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Date:      Mon, 11 Nov 1996 12:04:35 -0500 (EST)
From:      Dan Janowski <danj@3skel.com>
To:        bsdcur@shadows.aeon.net, jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com
Cc:        freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: ufs is too slow?
Message-ID:  <199611111704.MAA12463@fnur.3skel.com>

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 > > my friend told me that the ufs filesystem is too slow for a high end
 > > nntp server usage...
 > > 
 > > the average 7 articles per second is supposed to be too much, and that
 > > using some log type filesystem, like xfs (in sgi) would be better...
 > > 
 > > he was saying that ufs cant create those 7 files in the second.
 > > 
 > > is that so?
 >
 > That was, however, on a machine heavily optimized towards the task.
 > We were flyyyyyying....
 >
 > FFS is in general a great FS...  but it is optimized for the general case.
 >
 > It is particularly poor at handling large directories or lots of writes,
 > and news is excellent at pounding on these qualities.
 >
 > (see my other note this morning, or I can cc: you a copy).
me, please.
 > ... JG

At one point I had inquired about lfs (log file system), in
part because of my experience with xfs (SGI's). Although lfs
is not xfs, they are both better performers than ufs/ffs (which
are both REALLY old, I think ufs dates from the 50's and ffs
from the 70's).

I have seen that OpenBSD is doing something with lfs, but I
am not sure what. It would be worth while to get lfs running
for sure; if you ever wondered, a lot of that disk bandwith
goes to filesystem overhead.

I once exchanged some e-mail with someone at BSDI and with
Margo Seltzer, who was a principle for lfs. The apparent
primary reason why lfs does not run here is that lfs does some
wierd stuff with the ATT buffer code that is missing in
4.4-lite. I was not able to get a synopsis of what or how to
get around it, but it didn't sound like lfs was broken, it's
just missing some wheels.

Maybe we can all talk about it a little and figure out
how hard it would be to get going. If we were running
a kick-ass big/fast file system, FreeBSD would capture
some more of the Int(er|tra)+Net market. In addition
to which, the infamous 'make world' time would surely
benefit.

Dan

--
danj@3skel.com
Triskelion Systems, Inc.
New York




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