[quotemstr]

> The OS is already caching the file

Not necessarily. With O_DIRECT, pread() doesn't put pages into page cache: it just DMAs them directly into your process. Using O_DIRECT and the process-private caching we've been discussing, sophisticated programs (like databases) can (and do!) implement their own "page cache" systems. And because databases have access pattern information that the generic kernel VM subsystem doesn't, such a database can frequently do a better job doing this caching on its own.

[ben-schaaf]

I might have undersold the performance advantage of writing your own cache, but let me reiterate the point I was trying to make: The reason we didn't consider doing so was because we weren't having a performance issue. Writing our own cache would be strictly more work than just using pread and accomplished the same thing.

[quotemstr]

Yeah. For your application, you did the right thing. I was speaking more abstractly.