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- Xref: sparky comp.unix.ultrix:9215 comp.unix.misc:4879 comp.unix.bsd:11039 comp.arch.storage:902
- Path: sparky!uunet!news.mtholyoke.edu!jbotz
- From: jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz)
- Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix,comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.bsd,comp.arch.storage
- Subject: Filsystem performance and cylinder(group) alignment
- Date: 8 Jan 1993 11:51:08 -0500
- Organization: Mount Holyoke College
- Lines: 29
- Sender: news@mtholyoke.edu
- Distribution: world
- Message-ID: <1ikbdsINN1nv@slab.mtholyoke.edu>
- References: <1ihufqINNp1p@slab.mtholyoke.edu>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: slab.mtholyoke.edu
-
- In article <1ihufqINNp1p@slab.mtholyoke.edu> I asked:
- >I am somewhat mystified by the process of changing disk partitions
- >under Ultrix (4.x). In "The Unix System Administration Handbook"
- >(Evi & Nemeth) it states that BSD systems must have partition
- >boundaries aligned with cylinders (or even cylinder groups?) or
- >take a serious performance penalty. Is this also true for Ultrix
- >(which is derived from 4.2BSD) or does the Ultrix automatically
- >align partitions on cylinder boundaries? [...]
-
- I received a number of responses to this question, some of which were
- a bit conflicting. Some people say that yes, aligning partitions with
- cylinder group boundaries is important, others say that with modern
- disks it doesn't matter very much.
-
- One thing is clear: many of the default parititions in Ultrix's
- /etc/disktab do /not/ align with cylinder boundaries.
-
- So I'm asking again, with the newsgroup list expanded to comp.unix.bsd
- and comp.arch.storage because a lot of people asked me to forward
- responses to them, so I gather this is a topic of considerable
- confusion... on a relatively modern 1GB disk (such as an rz57), am I
- or am I not going to take a considerable performance hit if my (BSD
- fast-)filesystems are not aligned with cylinder (and cylinder-group)
- boundaries?
-
- I will post a summary in a few days.
- --
- Jurgen Botz, jbotz@mtholyoke.edu
- Northampton, MA, USA
-