On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 17:36:57 -0800 (PST) Greywolf <greywolf@starwolf.com>
wrote:

>[Thus spake Sean Davis ("SD: ") 8:30pm...]
>
>SD: I've got three out of four (everything but my root / main stuff disk)
>disks SD: running with softdeps, and while they DO perform better with
>softdeps, I've SD: noticed some drawbacks, such as when (for example)
>untarring pkgsrc. If I'm SD: doing it on a softdep'd partition on a nice
>fast disk (this box is an SD: XP2700+ with 1GB ram) it'll complete in
>about 19 seconds - then lag the HELL SD: out of the machine as it actually
>goes about doing the real writes. To the SD: point where it almost feels
>like it's hardlocked the system. I've had this SD: happen several times,
>only on softdep'd filesystems. SD:
>SD: - Sean
>
>My problem with softdeps is untarring into an already populated filesystem
>which is near capacity.  Because the files don't get recorded as truncated
>or overwritten, it overflows the filesystem.  I have to remount with
>"nosoftdep,noasync,sync" in order to avoid it.
> 

for installations I habitually do:

(in destdir.i386)

	tar cBpf - . | (cd /; tar --unlink -cBpf -)

Doesn't this avoid your problem? I've always assumed the unlink happens
close enough to the re-write that softdep is able to make the two opposites
attract :-)

-G