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

Willy Tarreau
2007-08-06T13:12:15Z

On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 08:57:12AM +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
>
> * Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu> wrote:
>
> > In your example above, maybe it's the opposite, users know they can
> > keep a file in /tmp one more week by simply cat'ing it.
>
> sure - and i'm not arguing that noatime should the kernel-wide default.
> In every single patch i sent it was a .config option (and a boot option
> _and_ a sysctl option that i think you missed) that a user/distro
> enables or disabled. But i think the /tmp argument is not very strong:
> /tmp is fundamentally volatile, and you can grow dependencies on pretty
> much _any_ aspect of the kernel. So the question isnt "is there impact"
> (there is, at least for noatime), the question is "is it still worth
> doing it".
>
> > Changing the kernel in a non-easily reversible way is not kind to the
> > users.
>
> none of my patches did any of that...

I did not notice you talked about a sysctl. A sysctl provides the ability
to switch the behaviour without rebooting, while both the config option
and the command line require a reboot.

> anyway, my latest patch doesnt do noatime, it does the "more intelligent
> relatime" approach.

... which is not equivalent noatime in the initial example.

Regards,
Willy