Re: [PATCH 00/23] per device dirty throttling -v8

[Ingo Molnar]

* Alan Cox <alan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > Linux has always been a "POSIX unless its stupid" type of system.  
> > For the upstream kernel, we should do the right thing -- noatime by 
> > default -- but allow distros and people that care about rigid 
> > compliance to easily change the default.
> 
> Linux has never been a "suprise your kernel interfaces all just 
> changed today" kernel, nor a "gosh you upgraded and didn't notice your 
> backups broke" kernel.

HSM uses atime as a _hint_. The only even remotely valid argument is 
Mutt, and even that one could easily be fixed _it is not even installed 
by default on most distros_ and nobody but me uses it ;) [and i've been 
using Mutt on noatime filesystems for years] So basically a single type 
of package and use-case (against tens of thousands of packages) held all 
of Linux desktop IO performance hostage for 10 years, to the tune of a 
20-30-50-100% performance degradation (depending on the workload)? Wow. 

And the atime situation is _so_ obvious, what will we do in the much 
less obvious cases?

	Ingo
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