[svlug] Sound Adventures Revisited

[Thomas Davis]

Seth David Schoen wrote:
> 
> Tom Tomlinson writes:
> > <snip>
> > Linux tries to minimize disk I/O by delaying actual writes as long as
> > possible.  The data written to disk files will be held in the main
> > memory (buffers) until the update daemon forces it to disk or somebody
> > executes sync command (or system call). In this way it's possible to
> > avoid completely writing many temporary files to disk because they are
> > deleted before the update daemon attacks to them.
> >
> > Unfortunately this makes it difficult to maintain sustained writes to
> > disk files.  At the time update runs (every 30 seconds or so) the
> > recording application will suspend for relatively long time until the
> > update operation completes.  If the application keeps blocked too long
> > time the buffer will overflow. This is more likely to happen with IDE
> > than with SCSI disks.
> >
> > This problem can probably be solved only by using special application
> > level buffering. Try another application if you are having problems with
> > the current one.
> > </snip>

I thought bdflush was supposed to fix this problem; as of 2.0.xx
kernels, you no longer was supposed to suffer from the every 30 seconds
of pauses..

for those wondering what bdflush is, it is a daemon that runs and
trickle flushes your buffers to disk, instead of waiting every 30
seconds to flush.  If your having problems with that, just do a 'man
bdflush', and read.  you probably need to change your flush interval
down, or disable it out right (that could be dangerous though..)

seriously, have you tried the alsa drivers, at http://alsa.jcu.cz. They
appear to be much better from what I've seen and used them for
(SB-AWE/64's and GUS UltraSounds/PNP)

-- 
-------------------+--------------------------------------------------------
Thomas Davis       | Supernova's are industrial accidents.
tadavis at jps.net    | One of the Linux/IrDA guys. 
http://www.jps.net/tadavis

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