Not that I don't truse SUSE, but at http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=92486&cid=7951598 someone's very pleased with FreeBSD 5.0: "Our site gets a million hits a day on a completely db-driven website. Both the Apache webserver and the two replicated MySQL servers on the backend are all running FreeBSD 5, and have been for months now." Does this configuration sound vaguely familiar? An alternative to consider in case SUSE proves unstable.
Magnus
Magnus Manske wrote:
"Our site gets a million hits a day on a completely db-driven website. Both the Apache webserver and the two replicated MySQL servers on the backend are all running FreeBSD 5, and have been for months now." Does this configuration sound vaguely familiar? An alternative to consider in case SUSE proves unstable.
I've been running Red Hat, SuSE and Debian on various servers, can't say anything about one of the BSD-flavours. Debian ist the most demanding system of the three I know, but also the one with the most control. SuSE CAN be reliable and secure, but you need a lot of manual configuration work (at least until 7.x I wasn't happy at all with the SuSE setup routines; don't know about later versions).
Peter
I have found the stability of the system does vary with distribution, although theoretically it shouldn't. I suppose much of this is down to proper versioning, eg dynamic libraries.
I haven't used Non-free Suse. Out of the many other distros I have used, I find Debian by far the most reliable, easy to administer in the long term, and difficult to install. (I rarely bother installing Debian from the official ISO, I prefer to clone systems). It took me 6 months of using GNU/Linux before I had enough knowledge to install Debian. Once I did so, dependency hell simply vanished and reliability has been 100%. I vowed to avoid RPMs from then on.
I haven't used BSD5. What licenses is it distributed under?
Magnus Manske wrote:
Not that I don't truse SUSE, but at http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=92486&cid=7951598 someone's very pleased with FreeBSD 5.0: "Our site gets a million hits a day on a completely db-driven website. Both the Apache webserver and the two replicated MySQL servers on the backend are all running FreeBSD 5, and have been for months now." Does this configuration sound vaguely familiar? An alternative to consider in case SUSE proves unstable.
FreeBSD is based on the Berkeley Software Distribution License, aka BSD License, University of California.
See http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/index.html
--Optim
--- Nick Hill nick@nickhill.co.uk wrote:
I have found the stability of the system does vary with distribution, although theoretically it shouldn't. I suppose much of this is down to proper versioning, eg dynamic libraries.
I haven't used Non-free Suse. Out of the many other distros I have used, I find Debian by far the most reliable, easy to administer in the long term, and difficult to install. (I rarely bother installing Debian from the official ISO, I prefer to clone systems). It took me 6 months of using GNU/Linux before I had enough knowledge to install Debian. Once I did so, dependency hell simply vanished and reliability has been 100%. I vowed to avoid RPMs from then on.
I haven't used BSD5. What licenses is it distributed under?
Magnus Manske wrote:
Not that I don't truse SUSE, but at
http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=92486&cid=7951598
someone's very pleased with FreeBSD 5.0: "Our site gets a million hits a day on a
completely db-driven
website. Both the Apache webserver and the two
replicated MySQL servers
on the backend are all running FreeBSD 5, and have
been for months now."
Does this configuration sound vaguely familiar? An
alternative to
consider in case SUSE proves unstable.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
Do not use FreeBSD 5, it is too new and unstable. Use FreeBSD 4.9 instead. If you need modern features (such as better threading etc) use FreeBSD 5.2.
I consider FreeBSD as superior to GNU/Linux.
Yahoo web servers run FreeBSD, too.
If you need security of firewall, OpenBSD is the best.
NetBSD is very portable.
See www.freebsd.org www.netbsd.org www.openbsd.org
--Optim
--- Magnus Manske magnus.manske@web.de wrote:
Not that I don't truse SUSE, but at
http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=92486&cid=7951598
someone's very pleased with FreeBSD 5.0: "Our site gets a million hits a day on a completely db-driven website. Both the Apache webserver and the two replicated MySQL servers on the backend are all running FreeBSD 5, and have been for months now." Does this configuration sound vaguely familiar? An alternative to consider in case SUSE proves unstable.
Magnus
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen schrieb:
Although I'm a copyleft kind of guy, I with this. In my experience, FreeBSD has been more stable and performed better under high load.
Even compared against the new Linux 2.6? With the new scheduler and overhauled IP-Stack, Linux 2.6 performs much better under load than Linux 2.4. On the two servers I maintain, 2.6 has improved the network performance to a measurable degree. Maybe we should give it a try on some of the soon-to-be-purchased machines...
Alwin Meschede
On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Alwin Meschede wrote:
Although I'm a copyleft kind of guy, I with this. In my experience, FreeBSD has been more stable and performed better under high load.
Even compared against the new Linux 2.6? With the new scheduler and overhauled IP-Stack, Linux 2.6 performs much better under load than Linux 2.4. On the two servers I maintain, 2.6 has improved the network performance to a measurable degree. Maybe we should give it a try on some of the soon-to-be-purchased machines...
There's are some interesting benchmarks comparing (among others) Linux 2.6 and FreeBSD 5.0 (I think):
http://bulk.fefe.de/scalability/
This seems to imply that you're correct in thinking 2.6 is more on level with FreeBSD in performance under load. I still feel Linux is not mature enough (who knows if 2.6 is stable, 2.4 certainly had a tendency not to be) to compare to FreeBSD here.
Still, the difference is insignificant compared to the work already sunk into the GNU/Linux base of Wikipedia. I agree that the easiest way to get some free performance (but not perhaps stability) is to just switch to 2.6.
-- Daniel
On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 18:55:38 +0100, Alwin Meschede wrote:
Even compared against the new Linux 2.6? With the new scheduler and overhauled IP-Stack, Linux 2.6 performs much better under load than Linux 2.4. On the two servers I maintain, 2.6 has improved the network performance to a measurable degree. Maybe we should give it a try on some of the soon-to-be-purchased machines...
I don't think it would be worth the risk- the differences in performance between different kernel versions or netbsd/linux will always be small- i value easy maintenance and high reliability much higher. We can easily add another server to the new setup if the load demands it. There will be quite a few additional machines to maintain- i think the easier this job gets the better.
I have Debian running on all my machines, best uptime so far was a webserver that came down after 450+ days because of a broken cooler- with the plain vanilla Debian kernel.
I don't consider a Debian install to be difficult really- quickest so far is the Morphix live CD (for a desktop setup). Chroot installs aren't hard either, even with XFS support.
I have asked a Linux expert friend and he made very positive comments on kernel 2.6. He even suggested me to move to 2.6 and stop using 2.4 ASAP.
--Optim
--- Alwin Meschede ameschede@gmx.de wrote:
Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen schrieb:
Although I'm a copyleft kind of guy, I with this.
In my experience, FreeBSD has
been more stable and performed better under high
load.
Even compared against the new Linux 2.6? With the new scheduler and overhauled IP-Stack, Linux 2.6 performs much better under load than Linux 2.4. On the two servers I maintain, 2.6 has improved the network performance to a measurable degree. Maybe we should give it a try on some of the soon-to-be-purchased machines...
Alwin Meschede
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
On Jan 12, 2004, at 07:56, Magnus Manske wrote:
Not that I don't truse SUSE, but at http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=92486&cid=7951598 someone's very pleased with FreeBSD 5.0: "Our site gets a million hits a day on a completely db-driven website. Both the Apache webserver and the two replicated MySQL servers on the backend are all running FreeBSD 5, and have been for months now." Does this configuration sound vaguely familiar? An alternative to consider in case SUSE proves unstable.
FreeBSD is lovely (my test server at home runs it), but I don't think it's going to magically fix hardware problems.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Alwin Meschede wrote:
Brion Vibber schrieb:
... but I don't think it's going to magically fix hardware problems.
BTW, what's the status of our hardware? It doesn't seem as if anything has happened over the weekend, as Wikipedia is still as slow as usual ;-)
Geoffrin, with the new motherboard, still failed memest86. Jason found self-contradictory information in the motherboard manual as to which slots pairs of memory were supposed to be in -- he tried several alternatives, and one almost worked. He has not found any configuration in which all 4Gb of RAM would pass the tests.
Today he is contacting Penguin about them replacing the machine completely. It is very likely that I will just have them send the 'new Geoffrin' directly here as part of our migration strategy.
I'm waiting to hear the status of the other hardware that Jason installed in the colo on Saturday before I do anything else, but the next step will be one of these two:
(1) I have a new Penguin 1000E dual Opteron on order for Bomis, and if Wikipedia isn't joyful by the time it comes in, I will loan it to Wikipedia.
(2) Depending on the exact status of things, I will have Jason move all the websites off of one of the existing Bomis servers to have yet another machine to loan to Wikipedia. I think I have a SCSI machine that I could trade with Wikipedia. But I have to study this for an hour or so to determine how much work it will be because another option would be to order some other 'off the shelf' configuration that Penguin or Silicon Mechanics can ship same-day, and loan that to Wikipedia instead.
--Jimbo
On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Geoffrin, with the new motherboard, still failed memest86. Jason found self-contradictory information in the motherboard manual as to which slots pairs of memory were supposed to be in -- he tried several alternatives, and one almost worked. He has not found any configuration in which all 4Gb of RAM would pass the tests.
I'll repeat my eariler question... Is the memory in that box *certified* to work on that motherboard? If the BIOS has an option like "spread spectrum", try turning that off.
--Ricky
Ricky Beam wrote:
I'll repeat my eariler question... Is the memory in that box *certified* to work on that motherboard? If the BIOS has an option like "spread spectrum", try turning that off.
I'll let Jason answer these questions definitively. As to the first, I can only suppose that the answer has to be 'yes'. Penguin is a reputable manufacturer with a lot of experience in Linux commodity webservers, their specialty. That's such an obvious detail that I don't see them overlooking it. But I haven't checked to be certain.
I also doubt if the bios has any options set that would break things, Penguin ships boxes like this all the time, I would imagine, to much bigger customers than us.
I think there's just something wrong.
I'm not happy about any of this, but I will say that -- other than shipping us a broken machine -- Penguin has been steadfast and upfront in their willingness to do the right thing to make things right with us.
--Jimbo
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org