(reiserfs) Re: files with numeric names (fwd)

Figured someone here might be interested in some of this thread, so I'm
cross posting it.. Anyone got any feedback?

--
Blue Lang
IBM Global Services
P: (919) 486-5183 E: wdlang@us.ibm.com
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 6 Sep 1999 14:20:21 +0200
From: Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au>
To: Matthew Kirkwood <weejock@ferret.lmh.ox.ac.uk>
Cc: reiserfs@devlinux.com
Subject: (reiserfs) Re: files with numeric names
>> Assertion: Squid and INN have file access patterns that are different
>> from all other applications.
>
>Is this really true?  I would have thought that they just pushed the
>filesystem a lot harder.
Squid: average file size ~13K.
INN: average file size <4K.
My root file system (includes a small squid cache): average file size 25K.
I consider that alone to be convincing evidence that INN and Squid have
different access patterns.
>> Assertion: a file system could recognise the files used by such
>> programs by their numeric file names (INN) and hexadecimal file names
>> (Squid).
>
>I think you'd get a surprising number of false positives this way.
Do any examples come to mind?
>> Theory: a file system could change the way it handles meta-data when
>> it sees such file names to improve performance of these applications.
>
>In what ways would its behaviour change?
Cache directories and other meta-data agressively to the exclusion of caching
file data.
ATIME resolution changes.
Probably more possibilities exist, I just can't think of them at the moment.
>Do bear in mind that anybody doing serious squid or INN will have
>separate filesystem (on separate spindles) for the purpose.  You
>may not think that this should have to be the case, but I think that
>it's a lot nicer than "magic" behaviour.
True.  Maybe some of these things could be done better by mount options.
-- 
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