From owner-freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Oct 28 11:56:12 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0778316A4CE for ; Thu, 28 Oct 2004 11:56:12 +0000 (GMT) Received: from web41203.mail.yahoo.com (web41203.mail.yahoo.com [66.218.93.36]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id B069C43D5E for ; Thu, 28 Oct 2004 11:56:11 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from arne_woerner@yahoo.com) Message-ID: <20041028115611.96139.qmail@web41203.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [83.129.193.23] by web41203.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Thu, 28 Oct 2004 04:56:11 PDT Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 04:56:11 -0700 (PDT) From: Arne "Wörner" To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="0-1005613650-1098964571=:95408" X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.1 Subject: ffs permormance X-BeenThere: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Filesystems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 11:56:12 -0000 --0-1005613650-1098964571=:95408 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Id: Content-Disposition: inline Hi! I did some tests on a freshly booted system (FreeBSD 5.2-CURRENT-20040408). I turned off hw.ata.wc via /boot/loader.conf successfully(?). Can somebody tell me, why 'atacontrol(8)' tells me, that "write cache" is enabled (yes)? Sometimes it is disabled (no), but not always. Sometimes atacontrol says, that ad0 has write cache disabled while atacontrol says that ad1 has write cache enabled... Is atacontrol wrong? At least in the beginning big writes to a new file (~64MB) are slow with hw.ata.wc=0 (with hw.ata.wc=1 such writes are fast). The subsequent fsync(1) to that new file did not take much time. But: After a long read (~64MB) from /dev/ad1 the following long write is as fast as with hw.ata.wc=1 before the test (see b.out.bz2). I gathered the sysctl variables (see diff in sc.diff.bz2) Can somebody explain me, why ffs behaves better after a long read? Maybe ffs simulates in kernel memory a hard disc write cache after a long read, so that the writes can be done in a more efficient order? Thank you. Bye Arne __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo --0-1005613650-1098964571=:95408--