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From: kenliew@mouse.pacific.net.sg ()
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: performance tuning for sendmail mail
Date: 2 Jul 1997 11:59:59 GMT
Organization: Pacific Internet, Singapore
Lines: 65
Message-ID: <5pdfrv$fo7$1@newton.pacific.net.sg>
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Hi,
I have a unix box running bsdi 3.0. I have patch the kernel. Tune the
kernel paremeters and recompile it. I am quite new to this OS.
and I wish to use it as a smtp gateway.
I am running sendmail 8.8.5.
I wrote a script to try to simulate the traffic on this
smtp gateway. say, firing smtp connections which write random
20-50K data onto the smtp gateway.
before I run the programs, the load is somewhere at:
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load averages: 0.23, 2.70, 6.09 19:53:44
27 processes: 1 running, 26 sleeping
CPU states: 0.0% user, 0.0% nice, 0.0% system, 0.0% interrupt, 100% idle
Memory: Real: 856K/3980K Virt: 4892K/128M Free: 98M
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after I started to bomb the machine, I always get this kind of load:
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load averages: 10.50, 4.72, 6.38 19:55:40
38 processes: 2 running, 36 sleeping
CPU states: 0.8% user, 0.0% nice, 13.0% system, 0.0% interrupt, 86.2% idle
Memory: Real: 4140K/7624K Virt: 11M/175M Free: 94M
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And there is about 60+ sendmails running.
As soon as I fire up the test scripts, I always see that I have
very high load, but my CPU idle time is always very high, and I could
not figure out why? My colleague is currently using BSDI machines to
run squid, and I have pickup most of the kernel tuning from him. His
squid machine always have connections > 800, but the load always maintain
at 1-2.
My questions:
1.) Why did I miss in terms of tuning the BSDI kernel parameters?
2.) Why whenever I run sendmail, the load shoot up to >10 but all the
resources seems so free. Is it the kernel report wrongly?
3.) How can I tune my system so that it can optimize the use for smtp
or sendmail gateway. I think Eric Allman wrote sendmail on the bsd
platform, and it should run best on bsd os.
4.) Any pointers? Any where that I could find more resources that explain
these kind of tuning?
Thanks and appreciate your help. Thanks.
kenneth
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Kenneth Liew - Systems Engineer
Pacific Internet Pte. Ltd.
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