Re: [PATCH] ide write barriers

[Marc-Christian Petersen <m.c.p@wolk-project.de>]

On Wednesday 05 February 2003 17:33, Jens Axboe wrote:

Hi Jens,

> Sure, I had that one already. BTW, I discovered that the default io
thank you :)

> scheduler forgets to honor the cmd_flags, it's supposed to break like
> the noop does (see very first hunk in very first file). Must have
> removed that by mistake some time ago... This applies both to the
> 2.4.21-pre4 patch posted and this one.
well, I am impressed, really!

As you described in the patch:

+ *   For journalled file systems, doing ordered writes on a commit
+ *   block instead of explicitly doing wait_on_buffer (which is bad
+ *   for performance) can be a big win. Block drivers supporting this
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I don't have benchmarks handy yet but as far as I can _feel_, this is a _MUST_ 
(I repeat: a _MUST_ for 2.4.21). And I am very good in feeling slowdowns for 
interactivity :)

I am running it for quite some hours now with 2.4.20. Well, maybe the 
nr_requests = 16 and read/write passovers changes in the elevator code give 
us more smoothness than w/o but in my theoretical mind, this should drop 
throughput. I also noticed, these changes aren't in your 2.4.21 patch. Can 
you explain why it is in 2.4.20 patch or why it isn't in 2.4.21 patch ? :)

Thanks alot.

/ME calls out for Con to do a benchmark with the 2.4.21 patch.

ciao, Marc