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Date:      Wed, 24 Sep 1997 09:43:27 +0930
From:      Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To:        pascale@cockatoo.aus.org
Cc:        John Fieber <jfieber@indiana.edu>, doc@FreeBSD.ORG, nik@iii.co.uk
Subject:   Re: Doc projects
Message-ID:  <19970924094327.18991@lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <XFMail.970923161600.pascale@cerebellar.corrosion-rust.com>; from Luke H. on Tue, Sep 23, 1997 at 04:16:00PM -0400
References:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.970923115530.17661K-100000@fallout.campusview.indiana.edu> <XFMail.970923161600.pascale@cerebellar.corrosion-rust.com>

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On Tue, Sep 23, 1997 at 04:16:00PM -0400, Luke H. wrote:
>
> On 23-Sep-97 John Fieber wrote:
>> On Mon, 15 Sep 1997 nik@iii.co.uk wrote:
>>
>>> my own machine at home. At which point I'd like to get more involved with
>>> the documentation project. What tasks are up for grabs at the moment?
>>
>> What REALLY needs to happen is for someone to do a cover-to-cover
>> reading of the handbook and flag things that are out of date,
>> flat out wrong, or generally incomprehensible.  I've stumbled
>> into things in all categories, and I know there are more.  Some
>> things are trivial to fix, otherwise just compile notes like
>> "sect 8.3.2:  yada yada yada is correct for 2.1, but the
>> procedure was changed for 2.2.  Note the change."
>>
>> THEN, we will no what needs to be done.  :)
>>
>> Although it would be easy to divide up the reading among a number
>> of people, having one person do it has the distinct advantage of
>> being better able to spot larger scale structural glitches,
>> however at ~300 pages printed, that is no tiny task.  (I recently
>> finished tech editing a ~370 page book...but I got paid for it :)
>>
>> As far as new docs, I think we could really use a "FreeBSD
>> performance tuning" guide.  This should cover (a) what
>> performance information exists, (b) how to get it, (c) how to
>> interpret it, and (d) what to do about it.
>>
>> Why is this an important document?  Because the applications that
>> separate FreeBSD from the alternatives (read: Linux) are server
>> applications where small performance tweaks can have a big
>> effect.
>>
>> (c) in particular can be quite complex as I discovered when I
>> started drafting a little blub about looking at memory
>> usage...what *exactly* do things like vss and rss reveal?  Things
>> like this have been at the root of a number of Linux/BSD debates
>> when, in fact, the numbers being compared between the systems
>> were not really comparable because of differences in reporting.
>>
>> A lot of the answers are diffused in the archives of the hackers
>> mailing lists, and can be picked from the brains of core team
>> members.
>>
>> -john
>>
> I am willing to work on this, except in cases where a particular piece of hardwa
> re is neccessary to do the writing/checking of the handbook.

Congratulations!  For the pieces of hardware, send a message to the
list.  You should get a few takers for the special hardware.

Greg




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