Selecting a Linux I/O Scheduler

I read that it's supposedly possible to change the I/O scheduler for a particular device on a running kernel by writing to /sys/block/[disk]/queue/scheduler. For example I can see on my system:

anon@anon:~$ cat /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler 
noop anticipatory deadline [cfq]

that the default is the completely fair queuing scheduler. What I'm wondering is if there is any use in including all four schedulers in my custom kernel. It would seem that there's not much point in having more than one scheduler compiled in unless the kernel is smart enough to select the correct scheduler for the correct hardware, specifically the 'noop' scheduler for flash based drives and one of the others for a traditional hard drive.

Is this the case?

linux linux-kernel scheduling

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The Linux Kernel does not automatically change the IO Scheduler at run-time. By this I mean, the Linux kernel, as of today, is not able to automatically choose an "optimal" scheduler depending on the type of secondary storage devise. During start-up, or during run-time, it is possible to change the IO scheduler manually.

The default scheduler is chosen at start-up based on the contents in the file located at /linux-2.6 /block/Kconfig.iosched. However, it is possible to change the IO scheduler during run-time by echoing a valid scheduler name into the file located at /sys/block/[DEV]/queue/scheduler. For example, echo deadline > /sys/block/hda/queue/scheduler

answered 2012-11-13T21:44:17.430

Selecting a Linux I/O Scheduler

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