Which FreeBSD is the most stable for Dell PowerEdge 2850

[Jim Keller]

Hi Dan,
   It's usually best to go with the current production release. As 
such, I would recommend going with the latest release of FreeBSD 6. 
FreeBSD 5 is now a legacy release, so support for it will probably 
start to fall off sooner rather than later. Also, as I understand it, 
version 5 was plagued with various problems that are not present in 6. 
Finally mySQL runs very well on FreeBSD 6, due to the new filesystem 
and updated threading libraries.

-Jim Keller
http://www.contexthosting.net

Quoting Dan Charrois <dan at syz.com>:

> Hi everyone.
>
> I'm currently running the following:
>
> Hardware: Dell PowerEdge 2850 rack mounted server, Dual 3.4 Ghz Xeon, 
>  5 Gb memory
> Hard Drives: LSILogic PERC 4e/Di, configured as RAID 5, with 3 X 40  Gb disks
> OS: FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE-p6 for amd64
>
> It's sole purpose is to be an SQL server, and that's about the only  
> thing that's running on it, namely:
>
> mysqld Ver 4.1.16 for portbld-freebsd5.4 on amd64 (FreeBSD port:  
> mysql-server-4.1.16)
>
> The server is rather heavily loaded, and 8 or 9 months ago, I had  
> problems with it spontaneously "hard" rebooting irregularly every few 
>  days to several weeks.  All the hardware tested out fine, but it  
> acted as if someone just pulled the plug and then plugged it back in  
> (looking through the log files showed everything working fine, and  
> then suddenly the logs would start showing messages from the boot  
> sequence).  Of course, the disks would then be scanned for errors,  
> and sometimes the SQL databases needed repairs from the unexpected  
> restart.  There weren't real power fluctuations involved - the  
> machine was on a building-wide UPS, and several other machines in the 
>  same cabinet plugged into the same power source never had issues -  
> and the PowerEdge itself has two power supplies.   I never was able  
> to track down definitively what was causing the problem (especially  
> since it was sporadic), but eventually found that by disabling  
> hyperthreading, it never crashed again.  I don't know why, or even  
> if, it fixed anything, but since it hasn't crashed since then,  
> haven't wanted to touch it.
>
> In any case, the server is used heavily all year except July, so this 
>  is my time of year to take things apart, update software, etc.  And  
> so I'm wondering - what is the recommended version of FreeBSD I  
> should be running if stability is of the utmost importance?  Should I 
>  migrate to the 6.x stream?  Is it relatively solid?  Or should I 
> stay  with 5.4 for now?  I've seen some messages posted periodically 
> from  various people running into problems, but am wondering if it's 
> just  relatively isolated incidents or if there are fairly common 
> problems  with stability.  I could keep running what I'm running now, 
> but since  this is the month to update things that are appropriate to 
> update, I  thought I'd ask.  I don't want to stay with the 5.4 
> release  indefinitely if the cessation of security patches loom on 
> the  horizon.  Plus, if 6.x is stable with hyperthreading, I'd like 
> to  turn it back on.  I heard about the information disclosure  
> vulnerability on hyperthreaded CPUs, but I'm under the impression  
> that it can only be exploited by other local users.  I'm the only  
> user on that machine, so if so, that vulnerability shouldn't affect  
> me, and I'd like to squeak out every bit of performance possible.
>
> I'll probably be upgrading to MySQL 5.0 along the way too, unless  
> anyone has any horror stories to share there :-)
>
> Thanks for any help or advice you can give!
>
> Dan
> --
> Syzygy Research & Technology
> Box 83, Legal, AB  T0G 1L0 Canada
> Phone: 780-961-2213
>
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