Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!sarah!cs.albany.edu!crdgw1!uunet!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ncar!asuvax!anasaz!rusty
From: rusty@anasaz.UUCP (Rusty Carruth)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Help!  I'm doing something stupid...
Summary: cnews Patch 7-Dec-1990 VERY SLOW
Message-ID: <4312@anasaz.UUCP>
Date: 19 Jun 91 21:52:30 GMT
Reply-To: rusty@anasaz.UUCP (Rusty Carruth)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Anasazi, Inc.
Lines: 68

I just brought up Cnews (last patch 7-Dec-1990) on a Pyramid 9000-series
computer (4 cpus, multi-gig of disk, OSx96MDN 5.0d-910325 Pyramid 9845,
for you sticklers :-).

I read all the hoopla about speedier news processing, and was greatly
looking forward to "high-speed news".

Alas, I must have done something wrong, as relaynews took a full 

    160 seconds

to process one 30k batch file.

Help!  Has anyone else had problems with slow "unbatching" of news?

How did you fix it?

And, for the detail-oriented folks:

the pyramid is fed over ethernet from machine "anasaz", which is a
tower32 (egads! :-)  running bnews (to be replaced with cnews as
soon as I figure why the pyramid now runs news slower than the tower32!).

setup:

  run from crontab:

     quarter-hourly: sendbatches anasaz
     hourly:  newsrun  (on the half hour)
     daily:   expire

results:

  incoming articles (over ethernet) seem to get put in in.coming just
  fine (i.e. rnews seems to be doing its job just peachy)

  articles get processed out of in.coming just fine, but very slowly.

  outgoing articles also seem to go out just fine.

  
I did a profile of relaynews, and got the following stuff:

Name     %time   Seconds  #calls ... (I'm entering by hand, so this is edited)
_fread    37.4    60.95
_memcpy   15.2    24.70   914983
_read     10.9    17.77    10243
_strncmp   7.7    12.62  1827237
_nextkey   7.4    12.12
mcount     7.2    11.68
_malloc    6.1     9.85  1824451
_free      3.9     6.40  1824429
_fetch     2.9     4.72
_open       .3      .43       33

We did not have dbm, so I'm using the supplied replacement....

I'm obviously doing something really wrong here, since Cnews is "so fast it
will make your head spin".... Help! 

Thanks in advance!  (this article posted on the Bnews system ("anasaz"),
   no particular reason for not using the Cnews one, actually)

Rusty

{ames!ncar!noao!asuvax,mcdphx}!anasaz!rusty      anasaz!rusty\ 
73 de Rusty Carruth, N7IKQ  (602) 870-3330   anasaz.UUCP!rusty>@asuvax
P.O. Box 27001, Tempe, AZ 85285             rusty%anasaz.UUCP/   \.eas.asu.edu