Re: Device detection?

[Ben Pfaff <pfaffben@pilot.msu.edu>]

Randolph Chung <tausq@debian.org> writes:

   > The problem with that method is that, at least under Windows, it
   > causes the hard drive to thrash horribly.  I assume it's because it
   > checkpoints after checking for *each* device.  I'm not sure I really
   > want to introduce that sort of thrashing slowness into Debian

   checkpointing doesn't have to thrash the harddisk. consider this -- if you
   have a program that flushes output to disk for each line it writes to a file,
   does it thrash the harddisk?

I don't know.  I don't do that in my programs.  Note that there is a
difference between an fflush() and an fsync(), but you probably know
that.

   checkpointing is needed for lots of apps... it doesn't necessary cause any
   thrashing.

Good.  It must just be bad Windows implementation, as usual.
-- 
"...In the UNIX world, people tend to interpret `non-technical user'
 as meaning someone who's only ever written one device driver."
--Daniel Pead