From owner-freebsd-arch  Tue Oct 12 17:44:35 1999
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To: Warner Losh <imp@village.org>
Cc: David Scheidt <dscheidt@enteract.com>,
	Kirk McKusick <mckusick@flamingo.McKusick.COM>,
	Julian Elischer <julian@whistle.com>, Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>,
	Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com>,
	freebsd-arch@freebsd.org, committers@freebsd.org, current@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: The eventual fate of BLOCK devices. 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 12 Oct 1999 16:11:30 CST."
             <199910122211.QAA99359@harmony.village.org> 
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 08:40:59 +0800
From: Peter Wemm <peter@netplex.com.au>
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Warner Losh wrote:
> In message <Pine.NEB.3.96.991012165540.65198B-100000@shell-1.enteract.com> Da
    vid Scheidt writes:
> : It doesn't run on FreeBSD, but Sybase uses block devices for its dedicated
> : disk devices.  There may be other RDBMSes that do this. 
> 
> EVERY RDBMS that I've ever seen or had to make work with my drivers
> has been on the raw partition.  This is because the database writers
> DO NOT LIKE OR TRUST the buffer cache due to its non-deterministic
> nature of disk writing.  Are you sure that Sybase uses BLOCK devices
> and not CHAR devices?

Sybase is supposed to be run on char devices.  The Linux sybase release
notes refer to "Unfortunately Linux does not have raw (char) disk devices so
we have to make do".

Cheers,
-Peter





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