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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.eng.convex.com!arco!news.utdallas.edu!news.starnet.net!wupost!spool.mu.edu!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!chi-news.cic.net!news.midplains.net!gw2.att.com!nntpa!not-for-mail From: dyson@inuxs.inh.att.com (John S. Dyson) Subject: Re: BSD As News Server Message-ID: <DHqB6t.LDD@nntpa.cb.att.com> Sender: news@nntpa.cb.att.com (Netnews Administration) Nntp-Posting-Host: inuxs.inh.att.com Organization: AT&T References: <47o7v6$4pt@nntp.interaccess.com> <MICHAELV.95Nov7232119@mindbender.headcandy.com> Date: Wed, 8 Nov 1995 14:35:15 GMT Lines: 40 In article <MICHAELV.95Nov7232119@mindbender.headcandy.com>, Michael L. VanLoon <michaelv@MindBender.HeadCandy.com> wrote: >In article <47o7v6$4pt@nntp.interaccess.com> stone@thymaster.interaccess.com (Tombstone) writes: > > I am working on setting up a news server at a community college, where > I work, that will serve around 400 people. > We have a T-1 to the internet and currently use a linux box as our > main mail hub. > I plan to buy a pentium 100 and install FreeBSD on it to run a > news server. > Space is not a problem for us because we have 30 GIG of NFS > mountable space. > My question is this: Will a Pentium 100 running BSD be able to > handle this task? > I would be interested in hearing (for my own peace of mind) about > any of you who have successfully accomplished this. > >Yes, many people have done just that successfully with NetBSD and >FreeBSD. You *DO*NOT* want to run your news server on NFS mounted >space, however. Usenet is constantly diddling on the drive(s). It >would both clog up your network with NFS traffic, and bog down your >news server as it was constantly waiting on remote file I/O. > >Put multiple disks on the news server, and spread news out among them. >Multiple spindles help tremendously. If you want to NFS mount some of >that space, mount it *FROM* the news server *TO* your other >machine(s). > >NetBSD and FreeBSD will handle this better than Linux for two reasons: >1) more robust networking code, and 2) more efficient NFS server. >Number 2 may have been addressed by now, but 1 is still being worked >on. > FreeBSD also has a dynamically sized buffer cache that helps tremendously in many situations. John dyson@freebsd.org