*BSD News Article 81062


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!arclight.uoregon.edu!news.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!news.alt.net!news1.alt.net!news.serv.net!not-for-mail
From: zeno@serv.net (Sean T. Lamont .)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: FreeBSD as news-server??
Date: 18 Oct 1996 17:09:28 -0700
Organization: ServNet Internet Services, Seattle, WA
Lines: 21
Message-ID: <54967o$fpj@itchy.serv.net>
References: <537ddl$3cc@amd40.wecs.org> <544nas$b5h@flash.noc.best.net> <5456rv$kbu@polaris.eurocontrol.fr> <545nm7$bd1@flash.noc.best.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: itchy.serv.net

In article <545nm7$bd1@flash.noc.best.net>,
Matthew Dillon <dillon@best.com> wrote:
>:In article <5456rv$kbu@polaris.eurocontrol.fr>,
>    Nonsense.  Why does everyone seem to believe that, somehow, .overview
>    is more magical then some random article file?  Scanning .overview once
>    per group is an order of magnitude less expensive then reading 10 articles
>    in the group.  It's in the noise.  My newsreader machine is happily wonking


Precisely correct ; it takes as much effort to read and/or write it as 
a random article file, which is precisely why you shouldn't have it in
your main spool. If you do, you're taking a feed of n articles per minute
(n disk writes per minute) and doubling it to n*2 disk writes per minute.
If it's on a separate spindle, it isn't taking valuable disk seek capacity
which could be used on writing articles.

-- 
Sean T. Lamont, President / Chief NetNerd, Abstract Software, Inc. (ServNet)  
- Internet access * WWW hosting * TCP/IP * UNIX * NEXTSTEP * WWW Development -
email: lamont@abstractsoft.com              WWW:  http://www.serv.net
"...There's no moral, it's just a lot of stuff that happens". - H. Simpson