If two or more files in the same directory are written to at the
same time, for example with
for i in 1 2 3 4
do
dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/large-$i bs=8k count=8000 &
done
then the data will interleave on the disk, making subsequent reading
slower.
The current preallocation strategy is to use a maximum of 8k. This
could be extended to preallocate a fraction of the current file size,
from a minimum of the current 8k to a certain maximum (for example 256k).
Comments?
[This isn't my idea, it's originally by Kristian Koehntopp. He's
also got a patch for it. I thought it might be worth mentioning
before 2.0]
-- Thomas Koenig, Thomas.Koenig@ciw.uni-karlsruhe.de, ig25@dkauni2.bitnet. The joy of engineering is to find a straight line on a double logarithmic diagram.