Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!kuhub.cc.ukans.edu!anu-news!list From: munnari!csc.anu.oz.au!gih900@UUNET.UU.NET (Geoff Huston) Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news Subject: RE: A New Topic -- Tuning News Message-ID: <8910310355.AA11260@uunet.uu.net> Date: 31 Oct 89 18:12:21 GMT Sender: ANU-NEWS Discussion Reply-To: Geoff Huston Lines: 33 Tom Linoncelli writes:... I would like to start a discussion on how to tune news so that it is as fast as possible when starting up. Currently it takes about 3-4 minutes to start. When we get 90-100 users on-line, it goes up to 8-10 minutes. Neither are reasonable. I understand that eventually it will be brought up to almost no time at all, but while we're waiting there must be a bunch of "do"s and "don't"s. I have done almost as much as I can without getting into rewriting slabs of code. I have implemented as many of the speedup suggestions as are feasible, but the one about opening the indexed files in read only mode will not produce any speed up because you have to allow concurrent writers, and therefore the RMS lock overheads are always with you. Apart from setting up global buffers for the two indexed files there is little else that I can suggest off-hand. The required directions are: a) make the newsrc file an indexed file rather than streamlf text. b) make the creation of the internal newsgroup data structure more direct by using the create and map section call on a memory image c) store the newsgroup directory screens in a file which can also be easily picked up on startup. All these things require time and resources, both of which from a personal view point are in very scarce supply. As with many other aspects of NEWS development this newsgroup as an appropriate forum for others to contribute code to NEWS. I would, as always, welcome any contributions of code. cheers, Geoff Huston