Re: [PATCH, resend] relatime: Let relatime update atime at least once per day

From: Matthew Wilcox
Date: Sun Dec 28 2008 - 16:37:13 EST


On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 10:24:55PM +0100, ?ric Piel wrote:
> Yes, it might bring important drawbacks: performance-wise, relatime will
> become more like atime, making it much less useful. There is also a
> significant number of desktop computers that are turned on once a day,
> the boot time may get hindered by those additional writes.

Huh? Nobody's ever claimed that atime writes cost a significant amount
of performance. The problem that relatime is designed to solve is
*spin-up* when a file is accessed.

> Actually, you are changing relatime from a boolean condition (maximum
> one additional write per write) to a atime with a coarse grain (maximum
> one additional write per day). Today you found a use case that needs a
> precision of one day. Tomorrow, someone else will find a use case that
> needs a precision of one hour. So maybe what is actually needed is a
> third option, a "grainatime" option where you can change the precision
> of the atime.

You're really over-thinking this.

--
Matthew Wilcox Intel Open Source Technology Centre
"Bill, look, we understand that you're interested in selling us this
operating system, but compare it to ours. We can't possibly take such
a retrograde step."
--
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/