Philippe,

On the new web site it might be interesting to have a section on
performance tips for FB on different hardware setups.

On 05/15/2011 01:56 PM, Philippe Makowski wrote:
...
> interesting
> by default ntfs is faster than ext4 under Ubuntu ;)
> you can change your mount options for ext4
> you will certainly find this kind of post interesting :
>
> http://blog.smartlogicsolutions.com/2009/06/04/mount-options-to-improve-ext4-file-system-performance/
> and
> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1096467
>
> but I'm not a Ubuntu fan, and I don't know what options they use by
> default and their kernel settings
> so read, ask to Ubuntu users, test
>
The suggestions in the above links don't bring anything in performance,
at least not for me with my hardware.

On my external eSata I created a ext3 file system:

#rows #seconds #total_seconds cum_ips table_size last_ips #queries
cum_qps last_qps
10000 5.2 5.2 1928.0 10000 1928.0 1116 215.2 215.2
20000 6.7 11.9 1683.6 20000 1494.2 1504 126.6 58.0
30000 6.8 18.7 1606.1 20000 1470.6 1908 102.1 59.4
40000 6.5 25.2 1589.1 20000 1540.1 2264 89.9 54.8
50000 7.0 32.2 1554.5 20000 1429.9 2612 81.2 49.8
Done

the ntfs file system on eSata:

#rows #seconds #total_seconds cum_ips table_size last_ips #queries
cum_qps last_qps
10000 4.9 4.9 2060.8 10000 2060.8 1144 235.8 235.8
20000 6.6 11.4 1748.9 20000 1519.0 1536 134.3 59.5
30000 6.7 18.2 1651.4 20000 1485.8 1936 106.6 59.4
40000 6.6 24.7 1616.7 20000 1520.6 2300 93.0 55.4
50000 6.9 31.7 1578.4 20000 1441.8 2652 83.7 50.8
Done

the ext4 on eSata drive:

#rows #seconds #total_seconds cum_ips table_size last_ips #queries
cum_qps last_qps
10000 22.3 22.3 447.9 10000 447.9 2300 103.0 103.0
20000 55.5 77.8 257.0 20000 180.2 6784 87.2 80.8
30000 68.4 146.2 205.1 20000 146.1 11548 79.0 69.6
40000 66.2 212.5 188.3 20000 151.0 16080 75.7 68.5
50000 67.4 279.9 178.7 20000 148.3 20684 73.9 68.3
Done

The ext4 and ext3 fstab entries where:
/dev/sdb2 /media/MyBookAV2 extX
defaults 0 0

The disk performance for internal (sda) and external disk (sdb) measured
using hdparm -Tt are:

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 6878 MB in 2.00 seconds = 3440.47 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 230 MB in 3.02 seconds = 76.26 MB/sec

/dev/sdb:
Timing cached reads: 6934 MB in 2.00 seconds = 3468.26 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 316 MB in 3.01 seconds = 105.15 MB/sec

I will just use ext3 or ntfs for Firebird SQL db's on my Ubuntu 10.10.

Hope this will be useful for someone else too.

Werner