> Every OS guarantees that file-backed pages be committed within some reasonably short period of time
Just curious: is that "short period of time" usually in order of seconds or minutes? (I know different OSes have different defaults; I just want to know a ballpark figure!)
ReiserFS on Linux was somewhat unusual in that it had a 5 second timer used to flush all of the dirty VFS blocks to disk. If I recall correctly, EXT2 (the previous popular filesystem) just flushed everything as soon as possible.
The first time I installed a box with ReiserFS, I recall being alarmed by my box "ticking" every 5 seconds.
:) Actually, I wanted to ask whether it's in order of milliseconds or seconds! Don't know how the "minute" found its way into my comment. A minute is reaaaly long.
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> Every OS guarantees that file-backed pages be committed within some reasonably short period of time
Just curious: is that "short period of time" usually in order of seconds or minutes? (I know different OSes have different defaults; I just want to know a ballpark figure!)
ReiserFS on Linux was somewhat unusual in that it had a 5 second timer used to flush all of the dirty VFS blocks to disk. If I recall correctly, EXT2 (the previous popular filesystem) just flushed everything as soon as possible.
The first time I installed a box with ReiserFS, I recall being alarmed by my box "ticking" every 5 seconds.
It's there to keep disk from trashing the head around, so I believe it's not more than a few spins of the platters.
:) Actually, I wanted to ask whether it's in order of milliseconds or seconds! Don't know how the "minute" found its way into my comment. A minute is reaaaly long.