From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754959AbYEQMQV (ORCPT ); Sat, 17 May 2008 08:16:21 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753300AbYEQMQO (ORCPT ); Sat, 17 May 2008 08:16:14 -0400 Received: from atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz ([195.113.31.123]:42755 "EHLO atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753076AbYEQMQO (ORCPT ); Sat, 17 May 2008 08:16:14 -0400 Date: Sat, 17 May 2008 14:15:45 +0200 From: Pavel Machek To: Morten Welinder Cc: linux-kernel Subject: Re: Deleting large files Message-ID: <20080517121544.GA3926@ucw.cz> References: <118833cc0805071249w36145eb6g7ed5c18d9fdf6fce@mail.gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <118833cc0805071249w36145eb6g7ed5c18d9fdf6fce@mail.gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.9i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed 2008-05-07 15:49:30, Morten Welinder wrote: > Hi there, > > deleting large files, say on the order of 4.6GB, takes approximately forever. > Why is that? Well, it is because a lot of things need to take place to free > the formerly used space, but my real question is "why does the unlink caller > have to wait for it?" > > I.e., could unlink do the directory changes and then hand off the rest of the > task to a kernel thread? Yep, but implementation is not going to be trivial. Send a patch ;-). Pavel -- (english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek (cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html