Hude read/write cache

Hude read/write cache

[Jürgen Scholz]

Hello!

I got a small server, which main purpose is routing and dialup besides being
a repository for files. This system is very noisy. Because of that I want to
stop the disks from spinning, when the system is in regular usage (standby,
routing..). This should happen through a read and write cache which keeps
the most often used files in RAM (like log files, bash, ...), so that there
is no need for the system to access the (physical) hard drive.
I would like to use a regular filesystem with a sort of transparent cache.
Any ideas?

Ciao,
Jürgen

Re: Hude read/write cache

[Andreas Dilger]

On Jan 14, 2004  20:40 +0100, Jürgen Scholz wrote:
> I got a small server, which main purpose is routing and dialup besides being
> a repository for files. This system is very noisy. Because of that I want to
> stop the disks from spinning, when the system is in regular usage (standby,
> routing..). This should happen through a read and write cache which keeps
> the most often used files in RAM (like log files, bash, ...), so that there
> is no need for the system to access the (physical) hard drive.
> I would like to use a regular filesystem with a sort of transparent cache.
> Any ideas?

Look for the laptop-mode patches, they do exactly this.

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2resize/
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/

Re: Hude read/write cache

[Bart Samwel]

Hi Jürgen,

You could take a look at laptop-mode. This a patch that defers disk writes, so that your disks can 
remain spun down for longer than just a couple of seconds. I've actually done the port of this patch 
to Linux 2.6 because I wanted to achieve exactly what you want to achieve. Be aware though that most 
HDs have a VERY LIMITED amount of spinups/spindowns in them, about 50K for most desktop drives 
(which translates to about once every two hours over a 6-year lifetime). This is why I've actually 
abandoned my original goal -- I couldn't get my spindown frequency below about twice per hour, so 
that would kill my drives. If you care for your drives and your data, make ABSOLUTELY SURE that your 
drive doesn't spin up more than once every two hours on average. And if you can't make that happen, 
don't do it, find a quiet drive+case+fan+etc instead. Good luck!

-- Bart

Jürgen Scholz wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> I got a small server, which main purpose is routing and dialup besides being
> a repository for files. This system is very noisy. Because of that I want to
> stop the disks from spinning, when the system is in regular usage (standby,
> routing..). This should happen through a read and write cache which keeps
> the most often used files in RAM (like log files, bash, ...), so that there
> is no need for the system to access the (physical) hard drive.
> I would like to use a regular filesystem with a sort of transparent cache.
> Any ideas?
> 
> Ciao,
> Jürgen
> 
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