Nick Reinking wrote:

Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

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Jason Dreyer wrote:

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You can try a different file system or block size. XFS for Linux is improving. You may want to compare it to ReiserFS. If you are going to test different block sizes for the db...

I'm a big fan of ReiserFS in general. That's what the MySQL folks recommend as well, and I run that at Piclab (which is a small machine but runs the testsuite faster than my Compaq). I'm not sure that block sizes are that flexible for Resier, but I'll look into it. At any rate, it would be good to find an optimal arrangement for the database before we get the new server to install it on. http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

AFAIK, ReiserFS block sizes are stuck at 4KB unless someone changed that while I wasn't looking.

XFS for Linux 1.2 on x86 supports a maximum of 4K, equal to the page size of the x86 kernel. XFS supports a minimum block size of 512 bytes, but I doubt a smaller block size would improve db performance. So.. a block size performance comparison for Wikipedia is probably off in the more distant future, when larger block sizes are supported on x86 systems or the if db moved to IA-64.