Postgres and 'directio' on Solaris/UFS

From: alex avriette <avriettea(at)speakeasy(dot)net>
To: pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Postgres and 'directio' on Solaris/UFS
Date: 2003-02-20 20:19:08
Message-ID: 90F571AF-4510-11D7-BE56-003065BDE8A6@speakeasy.net
Views: Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
Lists: pgsql-hackers

So I'm reading Sun's _Configuring & Tuning Databases on the Solaris
Platform_ book (ISBN: 0-13-083417-3). One of the first things mentioned
in the book is that UFS is, well, slow. Especially because of how
Solaris utilizes it. The authors contend that enabling directio(3C) can
increase performance substantially. It can lead to problems with
filesystems where strange things are done with files. Since databases
tend to manage their files very well to begin with, the authors say
this isn't normally a problem.

I searched the web for it, but all I found was some references to Zend.
Additionally, I grepped through source only to realize that "direction"
is used a lot. So I used the following find :

[goro:~/postgresql-7.3.1] alex% find . -type f -exec egrep -il
'directio[^Nn]' {} \;

And also didn't find anything. The manpage for directio (Solaris 9) is
here:

http://docs.sun.com/db/doc/816-0213/6m6ne37so?a=view

I haven't gotten my ultrasparc database server up yet, so I can't run
any benchmarks against this. Is it possible somebody with some spare
time could mount a filesystem with directio forced (forcedirectio) and
run some benchmarks on a Solaris/UFS database?

Thanks
alex

--
alex avriette, unix geek for hire
http://envy.posixnap.net/
alex(at)posixnap(dot)net

Browse pgsql-hackers by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message Tom Lane 2003-02-20 20:21:09 Re: Simplifying timezone support
Previous Message Ross J. Reedstrom 2003-02-20 19:34:53 Re: Simplifying timezone support