O. Hartmann" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> If SYNC is default how can you explain this:
> 
> [12:[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~# mount
> /dev/ad4s3a on / (ufs, local, synchronous)
> devfs on /dev (devfs, local)
> /dev/ad4s3d on /tmp (ufs, local, soft-updates)
> /dev/ad4s3f on /usr (ufs, local, soft-updates)
> /dev/ad4s3e on /var (ufs, local, soft-updates)
> 
> [13:[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~# cat /etc/fstab
> # Device                Mountpoint      FStype  Options         Dump 
> Pass#
> /dev/ad4s3b             none            swap    sw              0       0
> /dev/ad4s3a             /               ufs     rw,sync         1       1
> /dev/ad4s3d             /tmp            ufs     rw              2       2
> /dev/ad4s3f             /usr            ufs     rw              2       2
> /dev/ad4s3e             /var            ufs     rw              2       2
> 
> And this is only because I manually add *sync* to my /etc/fstab.
> 
> E.g if sync is default why mount do not report that my /dev/ad4s3f on 
> /usr is mounted synchronous?
[snip]

No, the default with softupdates disabled is synchronous, not
asynchronous under FreeBSD.  There was a thread on this years ago (back
around 3.5-RELEASE?) where this was discussed in detail.  (I'm too lazy
to look for it.)  The discussion centered around the Linux ext2 working
faster than UFS/FFS and it was exactly because ext2 file systems were
mounted async by default and UFS/FFS sync by default.

Looking at /usr/include/sys/mount.h, I see that there are two flags
defined:  MNT_SYNCHRONOUS and MNT_ASYNC.  I'm not sure why both flags
exist, but suspect the former was added so you could mount UFS/FFS/UFS2
filesystems that had soft updates enabled in synchronous mode without
having to umount the filesystem, use tunefs(8)'s "-n" flag to
enable/disable soft updates, then remount the filesystem with the
appropriate flag(s).

To return to your original questions, though.....  I'm not sure why KB/t
doesn't exceed 128, but suspect that you're right about it being a
buffer limit of some sort.  No idea where, though, without digging
through some source.  My guess is that the answer is buried somewhere in
the ATA DMA bus code, but that's pure speculation.

I'm unsure what would cause the slowdown you mention, too.  If it were
PATA, I'd immediately suspect some sort of legacy device being present,
e.g., an older CD-ROM drive or something.  However, that's not a concern
in the SATA world, and connections are (I thought) point-to-point.
Perhaps it's an interrupt sharing problem?  Do you have a legacy PATA
controller enabled and sharing resources with your SATA controller(s)?
What does 'dmesg' show for device identification, in particular which
device is on which atan-[master|slave] connection?

I'd be careful about running things like 'vmstat' or 'systat' with
intervals shorter than five seconds, though, as some of those tools have
historically had counters that didn't update meaningfully in intervals
shorter than that.  There's also the question of jitter, noise, whatever.

Also, if you want to benchmark the filesystem code, try running tests
against a memory-backed filesystem (but one that doesn't swap!) to see
how well they perform.

Good luck with your testing!


-- 
Alan Amesbury
University of Minnesota
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