FreeBSD AMD64 + high performance MySQL - Possible?

[K A Z]

A person I know runs a very large forum using a dual AMD Opteron box
running Linux for the MySQL database backend. I think he does several
thousand conncurrent connections or something.

I intend to do the same, and have the hardware sitting here to do it...

But alas, I am a FreeBSD user and would like to stay that way for this
database server if possible.

I read a lot on Jeremy Zawodny's BLOG site (Yahoo's server god I guess)
where he initially slammed MySQL on FreeBSD because of FreeBSD's
poor thread support vs linux and then made several follow ups....

The first stating that if you compile MySQL on FreeBSD with inuxThreads
support it will eliminate the poor threading issue. (Which, afaik, is not an 
option
for me on AMD64)

The second follow up he made was that FreeBSD 5.2 and on (for i386) use
a new threading method (called?) that helps resolve FreeBSD's threading 
issues
with MySQL.


But I noticed in just last weeks archives for the FreeBSD-threads mailing 
list that people were
still discussing FreeBSD + MySQL problems or what is best for what... 
(presumably on intel architecture).


Several weeks ago the MySQL port maintainer was given access to our Opteron
machine in order to make optimizations the MySQL port for the AMD64 branch.
But I think at the time he said the new threading was still being worked on.

Actually here is his quote regarding benchmark results...

"I tested libc_r and libpthread in different manners. I couldn't test 
linuxthreads since I cannot connect to the server anymore. Anyway, the 
fastest configuration on your machine is mysql compiled statically with 
libc_r. This may change if you upgrade your system to -current."


So I guess my question is... does anyone out there know the best way to 
compile
MySQL on an AMD64 box without too much (or any) performance loss over
an identical linux machine?


OR, If anyone from the FreeBSD/AMD64 dev team would like to use our hardware
to optimize threading for MySQL on AMD64, and compare the results to a linux
install (I have a linux install on identical drive we can swap out)...

I would be more than willing to donate access to interested and qualified 
parties.

The hardware is:

Dual Opteron 241 CPUs, 2 Gigs ram (can purchase more ram)
Tyan S2880UGNR w/ LSI Zero Channel Raid card
4x 15k rpm SCSI drives running 2 raid 0 channels.
Swapable OS/system drive.


I would love to be able to help compare and narrow the performance 
diferrences
for MySQL on FreeBSD and Linux for the AMD64 platform.

Thanks for any information or interest!

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