From owner-freebsd-questions Thu May 2 14:36:22 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id OAA27260 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 2 May 1996 14:36:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mistery.mcafee.com (jimd@mistery.mcafee.com [192.187.128.69]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id OAA27255 for ; Thu, 2 May 1996 14:36:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from jimd@localhost) by mistery.mcafee.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id OAA02448; Thu, 2 May 1996 14:35:58 -0700 From: Jim Dennis Message-Id: <199605022135.OAA02448@mistery.mcafee.com> Subject: Re: Dual Processer Support To: Ekrem_Gashi@ccmail.nybc.org (Ekrem Gashi) Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 14:35:58 -0700 (PDT) Cc: questions@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <9604028310.AA831077745@ccmail.nybc.org> from "Ekrem Gashi" at May 2, 96 03:53:02 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > > I am interested installing unix operating system, which I like to use > as a server and like to load Oracle DB. I don't know of a FreeBSD port for Oracle. A quick search of their webpages reveals no hits for 'bsd' or 'linux'. So I suspect you'd have to run the SCO binaries under iBCS (and I don't know if that would work -- some binaries are linked against libraries that are proprietary to SCO). Another quick search -- this time of the Sybase pages reveals a Linux client and server package but nothing under 'bsd'. Granted these weren't exhaustive searchines (I didn't try wildards or verify that they can find substrings -- I just tried 'linux' 'freebsd' and 'bsd' in separate searches and glanced at the product lists). > > I have dual processor 120MHz 2.00GB disk, 24MB RAM. I suspect that any serious processing will use up all of that RAM long before you'll benefit from the addtion processor -- particularly in db applications (which are usually much more disk and memory intensive then processor bound). Consider tripling the RAM (at least). > I am debating which operating system I shall use. Now I have NT, but I > won to install unix. We want to recommend Unix (at least I do). However I can't always do so with a clear conscience -- sometimes it simply isn't the answer. What's your applications. > > I was tolled that Linux does not support dual processing. It might not be nearly as important as you think. However there are groups working on SMP (symmetrical multi-processor) support for Linux. I'm not sure about the Free/Net/OpenBSD camps. If you find that you application really is this processor and/or I/O intensive -- and it's worth any money to keep it running (i.e. you'll be paying dozens or hundreds of employees to "work with" or "wait for" it) then you may want to perform a cost-benefit analysis for buying a Sparc station, or an RS/6000 (much as I like SGI's I don't see them with a big share of the db server market any time in the near term). > > Pleas let me know any infos you mid have on FreeBSD. Have you checked out the web pages? (http://www.freebsd.org). > > Thanks > Gashi In conclusion I would say that you should look at this with a couple of thoughts in mind: What are you really trying to do and why? What resources do you have (or can you get)? Do you think you are qualified to make the purchasing and implementation decisions, and/or do the requisite research yourself or should you hire a consultant? If this is just a home system and your just playing around with this to build up your experience and put a few extra bullets on the resume -- then most of what I've said is irrelevant. If you have any business at stake then I suspect (given the nature of your questions) that you'll want to bring in someone who's far more qualified than me to recommend a solution. Jim Dennis, System Administrator, McAfee Associates