From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jun 30 00:59:34 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3F7E737B401 for ; Mon, 30 Jun 2003 00:59:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from chunky.global.net.uk (chunky.global.net.uk [80.189.91.76]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 418B643FE3 for ; Mon, 30 Jun 2003 00:59:33 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from john.ekins@brightview.com) Received: from sunof.brightview.com ([80.189.91.77] helo=jre.is.brightview.com) by chunky.global.net.uk with smtp (Exim 3.36 #1) id 19WtTx-0006OG-00; Mon, 30 Jun 2003 08:53:49 +0100 Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 08:55:42 +0100 From: John Ekins To: Bill Moran Message-Id: <20030630085542.79951636.john.ekins@brightview.com> In-Reply-To: <3EFDE885.4050905@potentialtech.com> References: <20030627220033.5586e86b.john.ekins@brightview.com> <3EFD113A.3060402@potentialtech.com> <20030628192512.7165a3bf.john.ekins@brightview.com> <3EFDE885.4050905@potentialtech.com> Organization: Brightview X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.8.8 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-portbld-freebsd4.7) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Softupdates: df, du, sync and fsck [quite long] X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 07:59:34 -0000 On Sat, 28 Jun 2003 15:12:05 -0400 Bill Moran wrote: -> Hmmm ... not good. A little more research might qualify this problem for a PR. I was thinking that myself :-) -> Yikes! Is the machine still responsive? Sometimes you can put the load that -> high and still have a functional box. It was way too sluggish. The machine responded eventually but I wouldn't want to run it like that in production (even though I did for half an hour). -> I'm guessing by the way the conversation is going that you're able to grab -> one of these boxes and make some tweaks. Possibly try putting the spool -> directory on a dedicated partition and mounting it async? If the box shuts -> down dirty, you'll probably have to newfs the partition before you can use -> it again. At least make sure the spool partition is seperate from your log -> partition, that should help to mitigate the problem (although you may already -> have done that). I've ordered some more disks already. I'm going to split off the spool, the logs and the anti virus scanner (creates a temporary file for every message received). This will definitely help, I'm sure. Still, it doesn't answer the problem with soft updates I've experienced. -> I was wondering if maybe the syncs were taking longer than the shutdown process -> was willing to wait. It would certainly seem so, or perhaps it just can't sync for some reason. -> It may save you some time to look in CVS under the files for the drivers for -> the SCSI subsystem as well as the drivers for you specific cards to see if any -> commit messages talk about fixing problems like this. Will do. -> My experience with background fsck is that the machine is slow as hell while -> the background fsck is running. Whether or not this is better or worse than -> what you're experiencing with 4.7 is a question only you can answer. I've played around with background fsck on other machines, but I'm not sure it's right for these (very busy) machines. -> Well ... I'm really shooting in the dark with these suggestions, but hopefully -> there will be something useful. Gratefully received... -> -- -> Bill Moran Cheers, John.