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Date:      Wed, 9 Sep 1998 14:46:29 -0700 (PDT)
From:      josh@zcompany.com
To:        freebsd-gnats-submit@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   misc/7873: poor initial configuration and documentation of kernel resources frustrating!
Message-ID:  <199809092146.OAA23745@hub.freebsd.org>

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>Number:         7873
>Category:       misc
>Synopsis:       poor initial configuration and documentation of kernel resources frustrating!
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    freebsd-bugs
>State:          open
>Quarter:
>Keywords:
>Date-Required:
>Class:          change-request
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Wed Sep  9 14:50:01 PDT 1998
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Josh Beck
>Organization:
Z Company (filez.com, mp3.com, etc)
>Release:        various 97&98 SNAPS
>Environment:
FreeBSD robin.filez.com 3.0-19980804-SNAP FreeBSD 3.0-19980804-SNAP #0: Tue Sep  1 01:54:53 PDT 1998     root@robin.filez.com:/usr/src/sys/compile/ROBIN-19980901.2  i386

>Description:
The capabilities database (/etc/login.conf) and the kernel resource
limitations are very poorly documented and caused us no end of grief
for a long time trying to extract the maximum performance from our web
servers.
>How-To-Repeat:
install a stock freebsd system and naively change maxusers and the
login class for your web server user and assume all is well :)
>Fix:
Before 3.0 is finalized, how about a generic "high performance" switch.
In specific, I find that we need to do the following to keep apache from
complaining with "resource not available errors":

add these to the kernel:
options         "CHILD_MAX=1024"
options         "OPEN_MAX=1024"
options         "SOMAXCONN=4096"
options         "MAXMEM=(whatever is applicable)"
maxusers        512

and give the user the web server runs as the login class "root"

These are poorly documented, and given the amount of floundering I've
seen in the mailing list, I'd say a TON of other people run into these
problems. I don't even know if there is more I should do to get better
performance... ??? No documentation I've found in several months of
searching, so how am I to know?

FreeBSD really needs a way to easily get full performance from the
system. I personally don't mind the kernel taking up the extra memory,
it's a lot bigger hassle to figure out how to keep the stupid thing
from crashing and how to keep apache from running into resource
limitations.

I'm not trying to be an ass, but I really think that this is a big
problem with FreeBSD. I almost punted on FreeBSD and went the route
of getting all of our CGI working under Linux because I couldn't get
the OS to simply run at it's full potential, and I really think this
should be treated as a bug. All operating systems have issues like
this (Linux and file descriptors/process, for instance), but to see
FreeBSD have more built in and undocumented restrictions and limitations
than Windows NT is really depressing :)
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted:

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