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Date:      Mon, 12 Mar 2001 15:06:23 -0800
From:      Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net>
To:        Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
Cc:        Soren Schmidt <sos@freebsd.dk>, Kevin Oberman <oberman@es.net>, scsi@FreeBSD.ORG, gibbs@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Disk I/O problem in 4.3-BETA
Message-ID:  <20010312150623.D18351@fw.wintelcom.net>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0103130909370.2425-100000@besplex.bde.org>; from bde@zeta.org.au on Tue, Mar 13, 2001 at 09:17:47AM %2B1100
References:  <20010312132922.Y18351@fw.wintelcom.net> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0103130909370.2425-100000@besplex.bde.org>

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* Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au> [010312 14:18] wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Mar 2001, Alfred Perlstein wrote:
> 
> > > > Mr ATA, is there no ATA command to "syncronize cache" like in SCSI?
> > > 
> > > Yes, there is, and the ATA driver even uses it, the problem is WHEN
> > > to use it. I originally made it flush the cache if a write contained
> > > the BIO_ORDERED bit, but that doesn't work with softupdates..
> > > If somebody can come up with a way to tell me when I need to flush
> > > the write cache, then I'll happily add that..
> > 
> > Justin, I've heard that SCSI knows when to send sync-cache commands
> > to the disks, how does the driver know when to do this based on 
> > the bio request?
> > 
> > It'd be nice to get this fixed for 4.3 because I've noticed terrible
> > perf for laptops because of the complete lack of write caching... :(
> 
> I just put "options ATA_ENABLE_WC" in all my config files.  Changing
> the default for write caching from enabled to disabled in rev.1.92 of
> ata_disk.c was a huge pessimisation, but it is probably currently
> required for soft updates.  I don't use soft updates ...

Afaik it's also required by normal non-async mounts.  Basically
if you let the disk lie about write completetion you might as well
be running fully async.

-- 
-Alfred Perlstein - [bright@wintelcom.net|alfred@freebsd.org]
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