Re: noatime on ufs2

On Thu, Jan 11, 2024 at 6:59 AM Mike Karels <mike@karels.net> wrote:

> On 11 Jan 2024, at 7:30, Miroslav Lachman wrote:
>
> > On 11/01/2024 09:54, Tomoaki AOKI wrote:
> >> On Thu, 11 Jan 2024 08:36:24 +0100
> >> Alexander Leidinger <Alexander@Leidinger.net> wrote:
> >
> > [..]
> >
> >>> There's one possibility which nobody talked about yet... changing the
> >>> default to noatime at install time in fstab / zfs set.
> >>>
> >>> I fully agree to not violate POLA by changing the default to noatime in
> >>> any FS. I always set noatime everywhere on systems I take care about,
> no
> >>> exceptions (any user visible mail is handled via maildir/IMAP, not
> >>> mbox). I haven't made up my mind if it would be a good idea to change
> >>> bsdinstall to set noatime (after asking the user about it, and later
> >>> maybe offer  the possibility to use relatime in case it gets
> >>> implemented). I think it is at least worthwile to discuss this
> >>> possibility (including what the default setting of bsdinstall should be
> >>> for this option).
> >
> > [..]
> >
> >> A different aspect of view.
> >> Nowadays, storages are quickly moving from HDD, aka spinning rust, to
> >> SSD.
> >> And SSD has a risk of sudden-death of wearing out. In ancient days, HDD
> >> dies not suddenly and at least some cases admins could have time to
> >> replace suspicious drives. But SSD dies basically suddenly.
> >>
> >> IMHO, this could be a valid reason to violate POLA. In limited use
> >> cases, atime is useful, at the cost of amplified write accesses.
> >> But in most cases, it doesn't have positive functionality nowadays.
> >>
> >> Anyway, we should have time to discuss whether it should be done or not
> >> until upcoming stable/15 branch. stable/14 is already here and it
> >> wouldn't be a good thing to MFC. Only *.0-RELEASE should be the point
> >> to introduce this, unlike discussion about vi and ee on forums.
> >
> > The default values change over time as the needs of people, programs and
> hardware change. Many values for sysctls changed over time.
> > If "noatime" can help people to not trash SSD / SD storage, I can
> imagine that bsdinstall will detect the storage type (simple guess can be
> made by diskinfo -v) and offer a "noatime" option that the user can
> check/uncheck. This option can be pre-selected for flash based storage.
> > I don't care defaults for my-self, I can change them, but sane defaults
> should be beneficial for new users without much background knowledge.
> >
> > Kind regards
> > Miroslav Lachman
>
> I like the idea of an option in bsdinstall, but I don't think it is
> necessary
> to check the storage type.  It could simply default to noatime.
>
> I think we should automatically use noatime on SD card images (where
> bsdinstall
> doesn't get used).
>
> Separately, I think a relatime option would be a good compromise, and I
> would
> probably use it.
>

I think these are sensible steps. We already do something similar for ZFS.

Warner