Re: [RFC PATCH 0/5] Enable use of Solid State Hybrid Drives

From: Jens Axboe
Date: Thu Oct 30 2014 - 10:19:34 EST


On 2014-10-29 22:19, Dan Williams wrote:
I understand the desire to have per-io / per-inode xadvise()-style
hints, but I don't see why not also include a per-pid capability?

Per-pid was not "icky" for flashcache [1]. It let's you flag
processes that should not pollute the cache, as well "cache warming"
processes pre-loading sub-ranges of files that is awkward to do with a
per-inode hint. Per-pid also allows hinting on behalf of other
otherwise cache-unaware processes.

per-pid is imho fine as well, as long as it's not the primary interface. I quite like how the io priority works in this regard. If the task has a priority set, we use that. If you pass in something else, that overrides the task set one.

per-pid allows you to modify how we treat applications without modifying the application itself. This is handy for eg streamed backup and similar, which is most likely why flashcache has it.

--
Jens Axboe

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