*BSD News Article 62128


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
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From: ritz@ritz.mordor.com (Chris Mauritz)
Subject: Re: Optimization for a News server
X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 950824BETA PL0]
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Organization: Mordor International
Message-ID: <DMq59v.IAD@ritz.mordor.com>
References: <4foqfk$fu6@soggy.eis.net.au>
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 17:15:31 GMT

Ernie Elu (ernie@eis.net.au) wrote:
: I am in the process of setting up FreeBSD news server running INN to
: replace my current Linux server as an experiment.
: 
: The current machine is quite a busy little 486DX40.
: I am keen to hear of any suggetions on how to configure FreeBSD to get
: the maximum performance as a news server.

To get the most out of a news server, you should have:

*32-64mb RAM (64 is much better *grin*)
*SCSI-2 PCI or VLB disk controller (I prefer PCI)
*At least 3 fast disks to spread things over (I prefer Barracudas)
 (put alt on one, all the other hierchies on another, and all the
 other news binaries/logs/history files on the 3rd one)
*To squeeze out even more bits, using 2 disk controllers would
 also help since 3 7200rpm drives can easily saturate a non-wide
 SCSI bus.

With the size of a current newsfeed, I'd start with 3 Seagate
or Conner 7200rpm 4 gig drives.

Of course, these are all hardware suggestions.  :-)  If the machine
is only a news box I suppose you might improve things by forcing
the OS to use a much larger disk buffer cache.  How you would go
about doing that on FreeBSD I haven't a clue.  I also make sure
I compile with the "-m486" and "-O3" optimization flags.  I'm not
sure if it helps or not.

Good luck.

Chris
-- 
Christopher Mauritz         | For info on internet access:
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