Hi Marcel,

On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 09:37:57AM +0100, Marcel Taeumel wrote:
> Hi Dave --
> 
> > [...]??which point the sources file no longer lives on rotating media
> 
> Quick comment on this one. :-) Many computers use SSD/Flash storage
> these days and I am pretty sure that modern operating systems have
> their tricks with caching bigger files even further without the
> application ever noticing. However, considering external file scanners.
> scanning for viruses, yes, it can be beneficial to avoid an extra
> use of some OS file API.
> 

Indeed, I would be interested to know if the big slowdowns that
Christoph has reported are cured. I am assuming that the problem
is cause by virus scanners, so I anticipate that it will stop
happening when the sources are cached internally. Please let us
know if this proves to be the case.

Yes there is a lot of OS buffering going on that we cannot see,
although I suspect that some virus scanners are just hooking
in to file open requests to decide if a scan is needed. I would
not be surprised if some of those security(*) products are not
quite as intelligent as the sales people would have you believe.

Don't worry, I don't use actual rotating media on my PC, I've
been using SSD for many years :-)

Dave

(*) I am not sure we should call them "sucurity" tools, inasmuch
as they often seem to act primarily as denial-of-service agents.