Re: FreeBSD Softupdates?? - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Bruce Momjian
Subject Re: FreeBSD Softupdates??
Date
Msg-id 200009261407.KAA29919@candle.pha.pa.us
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: FreeBSD Softupdates??  (Neil Conway <nconway@klamath.dyndns.org>)
Responses Re: FreeBSD Softupdates??  (Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net>)
List pgsql-general
-- Start of PGP signed section.
> On Tue, Sep 26, 2000 at 03:20:31AM -0700, Alfred Perlstein wrote:
> > It can cause problems because softupdates makes meta data changes
> > (in this case file creation/removal) asyncronously, the same actually
> > happens with most other logging filesystems that don't support
> > transactions.
>
> I've been running FreeBSD 4.1 with soft updates on my development box
> for a while now without any problems at all. Although it's not
> production so there's not a lot of load on PgSQL.
>
> I don't know if it hurts or hampers performance.

Good question.  I can see soft updates improving performance because it
flushes meta-data writes all at once, rather than each time a file is
created/destroyed.  I don't see any downside for PostgreSQL.  The
default fsync() will still work, or at least it should.  This is not the
same as mounting a volume as async.

--
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
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