Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!ria!uwovax!brent
From: brent@uwovax.uwo.ca (Brent Sterner)
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: Re: RE: A New Topic -- Tuning News
Message-ID: <5087.25e9503a@uwovax.uwo.ca>
Date: 26 Feb 90 20:50:17 GMT
References: <9002190935.AA25552@uunet.uu.net>
Organization: CCS, U. of Western Ontario
Lines: 44

In article <9002190935.AA25552@uunet.uu.net>, munnari!csc.anu.oz.au!gih900@
					UUNET.UU.NET (Geoff Huston) writes:
>>This purely unscientific test suggests that NEWS startup time is predominated
>>by disk I/O.
>      
> yep - and tuning the file NEWS.ITEMS is the one to concentrate on - the file
> is big and very dynamic in terms of record insertions and deletions.
>      
> Geoff

   Pardon my ignorance, but I'm new to this group (but not to ANU NEWS).  I'm
the past system manager for our site, and I've observed some inefficiencies in
ANU NEWS when I run it.  NEWS.ITEMS is one.  One thing I'd really like is a
list of known problems and work-arounds you use in the field.  Specifically,
I've noted the following issues (probably old hat?):

a) NEWS.ITEMS is very big and sparse (at our site):
	Directory BIGDISK:[NEWS]
	NEWS.ITEMS;47                   6342/77205   21-FEB-1990

   The news manager does periodic convert/reclaim processing, but as far as
I know, that's all.  The file is phenomenally fragmented (cathedral windows),
but our defragger won't touch it because it is always busy.  I suspect that
if the file were less empty (eg 6342/10000 blocks) and defragmented, our site
would see a really big performance improvement.

b) NEWSRC for every user seems to be similarly fragmented, although *much*
smaller.  (It also gets rewritten every time I exit news, whether or not I
read anything.)  Might it be a candidate for writing more contiguously (ie
FOPEN the file with a preliminary guess about file size)?

   Any suggestions?  I'm aware (Geoff) that doing this stuff up *right* will
probably require recoding and a lot of effort.  For the time being, I'd be
quite happy with any periodic work-around that made news startup faster for
our users (especially news.items fragmentation and blocks allocated).

   If this stuff is old and boring to you folk, please send me email rather
than wasting a lot of bandwidth to this group.  Thanks.  b.
--
Brent Sterner                        Technical Support Manager, Academic Systems
Network    <BRENT@uwo.ca>            <BRENT@UWOVAX.BITNET>
           <129.100.2.13>            Telephone  (519)661-2151 x6036
Last Gasp  Computing & Communications Services, Natural Sciences Building
           The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada  N6A 5B7