[$] Why glibc's fstat() is slow

The fstat()system call retrieves some of the metadata - owner, size, protections,timestamps, and so on - associated with an open file descriptor. One mightnot think of it as a performance-critical system call, but there areworkloads that make a lot of fstat() calls; it is not somethingthat should be slowed unnecessarily. As it turns out, though, the GNU CLibrary (glibc) has been doing exactly that, but a fix is in the works.