Tom Allison said:
Jacob Anawalt wrote:
Joachim Förster said:
Does anybody know, why squid uses the harddisk although its (empty disk
cache, logs and other status files are on the tmpfs)?
I don't know why it uses the hard disk, but if it is only reading those
files and there is enough memory that they are cached in the kernel file
cache, then perhaps the atime is being updated and that is causing the
disk to spin up?
Are you mounting with the noatime option?
Maybe there's another http proxy that doesn't require any disk access?
I am interested in following this thread. I would like to set up a
similar
computer, with as few fans and spinning drives (zero would be ideal) as
possible while staying inexpensive and low-power.
For starters, consider via's eden PC's. Most of them are fanless.
Then look at the hard drives that are out their with Fluid Bearings.
Seagate is one, I think there a japanese company (Fujitsu or something)
that
also has very low noise hard drives.
If you are rich and demanding, get a Solid State Hard Drive.
Well, I don't qualify in the first category (at least enough to justify
solid state hard drives) and I try not to be demanding. :)
The via eden PC's look promising. I've been looking at them for a while. I
had looked into PC104 a couple of years ago, but I've decided I'm not
really interested in going that route. Maybe some day.
I need to qualify my "zero would be ideal" statement. I would like it to
be silent when not in use*. When in use I am fine with hard disk noise.
The Seagate or other fluid bearing/quite drives would be very nice when
the system is being used, but still my hope is to not be spinning them all
night long, no matter how quiet they are.
For me, squid disk access while someone on my internal network is using
the proxy is not an issue. If squid were spinning up the drive when
'nothing'* is happening, calling sync()/fsync() for some odd reason then
that would be annoying. I'm running a gateway w/ squid right now, but I
haven't tried to stop the disk from spinning when squid is running.
I am unclear from Joachim's email if Squid is spinning up the disk all the
time for him, every x seconds, or only when the proxy is being used. If
it's only the latter then for my needs that's OK.