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From: barr@pop.psu.edu (David Barr)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals,comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: Fast File System: optimizing arguments to newfs
Date: 13 Jan 1995 17:21:44 -0500
Organization: Penn State Population Research Institute
Lines: 31
Message-ID: <3f6udo$dhu@bosnia.pop.psu.edu>
References: <MARC.95Jan13161859@dun-dun-noodles.cam.ov.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: bosnia.pop.psu.edu

In article <MARC.95Jan13161859@dun-dun-noodles.cam.ov.com>,
Marc Horowitz <marc@cam.ov.com> wrote:
>For large disks, is there any criteria for choosing reasonable numbers
>for the free-space and bytes/inode argument to newfs?  Let's say I
>have three 2 gig disks:
>
> 1) News spool.  Lots and lots of small files.

"-m 5 -f 512 -i 2500 -b 4096" is what I use.

> 2) Random storage.  User homedirs, some packages, etc.  Widely
>varying file sizes.

The defaults for newfs are generally geared for (2), so no need
to change things.  If you really want to maximize space for 2GB disks,
having "-m 5" will probably not mean much loss of performance.

> 3) JPEG archive (since I don't know if I want to use GIF's anymore
>:-).  Generally very big files.

-i 66560 at least.  You'll be able to gain back quite a bit of space by
reducing the number of inodes.  You may also try using -f 8192 or 4096,
since the frag size won't be an issue with lots of large files.

>*How* do I want to choose parameters for newfs for these disks?

read newfs(8) and choose logical values, though the only flags
really useful to fiddle with are the ones mentioned above.  (things
like rotdelay and others aren't an issue with today's faster drives)

--Dave