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Xref: sserve comp.os.linux.advocacy:2474 comp.os.386bsd.questions:16845 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msunews!uwm.edu!news.alpha.net!news.mathworks.com!news.duke.edu!convex!cs.utexas.edu!news.sprintlink.net!malgudi.oar.net!hyperion.wright.edu!news.wittenberg.edu!wittenberg.edu!mandrews From: mandrews@wittenberg.edu (Mike Andrews, Comp Ctr) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Best platform for INN server? Date: 1 Mar 95 14:08:17 -0500 Organization: Wittenberg University, Springfield OH Lines: 46 Message-ID: <1995Mar1.140817@wittenberg.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: wittenberg.edu Disclaimer: I don't want to start yet another religious war. I know it depends on your particular application... and since I have a particular one in mind, I need _opinions_ on which to use to add to my own opinions. And I've read (I hope) all the FAQ's... (there, hope that's enough :-) I'm going to be setting up a dedicated NNTP server, running INN 1.4sec, on a VLbus 486/66 with an Adaptec VLB SCSI controller and a 3com 3c509 ISA ethernet card. This machine won't be used for anything else, except maybe a backup DNS server. Things like X, binary compatibility, etc aren't important, but speed and stability are. The little bits that concern me are: - I've heard mumblings that 3c509 cards are flaky under FreeBSD and maybe NetBSD too. They're fine on Linux as far as I can tell. - I don't know how good support for the Adaptec VLB SCSI controller (2840?) is. Should we get a different SCSI controller? - Linux does more aggressive disk caching, especially on writes. - Linux can swap to a file instead of just a partition. - FreeBSD 2.0 dosen't seem as stable as 1.1.5.1 did, at least on a machine with only 4 meg of RAM being used solely as a PPP router. - I've not used NetBSD since 0.9; it was pretty solid then, though. - BSD's got better networking. When I upgraded Linux from 1.1.47 to 1.1.74, "netstat" suddenly started showing hundreds of stale long-gone connections with things like question marks in the "state" column, which bugs me... - If we only had 16 meg of RAM, which would run better? I hope to have 32, but I may not be able to control that. - It's not very practical to spend that many hours installing all three. - What about buying BSDI? Does it have shared libraries yet? (sorry if I'm way behind the times there.) Basically, it boils down to disk and network performance while running one particular application -- INN. Right now, I'm basically flipping a coin between FreeBSD-current and NetBSD though I have INN running as a test on a Linux box now. (I can't tell how well it works because they only gave me an 8 meg machine to test with. Can you say "thrashing"?) Please reply in email to save bandwidth and to help prevent potential religious wars. :) Thanks... Mike Andrews Wittenberg University -- -- Mike Andrews -=- mandrews@wittenberg.edu -=- root@fragile.termfrost.org --