IRC, freenode, #hurd, 2011-07-25

< youpi> Mmm, typing something on the mach console triggers a write on the
  disk
< youpi> because the /dev/console node gets updated
< youpi> I don't really see why
< youpi> (yes, just typing at the bash prompt, not even running something)
< youpi> typing during the sleep command (i.e. mere tty echo) doesn't
  trigger it, however
< youpi> running bash's echo does trigger it
< braunr> during sleep, the glibc stream functions handle I/O, while with
  bash, its readline takes care of it, right ?
< youpi>  /bin/echo too
< youpi> during sleep it's the tty process which handles I/O
< braunr> the write may be due to a write time update on the inode
< braunr> modification* time
< youpi> probably yes, but how so?
< youpi> ext2fs is only supposed to pass the thing to the console
  translator
< braunr> not sure
< youpi> actually, ext2fs even isn't supposed to come into play when it's
  about typing at the bash prompt
< youpi> once it's opened, isn't the port for /dev/console supposed to be
  directly to the translator there?
< braunr> i think so
< youpi> (s/tty/term/ in what I said)
< braunr> well, it's certain
< youpi> so I don't see how ext2fs can be triggered to write an atime or
  mtime
< braunr> what does rpctrace say ?
< youpi> io_read_request and io_write_request
< youpi> braunr: it doesn't happen at the login prompt
< youpi> interestingly, atime is always 3-4 secs earlier than ctime & mtime
< youpi> doesn't happen with dash
< braunr> we should implement relatime and experiment with it
< braunr> it shouldn't be hard
< youpi> well, there's noatime already
< youpi> but my point is that this update shouldn't happen
< youpi> and I believe it's the source of the i_file_acl e2fsck warning
< braunr> i wasn't saying that concerning this problem, it was just a
  separate idea (noatime is more problematic than relatime)
< braunr> and i agree, it shouldn't happen :)
< youpi> ok, it's set_node_times which gets called

IRC, freenode, #hurd, 2011-07-27

< antrik> BTW, I'm not sure it's still relevant; but the reason accessing
  translators such as the console modifies the underlying node is that most
  stat information is generally passed through
< antrik> (in some cases it might be unintentional though, simply using the
  default implementation from trivfs carelessly...)
< youpi> I know
< youpi> I've seen that in the code
< antrik> OK
< youpi> it is still relevant: I still find it useless to write it on the
  disk
< youpi> though w uses it to show idle time over reboot
< braunr> is it useful to keep the information across reboots ?
< youpi> for some value of "useful" for w
< braunr> i wonder what would break if this was entierly kept in memory
< youpi> nothing, probably
< youpi> note that it doesn't overload ext2fs so much, it just adds a write
  every ~5s
< youpi> (at worse, i.e. when keeping showing text, for instance)
< braunr> indeed, the behaviour seems the same on linux
< antrik> ah... that explains why the disk doesn't spin down while IRC is
  active... always wondered about that :-)
< youpi> that's not very power-saving, yes
< youpi> well, we might want to put /dev on ram someday