Antti Harri wrote:
On Sun, 16 Jul 2006, knitti wrote:
On 7/16/06, Antti Harri <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Kernel is 3.8 GENERIC and there is one large ffs partition
on the SATA disc, roughly the size of 180G. Most of the files
make smaller slices and mount only the ones r/w which you
absolutely need. the bigger a fs is, the longer it takes, and the
more memory is consumed by the fsck
Thanks for the advice, but then then I cannot
hardlink files. I would need many terabytes of
storage without using hardlinks.
The machine is doing backups, it copies yesterdays
backup as hardlinks as base of the new backup
and then updates it.
yep, doing that myself. Darned slick, eh?
nope, you can still likely use multiple partitions. Break your backup
job into smaller chunks, put each chunk on its own partition. Or put
each machine on its own partition. Or ...
Quit "thinking big". Design your project right, it can work. And "What
happens when I trip over the power cord" is part of designing the
project right.
I wonder if using database as an extra layer
would help? I would need a wrapper but that
wouldn't be a problem.
oh, gee, let's make things more complicated. Thank you, no. ('course,
that's my general reaction when someone suggests using a database to
"improve" something... I have NO idea what you are suggesting, but I'm
pretty sure I won't like it.)
BTW: Yes, the dmesg could very well have helped. If your disks were not
being handled properly or you had insufficient RAM, you can have
HORRIBLE problems with fsck performance, adding to your fsck time by a
non-trivial multiple. Your times sound excessive to me, but then, I
don't think I have that many files on a single partition.
One idea which has been suggested is to use softupdates, and simply
"force" mounting of the volume at boot, and periodically, fsck the thing
on your schedule, to reclaim lost disk space. Yes, when you do run the
fsck, you will spend a lot of time waiting for it, but you will be able
to schedule it.
Keep in mind, partitions need not all be mounted in /etc/fstab, they can
be manually mounted "later" in rc.local. Why does your backup machine
have to boot "fast"? (I got one with way too little RAM, it needs to
use swap to fsck, but that's ok...I'm not in a hurry for this machine to
come up). Doing something else with it? Ok, just put the backup
partition as noauto in /etc/fstab, and fsck and mount (or just
force-mount) the partition in /etc/rc.local. Now, whatever it was that
was bothering you about booting so slowly is up quickly, and the backup
partition will get mounted in due time.
Nick.
