Hi Paul,
> > I think it would be a good idea to add an option to tell tar whether
> > to use POSIX_FADV_NOREUSE, POSIX_FADV_DONTNEED, or neither, since
> > there may be cases where any of the three possibilities is best.
>
> Might make sense, yes.
I often want to run tar, sha1sum, grep, etc., on a huge file knowing
that I won't do it again soon and I don't want it bullying the nice
working-set cache out the door. It seems crazy every command has to add
options to twiddle POSIX_FADV_NOREUSE, like dd(1)'s nocache [io]flag
IIRC. We have stdbuf(1). Perhaps a similar approach can be used to
affect command, even if it can't work in all cases.
fadvise --noreuse sha1sum big.foo
(Linux not implementing it aside. Perhaps wider use in userspace would
encourage implementation.)
--
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy
