raidframe: deleting a large file takes minutes and makes system unresponsive

[Petar Bogdanovic <petar%smokva.net@localhost>]

Hi,

I issued a `rm some-file-that-is-over-300gb-in-size' minutes ago and am
still waiting for rm to return.  That itself is not a problem but it
seems that the process of removing such a large file almost halts
everything else that is also doing i/o.

I noticed every once in a while that there are situations where certain
i/o-operations block everything else for a couple of seconds but it was
never as apparent as in this case.

Is it normal that a simple rm can starve everything else?

Some details:

        $ mount
        /dev/raid0a on / type ffs (log, NFS exported, local)

        $ df -h
        Filesystem         Size       Used      Avail %Cap Mounted on
        /dev/raid0a        1.3T       970G       368G  72% /

The rm was issued on linux-laptop that mounts /dev/raid0a over NFS.  But
I guess that shouldn't make a difference.

Thanks,

                Petar Bogdanovic