From owner-freebsd-performance@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Feb 14 19:35:22 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4032316A419 for ; Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:35:22 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from bbump@rsts.org) Received: from mail.rsts.org (host-82-161-107-208.midco.net [208.107.161.82]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 17C4F13C459 for ; Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:35:21 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from bbump@rsts.org) Received: from mail.rsts.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mail.rsts.org (8.13.6/8.12.11) with ESMTP id m1EJMj2I075367 for ; Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:22:45 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from bbump@rsts.org) Received: from localhost (bbump@localhost) by mail.rsts.org (8.13.6/8.12.11/Submit) with ESMTP id m1EJMjuE075364 for ; Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:22:45 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from bbump@rsts.org) X-Authentication-Warning: mail.rsts.org: bbump owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:22:45 -0700 (MST) From: Brett Bump To: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20080214114759.R75215@mail.rsts.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Subject: System perforamance 4.x vs. 5.x and 6.x X-BeenThere: freebsd-performance@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Performance/tuning List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:35:22 -0000 I've recently upgraded a mailserver from a 4.x version to 6.2. This server had been upgraded a few years ago to 5.x but the performance was so bad that we only let it run a few days before moving it back to 4.x. Years pass and it seemed time once again to move forward. What is the magic bullet in getting the same kind of performance out of a 5.x or 6.x version that I've just come to expect from FreeBSD ever since version 1? I'm seeing signal 6's on apache and imapd (never happened before) network errors, serious response time errors and generally poor performance during peak activity (same box, same people). ufs memory looks exactly like it did before and doesn't max: vfs.ufs.dirhash_minsize: 2560 vfs.ufs.dirhash_maxmem: 2097152 vfs.ufs.dirhash_mem: 1923157 vfs.ufs.dirhash_docheck: 0 mbufs hasn't changed: 536/604/1140 mbufs in use (current/cache/total) and disk performance is very good EXCEPT during peak activity: -------------------------------------------------------------------- Mail Server (Dual Xeon P4 3mhz 2g memory [Perc] U320): -bash-2.05b$ time dd if=/dev/zero bs=1024k of=tstfile2 count=1024 1024+0 records in 1024+0 records out 1073741824 bytes transferred in 47.037099 secs (22827552 bytes/sec) real 0m47.041s user 0m0.000s sys 0m5.444s -bash-2.05b$ time dd if=tstfile2 bs=1024k of=/dev/null 1024+0 records in 1024+0 records out 1073741824 bytes transferred in 2213.643946 secs (485056 bytes/sec) real 36m53.647s <---Check it out. user 0m0.008s sys 0m3.619s -------------------------------------------------------------------- I've changed the order of php extensions, disabled autonegotiation, moved mail queues and large volume directory folders to separate drives and set noatime. Nothing seems to make much of an impact. My next idea was to setup my kernel for device_polling, but none of this is really diagnosing what the real problem is. Any clues? Brett