Date: Thu, 7 Dec 1995 06:25:06 -0600 (CST) From: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com> To: john@gateway.net.hk (John Beukema) Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.org, freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: newsserver configuration Message-ID: <199512071225.GAA10255@brasil.moneng.mei.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSD/.3.91.951207175228.6041A-100000@gateway.net.hk> from "John Beukema" at Dec 7, 95 06:15:30 pm
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> A client is about to set up a news server for an ISP and proposes the > following: > > 1. Intel triton P5 mother board w/256k cache built in IDE & I/O port > 2. Intel P5 100Mhz CPU fine > 3. 2 x 16MB 72 pin RAM 70ns a little low on memory, probably, and slow memory at that. You may find that your expires/etc take too long because you are tight on memory. news.sol.net suffered from this so I compromised at 48MB for what is primarily a transport news server... anyways, if you find yourself wishing you had more memory and can't afford it, go read the recent T.W. Wells flamefest on news.software.nntp about memory tweaks for INN (you can trade a lower memory profile for more disk accesses). > 4. Panasonic 1,44MB floppy > 5. Panasonic 4.4x IDE Bus CD-Rom ewwwwwwwwwww. :-) > 6. PCI Promotion 6410 SVGA card w/ 1MB RAM > 7. Adaptec 2940 PCI SCSI-2 controller good choice. the 3940 works like a dream as well. > 7a. 2 x Seagate ST15230N 4GB Fast SCCI-2 HD depending on how large your ISP happens to be, this may be "rather tight" or "extremely tight". > 8. NE2000 compatible LAN card ?? booo, hiss, boo. there're some decent, cheap, supported PCI cards. Although I myself am guilty of running a WD *8003* on daily-planet.execpc.com for several months (big machine, generally more than a hundred nnrp clients, etc). > 9. HP 4000-I external SCCI DAT 4mm tape or > 10. Wangdat 3200 internal DAT 4mm > > We want to run FreeBSD 2.1.0 and just do news on the LAN. sounds like a plan. > Is the Intel mother board compatible and reliable? > are there drivers for all the hardware? > Is it worth getting a better ethernet card? > Any suggestions or comments? Umm. At 32MB RAM, you won't have a lot of room to spare for nnrpd's. If this is a Ma & Pa ISP you may be fine. If not, you will want more RAM!! Also, with so little disk and so few spindles, the concurrency needed to support a lot of activity on the system just isn't there. I typically recommend a MINIMAL setup: 1 disk operating system/swap (1G?) 1 disk newslib (usr/local) (500M-1G) 1 disk var + var/spool (500M-1G) 1 disk news overview database (15% of news spool capacity, i.e. for an 8GB total spool, 1.2GB NOV DB) 1 disk news spool root 1 disk news spool alt 1 disk news spool alt.binaries iffff you want to be serious about binaries. All disks should be "reasonably fast". I _always_ spec out news spool and news overview disks as 8ms disks, Barracuda class. It may not be so bad to have 9ms or even 10ms drives for some of the other disks, particularly in a RAM-rich system. This configuration at least separates out all the potential hotspots. News Rule 1: You would rather have LOTS of slightly slower, smaller disks than a few large, fast drives. This fact has been lost on so many people. If I had a nickel for every time I've told somebody this and they've ignored me, I could be Bill Gates. ... Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Greco - Systems Administrator jgreco@ns.sol.net Solaria Public Access UNIX - Milwaukee, WI 414/342-4847
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