Documentation on ext3?

[dsr at tao.merseine.nu (dsr at tao.merseine.nu)]

On Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 10:30:41PM +0000, John Chambers wrote:
> Ah, so I did it right by accident. ;-)

Yup.

> I'd wondered about that. I've heard of "kernel processes", but so far
> everything  I've read about them is mystical poetry.  They apparently
> don't work through the usual process hooks.

They're technically threads which look like processes. They don't have
to obey any normal rules. For example, kidled can be accounted for in
such a way that your load average is always 1.0 or higher...

> In a situation where files are being created and  destroyed  rapidly,
> I'd  think  that  a  journaling  file system might not be a very good
> idea.  It's sorta based on the idea that if something  is  lost,  you
> want  to be able to recover it.  But in this case, we want to get rid
> of files and reuse the space.

Right. Reliability is not so important as speed here; I recommend
keeping your root partition on a reliable file system, and using a fast
file system for the create/destroy stuff.

You can also tune this by getting a fast disk for the create/destroy,
or, if the size is small enough, using a RAM disk or a SSD.

> One problem is that the machine is somewhat distant, across the  net.
> I could travel to it, but it would be a real hassle and loss of time.
> I'm trying to do it all across the net.  I suppose this is a  growing
> fact of life for a lot of us.  So you can't look at the blinkenlights
> to quickly spot either activity or hardware problems.

Blinkenlights are pretty, too. I used to have a modem bank in my office
- 128 sets of 8 red/green/amber LEDs were very nice in the dark.

-dsr-

-- 
Network engineer looking for work in Boston area.
Resume at http://tao.merseine.nu/~dsr/