Re: Why should we teach students Linux??

2007-03-06 Thread Vu Pham
On Tue, 2007-03-06 at 09:14 -0800, Bill Campbell wrote: [...] One of the major differences between folks competent in Linux and Unix and Windows ``experts'' is that the *nix people usually start by trying to analyse and fix problems while MCSEs only know the Three R's of Windows, Reboot,

Re: Why should we teach students Linux??

2007-03-06 Thread Bill Campbell
On Mon, Mar 05, 2007, Roel Bindels wrote: Hello listers, I'm tutor on the Faculty ICT, department NID. This is a bachelor degree and we are preparing our students to become something more then just System Administrators (such as manager, consulting, etc). Since this department is part of the

Re: Why should we teach students Linux??

2007-03-06 Thread Roel Bindels
Vu Pham schreef: On Tue, 2007-03-06 at 09:14 -0800, Bill Campbell wrote: [...] One of the major differences between folks competent in Linux and Unix and Windows ``experts'' is that the *nix people usually start by trying to analyse and fix problems while MCSEs only know the Three R's of

[patch 0/8] VFS/VM patches

2007-03-06 Thread Miklos Szeredi
There's a new patch, which fixes the race in clear_page_dirty_for_io() and cleans up the page dirtying logic. And the mmap mtime/ctime update patch has seen much improvement. The others are resends and fixes. I'm not resending the fuse writable mmap patches until the fate of the deadlock fixes

[patch 1/8] fix race in clear_page_dirty_for_io()

2007-03-06 Thread Miklos Szeredi
From: Miklos Szeredi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fix race in clear_page_dirty_for_io() as suggested by Linus. Split the page dirtying into two phases: 1) done for each dirtying attempt 2) done only when the page's dirty flag changed from clean to dirty For 1 a_ops-set_page_dirty() is used (couldn't

[patch 4/8] fix deadlock in balance_dirty_pages

2007-03-06 Thread Miklos Szeredi
From: Miklos Szeredi [EMAIL PROTECTED] This deadlock happens, when dirty pages from one filesystem are written back through another filesystem. It easiest to demonstrate with fuse although it could affect looback mounts as well (see following patches). Let's call the filesystems A(bove) and

[patch 5/8] fix deadlock in throttle_vm_writeout

2007-03-06 Thread Miklos Szeredi
From: Miklos Szeredi [EMAIL PROTECTED] This deadlock is similar to the one in balance_dirty_pages, but instead of waiting in balance_dirty_pages after submitting a write request, it happens during a memory allocation for filesystem B before submitting a write request. It is easy to reproduce on

[patch 7/8] add filesystem subtype support

2007-03-06 Thread Miklos Szeredi
From: Miklos Szeredi [EMAIL PROTECTED] There's a slight problem with filesystem type representation in fuse based filesystems. From the kernel's view, there are just two filesystem types: fuse and fuseblk. From the user's view there are lots of different filesystem types. The user is not even

[patch 8/8] consolidate generic_writepages and mpage_writepages fix

2007-03-06 Thread Miklos Szeredi
From: Miklos Szeredi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fix NULL pointer dereference in __mpage_writepage. This probably doesn't matter in practice, but this is the original behavior. Signed-off-by: Miklos Szeredi [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Index: linux/fs/mpage.c

[patch 2/8] update ctime and mtime for mmaped write

2007-03-06 Thread Miklos Szeredi
From: Miklos Szeredi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Changes: v2: o set AS_CMTIME flag in clear_page_dirty_for_io() too o don't clear AS_CMTIME in file_update_time() o check the dirty bit in the page tables v1: o moved check from __fput() to remove_vma(), which is more logical o changed set_page_dirty()

[patch 3/8] per backing_dev dirty and writeback page accounting

2007-03-06 Thread Miklos Szeredi
From: Andrew Morton [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]: bugfix] Miklos Szeredi [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Changes: - updated to apply after clear_page_dirty_for_io() race fix This is needed for - balance_dirty_pages() deadlock fix - fuse dirty page accounting I have no idea how serious the

[patch 6/8] balance dirty pages from loop device

2007-03-06 Thread Miklos Szeredi
From: Miklos Szeredi [EMAIL PROTECTED] The function do_lo_send_aops() should call balance_dirty_pages_ratelimited() after each page similarly to generic_file_buffered_write(). Without this, writing the loop device directly (not through a filesystem) is very slow, and also slows the whole system

Re: [RFC] Heads up on sys_fallocate()

2007-03-06 Thread Ulrich Drepper
Christoph Hellwig wrote: fallocate with the whence argument and flags is already quite complicated, I'd rather have another call for placement decisions, that would be called on an fd to do placement decissions for any further allocations (prealloc, write, etc) Yes, posix_fallocate shouldn't

Re: [RFC] Heads up on sys_fallocate()

2007-03-06 Thread Jan Kara
On Tue 06-03-07 06:36:09, Ulrich Drepper wrote: Christoph Hellwig wrote: fallocate with the whence argument and flags is already quite complicated, I'd rather have another call for placement decisions, that would be called on an fd to do placement decissions for any further allocations

Re: [RFC] Heads up on sys_fallocate()

2007-03-06 Thread Christoph Hellwig
On Tue, Mar 06, 2007 at 06:36:09AM -0800, Ulrich Drepper wrote: Christoph Hellwig wrote: fallocate with the whence argument and flags is already quite complicated, I'd rather have another call for placement decisions, that would be called on an fd to do placement decissions for any further

Re: [RFC] Heads up on sys_fallocate()

2007-03-06 Thread Eric Sandeen
Ulrich Drepper wrote: Christoph Hellwig wrote: fallocate with the whence argument and flags is already quite complicated, I'd rather have another call for placement decisions, that would be called on an fd to do placement decissions for any further allocations (prealloc, write, etc) Yes,

Re: [patch 2/8] update ctime and mtime for mmaped write

2007-03-06 Thread Miklos Szeredi
None what so ever, but I always think of msync as a rare function (infrequent when compared to (minor) faults overall). But I don't have numbers backing that up either. Also, the radix tree scan you do isn't exactly cheap either. So what I was wondering is whether its worth

Re: [patch 1/8] fix race in clear_page_dirty_for_io()

2007-03-06 Thread Andrew Morton
On Tue, 06 Mar 2007 19:04:44 +0100 Miklos Szeredi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Fix race in clear_page_dirty_for_io() as suggested by Linus. please describe this race. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-fsdevel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More

Re: [patch 2/8] update ctime and mtime for mmaped write

2007-03-06 Thread Peter Zijlstra
On Tue, 2007-03-06 at 23:18 +0100, Miklos Szeredi wrote: None what so ever, but I always think of msync as a rare function (infrequent when compared to (minor) faults overall). But I don't have numbers backing that up either. Also, the radix tree scan you do isn't exactly cheap