Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 18:08:54 -0600 From: Dan Charrois <dan@syz.com> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Which FreeBSD is the most stable for Dell PowerEdge 2850 Message-ID: <281C4418-D0A0-4AAF-8C06-F6A4D5AC5571@syz.com>
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Hi everyone. I'm currently running the following: Hardware: Dell PowerEdge 2850 rack mounted server, Dual 3.4 Ghz Xeon, 5 Gb memory Hard Drives: LSILogic PERC 4e/Di, configured as RAID 5, with 3 X 40 Gb disks OS: FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE-p6 for amd64 It's sole purpose is to be an SQL server, and that's about the only thing that's running on it, namely: mysqld Ver 4.1.16 for portbld-freebsd5.4 on amd64 (FreeBSD port: mysql-server-4.1.16) The server is rather heavily loaded, and 8 or 9 months ago, I had problems with it spontaneously "hard" rebooting irregularly every few days to several weeks. All the hardware tested out fine, but it acted as if someone just pulled the plug and then plugged it back in (looking through the log files showed everything working fine, and then suddenly the logs would start showing messages from the boot sequence). Of course, the disks would then be scanned for errors, and sometimes the SQL databases needed repairs from the unexpected restart. There weren't real power fluctuations involved - the machine was on a building-wide UPS, and several other machines in the same cabinet plugged into the same power source never had issues - and the PowerEdge itself has two power supplies. I never was able to track down definitively what was causing the problem (especially since it was sporadic), but eventually found that by disabling hyperthreading, it never crashed again. I don't know why, or even if, it fixed anything, but since it hasn't crashed since then, haven't wanted to touch it. In any case, the server is used heavily all year except July, so this is my time of year to take things apart, update software, etc. And so I'm wondering - what is the recommended version of FreeBSD I should be running if stability is of the utmost importance? Should I migrate to the 6.x stream? Is it relatively solid? Or should I stay with 5.4 for now? I've seen some messages posted periodically from various people running into problems, but am wondering if it's just relatively isolated incidents or if there are fairly common problems with stability. I could keep running what I'm running now, but since this is the month to update things that are appropriate to update, I thought I'd ask. I don't want to stay with the 5.4 release indefinitely if the cessation of security patches loom on the horizon. Plus, if 6.x is stable with hyperthreading, I'd like to turn it back on. I heard about the information disclosure vulnerability on hyperthreaded CPUs, but I'm under the impression that it can only be exploited by other local users. I'm the only user on that machine, so if so, that vulnerability shouldn't affect me, and I'd like to squeak out every bit of performance possible. I'll probably be upgrading to MySQL 5.0 along the way too, unless anyone has any horror stories to share there :-) Thanks for any help or advice you can give! Dan -- Syzygy Research & Technology Box 83, Legal, AB T0G 1L0 Canada Phone: 780-961-2213
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