Date: Thu, 30 Oct 1997 14:00:31 -0800 (PST) From: "Bryn Wm. Moslow" <bryn@nwlink.com> To: freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Password file builds Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.971030131812.20446B-100000@wingnut.spacemonster.org>
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Hello, I'm running 2.2.2-RELEASE on a mail server that has several thousand users. The new box is pretty beefy: PPro 200, 256MB RAM, Adaptec 2940UW. The server it replaced was running BSD/OS 2.1 on a P133 w/ 80MB RAM Fast SCSI-2 (Buslogic). The mail system runs beautifully - very fast, very nice. I only have one rather annoying problem: Password file rebuilds just absolutely HAMMER the system. Whenever pwd_mkdb is running the whole box literally comes to a standstill (things still work - just VERY slowly.) This happens every 15 minutes if there has been a change to the master.passwd file I'm building from. The spwd.db and pwd.db are nearly 5MB and I'm using DES as I have several other boxes (Non-FreeBSD) that I have to stay compatible with for passwords. Someday they'll all be FreeBSD and no problem =). I've been running the password build under a nice value of '15' but if I'm watching top almost everything else on the box is in one of four STATEs: ufslk, getblk, wait, sbwait. The waits I get but I can't find anything on ufslk or getblk in the man pages or handbook. Maybe I'm on the wrong track but I'm thinking I've got disk I/O blockage. The disk is running furiously while pwd_mkdb is running but the system load actually DROPS while this is going on (presumably because everything is waiting) and then spikes way up for a minute as soon as it's finished and all the popper and sendmail processes get their time on the silicon and platters. I've been toying with the idea of running the filesystem(s) async but was hoping for something a little more solid. If I had another machine to build into an NIS server I might be inclined to do my builds elsewhere. Additionally, NIS would be a hard sell to the company president. He just don't like it. I've been avoiding it myself because of some horror stories and personal experiences. Right now, authentication (for popper and logins) is SLOW for the couple of minutes that pwd_mkdb is running. Every time my boss uses Eudora and has to see that blue bar I hear about it. Terminal Sessions are nearly unusable during the build. It irks me to say this but BSDI took almost no performance hit on a slower machine with slower drives with the same password files. Suggestions? /\ /\ /| Bryn Wm. Moslow / \ / \ / | Northwest Link Systems Administrator / \ / \ /\ / | (425) 451-1151 / \/ \/ \/ |_____ http://www.nwlink.com
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