aliebnitz# time dd if=3D/dev/zero of=3D/usr/bigf=
ile count=3D4096 bs=3D1M=0A4096+0 records in=0A4096+0 records out=0A4294967=
296 bytes transferred in 363.700967 secs (11809062 bytes/sec)=0A0.055u 83.9=
71s 6:03.78 23.0%    25+1071k 128+34391io 0pf+0w=0A=0Aliebnitz# time file /=
etc/ [run 5 times]=0A4.052u 0.047s 0:04.14 98.7%     15+1085k 0+0io 0pf+0w=
=0A4.068u 0.031s 0:04.13 99.0%     16+1095k 0+0io 0pf+0w=0A4.052u 0.046s 0:=
04.13 99.0%     16+1101k 0+0io 0pf+0w=0A4.044u 0.054s 0:04.13 99.0%     16+=
1092k 0+0io 0pf+0w=0A4.052u 0.046s 0:04.13 99.0%     15+1091k 0+0io 0pf+0w=
=0A=0AOk, so that looks pretty repeatable.  Now...=0Aliebnitz# cat /usr/big=
file > /dev/null &=0A[1] 37923=0Aliebnitz# time file /etc/* [again run 5 ti=
mes]=0A4.146u 0.038s 0:06.80 61.3%     15+1103k 87+0io 8pf+0w=0A4.128u 0.05=
4s 0:06.73 61.9%     15+1095k 93+0io 6pf+0w=0A =0A=0A=0A=0A=0AFlush as exam=
ple.=0Aliebnitz# cat /usr/bigfile > /dev/null=0Aliebnitz# cat /usr/bigfile =
> /dev/null &=0A[1] 37890=0A=0A=0A=0A      



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