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Gordon Henderson wrote:
...
... Just to be pedantic the data may be in RAM and disk. The file system tend to use intelligent access - it assumes that if the space is not short in RAM there's no need to get rid of it so it keeps it there just in case you want it again. Some may be identical to the matching area on disk and some may need flushing to write it.B cached, not 3.5MB ...What I'm wondering is if say, the cache is like the old SmartDrive cache on DOS where rather than writing directly do disc, it holds what it needs to write in a cache for a couple of seconds until the disk is pretty much idle to speed up writing?If that is the case, what is the buffer for?I'm under the impression (someone correct me if I'm wrong!) that 'cached' data belongs to the filesystem and "buffers" belong to the underlying block device(s).So the system has 35MB of files, cached in RAM and not on disk, and 2.5MB worth of buffered disk blocks that it can read from without accessing the disk.
Tom te tom te tom -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html