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Re: Q: Filesystem block sizes available?

Subject: Re: Q: Filesystem block sizes available?
From: "D. Stimits" <stimits@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 09:13:11 -0700
Cc: XFS Mailing list <linux-xfs@xxxxxxxxxxx>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0111131556430.1160-100000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-to: stimits@xxxxxxxxxx
Sender: owner-linux-xfs@xxxxxxxxxxx
Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk wrote:
> 
> > Right now the filesystem block size on linux is restricted to the
> > machine page size. Fixing this has been on the todo list for a
> > long time now, but other projects keep getting given higher priority.
> > The first thing to appear would be support for smaller block sizes,
> > not bigger ones - the problem in linux is that the kernel was really
> > not designed to provide chunks of memory larger than 1 page with any
> > reliability (i.e. there is a good chance it will fail).
> >
> > Anyway, having said that, xfs will do larger I/O than this, files should
> > get layed out contiguous on disk, and both the read and write path will
> > end up issuing larger requests to the scsi devices.
> 
> ok. So the fs block size really doesn't matter - is that it? I'm trying to
> set up streaming of multi-gigabyte files from a file system, and it's all
> too slow. Even with a RAID-0 with 5 drives (SCSI-3/160MBps/10k spin), I
> cannot get the speed higher than around 30 on ext2.

FYI, I've managed to get just over 30 MB/sec sustained (read; write
isn't too far off; both XFS and ext2 do well with average size files) on
a good 10K rpm U160 scsi drive (64 bit 66 MHz bus) if conditions are
right...no raid at all. With 5 drives on RAID 0 and your hardware specs,
can't imagine not getting far better than you get now. It sure sounds
like something is wrong.

D. Stimits, stimits@xxxxxxxxxx

> 
> Do you or anyone else have some idea of when the TUX/XFS potch
> incompatibility problem will be solved? I need Tux (the in-kernel web
> server from RedHat) in this project as well...
> 
> thanks
> 
> roy
> 
> --
> Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk, MCSE, MCNE, CLS, LCA
> 
> Computers are like air conditioners.
> They stop working when you open Windows.


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