On Thu, Jan 10, 2002 at 11:05:27AM -0600, Michael Burns wrote:
> ON Thu, Jan 10, 2002 at 08:01:06AM -0600, Nate Straz wrote: 
> > Don't be silly.  You should be able to tune the OS's disk caching enough
> > that it's as fast as a RAM disk and not as dangerous.  "Imagine running
> > this on a ramdisk" is just like saying, "imagine a beowulf of these."  
> 
> It's a mail queue. I wouldn't expect the system to hit the files often enough
> for the cache to make a difference, and so I'm not sure your objection applies.

You're assuming that only reads are cached.  For most OS file system
caches, this assumption is incorrect.  Write file once (to cache
pending disk write), read file once (from cache, may or may not have
made it onto disk), delete file (from cache, possible pending delete
from disk if it ever got written for real).  Like Nate said, as fast
as a ramdisk and not as dangerous, even though the file isn't being
hit repeatedly.

-- 
When we reduce our own liberties to stop terrorism, the terrorists
have already won. - reverius

Innocence is no protection when governments go bad. - Tom Swiss