Re: [PATCH 00/23] Adaptive read-ahead V11

From: Jon Smirl
Date: Sat Mar 18 2006 - 23:09:37 EST


On 3/18/06, Wu Fengguang <wfg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 18, 2006 at 10:10:43PM -0500, Jon Smirl wrote:
> > This is probably a readahead problem. The lighttpd people that are
> > encountering this problem are not regular lkml readers.
> >
> > http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5949
>
> [QUOTE]
> My general conclusion is that since they were able to write a user
> space implementation that avoids the problem something must be broken
> in the kernel readahead logic for sendfile().
>
> Maybe the user space solution does the trick by using a larger window size?
>
> IMHO, the stock read-ahead is not designed with extremely high concurrency in
> mind. However, 100 streams should not be a problem at all.

Has anyone checked to see if the readahead logic is working as
expected from sendfile? IO from sendfile is a different type of
context than IO from user space, there could be sendfile specific
problems. If window size is the trick, shouldn't sendfile
automatically adapt it's window size? I don't think you can control
the sendfile window size from user space.

The goal of sendfile is to be the most optimal way to send a file over
the network. This is a case where user space code is easily beating
it.

--
Jon Smirl
jonsmirl@xxxxxxxxx
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/