Re: adding support for posix_fadvise()

On Mon, Nov 03, 2003 at 08:50:00AM -0500, Neil Conway wrote:

> pool or the kernel's page cache. We can implement the former easily
> enough, but I don't see any feasible way to do the latter: on a high-end
> machine with gigabytes of RAM but a relatively small shared_buffers
> (which is the configuration we recommend), there may be plenty of hot

I wonder if the limitations that are on one's ability to evaluate
effectively what is in the OS's filesystem cache is the real reason
all those Other systems (of Databases, Big, too) have stayed with
their old design of managing it all themselves (raw filesystems and
all the buffering handled by the back end). Maybe that's not just an
historical argument whereby they happen to have the code around.
After all, it can't be cheap to maintain. Not that I'm advocating
writing such a system -- I sure couldn't do the work, to begin with.

A

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