Re: Linux 2.6.29

Ric Wheeler
2009-03-31T22:07:34Z

Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Jens Axboe wrote:
>> Another problem is that FLUSH_CACHE sucks. Really. And not just on
>> ext3/ordered, generally. Write a 50 byte file, fsync, flush cache and
>> wit for the world to finish. Pretty hard to teach people to use a nicer
>> fdatasync(), when the majority of the cost now becomes flushing the
>> cache of that 1TB drive you happen to have 8 partitions on. Good luck
>> with that.
>
> (responding to an email way back near the start of the thread)
>
> I emailed Microsoft about their proposal to add a WRITE BARRIER
> command to ATA, documented at
> http://www.t13.org/Documents/UploadedDocuments/docs2007/e07174r0-Write_Barrier_Command_Proposal.doc
>
>
> The MSFT engineer said they were definitely still pursuing this proposal.
>
> IMO we could look at this too, or perhaps come up with an alternate
> proposal like FLUSH CACHE RANGE(s).
>
> Jeff
>

I agree that it is worth getting better mechanisms in place - the cache
flush is really primitive. Now we just need a victim to sit in on
T13/T10 standards meetings :-)

ric