Re: [Lsf-pc] Linux kernel impact on PostgreSQL performance

From: Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: Claudio Freire <klaussfreire(at)gmail(dot)com>
Cc: Hannu Krosing <hannu(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>, Dave Chinner <david(at)fromorbit(dot)com>, Andres Freund <andres(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>, James Bottomley <James(dot)Bottomley(at)hansenpartnership(dot)com>, Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com>, "lsf-pc(at)lists(dot)linux-foundation(dot)org" <lsf-pc(at)lists(dot)linux-foundation(dot)org>, Kevin Grittner <kgrittn(at)ymail(dot)com>, "pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org" <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>, Joshua Drake <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com>, Mel Gorman <mgorman(at)suse(dot)de>, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>, Trond Myklebust <trondmy(at)gmail(dot)com>, Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net>
Subject: Re: [Lsf-pc] Linux kernel impact on PostgreSQL performance
Date: 2014-01-14 14:57:20
Message-ID: CA+TgmoaoiT68azOvVs9nWSQX7ov=CC3W0iFTY5cOQ=A6Mkpr_w@mail.gmail.com
Views: Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
Lists: pgsql-hackers

On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 3:39 AM, Claudio Freire <klaussfreire(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 5:08 AM, Hannu Krosing <hannu(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
>> Again, as said above the linux file system is doing fine. What we
>> want is a few ways to interact with it to let it do even better when
>> working with postgresql by telling it some stuff it otherwise would
>> have to second guess and by sometimes giving it back some cache
>> pages which were copied away for potential modifying but ended
>> up clean in the end.
>
> You don't need new interfaces. Only a slight modification of what
> fadvise DONTNEED does.

Yeah. DONTREALLYNEEDALLTHATTERRIBLYMUCH.

> This insistence in injecting pages from postgres to kernel is just a
> bad idea. At the very least, it still needs postgres to know too much
> of the filesystem (block layout) to properly work. Ie: pg must be
> required to put entire filesystem-level blocks into the page cache,
> since that's how the page cache works. At the very worst, it may
> introduce serious security and reliability implications, when
> applications can destroy the consistency of the page cache (even if
> full access rights are checked, there's still the possibility this
> inconsistency might be exploitable).

I agree with all that.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

In response to

Browse pgsql-hackers by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message Robert Haas 2014-01-14 15:04:16 Re: [Lsf-pc] Linux kernel impact on PostgreSQL performance
Previous Message Claudio Freire 2014-01-14 14:54:06 Re: [Lsf-pc] Linux kernel impact on PostgreSQL performance