Rik van Riel wrote:
> On Wed, 17 May 2000, Balbir Singh wrote:
>
> > Recently, I tried to copy a huge file from one directory to another (on
> > the same filesystem), the size was about 100 MB. Since the filesize was
> > huge, I started a "cp" in the background, I tried proceeding to normal
> > activity on the same filesystem on which the copy was progressing.
> > I felt stuck (i could not do anything)
>
> 1) you CCd to Linus without reason (he has more than enough mail)
> 2) what kernel version are you using?
There are two things: First there is the "mm" subsystem that is quite
busy, but there seems to be a lock on the directory which seems to
take quite a while to be released. When I do something like that,
cp /dev/hdc disk.img &
ls -al
will take a VERY long time before the "ls" returns, but
ls -al disk.img
is MUCH faster. Like what you'd expect for a system that is copying
2-5Mb per second.
Even if there are no other files in the directory.
(This is from memory, and was a long time ago. I just hope I can allow
others to reproduce this from this description. Then comes the task of
analyzing wether this is something that can be helped or not... )
Roger.
-- ** R.E.Wolff@BitWizard.nl ** http://www.BitWizard.nl/ ** +31-15-2137555 ** *-- BitWizard writes Linux device drivers for any device you may have! --* * Common sense is the collection of * ****** prejudices acquired by age eighteen. -- Albert Einstein ********- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue May 23 2000 - 21:00:15 EST