Can we make readahead more robust to package updates?

Jeff Spaleta jspaleta at gmail.com
Mon Nov 13 09:48:24 UTC 2006


On 11/12/06, Arjan van de Ven <arjan at fenrus.demon.nl> wrote:
> the downside is that you now add extra costs (seeks :) which.. well
> readahead was trying to avoid. So if this is going to get used massively
> it's less certain things will gain as much as before...

I'm not saying use it for everything.. im just saying lets make sure
that the default items we have now in the readahead config actually
stay in sync with the libraries on disk so users can derive consistent
benefit from it over time.  My current favorite example is firefox.
The libraries are listed in the default readahead config..but now that
firefox has seen an update, the listings are no longer in-sync with
the files on disk.. because the library locations are in a versioned
directory tree...so firefox won't get a readahead boost on an updated
system.

I understand the seek time issue associated with doing readahead
willy-nilly, so if you can think of a way to centralize a default
config and prevent out-of-sync conditions like we have with firefox at
the moment I'm all ears.  Please go ahead and take a lot at the
listing in default.later and see if anything else besides firefox is
currently out of sync on an updated fc6 install.

-jef




More information about the fedora-devel-list mailing list