From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jun 11 07:59:02 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8C10E16A41C for ; Sat, 11 Jun 2005 07:59:02 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from cyrus.watson.org (cyrus.watson.org [204.156.12.53]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 30A8F43D49 for ; Sat, 11 Jun 2005 07:59:02 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [204.156.12.50]) by cyrus.watson.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BE6E546B7B; Sat, 11 Jun 2005 03:59:00 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2005 09:00:26 +0100 (BST) From: Robert Watson X-X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: Steve Roome In-Reply-To: <20050610170537.GA67849@bibipentium.lonres.com> Message-ID: <20050611085604.J75625@fledge.watson.org> References: <746fd037f6ca8131a8fb8938f1e346e9@lonres.com> <20050610170537.GA67849@bibipentium.lonres.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD MySQL still WAY slower than Linux X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2005 07:59:02 -0000 On Fri, 10 Jun 2005, Steve Roome wrote: > We're using mostly: > > 5.4-STABLE FreeBSD 5.4-STABLE #0: Mon Jun 6 12:22:18 BST 2005 In my experience, the following factors make a big performance difference: - Thread package. In 5.x, you get process scope threads by default, but it turns out MySQL is tuned for system scope threads, and this is particularly visible in the supersmack benchmark, which competes many client processes against a few server threads. I'm not sure what the condition is of libthr on 5.x, but you could give it a spin. In 6.x, libthr has been largely rewritten and is a great deal faster. I think there's a compile-time option to make libpthread use system scope threads but the details ellude me. The Linuxthreads library may well provide a substantial improvement -- not as good for MySQL as the 6.x libthr, but perhaps much more appropriate than libpthread. - Locking model. Make sure that debug.mpsafenet is set to 1 (i.e., there aren't components in the kernel that force Giant over the network stack. Chances are there are none, but it's worth checking). - Twiddling hyper-threading, which helps or hurts differently in various configurations. - On a UP system, consider compiling a kernel without "options SMP" to reduce locking overhead. I've found the single largest remaining factor to be threading package -- over the past year or so I've about doubled MySQL performance on 5.x leading up to 5.3, largely through SMP locking work, but the remainder of the difference appears to be in the threading package. Robert N M Watson