Re: [HACKERS] O_DIRECT for WAL writes

ITAGAKI Takahiro wrote:
> Thanks for reviewing!
> But the patch does not work on HEAD, because of the changes in BootStrapXLOG().
> I send the patch with a fix for it.

Thanks.

> > If you are doing fsync(), I don't see how O_DIRECT
> > makes any sense because O_DIRECT is writing to disk on every write, and
> > then what is the fsync() actually doing.
>
> It's depends on OSes. Manpage of Linux says,
> http://linux.com.hk/PenguinWeb/manpage.jsp?name=open&section=2
> File I/O is done directly to/from user space buffers. The I/O is
> synchronous, i.e., at the completion of the read(2) or write(2) system
> call, data is **guaranteed to have been transferred**.
> But manpage of FreeBSD says,
> http://www.manpages.info/freebsd/open.2.html
> O_DIRECT may be used to minimize or eliminate the cache effects of read-
> ing and writing. The system will attempt to avoid caching the data you
> read or write. If it cannot avoid caching the data,
> it will **minimize the impact the data has on the cache**.
>
> In my understanding, the completion of write() with O_DIRECT does not always
> assure an actual write. So there may be difference between O_DIRECT+O_SYNC
> and O_DIRECT+fsync(), but I think that is not very often.

Yes, I do remember that. I know we _need_ fsync when using O_DIRECT,
but the downside of O_DIRECT (force every write to disk) is the same as
O_SYNC, so it seems if we are using O_DIRECT, we might as well use
O_SYNC too and skip the fsync().

I will add a comment mentioning this.

> > What I did was to add O_DIRECT unconditionally for all uses of O_SYNC
> > and O_DSYNC, so it is automatically used in those cases. And of course,
> > if your operating system doens't support O_DIRECT, it isn't used.
>
> I agree with your way, where O_DIRECT is automatically used.
> I bet the combination of O_DIRECT and O_SYNC is always better than
> the case O_SYNC only used.

OK.

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