Date: Sun, 14 May 1995 04:22:26 +0200 (MET DST) From: Pierre Beyssac <pb@fasterix.freenix.fr> To: asami@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Satoshi Asami | =?ISO-2022-JP?B?GyRCQHUbKEI=?= =?ISO-2022-JP?B?GyRCOCsbKEIgGyRCOC0bKEI=?=) Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Large installations of FreeBSD? Message-ID: <199505140222.EAA00626@fasterix.frmug.fr.net> In-Reply-To: <199505121217.FAA07593@silvia.HIP.Berkeley.EDU> from "Satoshi Asami | =?ISO-2022-JP?B?GyRCQHUbKEI=?= =?ISO-2022-JP?B?GyRCOCsbKEIgGyRCOC0bKEI=?=" at May 12, 95 05:17:57 am
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Satoshi Asami | =?ISO-2022-JP?B?GyRCQHUbKEI=?= =?ISO-2022-JP?B?GyRCOCsbKEIgGyRCOC0bKEI=?= writes: > Anyway, I have a question for you. Are any of you using FreeBSD in a > large community? By large, I mean: > > (1) The machine is "large", i.e., lots of memory/disk, large number of > users/ftp/http connections (e.g., wcarchive, Brian Tao's www site) FDN (a small non-profit French dialup IP/UUCP provider) runs two FreeBSD 1.1.5.1 PCs. The machines in themselves are not "large" (simple DX2/66 with 16 megs), but the busiest (news.fdn.fr) gets a full feed (about 90.000 articles/day) of news (actually, two big NNTP feeds from the two biggest french news sites and a small from uunet) and feeds three Next stations over the local ethernet (which themselves batch news over UUCP to over 250 dialup sites). This FreeBSD machine is also a NNTP server for about 100 dialup-IP accounts (not simultaneously connected, obviously) and a NTP server. This first machine runs fine since last november, provided : 1) INN is restarted at least once a week ; 2) the machine is rebooted at least once every 3 weeks. Both these problems seem related to the 1.1.5.1 VM. If you do none of these, the machine will spontaneouly reboot about once a week, which is not really a problem, except that some news article are never expired and you have to clean them up. A second machine (dialup.fdn.fr) handles a name server, another NTP server and dialup mail for about 40 people, and is used as a backup mail exchanger for about 200 UUCP sites (about 400 mails / day). The uptime is much higher on it, much over 40 days. Actually most reboots on this machine are due to hardware maintenance interventions. Actually, these machines are progressively replacing two NextStations (running NextStep) which don't seem to be able to handle a high load, or a full disk (system hangs), and generally just hang instead of rebooting, which is a big problem for unattended machines. Planned extensions are to add two new FreeBSD PCs, one for UUCP replacing one of the Nexts, and another as a router on the 64kbps leased line (don't ask why -- it's not really needed but that's a weird requirement from Renater, a french IP provider, when you want more than one class C routed for you). Probably at least the latter will run FreeBSD 2.x :-) Frmug, another non-profit french UUCP news/mail provider, feeds about 100 UUCP sites with a single 16megs 486DX2/66 on two dialup lines directly attached to the machine. FreeBSD 1.1.5.1 runs fine here too, the machine is rebooted only when the internal modem hangs (don't _ever_ buy an internal modem if you have serious work to do)... This PC replaces an old Sun 3/80 since last october... I'm not sure these examples really match what you call a "large" machine. But they show that FreeBSD 1 is perfectly able to replace commercial Unices on "production" environments. Regarding FreeBSD 2, I honestly can't tell how it would behave in the same conditions, since I did only try it at home yet. Except for a few minor problems I experienced, it's a good candidate for testing new sites. -- Pierre Beyssac pb@fasterix.frmug.fr.net pb@fasterix.fdn.fr FreeBSD, NetBSD, Linux -- Il y a moins bien, mais c'est plus cher. You can also get less bang for more bucks. (translation F. Berjon)
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