linux-kernel - Re: Should I choose SLOW

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Message-ID: <alpine.LNX.2.00.0904060130300.20641@swampdragon.chaosbits.net>
Date:	Mon, 6 Apr 2009 01:33:16 +0200 (CEST)
From:	Jesper Juhl <jj@...osbits.net>
To:	Jeff Garzik <jeff@...zik.org>
cc:	David Howells <dhowells@...hat.com>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Should I choose SLOW_WORK?

On Sun, 5 Apr 2009, Jeff Garzik wrote:

> I am newly presented with
> 
> 
> > Enable slow work thread pool (SLOW_WORK) [N/y/?] (NEW) ?
> > 
> > The slow work thread pool provides a number of dynamically allocated
> > threads that can be used by the kernel to perform operations that
> > take a relatively long time.
> > 
> > An example of this would be CacheFiles doing a path lookup followed
> > by a series of mkdirs and a create call, all of which have to touch
> > disk.
> 
> 
> However, this does not tell me whether I need or want this.
> 
> And, why must the user make this choice at all?  Surely it can be
> auto-selected, if cachefs is enabled?  At a minimum, hide this under
> CONFIG_EMBEDDED or whatnot, so that most users don't see this choice, IMO.
> 

I very much agree. I was confused by that option as well when I first saw 
it and the help text didn't really help much in determining if I wanted it 
or not.
If it's something that's generally useful, the kernel should just 
enable/use it. If other things depend on it they should auto-select it.


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Jesper Juhl <jj@...osbits.net>             http://www.chaosbits.net/
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