should readahead allow generic paths?

[Alexander Larsson]

On Thu, 2007-10-11 at 09:31 -0500, Eric Sandeen wrote:
> Matthias Clasen wrote:
> > On Thu, 2007-10-11 at 09:20 -0500, Eric Sandeen wrote:
> > 
> >> Tossing a default list out there and hoping for the best probably won't
> >> work, at any rate.
> > 
> > So are we going to get your fixed lists into F8 ?
> > 
> 
> Well, part of the problem is that "my" fixed lists may not be everyone's
> fixed lists - I generated a custom list from *my* boot sequence.  Coming
> up with a good default list that actually speeds *everyone's* boot time
> is another issue.  If we think it's worth the 4 second or so boottime
> reduction, maybe some way to automatically generate the custom lists
> during firstboot might be an option.  But then, they will rot over time...

Is there any chance we can use Jens Axboes "fcache"?
Info e.g. at:
http://en.opensuse.org/Fcache-howto

I don't understand why nobody seems interested in this. It seems like a
much nicer solution than readahead of files. In the current version it
has to have a separate device for mirroring the blocks, but I can't
think its that hard to create a physically linear file on an ext3
filesystem, lock it in place and use that. (Isn't this basically what
extents are?)