From owner-freebsd-chat Mon Sep 20 14: 6: 4 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from dt014nb6.san.rr.com (dt014nb6.san.rr.com [24.30.129.182]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B263415C0E for ; Mon, 20 Sep 1999 14:06:01 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from Doug@gorean.org) Received: from localhost (doug@localhost) by dt014nb6.san.rr.com (8.9.3/8.8.8) with ESMTP id OAA05819; Mon, 20 Sep 1999 14:04:50 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from Doug@gorean.org) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1999 14:04:50 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug X-Sender: doug@dt014nb6.san.rr.com To: Kip Macy Cc: Dag-Erling Smorgrav , Joao Carlos , hitech@bahianet.com.br, chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Out of mbuf clusters In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org [Re-directed to -chat since none of the 3(!) lists were appropriate] On Mon, 20 Sep 1999, Kip Macy wrote: > Here is where your philosophy diverges from many others -- I and I believe > many others think that a server operating system should at least be robust > out of the box. You have a fundamental flaw in your logic here, and in most of the other sentences in this post. Namely, you fail to adequately define the problem domain that you're proposing freebsd as a solution for. More precisely, a server OS should be robust _for what application_ out of the box? > Neither Linux nor Solaris is vulnerable to running out of > mbufs as a result of malicious code. I don't think FreeBSD should be > either. So, how many mbuf clusters should freebsd assign in a default configuration, and how will you justify the massive amount of ram (massive relative to other kernel structures) that they will consume? Before you answer, keep in mind that I can direct an attack against your box that will easily consume more than 15,000 mbuf's without even breathing hard. (BTW, you're also wrong about linux and solaris not being vulnerable to high server load problems out of the box.) > This is in no way a rant against FreeBSD, but rather a rant against the > attitude that one needs to know about OS internals to run a lightweight > server. As someone else already pointed out, you don't need to know the OS internals to run a lightweight server. You DO need to know them to run a heavyweight server, or in the case of the original poster to run a clone flooding script designed to take down a heavyweight server. You cannot define a default configuration that will be perfect for every use. It's simply not possible. > If all of core insisted that Joe User had to know about internals > to use FreeBSD as a server, FreeBSD would be little more than a hobbyist > OS, But -core has stated explicitly that freebsd IS a hobbyist OS. I believe Jordan's exact words were that, "FreeBSD is a vanity OS by and for the developers." The fact that it's also useful for doing productive things is purely an accident, resulting from the fact that the hobbyists involved like to spend their time doing productive things. > rather than what it is -- the best OS currently available. Once again, this whole thesis is just plain silly. FreeBSD is not the best OS available for every possible application. It happens to be a really good OS for a lot of things, in fact I ran what was at the time the largest IRC server in the world on a freebsd machine. However my success came from long hours of learning about how the OS works, combined with a lot of help from knowledgeable people. A lot of what we learned is in the base system now, but I can pretty much guarantee you that it won't set any records for high performance servers "out of the box." Doug -- "My mama told me, my mama said, 'don't cry.' She said, 'you're too young a man to have as many women you got.' I looked at my mother dear and didn't even crack a smile. I said, 'If women kill me, I don't mind dyin!'" - John Belushi as "Joliet" Jake Blues, "I Don't Know" To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message