Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 11:03:06 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Thomas David Rivers <rivers@dignus.com> Cc: julian@elischer.org, nik@FreeBSD.ORG, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: No block devices (was: VMWare on -current, how fast should I expect it to be?) Message-ID: <20000913110306.D47700@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <200009121413.KAA51124@lakes.dignus.com>; from rivers@dignus.com on Tue, Sep 12, 2000 at 10:13:16AM -0400 References: <39BE38FC.41C67EA6@elischer.org> <200009121413.KAA51124@lakes.dignus.com>
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On Tuesday, 12 September 2000 at 10:13:16 -0400, Thomas David Rivers wrote: > > Julian Elischer (julian@elischer.org) wrote: >> >> Nik Clayton wrote: >>> >>> Hi guys, >>> >>> For those of you running VMWare (2) on -current, how fast do you expect it to >>> be? >>> >>> I'm running it quite successfully on a 750MHz PIII w/ 128MB RAM, and the >>> following disk controller / disk >>> >>> atapci0: <Intel PIIX4 ATA33 controller> port 0xfc90-0xfc9f at device 7.1 on pci0 >>> ata0: at 0x1f0 irq 14 on atapci0 >>> ata1: at 0x170 irq 15 on atapci0 >>> ad0: 17301MB <FUJITSU MHJ2181AT> [35152/16/63] at ata0-master using UDMA33 >>> >>> This is -current from about three weeks ago. It works, but it's a bit slow. >>> Applications themselves run at a reasonable speed, but every now and then >>> (can be as frequent as 10-15 seconds) >> >> use only virtual disks and see if it still happens. >> I found (on vmware 1) that using the raw disks was a recipe for >> poor performance. Since we don't have block devices any more, >> we are screwed in this regard. Virtual disks (files) are however >> buffered and so can sometimes work faster. > > I'm confused... > > I thought one of the justifications for removing the block devices > was "look - Linux doesn't have any." No, that's never been a justification for removing block devices. Linux has block devices but no character disk devices. FWIW, I was never happy with the removal of block devices either. I was shouted down with "can you point to any one use they are?", to which I replied "just because I don't know of one doesn't mean there isn't one, or that there will never be one in the future". This is an example where they could presumably be useful. Greg -- Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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