On Fri, 2006-07-21 at 23:53 -0600, Hans Reiser wrote: > We have 3 levels of optimization: 1) at each modification, 2) at each > flush, and 3) at each repack. Each of these operates on a different > time scale, and all 3 are worthy of doing as right as we can. > > Now, the issue of where should airholes be? Why, that is the grand > experiment that will start to happen in a few months. Nobody knows yet > what defaults we should have, and whatever we choose, there will be some > users who gain from explicit control of it. >
Wouldn't the most recently modified files give a good hint to the repacker? The files larger then a few kilobytes most recently modified would be packed with air holes, and the files least recently modified would be packed more tightly? Perhaps even files that are currently the most fragmented would be repacked with air holes, as compared to files least fragmented would be packed more tightly. Could you not also write a small little app that gathers all kinds of stats about a file system and sends it to a Namesys server in hopes of finding better statistical data? I'm sure there are thousands of users that would be willing to run this app for the "greater good" regardless or not if they used ReiserFS in the first place. Things like the number of files on the disk, what percentage of those files have been modified in the last week, which files are the most/least fragmented, and when they were last modified, etc...? > > > >> A much better approach in my opinion would be to have Reiser4 perform > >> well in the majority of cases without the repacker, and sell the > >> repacker to peopleisn' something who need that extra bit of performance. > >> If I'm not > >> mistaken this is actually Hans intent. > > > > > > Hans? > > Yes, that's the idea. Only sysadmins of large corps are likely to buy. > We throw in service and support as well for those who purchase it. > > If I was making money, I would not do this, but I am not. I am not > really willing to work a day job for the rest of my life supporting guys > in Russia, it is only ok to do as a temporary measure. I am getting > tired.... > Personally, as much as I would like it all to be free, I think I would be much more willing to pay for compression/encryption (on both servers and desktops) then I would be for a repacker. Hard disks cost money, and if I can compress the vast majority of my data and save on purchasing a new hard disk, that is well worth it. I also have some important data that I would really like to encrypt, which is also worth spending money on. But gaining ~10% in performance probably isn't worthwhile spending money on as I most likely wouldn't notice a difference in my day to day life, unless my server was incredibly busy. There is no doubt there is a market for a repacker, but I think people are much more likely to spend money on something that is immediately tangible, like disk space instantly being free'd up by compression, or data instantly being encrypted. As compared to something that is much less tangible like fragmentation percentages and minor I/O throughput improvements. I used to work at a large, world wide web hosting company and I could see making a case to management for purchasing Reiser4 compression would be pretty easy for our shared servers. Instantly freeing up large amounts of disk space (where .html/.php files were the vast majority) would save huge amounts of money on disk drives, especially since most of the servers used RAID1 and adding new drives was a huge pain in the neck. Making a case to purchase a repacker would be much, much more difficult. See, customers who used lots of CPU were easy to up-sell to a dedicated server because page load times were tangible and if they didn't move we would be forced to shut them off. However customers who used gobs of disk space were much more difficult to up-sell to dedicated servers because it didn't affect themselves or other customers in a tangible way. They wouldn't notice any difference by moving to a much more expensive dedicated server. I would like to see Namesys succeed and become incredibly profitable for Hans, if nothing else for the fact that he has given a huge amount to the open source community already. A profitable Namesys only means we'll have a greater chance of seeing even more interesting stuff from them in the future. -- Mike Benoit <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part
