Comment 53 for bug 221009

I can confirm this behavior on karmic amd64 with latest firefox (3.5.7+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.9.10.1):

soenke@kellerautomat:~$ strace -p $(pgrep firefox) -e fsync,fdatasync -tT
Process 20808 attached - interrupt to quit
23:21:47 fsync(71) = 0 <0.035733>
23:21:57 fsync(94) = 0 <0.059098>
23:22:07 fsync(94) = 0 <0.033586>
23:22:17 fsync(69) = 0 <0.046717>
23:22:28 fsync(69) = 0 <0.052431>
23:22:38 fsync(66) = 0 <0.033899>
23:22:45 fdatasync(74) = 0 <0.061717>
23:22:45 fdatasync(74) = 0 <0.055044>
23:22:45 fdatasync(34) = 0 <0.066163>
23:22:48 fsync(94) = 0 <0.044252>
23:22:58 fsync(94) = 0 <0.063860>
23:23:16 fsync(94) = 0 <0.035658>
23:23:22 fdatasync(74) = 0 <0.049499>
23:23:22 fdatasync(74) = 0 <0.044065>
23:23:22 fdatasync(34) = 0 <0.066276>
23:23:26 fsync(63) = 0 <0.045178>
23:23:36 fsync(63) = 0 <0.071344>

fds 34 and 74 are places.sqlite[-journal]:

This is how it looks like when using firefox as usual.

Often I even recognize fsync fireworks (I had just to wait about 10 minutes for this report):

23:31:51 fdatasync(74) = 0 <0.043869>
23:31:51 fdatasync(34) = 0 <0.077413>
23:31:51 fdatasync(74) = 0 <0.058513>
23:31:51 fdatasync(74) = 0 <0.044234>
23:31:51 fdatasync(34) = 0 <0.066308>
23:31:51 fdatasync(74) = 0 <0.071748>
23:31:51 fdatasync(74) = 0 <0.047007>
23:31:51 fdatasync(34) = 0 <0.077155>
23:31:51 fdatasync(74) = 0 <0.043521>
23:31:51 fdatasync(74) = 0 <0.055024>
23:31:51 fdatasync(34) = 0 <0.066442>
23:31:53 fdatasync(74) = 0 <0.050449>
23:31:53 fdatasync(74) = 0 <0.044038>
23:31:53 fdatasync(34) = 0 <0.108065>
23:31:53 fdatasync(74) = 0 <0.056989>
23:31:53 fdatasync(74) = 0 <0.054972>
23:31:53 fdatasync(34) = 0 <0.088218>
23:31:53 fdatasync(74) = 0 <0.061579>
23:31:53 fdatasync(74) = 0 <0.046760>
23:31:53 fdatasync(34) = 0 <0.071646>

and so on for about 5-10 seconds. This behavior is annoying especially if you have an ecryptfs homedir :(