FreeBSD 5.3 I/O Performance / Linux 2.6.10 | Continued Discussion

[Claus Guttesen]

Hi.

I'm about to replace our internal nfs- and
samba-server with a newer Dell 2850 dual nocona @ 3.2
GHz and 4 GB RAM and 5 SCSI-disks in RAID 5.

Inspirred by the recent performance-discussions I'd
like to do my own testing regarding nfs and samba, and
would like to add some tests like bonnie to aid the
dissussion on this list and to have some valid points
in a why-FreeBSD-and-not-Linux discussion at work
(which is healthy from time to time).

I haven't installed linux for some years now, and do
not have a good feeling how the 2.6 kernel does
regarding smp, disk-io, network etc. compared to
FreeBSD.

I want to know, how FreeBSD stacks up regarding
performance, ease of installation/updating /upgrading
compared to primarily Linux and to some degree NetBSD.

My plan is to start with FreeBSD 4.11, reinstall 5.3
(release), upgrade to 5.3 stable, then move to 6.0
current, install a linux-distro, and possibly install
NetBSD 2.0.

I will apply the following optimizations in
/etc/make.conf (when applicable):

march=nocona
CFLAGS= -O2 -pipe -funroll-loops
COPTFLAGS= -O2 -pipe -funroll-loops

HTT will be disabled in BIOS. 4.11 will be the
i386-port (choosing is not difficult here ;-) and
UFS1, 5.3 and 6.0 will be the amd64-port and UFS2. The
amd64-port will also apply to Linux/NetBSD.

I want to limit my testing to nfs- and
samba-networking, some web-benchmarking, disk-io and
network-io. I haven't spent much time on the last two
items so any small howto, what ports to install,
pre-written scripts etc. would be appreciated.

What Linux-distro is most BSD-like? Fumbled with
Gentoo where portage seems to be a pretty strong tool.
I'm planning to use ReiserFS.

regards
Claus