From: Valdis Kletnieks We added the ability to change a block device's IO elevator scheduler both at kernel boot and on-the-fly, but we only documented the elevator= boot parameter. Add a quick how-to on doing it on the fly. Signed-off-by: Valdis Kletnieks Cc: Jens Axboe Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton --- Documentation/block/switching-sched.txt | 22 ++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 files changed, 22 insertions(+) diff -puN /dev/null Documentation/block/switching-sched.txt --- /dev/null Thu Apr 11 07:25:15 2002 +++ 25-akpm/Documentation/block/switching-sched.txt Mon Mar 27 15:51:00 2006 @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +As of the Linux 2.6.10 kernel, it is now possible to change the +IO scheduler for a given block device on the fly (thus making it possible, +for instance, to set the CFQ scheduler for the system default, but +set a specific device to use the anticipatory or noop schedulers - which +can improve that device's throughput). + +To set a specific scheduler, simply do this: + +echo SCHEDNAME > /sys/block/DEV/queue/scheduler + +where SCHEDNAME is the name of a defined IO scheduler, and DEV is the +device name (hda, hdb, sga, or whatever you happen to have). + +The list of defined schedulers can be found by simply doing +a "cat /sys/block/DEV/queue/scheduler" - the list of valid names +will be displayed, with the currently selected scheduler in brackets: + +# cat /sys/block/hda/queue/scheduler +noop anticipatory deadline [cfq] +# echo anticipatory > /sys/block/hda/queue/scheduler +# cat /sys/block/hda/queue/scheduler +noop [anticipatory] deadline cfq _