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Date:      Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:17:10 +1100
From:      Peter Jeremy <peterjeremy@optushome.com.au>
To:        "M. Warner Losh" <imp@bsdimp.com>
Cc:        hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: 3x read to write ratio on dump/restore
Message-ID:  <20090111041710.GB5661@server.vk2pj.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20090109.095027.-1672857892.imp@bsdimp.com>
References:  <20090109.095027.-1672857892.imp@bsdimp.com>

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On 2009-Jan-09 09:50:27 -0700, "M. Warner Losh" <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>The read kBps was 3x the write kBps.
=2E..
>Any ideas what gives?  I observed this with 16MB cache and with 32MB
>cache, fwiw.

I've seen this as well.  AFAIK, this is a side-effect of dump's caching.

My top-of-head explanation is that each dump process has its own cache
but actual I/O is round-robined on a (roughly) block scale so a large
contiguous file will wind up in each 'slave' process's cache.

The most obvious (and easiest) fixes are to either implement a shared
cache (though this means another level of inter-process communication)
or only use a single 'slave' process when caching is enabled.

The cache algorithm could probably be enhanced as well - apart from
inode blocks, any block will only be accessed once so once a block has
been accessed, it can be purged from the cache (which is completely
opposite to a "normal" cache).

--=20
Peter Jeremy
Please excuse any delays as the result of my ISP's inability to implement
an MTA that is either RFC2821-compliant or matches their claimed behaviour.

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