Mark Kirkwood wrote:
> This is a well-worn thread title - apologies, but these results seemed
> interesting, and hopefully useful in the quest to get better performance
> on Solaris:
>
> I was curious to see if the rather uninspiring pgbench performance
> obtained from a Sun 280R (see General: ATA Disks and RAID controllers
> for database servers) could be improved if more time was spent
> tuning.
>
> With the help of a fellow workmate who is a bit of a Solaris guy, we
> decided to have a go.
>
> The major performance killer appeared to be mounting the filesystem with
> the logging option. The next most significant seemed to be the choice of
> sync_method for Pg - the default (open_datasync), which we initially
> thought should be the best - appears noticeably slower than fdatasync.
I thought the default was fdatasync, but looking at the code it seems
the default is open_datasync if O_DSYNC is available.
I assume the logic is that we usually do only one write() before
fsync(), so open_datasync should be faster. Why do we not use O_FSYNC
over fsync().
Looking at the code:
#if defined(O_SYNC)
#define OPEN_SYNC_FLAG O_SYNC
#else
#if defined(O_FSYNC)
#define OPEN_SYNC_FLAG O_FSYNC
#endif
#endif
#if defined(OPEN_SYNC_FLAG)
#if defined(O_DSYNC) && (O_DSYNC != OPEN_SYNC_FLAG)
#define OPEN_DATASYNC_FLAG O_DSYNC
#endif
#endif
#if defined(OPEN_DATASYNC_FLAG)
#define DEFAULT_SYNC_METHOD_STR "open_datasync"
#define DEFAULT_SYNC_METHOD SYNC_METHOD_OPEN
#define DEFAULT_SYNC_FLAGBIT OPEN_DATASYNC_FLAG
#else
#if defined(HAVE_FDATASYNC)
#define DEFAULT_SYNC_METHOD_STR "fdatasync"
#define DEFAULT_SYNC_METHOD SYNC_METHOD_FDATASYNC
#define DEFAULT_SYNC_FLAGBIT 0
#else
#define DEFAULT_SYNC_METHOD_STR "fsync"
#define DEFAULT_SYNC_METHOD SYNC_METHOD_FSYNC
#define DEFAULT_SYNC_FLAGBIT 0
#endif
#endif
I think the problem is that we prefer O_DSYNC over fdatasync, but do not
prefer O_FSYNC over fsync.
Running the attached test program shows on BSD/OS 4.3:
write 0.000360
write & fsync 0.001391
write, close & fsync 0.001308
open o_fsync, write 0.000924
showing O_FSYNC faster than fsync().
--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073
/*
* test_fsync.c
* tests if fsync can be done from another process than the original write
*/
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>
#include <unistd.h>
void die(char *str);
void print_elapse(struct timeval start_t, struct timeval elapse_t);
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
struct timeval start_t;
struct timeval elapse_t;
int tmpfile;
char *strout =
"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa";
/* write only */
gettimeofday(&start_t, NULL);
if ((tmpfile = open("/var/tmp/test_fsync.out", O_RDWR | O_CREAT)) == -1)
die("can't open /var/tmp/test_fsync.out");
write(tmpfile, &strout, 200);
close(tmpfile);
gettimeofday(&elapse_t, NULL);
unlink("/var/tmp/test_fsync.out");
printf("write ");
print_elapse(start_t, elapse_t);
printf("\n");
/* write & fsync */
gettimeofday(&start_t, NULL);
if ((tmpfile = open("/var/tmp/test_fsync.out", O_RDWR | O_CREAT)) == -1)
die("can't open /var/tmp/test_fsync.out");
write(tmpfile, &strout, 200);
fsync(tmpfile);
close(tmpfile);
gettimeofday(&elapse_t, NULL);
unlink("/var/tmp/test_fsync.out");
printf("write & fsync ");
print_elapse(start_t, elapse_t);
printf("\n");
/* write, close & fsync */
gettimeofday(&start_t, NULL);
if ((tmpfile = open("/var/tmp/test_fsync.out", O_RDWR | O_CREAT)) == -1)
die("can't open /var/tmp/test_fsync.out");
write(tmpfile, &strout, 200);
close(tmpfile);
/* reopen file */
if ((tmpfile = open("/var/tmp/test_fsync.out", O_RDWR | O_CREAT)) == -1)
die("can't open /var/tmp/test_fsync.out");
fsync(tmpfile);
close(tmpfile);
gettimeofday(&elapse_t, NULL);
unlink("/var/tmp/test_fsync.out");
printf("write, close & fsync ");
print_elapse(start_t, elapse_t);
printf("\n");
/* open_fsync, write */
gettimeofday(&start_t, NULL);
if ((tmpfile = open("/var/tmp/test_fsync.out", O_RDWR | O_CREAT | O_FSYNC)) ==
-1)
die("can't open /var/tmp/test_fsync.out");
write(tmpfile, &strout, 200);
close(tmpfile);
gettimeofday(&elapse_t, NULL);
unlink("/var/tmp/test_fsync.out");
printf("open o_fsync, write ");
print_elapse(start_t, elapse_t);
printf("\n");
return 0;
}
void print_elapse(struct timeval start_t, struct timeval elapse_t)
{
if (elapse_t.tv_usec < start_t.tv_usec)
{
elapse_t.tv_sec--;
elapse_t.tv_usec += 1000000;
}
printf("%ld.%06ld", (long) (elapse_t.tv_sec - start_t.tv_sec),
(long) (elapse_t.tv_usec - start_t.tv_usec));
}
void die(char *str)
{
fprintf(stderr, "%s", str);
exit(1);
}
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