Date: Sun, 12 Nov 1995 14:14:58 -0500 (EST) From: "Jonathan M. Bresler" <jmb@kryten.Atinc.COM> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: Jake Hamby <jehamby@lightside.com>, Peter Dufault <dufault@hda.com>, current@freebsd.org, freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: ISP state their FreeBSD concerns Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9511121424.H27384-0100000@kryten.atinc.com> In-Reply-To: <16518.816202770@time.cdrom.com>
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sounds like we have the first entry in an document here. 1. Trash all IDE devices--or expect piss-poor performance. Suck is the nature of IDE drives: little or no cache, poor seek times (numbers needed) ... 2. Get SCSI devices. why? normally 256kB cache or more command chaining low interrupt load ... whoever wrote the ide driver and scsi drivers knows this inside and out. how about writing a one page explaination? On Sun, 12 Nov 1995, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > On my system at home (486DX4/100, 850MB Western Digital IDE, VLB IDE > > controller, 24MB RAM) the system does seem to freeze up for as much as 5 > > seconds when I start up a large process such as Netscape or cause one of > > the existing processes to greatly expand their RAM usage (for example, > > looking through the 1000 messages that sometimes accumulate in my INBOX > > using pine, or loading a large number of pictures into XV). I think it's > > Huh. Well, all I can say is that this definitely points at IDE > because I can't reproduce it at all, and that includes starting the > most bloated netscape v2.0b1 binaries, systems like KCL and other > notorious memory hogs. I also know that our IDE driver isn't exactly > likely to win land records for speed - it's one of those icky parts of > the system that nobody really wanted to work on once it got to a state > where it was fairly bulletproof. > > I also agree with Jake - if there's an ISP using IDE CDROM drives out > there for anything then they should donate those drives to charity > just as fast as they can rip them out of the machines and buy SCSI > drives. I was helping an ISP recently who had several machines that I > was horrified to learn had IDE drives in them. The systems were not > performing very well under heavy load, and he called me in to try and > figure out why. The very first thing I did was threaten to come back > with a ball peen hammer and do extreme violence to any IDE drives I > found lurking in any machines on the premises, and he hastily yanked > them out (I'm not sure he knew whether or not I was joking, and > frankly neither did I :-). Since then, his systems have been just > champing along. He's very happy. > > Jordan > Jonathan M. Bresler jmb@kryten.atinc.com | Analysis & Technology, Inc. FreeBSD Postmaster jmb@FreeBSD.Org | 2341 Jeff Davis Hwy play go. | Arlington, VA 22202 ride bike. hack FreeBSD.--ah the good life | 703-418-2800 x346
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