Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 8 Oct 2002 12:52:23 -0700 | From | Chris Wedgwood <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH] O_STREAMING - flag for optimal streaming I/O |
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On Tue, Oct 08, 2002 at 03:17:16PM -0400, Robert Love wrote:
> Yep. Linux treats most "hints" (e.g. madvise) as a requirement - it > fails if it cannot do it. That is against the spec most of the > time, but oh well...
There is no spec for O_DIRECT... SGI 'invented' this in '93 or perhaps earlier (but the idea wasn't new) for IRIX.
O_DIRECT is a very special thing, you shouldn't ask for this unless yoy know you want it and how to deal with it --- treating it as anything less that a requirement is bogus IMO.
> Shrug. I do not have much experience with O_DIRECT. I suspect the > synchronous nature and the requirement of aligned buffers is not > ideal.
I'm not sure how being synchornous matters if you use a different thread (perhaps it's a pain), this also allows your own user-space code to implement read-ahead? Buffer alignment issues in practice really aren't that bad.
If someone can think of a meaningful benchmark that would be cool; if not, then I'll hack up the code I wrote to stream DVD vobs about and see how that compares.
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