Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 22:35:29 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: <robert@mpe.mpg.de>, <freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Survey on tuning facts. Message-ID: <001801c0d45c$07603840$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <200105031347.f43DlES30960@robert2.mpe-garching.mpg.de>
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Sadly, the art of tuning UNIX systems is rapidly disappearing because for one thing so many of the kernel parameters today are self-tuning, but the biggest reason is that it's easier to throw money at bigger hardware than to tune the system. Still, the sync/async/softupdates thing is still very serious and anyone managing a FreeBSD server needs to know about it. Beyond that, if your doing some unusual things on your server you do need to go off the defaults. For example, on our Usenet news server, which handles many itty-bitty files, I've created the spools with a smaller frag size and smaller number of bytes per inode because you need all those extra inodes on a newsspool (but, it makes the disks run slower so don't ever do this on anything other than a newsserver) Also, for another example, on a major BGP router with close to 100K routes in it I had to raise NMBCLUSTERS and VM_KMEM_SIZE as well as MAXUSERS. But, beyond these things your going to get better tuning results by good hardware selection, (espically disks) and by recompiling your kernel to remove unneeded drivers. If your doing normal things on your server the defaults will probably serve you best. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com >-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Robert Suetterlin >Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2001 6:47 AM >To: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: Survey on tuning facts. > > >Howdy, > > I found out two weeks ago, that one has to switch on >soft-updates for ffs manually. > >I was wondring how many newbies know about this fact, how many of >us have done it, how we found out and if there are other tuning >facts we should care for. > >If the above is total gibberish to you, please do the following. >Type the command 'mount' on your shell and see if any of your >mounted filesystems has 'soft-updates' in the parantheses. > If this is not the case, and Your kernel has FFS (look in >/sys/<architacture>/conf/GENERIC), please read 'man tunefs' the >option to look for is '-n enable'. Also look into >/usr/share/doc/smm (I guess that is 'System Manager Manual') under >05.fastfs is more information on the fast filesystem and soft updates. > >Why You should bother? Have You ever tried to delete a large >directory structure, like /usr/ports ? Have You ever wondered why >this takes half an hour or longer? Well I did, but I thought I >had to live with it ... or change to another OS with a quicker >Filesystem. Don't chang OS ... switch on softupdates. > > >Have any of You found other tuning parameters that increased the >speed of their machine by an order of magnitude? If so, please >tell me, or tell me where to read about it. > > >Sincerely, > > Robert S. > >To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org >with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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