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Re: [HACKERS] Faster CREATE DATABASE by delaying fsync (was 8.4.1 ubuntu karmic slow createdb)

Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

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From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Cc: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org, Michael Clemmons <glassresistor@gmail.com>, Hannu Krosing <hannu@2ndquadrant.com>, Scott Marlowe <scott.marlowe@gmail.com>
Date: 2009-12-28T23:06:28Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers, pgsql-performance 
Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> writes:
> This speeds up CREATE DATABASE from ~9 seconds to something around 0.8s on my
> laptop.  Still slower than with fsync off (~0.25) but quite a worthy 
> improvement.

I can't help wondering whether that's real or some kind of
platform-specific artifact.  I get numbers more like 3.5s (fsync off)
vs 4.5s (fsync on) on a machine where I believe the disks aren't lying
about write-complete.  It makes sense that an fsync at the end would be
a little bit faster, because it would give the kernel some additional
freedom in scheduling the required I/O, but it isn't cutting the total
I/O required at all.  So I find it really hard to believe a 10x speedup.

			regards, tom lane