Returning User With Filesystem/Memory Tuning Questions

[Kevin Monceaux]

On Thu, 4 Dec 2008, Giorgos Keramidas wrote:

> For what it's worth, I've been reading newsgroups with more than 5000 
> messages in Gnus, a newsreader that runs inside GNU Emacs, and its 
> memory usage has *never* reached 512 MB,

I doubt I'd have a problem with newsgroups that small with either tin or 
pan.  How well does Gnus handle groups with 1,000,000 to 2,000,000+ 
messages?  My ISP dropped it's NNTP service a while back and I ended up 
signing up with GigaNews.  They have 240 day retention for binary groups 
and 1,990 day retention for text groups.  So, many of the group archives 
on their servers are huge.  Granted I don't need to retrieve all the 
headers for a particular group, but it's not unusual for me to be browsing 
a group with a header count in the five to six digit range.

> so if you want help to switch from the aging tin reader to something 
> that is still maintained & developed actively, I will be glad to help.

I finally gave up on tin a while back and switched to pan.  It seems to be 
less of a memory hog with larger groups than tin was.  I prefer TUI based 
programs over GUI based programs, but I think pan is worth putting up with 
the GUI interface.  It handles large groups with multi-part binary posts 
fairly well and makes good use of the ten NNTP connections GigaNews gives 
me.  Chances are I might not have any problems with pan under FreeBSD.  I 
might be misremembering, it may have only been tin I had problems with. 
But it wouldn't hurt to learn a little more about FreeBSD memory tunable 
settings even if I end up not needing them.  Well, I guess I'll probably 
need at least a few if I go with ZFS this time around.

I prefer vim over emacs but might take a look at Gnus.



Kevin
http://www.RawFedDogs.net
http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org
Bruceville, TX

Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Longum iter est per praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla!!!