Re: [GENERAL] advice on buying sun hardware to run postgres

Dustin Sallings wrote:

> You can only cache so much. At some point, you're going to
> actually want to write something to a disk, and while you're doing this,
> nothing else can read. This is why your system slows down sometimes even
> when there's not a lot of intensive processing. This doesn't happen with
> SCSI until you saturate your SCSI bandwidth.

Umm. SCSI or no SCSI, if the disk's cache is full and it has to go away
and write stuff, then nobody is going to be able to read anything while
this is happening. SCSI disks can't defy the laws of physics. So the OS
is going to have to go and do something else in the meantime either way,
no?

> # Never lost a file to Linux in 5 years.
>
> I'm just glad I keep backups. When I was using Linux, I didn't
> keep enough, though. I lost some really good stuff. I'd have a hard time
> believing you've never lost a file unless the statement is qualified by
> describing your backup strategy. It's very difficult to improperly shut
> down a Linux machine while it's actually doing something and not lose a
> file. It's very difficult to run an OS for five years without having it
> improperly shut down (given normal home conditions).

I've had the machine improperly shut down many many times for a variety
of reasons. I've never restored a file from backup and I've never lost a
file that I'm aware of. At least not that I can remember, if I did it
couldn't have been very important because I didn't notice.