From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1765066AbYEGTtp (ORCPT ); Wed, 7 May 2008 15:49:45 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752602AbYEGTte (ORCPT ); Wed, 7 May 2008 15:49:34 -0400 Received: from gv-out-0910.google.com ([216.239.58.190]:61875 "EHLO gv-out-0910.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751999AbYEGTtd (ORCPT ); Wed, 7 May 2008 15:49:33 -0400 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=message-id:date:from:to:subject:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition; b=se3LLKO2zH5A2Xy+jjA+watCAssWnCAE9s3Q+0RZGACGF2hdH8wesq7+shGfcumhy8m1OG2Ux/UzmOyhXhHEaRWfWywZwaJxcK57QC1La2tyskh8+xbbUYFyg5pQ75IhGU6JDALEOngiToaAKOHZTEfZSbVgjyUltNym4NCXcWY= Message-ID: <118833cc0805071249w36145eb6g7ed5c18d9fdf6fce@mail.gmail.com> Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 15:49:30 -0400 From: "Morten Welinder" To: linux-kernel Subject: Deleting large files MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Hi there, deleting large files, say on the order of 4.6GB, takes approximately forever. Why is that? Well, it is because a lot of things need to take place to free the formerly used space, but my real question is "why does the unlink caller have to wait for it?" I.e., could unlink do the directory changes and then hand off the rest of the task to a kernel thread? Morten