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To: spork <spork@super-g.com>
cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: News server, 2.1.6.1 vs 2.2 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 24 Jan 1997 14:51:40 EST."
             <Pine.BSF.3.95.970124145018.22729A-100000@super-g.inch.com> 
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 15:33:19 -0700
From: Dave Andersen <angio@aros.net>
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> From: spork <spork@super-g.com>
> 
> I'm about to start building a new news server, and I'm kind of in the dark
> about which version of FBSD to go with.  We have about 5 machines running
> 2.1.6 now, and it's been very stable and predictable.  But I'm a bit
> curious if any of the recent enhancements in 2.2 would make it worth the
> risk (how much of a risk?) for a bit more speed and some additional
> features.
> 
> Hardware so far consists of:
> 
> Adaptec 3940
   
   As Joe Greco would say, "overkill". :)

> 16 2G drives

   Yum.  Good choice.

> Any thoughts?  Anyone else running 2.2 on a news server?

   Yup.  We upgraded ours a while ago on a whim (or perhaps it was a well
thought out upgrade, we're not sure).  It's been running 2.2 flawlessly since
01/08/1997.  Well, not quite flawlessly - it spontaneously rebooted once
between then and now, and we still haven't figured out what caused it, but it
hasn't happened since.

   Running with noatime makes the server quite happy compared to its
previous incarnation as 2.1.6 box.  Overall, the system is performing
better with the same resources.

   (On a side note, and not to drag back an awful discussion about FS-layer
abstraction and terryBSD) We've also been experimenting with mounting
the news filespool asynchronously.  We've run it that way during
the daily fastrm run, and it shaves about 50% off of the the runtime.
I wouldn't suggest it if you're concerned about losing articles now and then,
but it's kinda fun to watch.

    -Dave