FreeBSD 5.x performance tips (ISC)
Peter Losher
Peter_Losher at isc.org
Tue Jan 13 11:13:34 PST 2004
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Thanks for the responses so far, many privately, I'd like to respond to them
via one message, rather than a bunch of tiny ones.
To give you a better picture, ths system handles ftpd (less than 500 clients)
& cvsupd (15 max clients), and to a lesser extent httpd.
> I'm not familiar with the hardware that you folks have, so maybe
> this is redundant, but, coming from a systems perspective, I can
> guess that you need faster I/O channels and more disk/etc bandwidth.
It has internal SATA drives hooked up to a 3ware SATA (64-bit / 66MHz bus)
PCI RAID controller, as well as a external HP Virtual Array hooked to the
host via FC (Qlogic) - The array is the one doing the heavy disk I/O (it has
all of the mirrored content) Right now iostat is stating that the array is
pushing out 4.40MB/sec - It's usually in the low-mid 4MB/sec range at high
traffic levels. And just to round out things, the NIC is a Intel Fiber GigE
PCI card.
> What state does top report these processes in? On a busy ftp server, I
> would expect *Giant, getblk, biord or select. What kind of load averages
> are you seeing under load, and when somewhat idle? If this system is
> currently contending on Giant, 5.2 will still exhibit this behavior but to
> a lesser degree.
Apologies for not mentioning the cvsup server, but most of those processes are
always reported as *Giant, the top 4-5 ftpd process are also *Giant; the rest
are either biord, sbwait, or in one or two cases accept. httpd processes are
almost all selects.
The load average w/ a SMP kernel is 1-3, in a non-SMP kernel, it's around 50.
> For a little performance boost, try the ZERO_COPY_SOCKETS and
> ADAPTIVE_MUTEXES combo in your kernel config. It Works Here (TM). :)
Are you using ADAPTIVE_MUTEXES in a SMP-aware kernel? Googling on the term
showed some lockup issues at boot with it. (and I assume you are still using
the 4BSD scheduler?)
> Hmmm..... Peter, I don't know if anyone has advocated this or not, but have
> you tried the ULE scheduler? I have been using it on SMP and UNI machines
> and it seems to do a better job of keeping loads much more in control.
I remember trying SCHED_ULE at some point but I think that was during the
vmpanics so it may not have ever gotten a fair shake...
Hopefully this illuminates more light on the issue, I will probably try adding
ZERO_COPY_SOCKETS & ADAPTIVE_MUTEXES later today when the load dies down.
Best Wishes - Peter
- --
Peter_Losher at isc.org | ISC | OpenPGP 0xE8048D08 | "The bits must flow"
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