From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2007 14:54:33 +0200 From: Ingo Molnar Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/23] per device dirty throttling -v8 Message-ID: <20070805125433.GA22060@elte.hu> References: <46B4C0A8.1000902@garzik.org> <20070804191205.GA24723@lazybastard.org> <20070804192130.GA25346@elte.hu> <20070804211156.5f600d80@the-village.bc.nu> <20070804202830.GA4538@elte.hu> <20070804210351.GA9784@elte.hu> <20070804225121.5c7b66e0@the-village.bc.nu> <20070805073709.GA6325@elte.hu> <20070805134328.1a4474dd@the-village.bc.nu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20070805134328.1a4474dd@the-village.bc.nu> Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org Return-Path: To: Alan Cox Cc: J??rn Engel , Jeff Garzik , Linus Torvalds , Peter Zijlstra , linux-mm@kvack.org, Linux Kernel Mailing List , miklos@szeredi.hu, akpm@linux-foundation.org, neilb@suse.de, dgc@sgi.com, tomoki.sekiyama.qu@hitachi.com, nikita@clusterfs.com, trond.myklebust@fys.uio.no, yingchao.zhou@gmail.com, richard@rsk.demon.co.uk, david@lang.hm List-ID: * Alan Cox wrote: > > you try to put the blame into distribution makers' shoes but in > > reality, had the kernel stepped forward with a neat .config option > > sooner (combined with a neat boot option as well to turn it off), > > we'd have had noatime systems 10 years ago. A new entry into > > relnotes and done. It's > > Sorry Ingo, having been in the distribution business for over ten > years I have to disagree. Kernel options that magically totally change > the kernel API and behaviour are exactly what a vendor does *NOT* want > to have. it's default off of course. A distro can turn it on or off. > > Distro makers did not dare to do this sooner because some kernel > > developers came forward with these mostly bogus arguments ... The > > impact of atime is far better understood by the kernel community, so > > it is the responsibility of _us_ to signal such things towards > > distributors, not the other way around. > > You are trying to put a bogus divide between kernel community and > developer community. Yet you know perfectly well that a large part of > the kernel community yourself included work for distribution vendors > and are actively building the distribution kernels. i've periodically pushed for a noatime distro kernel for like ... 5-10 years and last time this argument came up [i brought it up 6 months ago] most of the distro kernel developer actually recommended using noatime, but it took only 1-2 kernel developers to come out with the 'compatibility' and 'compliance' boogeyman to scare the distro userspace people away from changing /etc/fstab. so yes, things like this needs a clear message from the kernel folks, and a kernel option for that is a pretty good way of doing it. Ingo -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: email@kvack.org