[mythtv-users] IOBOUND errors after kernel upgrade from 2.6.31 to 2.6.32

[Tom Dexter]

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 12:48 PM, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:
> On Friday 07 May 2010 10:36:24 am John Drescher wrote:
>> > From what I've read, the kernel folks seem determined to push ext4 out
>> > the door, ready or not, I'm not sure why.
>>
>> It's been working well for me for over 2 years. That is since kernel
>> 2.6.26 and ext4-dev. And I not talking about just Mythtv usage. I use
>> it at work with at least 10TB of medical image storage. I am not using
>> barriers and I also am not updating kernels frequently. So possibly
>> that is why it has gone well for me.
>
> I just don't like to see ext4 used as a test bed.
>
> I miss the old "odd/even" model for kernel development, you could use an even
> kernel if you wanted stability, and an odd one if you wanted to go "bleeding
> edge" and accept the risks. Things could be tested on the development tree
> before moving them to the stable (even) tree once proven reliable.
>
> Linus eliminated the odd/even system, saying that by doing do he was "making
> kernel development smoother".
>
> "Smoother" perhaps, for the developers, not necessarily for the users, who are
> now treated as guinea pigs.
>

I'm a bit put off by the radical changes that appear to have gone into
ext4 between those two versions of 2.6.31...the changes that appear to
causing my performance issues.  My understanding is most of these
recent changes were about correcting potential issues with data
integrity, and they tended to be at the cost of performance.  It seems
odd to push out such a radical change in the middle of a kernel
version like that.  I guess they were concerned enough about the
integrity issues to do that.

I'm just sticking with the working kernel for the foreseeable future.
Another option would be to either try going back to ext3 or perhaps
trying XFS, but either one means temporarily copying a TB of
recordings off to some drive I currently don't even have...not sure I
want to deal with that any time soon.

Tom