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Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!sdd.hp.com!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!unmvax!nmt.edu!nraoaoc
From: nraoaoc@nmt.edu (NRAO Array Operations Center)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin,news.software.b,comp.unix.aix
Subject: Re: IBM RS/6000 unsuitable for news
Message-ID: <1991May8.191430.6864@nmt.edu>
Date: 8 May 91 19:14:30 GMT
References: <1991May6.181144.23900@zoo.toronto.edu> <1F7k22w164w@halcyon.uucp>
Reply-To: rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Ruth Milner)
Organization: National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro NM
Lines: 21

In article <1F7k22w164w@halcyon.uucp> halcyon!ralphs@seattleu.edu (Ralph Sims) writes:
>In an earlier post I mentioned that the average MS-DOS filesize for news
>articles appeared to be ~3K.  Using a 4K blocksize would be fairly efficient
>under that condition.  

Not if you have hundreds of tiny articles and a few giant ones which skew the
average.

>I would reason that articles <2K would
>get allocated a 4K block and those of 5K would get an 8K one.  Perhaps
>with that in mind 1 or 2K blocks would be better.  

Precisely. If your file sizes were random, you would always waste on average
half the filesystem block size per file. Even in this situation, 2K/file is
a lot to waste (as opposed to 512 bytes, which is half a Berkeley filesystem
fragment). In reality, news tends to be made up as stated above, which means 
that *on average* you are wasting more than 2K/file.
-- 
Ruth Milner
Systems Manager                     NRAO/VLA                    Socorro NM
Computing Division Head      rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu