From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Nov 11 2:15:34 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from fw.wintelcom.net (ns1.wintelcom.net [209.1.153.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DF52A37B479 for ; Sat, 11 Nov 2000 02:15:31 -0800 (PST) Received: (from bright@localhost) by fw.wintelcom.net (8.10.0/8.10.0) id eABAFUF08846; Sat, 11 Nov 2000 02:15:30 -0800 (PST) Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2000 02:15:30 -0800 From: Alfred Perlstein To: Mike Batchelor Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Memory Caching Message-ID: <20001111021530.M11449@fw.wintelcom.net> References: <003201c04c8a$9209fda0$8ded4518@kldt1.bc.wave.home.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.4i In-Reply-To: <003201c04c8a$9209fda0$8ded4518@kldt1.bc.wave.home.com>; from smujohnson@home.com on Sun, Nov 12, 2000 at 01:25:31AM -0800 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG * Mike Batchelor [001111 01:25] wrote: > Hey guys, > > I recently tried to delete the /usr/ports directory off FreeBSD > for a fresh install.. and I was amazed at how long it took to delete > it. In fact, i never got around to finish removing it cause it > took so long. So.... is it possible that I'm not getting any > efficient memory caching? I have 128 Megs ram installed..and a > 20.4 gig HD /w 2048k cache.. > > To see actually how fast it was deleting, I was using "df" while > it was deleting and it said about 1 meg was deleted for every 5 > seconds. Is this normal? I remember how under Windows, it would > take seconds to delete large amounts of files. Can anyone help? > Thanks! > > PS - My `top` displays 12K Cache. I don't know if this helps. Thanks FreeBSD can not simply cache directory operations in RAM without the possibilty of severe data loss in the event of a crash without softupdates. So either: 1) read /usr/src/sys/ufs/ffs/README.softupdates and enable softupdates -or- 2) mount your filesystems 'async' which can cause serious problems if you happen to crash while it's 'async' option 1 is a better idea. :) you may also want to try this setting: sysctl -w vfs.vmiodirenable=1 But that will really only help if you've set softupdates or async. -- -Alfred Perlstein - [bright@wintelcom.net|alfred@freebsd.org] "I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on my desk." To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message