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From: grr@unirot.UUCP (George Robbins)
Newsgroups: net.news.adm,net.news.b
Subject: Re: curious 2.10.3 efficiency situation
Message-ID: <364@unirot.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 12-Mar-86 03:09:54 EST
Article-I.D.: unirot.364
Posted: Wed Mar 12 03:09:54 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Mar-86 05:45:29 EST
References: <5044@glacier.ARPA>
Reply-To: grr@unirot.UUCP (George Robbins)
Organization: Public Access Unix -- Piscataway
Lines: 51
Xref: watmath net.news.adm:556 net.news.b:1315

In article <5044@glacier.ARPA> reid@glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid) writes:
>I upgraded to 2.10.3 about a month ago, and except for the "expire" bug that
>has already been reported here, I am quite happy with it.
>
>What happened then was both horrible and fascinating. Our machine has had
>load factors of 10 to 12 around the clock for the last 3 days, and as I
>watch the queues and analyze things, it looks as though it is not likely to
>quiesce soon. Even as I type this message, it is about midnight, I am the
>only user on the machine, and the load factor is 9.95.
>
>The increased rate of news-flow, a pulse of 3 days' worth of news shipped in
>one 8-hour burst, gave our system an impulse that is not damping out.
>Glacier is now loaded down badly enough that it is unable to process news as
>fast as the ordinary news is coming in, and the situation is actually
>getting worse rather than better. In 2 days the number of unprocessed uucp
>"X." files has grown from 155 to 220.
>
>What I am going to do to fix this problem is to run news at nice -16 all
>weekend; that should give it enough of an increased speed that I can drain
>the queues.
>-- 
>	Brian Reid	decwrl!glacier!reid
>	Stanford	reid@SU-Glacier.ARPA

You don't indicate which program is hogging your system the most, but here
are several suggestions.

1)	Compress, as distributed with news, is a real core and cpu hog.  This
	is fine if you have the resources, but if not will cause thrashing and
	general sleepiness.  There are options in the program for smaller
	systems that are easy to set up.

2)	History file processing, unless using the BSD style indexed file
	access, is really ineffieient.  Consider kludging the BSD option
	to use any indexed file stuff you have handy.

3)	All the pipeing that goes on with compressed news can't be helping.
	One of those unix features that's nice to have, but screws you in
	high-volume situations.

4)	If you are running mod.sources vnews, afbuild isn't the fastest thing
	in town.  Check the hashing algorithm - you mean you don't like to
	do divide instructions for every character?




-- 
George Robbins			uucp:	...!ihnp4!tapa!grr
P.O. Box 177				...!caip!unirot!grr
Lincoln U, PA  19352	[Any ideas herein are not responsible for themselves!]