There used to be a patch that disabled the use of atime altogether. Is
this patch still around? Did it make it to 2.1?
Thanks!
--Arthur
On Tue, 23 Sep 1997, Richard B. Johnson wrote:
>
> Possible bug or feature in V2.1.55 with pre-patch-2.1.56B (which?).
>
> o Boot machine with init=/bin/bash
>
> o Mount the root file-system.
> `mount -n -o remount /`
>
> o Mount /proc if you want. Do not start /sbin/update.
>
> o Perform `ls -R /`. The hard disk will be active.
>
> o If you have plenty of RAM, the second time you perform `ls -R /`
> no disk activity will occur because the whole directory structure
> is is RAM. This is nice. This is how it should be.
>
> o Now perform `sync`. Every directory entry will be updated, causing
> an enormonous amount of wasted CPU cycles and disk activity!
> Sync should have done nothing. The disk was never written.
> If you execute `ls -R /`, the entire directory structure is again
> read from the physical media. Not nice.
>
> o Now, if you start /sbin/update, you will see the same problem as
> update calls sync() every so-often. Every time sync() is called
> by update, the entire directory structure that exists in the new
> dcache is either read from, or written to, the physical disk!
>
> o This undoes all the good work that the new dcache code did.
>
> Cheers,
> DJ
> Richard B. Johnson
> Analogic Corporation
> Penguin : Linux version 2.1.55 on an i586 machine (66.15 BogoMips).
> Warning : It's hard to stay on the trailing edge of technology.
> Linux : Engineering tool
> Spam : sync@localhost, daemon@loghost
>
>