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From: mike@sentex.net (Mike Tancsa)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: News machine Configuration Questions
Date: Tue, 03 Dec 1996 21:52:41 GMT
Organization: Sentex Communications
Lines: 137
Message-ID: <32a4a0ec.23349534@news.sentex.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.222.77.6
X-Newsreader: Forte Agent .99e/32.227
Hello, I am trying to configure our news machine for optimal
performance running
FreeBSD 2.1.5R and I have a few config type questions I hope you can
help me with...
(*NOTE I have searched through the FreeBSD mailing lists and done a
few searches on DejaNews and did not find all the answers to my
questions. If however all this is in an FAQ somewhere that I missed,
sorry to waste time and could you please point me to the right
document.*)
The hardware is the following
Pentium 133 with 128Meg of EDO RAM
NE2000 NIC
AHA 2940 SCSI adapter
/dev/wd0a 31775 15651 13582 54% /
/dev/wd0s1e 1440639 1105935 219453 83% /usr
/dev/sd0s1e 998879 246095 672874 27% /usr/local/news
/dev/sd1e 3868777 2381285 1177990 67% /usr/local/newsspool
This is the main news spoool
/dev/sd2e 580303 153198 380681 29%
/usr/local/newsspool/misc
kinda a waste right now, but will change it...
/dev/sd2f 628662 379097 199272 66%
/usr/local/newsspool/rec
/dev/sd2g 785902 158492 564538 22%
/usr/local/newsspool/over.view
I am starting InterNetNews server INN 1.4unoff4 05-Mar-96 ready with
the following...
unlimit datasize
unlimit stacksize
limit openfiles 1000
limit maxproc 400
We are not really feeding anyone else save a few UUCP customers who
have perhaps 10-15meg a day that they slurp down from us. In terms of
NNRP connections, we have perhaps 10 or so at peak times... Our active
file contains around 16,000 groups of which in one week only 1500 were
only accessed in a one week period :-(
My questions are
1: I will be adding another Hawk SCSI 1 gig drive... How should I make
use of it? put the comp.* on it or use it for logs? the IDE is
currently being used just to spool /var/log/news and so on... watching
vmstat, there is not a lot of activity on IDE however. Will getting
rid of the IDE make a significant difference?
2: Should I get rid of the NE2000 for a PCI based NIC ? Again, will
it make a big diff? If so, what is the PCI NIC of choice for FreeBSD ?
3: Kernel configs.... Currently I have the following options...
----------------------
#options MATH_EMULATE #Support for x87
emulation
options INET #InterNETworking
options FFS #Berkeley Fast Filesystem
options NFS #Network Filesystem
#options MSDOSFS #MSDOS Filesystem
options "CD9660" #ISO 9660 Filesystem
options PROCFS #Process filesystem
options "COMPAT_43" #Compatible with BSD 4.3
options "SCSI_DELAY=15" #Be pessimistic about Joe SCSI
device
#options BOUNCE_BUFFERS #include support for
DMA bounce buffers
options UCONSOLE #Allow users to grab the
console
maxusers 64
options "CHILD_MAX=128"
options "OPEN_MAX=1024"
options EXTRAVNODES=1
#the extravnodes I saw in another mailling list post and havent tried
it yet...
options SYSVSHM
options SYSVSEM
options SYSVMSG
options MAXMEM=131072
----------------------
Should I increase the maxusers even higher ? Are there any other
kernel settings (undocumented or what not) that I should fiddle with?
4: Innd doesnt *seem* to be taking advantage of the memory I have in
the system... Its only about 18meg right now as reported by ps...
news 20373 9.0 13.7 18372 17688 ?? SNs Sun09AM 250:23.06
/usr/local/news/etc/innd -p7 -i0
Top reports the following info
load averages: 0.08, 0.28, 0.23
15:47:27
43 processes: 2 running, 41 sleeping
Cpu states: 0.9% user, 0.9% nice, 7.8% system, 0.9% interrupt,
89.5% idle
Mem: 41M Active, 2068K Inact, 13M Wired, 70M Cache, 4855K Buf, 176K
Free
Swap: 144M Total, 64K Used, 144M Free
PID USERNAME PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME WCPU CPU
COMMAND
20373 news -6 4 18M 18M biowai 250:30 8.13% 8.13% innd
5: As you can see, innd has reniced itself to 4... Should I fiddle
with this value? If so, how do I prevent the spawned nnrpd's from
also getting a higher priorty?
6: Has anyone using FreeBSD upgraded to INND 1.5? Is it worth it to
upgrade to it?
and...
7: Should I go through our active file and nuke groups that people
really are not reading? Will it make a big difference to go down from
16,000 to about 10K?
8: At what point should I add another SCSI controller ?
Thanks for looking this over and I appriciate any insights /
suggestions you can provide,
---Mike