Few days ago I’ve written a post explaining how to do a direct I/O in Python. But then I thought that it might be a good idea to explain what direct I/O is. So, here we go. As surprising as it is, when you write some information to the disk, it doesn’t get there immediately. […]

When git appeared for the first time, I was convinced that I don’t need it. It seemed that git is good for large and distributed projects, like kernel. While my own needs where much more modest – manage a project with couple of dozen files and perhaps a couple of contributors at most. Couple of […]

This article describes how lack of swap partition affects behavior of your Linux system. It is right here.

Table of contents Introduction The obvious Memory leaks Hibernation The less obvious I/O cache Bottom line IntroductionBACK TO TOC This short article deals with simple question. How exactly lack of swap partition affects Linux’s performance. What would happen if you turn the swap off? The obviousBACK TO TOC Memory leaksBACK TO TOC The obvious price […]

I have finished writing a new article. This article gives solutions to common problems that one may encounter when booting Linux. From faulty service scripts to corrupted initrd, it’s all there. You can find the article here.

Table of contents Introduction The obvious Memory leaks Hibernation The less obvious I/O cache Bottom line Introduction Understanding the kernel installation Kernel binary Kernel version number Kernel modules Linux boot process explained Initial ram-disk Mounting root file-system init and services init levels Services Booting Linux with broken init scripts Conclusion IntroductionBACK TO TOC I thought […]

As the name implies, this article explains how to crack up, modify and save modern initrd file, without using fancy tools such as mkinitrd and friends. You can find it here.

Table of contents Introduction The obvious Memory leaks Hibernation The less obvious I/O cache Bottom line Introduction Understanding the kernel installation Kernel binary Kernel version number Kernel modules Linux boot process explained Initial ram-disk Mounting root file-system init and services init levels Services Booting Linux with broken init scripts Conclusion Introduction Few words about initrd […]

Today I finished working on a new article called “SMP affinity and proper interrupt handling in Linux”. It describes a problem encountered by many system engineers and administrators and that is how to configure the system to properly handle interrupts. This article concludes a research that I did, those purpose was to find out what […]

Introduction Hardware interrupts has always been expensive. Somehow these small pieces of software consume so much CPU power and hardware and software engineers has always been trying to change this state of affairs. Some significant progress has been made. Still hardware interrupts consume lots of CPU power. You will rarely see effects of interrupt handling […]