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

Ingo Molnar
2007-08-05T07:18:01Z

* Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> 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