On 25/05/12 12:14, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote: > On Fri, 25 May 2012, Thomas Goirand wrote: >> for small files, and in that case, it's faster. In reality, it's >> not that much faster, thanks to Linux caching of the filesystem, > > Under heavy filesystem IO load, yes it is. By several orders of magnitude. > This is a corner case. Defaults should be sane for most of the cases, and not for corner cases. Also defaults should prioritize stability (and non-breakage) over performance. With "tmpfs on /tmp" you are breaking many applications that assume that they have enough space to write on /tmp like the flash player ( see Debian bug #666096 ) or cdrecord software ( see #665634 ). >> the point. Maybe we should add a /small-files-on-tmpfs (choose >> a better name, of course...) folder so that apps know what to do, >> that'd be a lot more graceful than just switching to whole /tmp >> to tmpfs without any app knowing about it. > > Nice idea, but it would be worthless. > > In fact it is the other way. We have /var/tmp for the large file since > about forever, and important platforms that have /tmp in memory since the > early 2000's (Solaris).... > They did it, because their native file system (UFS) was very slow. Even linux ext2 was faster than Solaris tmpfs!! [1] > And that STILL wasn't enough for people to not screw it up and dump large > files in /tmp. > The FHS [2] does not define *nothing* about the size of /tmp or /var/tmp. It *only* says that programs using files under /tmp must not assume that this files are preserved between invocations of the program So please, *stop* saying that /tmp should be only for small files because this is simply *not* *true*. It is *not* defined on any standard that files on /tmp should be small. Period. Regards! -------- [1] http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=90222140834090&w=2 http://marc.info/?t=90223928400001 [2] http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#TMPTEMPORARYFILES -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Carlos Alberto Lopez Perez http://neutrino.es Igalia - Free Software Engineering http://www.igalia.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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