On Thu, Apr 02, 2009 at 06:16:20PM -0700, david@xxxxxxx wrote:On Fri, 3 Apr 2009, Matthew Garrett wrote:
On Thu, Apr 02, 2009 at 05:55:11PM -0700, david@xxxxxxx wrote:On Fri, 3 Apr 2009, Matthew Garrett wrote:Then they shouldn't use a mail client that fsync()s.
so they need to use one mail client when they want to have good battery
life and a different one when they are plugged in to power?
They need to make a decision about whether they care about their mailbox
being precisely in sync with their server or not, and either use a
client that adapts appropriately or choose a client that behaves
appropriately. It's certainly not the kernel's business.
the kernel is not deciding this, the kernel would be implementing the
user's choice
No it wouldn't. The kernel would be implementing an adminstrator's
choice about whether fsync() is important or not. That's something that
would affect the mail client, but it's hardly a decision based on the
mail client. Sucks to be that user if they do anything involving mysql.
If you can demonstrate a real world use case where the hard drive
(typically well under a watt of power consumption on modern systems)
spindown policy will be affected sufficiently pathologically by a mail
client that you lose an hour of battery life, then I'd rethink this. But
mostly I'd conclude that this was an example of an inappropriate
spindown policy.
remember that the mail client was an example.
you want another example, think of anything that uses sqlite (like the
firefox history stuff, although that was weakened drasticly due to the
ext3 problems).
Benchmarks please.