Re: removing an ext2fs file forces disk activity

[Jeroen Dekkers]

On Mon, Mar 25, 2002 at 10:07:25AM -0500, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I just found out that
> 
> while touch /tmp/foo; do rm /tmp/foo; done
> 
> causes a lot of disk activity.  Further tests showed that the disk is
> activated for each rm.  Is this a hard requirement?  In Linux, the loop
> above does not cause any disk activity (except at the beginning and
> maybe at the end), it seems to be done completely in the cache.

I found out another thing a few days ago.

Have a directory with a lot of files (for example gcc or glibc build
tree) and then do "rm -rfv <dir>", it looks like all files are deleted
one by one on the hard disk and the next one is deleted after the
previous one is written to disk.

I think the speed of the filesystem is one of the biggest performance
issues in the Hurd. I think ext2fs itself isn't only factor, the Linux
drivers with the glue code could also have some performance issues.

Jeroen Dekkers
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