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Date:      Tue, 8 Nov 2005 10:24:01 +0100
From:      =?ISO-8859-1?Q?S=F8ren_Schmidt?= <sos@FreeBSD.ORG>
To:        Alexander Leidinger <Alexander@Leidinger.net>
Cc:        Ion-Mihai Tetcu <itetcu@people.tecnik93.com>, freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG, le@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: vinum, 5.x performance, ... (was: Re: ANNOUNCE: GNOME 2.12.1 has been merged into the ports tree)
Message-ID:  <A431DFC9-30C1-4C57-98A6-A0BC2CAECC3C@FreeBSD.ORG>
In-Reply-To: <20051108101608.2nucv3s9us4k844k@netchild.homeip.net>
References:  <20051106.131413.122956532.yasu@utahime.org> <1131176568.3960.20.camel@shumai.marcuscom.com> <20051106.131413.122956532.yasu@utahime.org> <op.szszvnn89aq2h7@mezz.mezzweb.com> <ZhqaDxv9wJ@dmeyer.dinoex.sub.org> <20051107111800.e199ndcxa8s0c444@netchild.homeip.net> <20051107122458.27a1f9e7@it.buh.tecnik93.com> <20051107145645.rav7hhtlsggk4sss@netchild.homeip.net> <20051107214458.30ca47f2@it.buh.tecnik93.com> <20051108101608.2nucv3s9us4k844k@netchild.homeip.net>

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On 08/11/2005, at 10:16, Alexander Leidinger wrote:

> Ion-Mihai Tetcu <itetcu@people.tecnik93.com> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 07 Nov 2005 14:56:45 +0100
>> Alexander Leidinger <Alexander@Leidinger.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Ion-Mihai Tetcu <itetcu@people.tecnik93.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> > On Mon, 07 Nov 2005 11:18:00 +0100
>>> > Alexander Leidinger <Alexander@Leidinger.net> wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> > - and performaces is a nightmare on atapi harddisks
>>> >>
>>> >> AFAIR 4.x enables the write cache (bad if there's a power failure
>>> >> in the soft-updates case, since without native command =20
>>> queueing the
>>> >> drivers may reorder writes witout the possibility to notify
>>> >> soft-updates about it),
>
> I' a little bit confused now. The man page says the WC is enabled =20
> by default,
> but I was under the impression, that it is disabled by default (I =20
> remember
> there was a discussion about this long ago). On my systems it is =20
> disabled,
> since I haven't removed the loader.conf line since the 4.x days. =20
> S=F8ren, is
> this a bug in the man page or did I got it wrong?

WC is enabled by default on modern FreeBSD's, it was tried to disable =20=

it once but the performance hit quickly changed that decision.
>>> > So on NCQ disks write_caching should be safe from consistency
>>> > point-of-view ?
>>>
>>> AFAIK: Enabling the write cache doesn't mean you use NCQ. So just
>>> because your drive is able to do NCQ, you shouldn't enable the write
>>> cache. If your controller, your disk and the OS is able to use NCQ,
>>> and you enable the use of NCQ, then everything is fine... assuming
>>> the drive doesn't lie to you. AFAIR there are or there where some
>>> drives which lie(d), but I don't remember the details.
>>
>> And finding out the what disk and controller use NCQ _and_ are
>> supported by our drivers can be done how ?
>
> Asking sos@FreeBSD.org (CCed) would be a way to find it out...

NCQ is not supported on FreeBSD at this time, support is in the works =20=

and will get into -current once its far enough along. Note that TCQ =20
is only supported (and buggy since the PAE code was added) in 4.x.

> At first I thought atacontrol tells you about it. But the =20
> "atacontrol cap
> ad0" command just tells you about the capabilities of the drive, =20
> not which
> of those capabilities are used by the driver (would be nice to have,
> specially in the light of seeing TCQ enabled but knowing that you =20
> said is
> doesn't work... at least with the previous implementation of ata).
>
> S=F8ren, is there a way to en-/disable some of the capabilities with =20=

> atacontrol
> or something else?

Not as is, but it could be added along the way. However some of the =20
capabilties depends on both disk and controller and in most cases =20
also the OS have support for it. Furthermore some if the capabilities =20=

only makes sense to change during boot.

S=F8ren Schmidt
sos@FreeBSD.org






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