From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Apr 21 8:13: 2 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from chmod.ath.cx (CC2-861.charter-stl.com [24.217.115.99]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F32B637B422 for ; Sat, 21 Apr 2001 08:13:00 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from ajh3@chmod.ath.cx) Received: by chmod.ath.cx (Postfix, from userid 1001) id E86BAA924; Sat, 21 Apr 2001 10:12:20 -0500 (CDT) Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 10:12:20 -0500 From: Andrew Hesford To: David O'Brien Cc: Alfred Perlstein , niek@bergboer.net Subject: Re: UFS block size vs. write speed Message-ID: <20010421101220.A4459@cec.wustl.edu> References: <20010420144543.F30241@wit379119.student.utwente.nl> <20010420055426.Q1790@fw.wintelcom.net> <20010420152029.A35974@wit379119.student.utwente.nl> <20010420093530.A98970@cec.wustl.edu> <20010420075203.T1790@fw.wintelcom.net> <20010420104748.A99196@cec.wustl.edu> <20010421080120.C72704@dragon.nuxi.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <20010421080120.C72704@dragon.nuxi.com>; from freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org on Sat, Apr 21, 2001 at 08:01:20AM -0700 X-Loop: Andrew Hesford Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sat, Apr 21, 2001 at 08:01:20AM -0700, David O'Brien wrote: > On Fri, Apr 20, 2001 at 10:47:48AM -0500, Andrew Hesford wrote: > > I do see both synchronous writes and asynchronous writes on my > > filesystem (as reported by mount); what are these? > > The default mount is "nosync". synchronous metadata, asynchronous data. > Compare with the "async" and "sync" mount options. Hey, thanks for the info. The synchronous metadata explains why, when I first started using FreeBSD, it took ages to delete a highly-populated directory (it might have been the ports tree, or something that size). With soft updates, however, the deletion happens much quicker. Is this because soft updates does everything asynchronously, but in a structured (ordered) fashion? If so, how often is the cache flushed to disk, and is it user-configurable? -- Andrew Hesford ajh3@chmod.ath.cx To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message