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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.cis.okstate.edu!news.ksu.ksu.edu!mccall.com!kuhub.cc.ukans.edu!news.starnet.net!wupost!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!chi-news.cic.net!news.midplains.net!gw2.att.com!nntpa!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.networking,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix Subject: Re: Linux or Free BSD for WWW server? Message-ID: <DHqB3I.L4G@nntpa.cb.att.com> From: dyson@inuxs.inh.att.com (John S. Dyson) Date: Wed, 8 Nov 1995 14:33:17 GMT Sender: news@nntpa.cb.att.com (Netnews Administration) References: <47oul2$35j@kadath.zeitgeist.net> <47phll$g59@park.uvsc.edu> Organization: AT&T Nntp-Posting-Host: inuxs.inh.att.com Lines: 40 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.networking:19682 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:8798 comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix:6422 In article <47phll$g59@park.uvsc.edu>, Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> wrote: >Peter Seibel <seibel@mojones.com> wrote: >] I have to pick out a machine and OS to buy to replace our old Sun 4/260 which >] is our www server (and everything else, mail, ftp, gopher) and have narrowed >] it down to a well equipped Pentium running either Linux or Free BSD. I was >] leaning toward Linux but was told that the networking code in Free BSD is more >] robust and therefore better for running a www server than Linux. Is this still >] true? The reason, as I understand it was that the Free BSD networking code was >] based on the old, tried and true BSD code whereas the Linux code was written >] from scratch. Experiences? > >The BSD 4.3 networking code is, for better or worse, the reference >implementation. > >If you are used to SunOS, BSD will be more comfortable for you >than Linux. If your Sun was running Solaris, you might like >Linux better. > The funny thing is that I was maintaining SVR4 on a mainframe for a large computer manufacturer -- and except for a few nits -- FreeBSD seems not that much different from SVR4 in many ways (except FreeBSD is faster.) Note also, in WWW applications you will probably do lots of fork/execs, and if you build your httpd static, FreeBSD is about as fast as you can get on fork/execs!!!! FreeBSD benchmarks approx 50% faster than Linux on fork related operations -- and is probably faster than most any other non-commercial OS. Note that if you build your httpd dynamic, then FreeBSD is about the same as Linux, when Linux uses the old, SVR3-style shared libs. The same maxim applies on FreeBSD as on SVR4 -- if you have lots of the same processes, or if you do lots of fork/execs, build your "most frequently used" processes static. It is most likely that the will take less memory if you build static also on heavily used processes -- due to locality problems in most shared lib implementations. VM systems seem to be overlooked in many OSes that I have seen, and do not get the attention that it has gotten in FreeBSD. It does make a BIG difference. John dyson@freebsd.org