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Xref: sserve news.software.nntp:14890 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:4209 comp.os.linux.advocacy:15709 Path: sserve!euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.uwa.edu.au!classic.iinet.com.au!news.uoregon.edu!news.kreonet.re.kr!usenet.seri.re.kr!xpat.postech.ac.kr!news.kigam.re.kr!news.dacom.co.kr!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.mathworks.com!news.ultranet.com!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!atlantis.utmb.edu!news.tamu.edu!newshost.comco.com!newshost.comco.com!not-for-mail From: dougmc@comco.com (Doug McLaren) Newsgroups: news.software.nntp,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy Subject: Sun/Solaris or Pentium/Linux for new server ? Date: 1 Aug 1995 12:50:12 -0500 Organization: Computational Mechanics, Inc. Lines: 57 Distribution: inet Message-ID: <3vlpgk$rdk@graphite.comco.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: graphite.comco.com We currently have a Sparcstation 2 with 48 megs of ram running Solaris 2.4 running as our news server (running INN.) The news is on a 3 gig disk which is rapidly proving to be inadequate (but that's not relavent here.) It works, but not very well. It's slow, it crashes every few days, etc. It has two news feeds, and rarely has more than five people reading news at once - i.e. most of the time it's far more busy accepting/giving newsfeeds than handling news readers. Oh, and the machine isn't dedicated to news. I try to keep people from using it as a `seat', but past experience has shown that if a machine can run X, eventually somebody's going to be using it as a terminal, as they don't have any other place to work. The future: We're getting two Pentium 120's, PCI, 32 megs of ram. They're to be running Linux. They're coming with IDE drives, but we're gonna ditch those and throw in an NCR scsi card and a 1 gig drive for each. I'm going to get one of the Pentiums for my machine, give my SS2 (not currently the one running news) to somebody else (since I'm the local PC and Linux guru, I'll get one.) The question is this : Should I move news to the PC? Around here, news is one of those things that everybody wants, and wants to work well, but nobody wants it on *their* machine, and my attempts to dedicate a machine to anything, including news, have failed. So basically I can either leave it as it is, or move it to my machine (since I'm the one who runs it.) I don't do too much on my machine, mostly using it as an X terminal, so that's not a big concern. More memory is probably unlikely to happen in the immediate future, neither is more disk. I could probably get them to spring for another NCR scsi card (so the machine would have two SCSI buses) if that would help (putting another SCSI card in the Sun isn't so easy/cheap.) Also, I could probably go Net/FreeBSD instead of Linux. Right now, the management is kind of interested in Linux, but since Net/FreeBSD is also free, I could probably switch to it. I've played with FreeBSD for a bit at home, but am far more familiar with Linux. From personal experience, Linux's disk I/O is far faster, but Net/FreeBSD may make up for it in other areas/ Anybody have any suggestions? I'm NOT looking for `Linux sucks!' dogma - I'm fully aware of the merits and problems of Linux, and somewhat less aware of the benefits/problems of FreeBSD or NetBSD ... I'm far more interested in success/horror stories of other people who have run busy news servers under Solaris, Linux and Free/NetBSD (especially if they've done two or all three of these options.) -- Doug McLaren, dougmc@comco.com