How to make Ubuntu extremely fast

[Steve Lamb]

NoOp wrote:
> Anyone else seen this:
> http://tuxtraining.com/2008/09/28/how-to-make-ubuntu-extremely-fast/

> Comments?

    Some of the advice there is downright dangerous to be giving without
explanation.  I'll just give one example, the flags he says to add to fstab:

noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro,data=writeback

    noatime = This should be, at least, relatime.  Why?  Check the man page...

relatime
Update inode access times relative to modify or change time.  Access time is
only updated if the previous access time was earlier than the current modify
or change time. (Similar to noatime, but doesn't break mutt or other
applications that need to know if a file has been read since the last time it
was modified.)

    So unless one knows /all/ of their applications do not require atime then
it is dangerous to set this since it will cause unintended behavior.  Same for
nodiratime.

    Writeback is also dangerous.  From the man page:

writeback
Data ordering is not preserved - data may be written into the main file system
 after its metadata has been committed to the journal.  This is rumoured to be
the highest-throughput option.  It guarantees internal file system integrity,
however it can allow old data to appear in files after a crash and journal
recovery.

    I don't know about anyone else but data integrity is the whole point of
why I use a journaled file system.  If I wanted the chance of data corruption
why enable ext3 when ext2 is perfectly fine?

    Are these suggestions bad?  No.  The problem is that it doesn't explain
the consequences of those suggestions.  A neophyte Linux user who hits that
page thinking "Oh, there's no harm in this" isn't going to recognize they
symptoms of those changes when things go wrong.  I know them but I've got over
a decade of using Linux under my belt.  In fact, I don't (and wouldn't)
implement most of those suggestions and for good reason.  He should at least
explain the cons to offset the pros of speed.

-- 
         Steve C. Lamb         | But who can decide what they dream
       PGP Key: 1FC01004       |      and dream I do
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