Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 18:00:42 +0930 From: "Thyer, Matthew" <Matthew.Thyer@dsto.defence.gov.au> To: "Brandon D. Valentine" <bandix@looksharp.net>, current@freebsd.org Subject: NIS client does perform Ok when my duplex is right (Was: Re: NIS client performance seems very poor under network load) Message-ID: <3BCD41B2.2B089449@dsto.defence.gov.au>
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It was my problem. My network interface was in 100Mbps half-duplex instead of 100Mbps full-duplex (the switch was in 100 full). I was using DHCP to configure the interface and for some reason it came up as half (even though a 4.3-BETA box elsewhere around here comes up in full-duplex). It seems that Cisco equipment doesn't autonegotiate well as we have seen this problem on other UNIX systems (HP-UX in particular) so we try to tie everything down these days. I have now tied down the interface at my end with this in /etc/rc.conf: ifconfig_xl0="inet 10.1.2.3 netmask 0xffffff00 media 100baseTX mediaopt full-duplex" I no longer have problems with NIS client performance. i.e. when doing my huge FTP tests I can open xterms and they now start immediately. Sorry for the false alarm. P.S. I would still like to try using DHCP but *NOT* autonegotiating. Is this possible ? Should the below work ? ifconfig_xl0="DHCP media 100baseTX mediaopt full-duplex" --- Excerpt of my complaint earlier re: NIS client caching issues --- I can see this poor performance in just trying to start an xterm under network load and can create 24 -> 32 second delays with a test as follows: % cd /usr/ports/distfiles/xc % ftp nis-server (my home there is local to that box) ftp> prompt ftp> mput *.tgz Just after pressing enter on the above line, start two xterms. Now thats quite a bit of data even when myself and the server are on 100Mbit/s full-duplex switched ethernet links. -rw-r----- 1 user group 237098 Oct 3 17:55 X336contrib.tgz -rw-r----- 1 user group 17388037 Oct 3 17:55 X336src-1.tgz -rw-r----- 1 user group 14834083 Oct 3 17:55 X336src-2.tgz -rw-r----- 1 user group 21994230 Oct 3 17:55 X401src-1.tgz -rw-r----- 1 user group 18971060 Oct 3 17:55 X401src-2.tgz -rw-r----- 1 user group 23880758 Oct 3 17:56 X402src-1.tgz -rw-r----- 1 user group 18918369 Oct 3 17:56 X402src-2.tgz -rw-r----- 1 user group 24990773 Oct 3 17:56 X410src-1.tgz -rw-r----- 1 user group 22496001 Oct 3 17:56 X410src-2.tgz The transfers go well with the larger files achieving between 5.14 and 7.78 MB/s however the xterms dont appear until after the whole FTP mput is finished. i.e. the timing was: T+0 I press enter on the "mput *.tgz" FTP command T+3s I launch xterm 1 from another xterm T+5s I launch xterm 2 from another xterm T+25s FTP mput completes T+27s xterm 1 appears on my display T+37s xterm 2 appears on my display Now xterm 1 has the message "yp_first: clnt_call: RPC: Timed out" as its first line and xterm 2 has two of these messages. So I'd like to do a little bit of investigation and was wonderring if other people have some insight as to where to look. This is not a short term problem and has been present across many months of -CURRENT (last build 19th September 2001 and typically built monthly) ever since I became a NIS client about 18 to 24 months ago. Further info: The nis-server runs HP-UX 10.20. The network is expensive Cisco switched ethernet with everything tied down to 100 MBit full-duplex at all ends except my FreeBSD box which is autonegotiating its "3Com 3c905B-TX Fast Etherlink XL" card simply because I have the line ifconfig_xl0="DHCP" in my /etc/rc.conf and I dont know how to set media options with ifconfig when DHCPing (anyone ??). -- Matthew Thyer Phone: +61 8 8259 7249 Science Corporate Information Systems Fax: +61 8 8259 5537 Defence Science and Technology Organisation, Edinburgh PO Box 1500 EDINBURGH South Australia 5111 IMPORTANT: This email remains the property of the Australian Defence Organisation and is subject to the jurisdiction of section 70 of the CRIMES ACT 1914. If you have received this email in error, you are requested to contact the sender and delete the email. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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