[laptop-mode] Improving readahead behaviour

[Matthijs Kooijman]

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Hi all,

I'm using laptopmode to (among other things) increase the readahead value.
I've set it to 3MB currently:

  LM_READAHEAD=3072

However, every now and then I still have my music delay for a second or two
while my harddisk is spinning up. This is probably when my mp3 files are
larger than this 3MB. I could of course increase this value further, but I'm
afraid that will cause performance problems for other files.

Also, it seems this is not the proper solution to this problem. Is there any
way to make the kernel smarter and make it start buffering when the readahead
buffer is getting empty (instead of when it _is_ empty). Perhaps by setting
some minimal readahead buffer value, or by letting the kernel observe that an
application is slowly consuming a file at a constant rate? Perhaps by letting
the application itself tell the kernel that it wants a constant stream?

I've tried using mplayer for playback and setting all kinds of buffer or cache
options, but that didn't seem to work.

Are other people seeing this problem? Does anyone have a solution?

Gr.

Matthijs

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