From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Aug 13 16:34:47 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA07155 for questions-outgoing; Wed, 13 Aug 1997 16:34:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from implode.root.com (implode.root.com [198.145.90.17]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA07147 for ; Wed, 13 Aug 1997 16:34:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from implode.root.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by implode.root.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA19513; Wed, 13 Aug 1997 16:36:44 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199708132336.QAA19513@implode.root.com> To: Paul Dekkers cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD is slower than Linux !? In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 14 Aug 1997 00:43:04 +0200." From: David Greenman Reply-To: dg@root.com Date: Wed, 13 Aug 1997 16:36:44 -0700 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > Linux FreeBSD >dd 2.61 4.95 dd if=/dev/zero of=/test bs=1024 count=5000 >gzip 12.50 11.01 gzip -9 test >gunzip 3.86 8.12 >sync 4.21 0.9 -> So it seems FreeBSD writes everything to > disk directly?! WHY? This makes FreeBSD > much slower! >unzips 4.45 41.92 decompress the sendmail distr >compil 353.79 371.87 compile sendmail (makesendmail) > >Yes, I used the same (slow) disk on my i486 >But I was really surprised discovering that FreeBSD is much slower in disk >access than Linux, so why is the filesystem called FFS (fast-filesystem?!) >;-) > >But, my main question -> I think FreeBSD is that slow because it writes >everything to disk directly, without a good cache. Why is this like it is? >This does not make FreeBSD very attractive for me to use as a fileserver >(nfs or samba) or e.g. a mail server. If you don't mind the potential for filesystem corruption, you can enable async updates with the "async" mount option. This will give you the behavior you desire at the risk of losing everything if the system should crash at the wrong time. -DG David Greenman Core-team/Principal Architect, The FreeBSD Project