[comp.sys.sgi] Do IRIS files systems fragment?

larry@abtlabs (Larry Pajakowski) (03/14/91)

I've been running news on a PI for serveral months now.  Now when I run
gr_osview while news is running the io wait for disk stays pegged at or
near 100%.

Questions:  How badly does the IRIS fs fragment?  Should I bother to
save/mkfs/restore the thing?  Anybody know of a defragmenter?

Many thanks.

Larry Pajakowski
Abbott Labs
uunet!abtlabs!larry

bh@sgi.com (Bent Hagemark) (03/15/91)

In article <1991Mar13.211738.9885@abbott.com> larry@abtlabs (Larry Pajakowski) writes:
>I've been running news on a PI for serveral months now.  Now when I run
>gr_osview while news is running the io wait for disk stays pegged at or
>near 100%.
>
>Questions:  How badly does the IRIS fs fragment?  Should I bother to
>save/mkfs/restore the thing?  Anybody know of a defragmenter?
>
>Many thanks.
>
>Larry Pajakowski
>Abbott Labs
>uunet!abtlabs!larry

First off, I'd let more direct measurement or even personal feel decide if
your system is not performing up to snuff.  gr_osview can give a nice
vivid picture of only part of the story.  What do you mean by "news
is running"?  New articles coming in?  Creating lots of little files is
generally harder on the system than the same amount of data in few large files.
Inodes are updated synchronously on close(2), etc...

In general the EFS file system does a nice job of keeping file system layout
optimal for both reading and writing.  I've really only seen poor layout
on very full file systems (>90%) which see a lot of activity.

The next major release of IRIX (4.0) includes an automatic file system
reorganizer which is designed to keep file blocks and free space contiguous.

Bent

larry@abtlabs (Larry Pajakowski) (03/18/91)

Ok I mean news is unpacking.  No uucp acitivty running.  Gr_osview as I
mentioned shows a nearly constant 100% disk wait.  Cpu is running about 40%
utilization.  Ethernet normally runs about 5% of utilization if that
matters and I am the only user on the machine.  Without making more of a
scientific measurement the machine is VERY sluggish while unpacking news.

Yes there a alot of little files on the disk.  If this is normal and to be
expected so be it.  I was just wondering if this was normal.

TNX 

Larry

In article <1991Mar14.220120.13856@odin.corp.sgi.com> bh@sgi.com (Bent Hagemark) writes:
>In article <1991Mar13.211738.9885@abbott.com> larry@abtlabs (Larry Pajakowski) writes:
>>I've been running news on a PI for serveral months now.  Now when I run
>>gr_osview while news is running the io wait for disk stays pegged at or
>>near 100%.
>>
>>Questions:  How badly does the IRIS fs fragment?  Should I bother to
>>save/mkfs/restore the thing?  Anybody know of a defragmenter?
>>
>>Many thanks.
>>
>>Larry Pajakowski
>>Abbott Labs
>>uunet!abtlabs!larry
>
>First off, I'd let more direct measurement or even personal feel decide if
>your system is not performing up to snuff.  gr_osview can give a nice
>vivid picture of only part of the story.  What do you mean by "news
>is running"?  New articles coming in?  Creating lots of little files is
>generally harder on the system than the same amount of data in few large files.
>Inodes are updated synchronously on close(2), etc...
>
>Bent