I just found out there's no pdflush on my Linux, v2.6.38. But when I do a
ps uax | grep flush
It shows:
root 269 0.1 0.0 0 0 ? S 13:05 0:04 [flush-8:0]
My kernel is:
Linux yonggang-laptop 2.6.38-11-generic #50-Ubuntu SMP Mon Sep 12 21:18:14 UTC 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
It seems [flush8:0] is a replacement of pdflush. Does anyone have further information about how this [flush-8:0] thread works and what does 8:0 mean? I know in old versions, the number of pdflush threads is 2-8 and it varies upon the system write back workload. I expect the [flush-8:0] thread to do something similar. In addition, why does /proc/sys/vm/nr_pdflush_threads still exist if there's no pdflush thread at all?
Thanks,
Best Answer
The
flushprocess is responsible for flushing data from temporary disk to permanent. Its a replacement for the oldpdflush, like you mentioned, that claims much faster response time. The numbers you see refer to the block device it is monitoring.