Re: fsync on large files

Dan Hollis (goemon@sasami.anime.net)
Sat, 13 Feb 1999 21:35:48 -0800 (PST)

On Sat, 13 Feb 1999, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
> Hmm. That's an interesting problem. This is the first time someone's
> called it to my attention that syslog was calling fsync() all the time,
> and obviously this causes a problem if there's a lot of syslogging going
> on and the log files are large.

You can disable syslogd's syncing by prepending a '-' to the filename:

# Log anything (except mail) of level info or higher.
# Don't log private authentication messages!
*.info;mail.none;authpriv.none -/var/log/messages
# The authpriv file has restricted access.
authpriv.* -/var/log/secure
# Log all the mail messages in one place.
mail.* -/var/log/maillog

I have *destroyed* seagate scsi drives by syslog's fsync'ing too much.
(A syslog server handling 50 syslog lines/sec on average)

After 2 destroyed drives in 2 months, one learns rather quickly to turn
off fsync action.

-Dan

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