From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri May 9 21:00:15 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7A4891065672 for ; Fri, 9 May 2008 21:00:15 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from mail-out3.apple.com (mail-out3.apple.com [17.254.13.22]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6039F8FC1E for ; Fri, 9 May 2008 21:00:15 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from relay14.apple.com (relay14.apple.com [17.128.113.52]) by mail-out3.apple.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2F87B2B3106B; Fri, 9 May 2008 14:00:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from relay14.apple.com (unknown [127.0.0.1]) by relay14.apple.com (Symantec Mail Security) with ESMTP id 162F12804C; Fri, 9 May 2008 14:00:15 -0700 (PDT) X-AuditID: 11807134-aced5bb000000ed7-44-4824bb5eaea0 Received: from cswiger1.apple.com (cswiger1.apple.com [17.214.13.96]) by relay14.apple.com (Apple SCV relay) with ESMTP id E6EAB2803F; Fri, 9 May 2008 14:00:14 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: From: Chuck Swiger To: DAve In-Reply-To: <48249E0A.8080709@pixelhammer.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v919.2) Date: Fri, 9 May 2008 14:00:14 -0700 References: <482473B7.7070707@pixelhammer.com> <48248AC9.5060507@infracaninophile.co.uk> <20080509202941.J53368@wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> <9F98C32F-0DA0-40F9-B82B-4866F3D600CB@mac.com> <48249E0A.8080709@pixelhammer.com> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.919.2) X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAA== Cc: User Questions Subject: Re: FBSD 6.2 Xeon 2.4ghz CPU and high load X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 09 May 2008 21:00:15 -0000 On May 9, 2008, at 11:55 AM, DAve wrote: >> For single-processor systems, FreeBSD 4.11 does very well at a lot >> of tasks. However, Dave apparently has a 4-CPU system (~8 threads >> if he enabled hyperthreading), and for real SMP hardware, more >> recent versions of FreeBSD generally perform better than 4.x would. > > Single CPU quad core. OK. > ps -aux output is up, look under the FBSD dir. I also put up both > dmesg.boot files from the servers. MailScanner is what is taking up all of the load; tuning that area is where you need to focus. Things which come to mind are trying to limit the max number of children of that being run to something smaller, perhaps 8 or so. Yes, they recommend running 5 * #CPUs, but they also think their instances are going to be around 20MB in size, but yours are running at 100+ MB size. You might find that running sa-update and sa-compile nightly might improve your SpamAssassin performance; I've got a crontab setup which runs the following nightly: % cat /usr/local/bin/update-spamassassin #! /bin/sh PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin sa-update --allowplugins --gpgkey D1C035168C1EBC08464946DA258CDB3ABDE9DC10 --channel saupdates.openprotect.com --channel updates.spamassassin.org sa-compile kill -HUP `cat /var/run/vscan/spamd.pid` (If you aren't running spamd because MailScanner uses builtin interface to SpamAssassin, comment out the last line. But do check the sa-compile docs, you have to make a change for it to be used....) Regards, -- -Chuck