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softlink to /var/tmp. This is horribly wrong since /tmp and /var/tmp serve different goals. Even given the text that in the old days things were different doesn't help, since our scripts clean /tmp, and we depend on /var/tmp to persist for vi editing sessions recovery and other likewise applications.
804 lines
28 KiB
Groff
804 lines
28 KiB
Groff
.\" Copyright (c) 2001, Matthew Dillon. Terms and conditions are those of
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.\" the BSD Copyright as specified in the file "/usr/src/COPYRIGHT" in
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.\" the source tree.
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.\"
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.\" $FreeBSD$
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.\"
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.Dd May 25, 2001
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.Dt TUNING 7
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.Os
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.Sh NAME
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.Nm tuning
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.Nd performance tuning under FreeBSD
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.Sh SYSTEM SETUP - DISKLABEL, NEWFS, TUNEFS, SWAP
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When using
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.Xr disklabel 8
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or
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.Xr sysinstall 8
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to lay out your filesystems on a hard disk it is important to remember
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that hard drives can transfer data much more quickly from outer tracks
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than they can from inner tracks.
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To take advantage of this you should
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try to pack your smaller filesystems and swap closer to the outer tracks,
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follow with the larger filesystems, and end with the largest filesystems.
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It is also important to size system standard filesystems such that you
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will not be forced to resize them later as you scale the machine up.
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I usually create, in order, a 128M root, 1G swap, 128M
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.Pa /var ,
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128M
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.Pa /var/tmp ,
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3G
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.Pa /usr ,
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and use any remaining space for
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.Pa /home .
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.Pp
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You should typically size your swap space to approximately 2x main memory.
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If you do not have a lot of RAM, though, you will generally want a lot
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more swap.
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It is not recommended that you configure any less than
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256M of swap on a system and you should keep in mind future memory
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expansion when sizing the swap partition.
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The kernel's VM paging algorithms are tuned to perform best when there is
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at least 2x swap versus main memory.
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Configuring too little swap can lead
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to inefficiencies in the VM page scanning code as well as create issues
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later on if you add more memory to your machine.
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Finally, on larger systems
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with multiple SCSI disks (or multiple IDE disks operating on different
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controllers), we strongly recommend that you configure swap on each drive
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(up to four drives).
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The swap partitions on the drives should be approximately the same size.
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The kernel can handle arbitrary sizes but
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internal data structures scale to 4 times the largest swap partition.
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Keeping
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the swap partitions near the same size will allow the kernel to optimally
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stripe swap space across the N disks.
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Do not worry about overdoing it a
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little, swap space is the saving grace of
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.Ux
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and even if you do not normally use much swap, it can give you more time to
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recover from a runaway program before being forced to reboot.
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.Pp
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How you size your
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.Pa /var
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partition depends heavily on what you intend to use the machine for.
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This
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partition is primarily used to hold mailboxes, the print spool, and log
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files.
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Some people even make
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.Pa /var/log
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its own partition (but except for extreme cases it is not worth the waste
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of a partition ID).
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If your machine is intended to act as a mail
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or print server,
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or you are running a heavily visited web server, you should consider
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creating a much larger partition \(en perhaps a gig or more.
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It is very easy
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to underestimate log file storage requirements.
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.Pp
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Sizing
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.Pa /var/tmp
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depends on the kind of temporary file usage you think you will need.
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128M is
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the minimum we recommend.
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Also note that sysinstall will create a
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.Pa /tmp
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directory.
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Dedicating a partition for temporary file storage is important for
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two reasons: first, it reduces the possibility of filesystem corruption
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in a crash, and second it reduces the chance of a runaway process that
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fills up
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.Oo Pa /var Oc Ns Pa /tmp
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from blowing up more critical subsystems (mail,
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logging, etc).
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Filling up
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.Oo Pa /var Oc Ns Pa /tmp
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is a very common problem to have.
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.Pp
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In the old days there were differences between
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.Pa /tmp
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and
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.Pa /var/tmp ,
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but the introduction of
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.Pa /var
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(and
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.Pa /var/tmp )
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led to massive confusion
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by program writers so today programs haphazardly use one or the
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other and thus no real distinction can be made between the two.
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So it makes sense to have just one temporary directory.
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However you handle
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.Pa /tmp ,
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the one thing you do not want to do is leave it sitting
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on the root partition where it might cause root to fill up or possibly
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corrupt root in a crash/reboot situation.
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.Pp
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The
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.Pa /usr
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partition holds the bulk of the files required to support the system and
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a subdirectory within it called
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.Pa /usr/local
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holds the bulk of the files installed from the
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.Xr ports 7
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hierarchy.
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If you do not use ports all that much and do not intend to keep
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system source
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.Pq Pa /usr/src
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on the machine, you can get away with
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a 1 gigabyte
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.Pa /usr
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partition.
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However, if you install a lot of ports
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(especially window managers and Linux-emulated binaries), we recommend
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at least a 2 gigabyte
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.Pa /usr
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and if you also intend to keep system source
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on the machine, we recommend a 3 gigabyte
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.Pa /usr .
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Do not underestimate the
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amount of space you will need in this partition, it can creep up and
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surprise you!
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.Pp
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The
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.Pa /home
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partition is typically used to hold user-specific data.
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I usually size it to the remainder of the disk.
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.Pp
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Why partition at all?
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Why not create one big
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.Pa /
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partition and be done with it?
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Then I do not have to worry about undersizing things!
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Well, there are several reasons this is not a good idea.
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First,
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each partition has different operational characteristics and separating them
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allows the filesystem to tune itself to those characteristics.
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For example,
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the root and
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.Pa /usr
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partitions are read-mostly, with very little writing, while
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a lot of reading and writing could occur in
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.Pa /var
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and
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.Pa /var/tmp .
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By properly
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partitioning your system fragmentation introduced in the smaller more
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heavily write-loaded partitions will not bleed over into the mostly-read
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partitions.
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Additionally, keeping the write-loaded partitions closer to
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the edge of the disk (i.e. before the really big partitions instead of after
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in the partition table) will increase I/O performance in the partitions
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where you need it the most.
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Now it is true that you might also need I/O
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performance in the larger partitions, but they are so large that shifting
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them more towards the edge of the disk will not lead to a significant
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performance improvement whereas moving
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.Pa /var
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to the edge can have a huge impact.
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Finally, there are safety concerns.
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Having a small neat root partition that
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is essentially read-only gives it a greater chance of surviving a bad crash
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intact.
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.Pp
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Properly partitioning your system also allows you to tune
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.Xr newfs 8 ,
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and
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.Xr tunefs 8
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parameters.
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Tuning
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.Xr newfs 8
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requires more experience but can lead to significant improvements in
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performance.
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There are three parameters that are relatively safe to tune:
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.Em blocksize , bytes/i-node ,
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and
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.Em cylinders/group .
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.Pp
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.Fx
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performs best when using 8K or 16K filesystem block sizes.
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The default filesystem block size is 16K,
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which provides best performance for most applications,
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with the exception of those that perform random access on large files
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(such as database server software).
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Such applications tend to perform better with a smaller block size,
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although modern disk characteristics are such that the performance
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gain from using a smaller block size may not be worth consideration.
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Using a block size larger than 16K
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can cause fragmentation of the buffer cache and
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lead to lower performance.
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.Pp
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The defaults may be unsuitable
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for a filesystem that requires a very large number of i-nodes
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or is intended to hold a large number of very small files.
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Such a filesystem should be created with an 8K or 4K block size.
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This also requires you to specify a smaller
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fragment size.
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We recommend always using a fragment size that is 1/8
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the block size (less testing has been done on other fragment size factors).
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The
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.Xr newfs 8
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options for this would be
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.Dq Li "newfs -f 1024 -b 8192 ..." .
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.Pp
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If a large partition is intended to be used to hold fewer, larger files, such
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as a database files, you can increase the
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.Em bytes/i-node
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ratio which reduces the number of i-nodes (maximum number of files and
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directories that can be created) for that partition.
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Decreasing the number
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of i-nodes in a filesystem can greatly reduce
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.Xr fsck 8
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recovery times after a crash.
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Do not use this option
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unless you are actually storing large files on the partition, because if you
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overcompensate you can wind up with a filesystem that has lots of free
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space remaining but cannot accommodate any more files.
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Using 32768, 65536, or 262144 bytes/i-node is recommended.
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You can go higher but
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it will have only incremental effects on
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.Xr fsck 8
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recovery times.
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For example,
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.Dq Li "newfs -i 32768 ..." .
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.Pp
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.Xr tunefs 8
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may be used to further tune a filesystem.
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This command can be run in
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single-user mode without having to reformat the filesystem.
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However, this is possibly the most abused program in the system.
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Many people attempt to
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increase available filesystem space by setting the min-free percentage to 0.
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This can lead to severe filesystem fragmentation and we do not recommend
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that you do this.
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Really the only
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.Xr tunefs 8
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option worthwhile here is turning on
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.Em softupdates
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with
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.Dq Li "tunefs -n enable /filesystem" .
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(Note: in
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.Fx 4.5
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and later, softupdates can be turned on using the
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.Fl U
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option to
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.Xr newfs 8 ,
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and
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.Xr sysinstall 8
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will typically enable softupdates automatically for non-root filesystems).
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Softupdates drastically improves meta-data performance, mainly file
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creation and deletion.
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We recommend enabling softupdates on most filesystems; however, there
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are two limitations to softupdates that you should be aware of when
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determining whether to use it on a filesystem.
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First, softupdates guarantees filesystem consistency in the
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case of a crash but could very easily be several seconds (even a minute!)
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behind updating the physical disk.
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If you crash you may lose more work
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than otherwise.
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Secondly, softupdates delays the freeing of filesystem
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blocks.
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If you have a filesystem (such as the root filesystem) which is
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close to full, doing a major update of it, e.g.\&
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.Dq Li "make installworld" ,
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can run it out of space and cause the update to fail.
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.Pp
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A number of run-time
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.Xr mount 8
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options exist that can help you tune the system.
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For this reason, softupdates will not be enabled on the root filesystem
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during a typical install.
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The most obvious and most dangerous one is
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.Cm async .
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Do not ever use it, it is far too dangerous.
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A less dangerous and more
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useful
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.Xr mount 8
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option is called
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.Cm noatime .
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.Ux
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filesystems normally update the last-accessed time of a file or
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directory whenever it is accessed.
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This operation is handled in
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.Fx
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with a delayed write and normally does not create a burden on the system.
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However, if your system is accessing a huge number of files on a continuing
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basis the buffer cache can wind up getting polluted with atime updates,
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creating a burden on the system.
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For example, if you are running a heavily
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loaded web site, or a news server with lots of readers, you might want to
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consider turning off atime updates on your larger partitions with this
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.Xr mount 8
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option.
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However, you should not gratuitously turn off atime
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updates everywhere.
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For example, the
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.Pa /var
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filesystem customarily
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holds mailboxes, and atime (in combination with mtime) is used to
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determine whether a mailbox has new mail.
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You might as well leave
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atime turned on for mostly read-only partitions such as
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.Pa /
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and
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.Pa /usr
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as well.
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This is especially useful for
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.Pa /
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since some system utilities
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use the atime field for reporting.
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.Sh STRIPING DISKS
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In larger systems you can stripe partitions from several drives together
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to create a much larger overall partition.
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Striping can also improve
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the performance of a filesystem by splitting I/O operations across two
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or more disks.
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The
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.Xr vinum 8
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and
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.Xr ccdconfig 8
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utilities may be used to create simple striped filesystems.
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Generally
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speaking, striping smaller partitions such as the root and
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.Pa /var/tmp ,
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or essentially read-only partitions such as
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.Pa /usr
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is a complete waste of time.
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You should only stripe partitions that require serious I/O performance,
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typically
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.Pa /var , /home ,
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or custom partitions used to hold databases and web pages.
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Choosing the proper stripe size is also
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important.
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Filesystems tend to store meta-data on power-of-2 boundaries
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and you usually want to reduce seeking rather than increase seeking.
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This
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means you want to use a large off-center stripe size such as 1152 sectors
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so sequential I/O does not seek both disks and so meta-data is distributed
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across both disks rather than concentrated on a single disk.
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If
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you really need to get sophisticated, we recommend using a real hardware
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RAID controller from the list of
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.Fx
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supported controllers.
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.Sh SYSCTL TUNING
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.Xr sysctl 8
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variables permit system behavior to be monitored and controlled at
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run-time.
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Some sysctls simply report on the behavior of the system; others allow
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the system behavior to be modified;
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some may be set at boot time using
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.Xr rc.conf 5 ,
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but most will be set via
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.Xr sysctl.conf 5 .
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There are several hundred sysctls in the system, including many that appear
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to be candidates for tuning but actually are not.
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In this document we will only cover the ones that have the greatest effect
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on the system.
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.Pp
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The
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.Va kern.ipc.shm_use_phys
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sysctl defaults to 0 (off) and may be set to 0 (off) or 1 (on).
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Setting
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this parameter to 1 will cause all System V shared memory segments to be
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mapped to unpageable physical RAM.
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This feature only has an effect if you
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are either (A) mapping small amounts of shared memory across many (hundreds)
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of processes, or (B) mapping large amounts of shared memory across any
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number of processes.
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This feature allows the kernel to remove a great deal
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of internal memory management page-tracking overhead at the cost of wiring
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the shared memory into core, making it unswappable.
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.Pp
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The
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.Va vfs.vmiodirenable
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sysctl defaults to 1 (on).
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This parameter controls how directories are cached
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by the system.
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Most directories are small and use but a single fragment
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(typically 1K) in the filesystem and even less (typically 512 bytes) in
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the buffer cache.
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However, when operating in the default mode the buffer
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cache will only cache a fixed number of directories even if you have a huge
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amount of memory.
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Turning on this sysctl allows the buffer cache to use
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the VM Page Cache to cache the directories.
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The advantage is that all of
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memory is now available for caching directories.
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The disadvantage is that
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the minimum in-core memory used to cache a directory is the physical page
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size (typically 4K) rather than 512 bytes.
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We recommend turning this option off in memory-constrained environments;
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however, when on, it will substantially improve the performance of services
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that manipulate a large number of files.
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Such services can include web caches, large mail systems, and news systems.
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Turning on this option will generally not reduce performance even with the
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wasted memory but you should experiment to find out.
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|
.Pp
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There are various buffer-cache and VM page cache related sysctls.
|
|
We do not recommend modifying these values.
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|
As of
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.Fx 4.3 ,
|
|
the VM system does an extremely good job tuning itself.
|
|
.Pp
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|
The
|
|
.Va net.inet.tcp.sendspace
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|
and
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|
.Va net.inet.tcp.recvspace
|
|
sysctls are of particular interest if you are running network intensive
|
|
applications.
|
|
This controls the amount of send and receive buffer space
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allowed for any given TCP connection.
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The default sending buffer is 32K; the default receiving buffer
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|
is 64K.
|
|
You can often
|
|
improve bandwidth utilization by increasing the default at the cost of
|
|
eating up more kernel memory for each connection.
|
|
We do not recommend
|
|
increasing the defaults if you are serving hundreds or thousands of
|
|
simultaneous connections because it is possible to quickly run the system
|
|
out of memory due to stalled connections building up.
|
|
But if you need
|
|
high bandwidth over a fewer number of connections, especially if you have
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|
gigabit Ethernet, increasing these defaults can make a huge difference.
|
|
You can adjust the buffer size for incoming and outgoing data separately.
|
|
For example, if your machine is primarily doing web serving you may want
|
|
to decrease the recvspace in order to be able to increase the
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|
sendspace without eating too much kernel memory.
|
|
Note that the routing table (see
|
|
.Xr route 8 )
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|
can be used to introduce route-specific send and receive buffer size
|
|
defaults.
|
|
.Pp
|
|
As an additional management tool you can use pipes in your
|
|
firewall rules (see
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|
.Xr ipfw 8 )
|
|
to limit the bandwidth going to or from particular IP blocks or ports.
|
|
For example, if you have a T1 you might want to limit your web traffic
|
|
to 70% of the T1's bandwidth in order to leave the remainder available
|
|
for mail and interactive use.
|
|
Normally a heavily loaded web server
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|
will not introduce significant latencies into other services even if
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|
the network link is maxed out, but enforcing a limit can smooth things
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|
out and lead to longer term stability.
|
|
Many people also enforce artificial
|
|
bandwidth limitations in order to ensure that they are not charged for
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|
using too much bandwidth.
|
|
.Pp
|
|
Setting the send or receive TCP buffer to values larger then 65535 will result
|
|
in a marginal performance improvement unless both hosts support the window
|
|
scaling extension of the TCP protocol, which is controlled by the
|
|
.Va net.inet.tcp.rfc1323
|
|
sysctl.
|
|
These extensions should be enabled and the TCP buffer size should be set
|
|
to a value larger than 65536 in order to obtain good performance out of
|
|
certain types of network links; specifically, gigabit WAN links and
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|
high-latency satellite links.
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|
RFC1323 support is enabled by default.
|
|
.Pp
|
|
The
|
|
.Va net.inet.tcp.always_keepalive
|
|
sysctl determines whether or not the TCP implementation should attempt
|
|
to detect dead TCP connections by intermittently delivering
|
|
.Dq keepalives
|
|
on the connection.
|
|
By default, this is enabled for all applications; by setting this
|
|
sysctl to 0, only applications that specifically request keepalives
|
|
will use them.
|
|
In most environments, TCP keepalives will improve the management of
|
|
system state by expiring dead TCP connections, particularly for
|
|
systems serving dialup users who may not always terminate individual
|
|
TCP connections before disconnecting from the network.
|
|
However, in some environments, temporary network outages may be
|
|
incorrectly identified as dead sessions, resulting in unexpectedly
|
|
terminated TCP connections.
|
|
In such environments, setting the sysctl to 0 may reduce the occurrence of
|
|
TCP session disconnections.
|
|
.Pp
|
|
The
|
|
.Va kern.ipc.somaxconn
|
|
sysctl limits the size of the listen queue for accepting new TCP connections.
|
|
The default value of 128 is typically too low for robust handling of new
|
|
connections in a heavily loaded web server environment.
|
|
For such environments,
|
|
we recommend increasing this value to 1024 or higher.
|
|
The service daemon
|
|
may itself limit the listen queue size (e.g.\&
|
|
.Xr sendmail 8 ,
|
|
apache) but will
|
|
often have a directive in its configuration file to adjust the queue size up.
|
|
Larger listen queues also do a better job of fending off denial of service
|
|
attacks.
|
|
.Pp
|
|
The
|
|
.Va kern.maxfiles
|
|
sysctl determines how many open files the system supports.
|
|
The default is
|
|
typically a few thousand but you may need to bump this up to ten or twenty
|
|
thousand if you are running databases or large descriptor-heavy daemons.
|
|
The read-only
|
|
.Va kern.openfiles
|
|
sysctl may be interrogated to determine the current number of open files
|
|
on the system.
|
|
.Pp
|
|
The
|
|
.Va vm.swap_idle_enabled
|
|
sysctl is useful in large multi-user systems where you have lots of users
|
|
entering and leaving the system and lots of idle processes.
|
|
Such systems
|
|
tend to generate a great deal of continuous pressure on free memory reserves.
|
|
Turning this feature on and adjusting the swapout hysteresis (in idle
|
|
seconds) via
|
|
.Va vm.swap_idle_threshold1
|
|
and
|
|
.Va vm.swap_idle_threshold2
|
|
allows you to depress the priority of pages associated with idle processes
|
|
more quickly then the normal pageout algorithm.
|
|
This gives a helping hand
|
|
to the pageout daemon.
|
|
Do not turn this option on unless you need it,
|
|
because the tradeoff you are making is to essentially pre-page memory sooner
|
|
rather then later, eating more swap and disk bandwidth.
|
|
In a small system
|
|
this option will have a detrimental effect but in a large system that is
|
|
already doing moderate paging this option allows the VM system to stage
|
|
whole processes into and out of memory more easily.
|
|
.Sh LOADER TUNABLES
|
|
Some aspects of the system behavior may not be tunable at runtime because
|
|
memory allocations they perform must occur early in the boot process.
|
|
To change loader tunables, you must set their values in
|
|
.Xr loader.conf 5
|
|
and reboot the system.
|
|
.Pp
|
|
.Va kern.maxusers
|
|
controls the scaling of a number of static system tables, including defaults
|
|
for the maximum number of open files, sizing of network memory resources, etc.
|
|
As of
|
|
.Fx 4.5 ,
|
|
.Va kern.maxusers
|
|
is automatically sized at boot based on the amount of memory available in
|
|
the system, and may be determined at run-time by inspecting the value of the
|
|
read-only
|
|
.Va kern.maxusers
|
|
sysctl.
|
|
Some sites will require larger or smaller values of
|
|
.Va kern.maxusers
|
|
and may set it as a loader tunable; values of 64, 128, and 256 are not
|
|
uncommon.
|
|
We do not recommend going above 256 unless you need a huge number
|
|
of file descriptors; many of the tunable values set to their defaults by
|
|
.Va kern.maxusers
|
|
may be individually overridden at boot-time or run-time as described
|
|
elsewhere in this document.
|
|
Systems older than
|
|
.Fx 4.4
|
|
must set this value via the kernel
|
|
.Xr config 8
|
|
option
|
|
.Cd maxusers
|
|
instead.
|
|
.Pp
|
|
.Va kern.ipc.nmbclusters
|
|
may be adjusted to increase the number of network mbufs the system is
|
|
willing to allocate.
|
|
Each cluster represents approximately 2K of memory,
|
|
so a value of 1024 represents 2M of kernel memory reserved for network
|
|
buffers.
|
|
You can do a simple calculation to figure out how many you need.
|
|
If you have a web server which maxes out at 1000 simultaneous connections,
|
|
and each connection eats a 16K receive and 16K send buffer, you need
|
|
approximate 32MB worth of network buffers to deal with it.
|
|
A good rule of
|
|
thumb is to multiply by 2, so 32MBx2 = 64MB/2K = 32768.
|
|
So for this case
|
|
you would want to set
|
|
.Va kern.ipc.nmbclusters
|
|
to 32768.
|
|
We recommend values between
|
|
1024 and 4096 for machines with moderates amount of memory, and between 4096
|
|
and 32768 for machines with greater amounts of memory.
|
|
Under no circumstances
|
|
should you specify an arbitrarily high value for this parameter, it could
|
|
lead to a boot-time crash.
|
|
The
|
|
.Fl m
|
|
option to
|
|
.Xr netstat 1
|
|
may be used to observe network cluster use.
|
|
Older versions of
|
|
.Fx
|
|
do not have this tunable and require that the
|
|
kernel
|
|
.Xr config 8
|
|
option
|
|
.Dv NMBCLUSTERS
|
|
be set instead.
|
|
.Pp
|
|
More and more programs are using the
|
|
.Xr sendfile 2
|
|
system call to transmit files over the network.
|
|
The
|
|
.Va kern.ipc.nsfbufs
|
|
sysctl controls the number of filesystem buffers
|
|
.Xr sendfile 2
|
|
is allowed to use to perform its work.
|
|
This parameter nominally scales
|
|
with
|
|
.Va kern.maxusers
|
|
so you should not need to modify this parameter except under extreme
|
|
circumstances.
|
|
.Sh KERNEL CONFIG TUNING
|
|
There are a number of kernel options that you may have to fiddle with in
|
|
a large scale system.
|
|
In order to change these options you need to be
|
|
able to compile a new kernel from source.
|
|
The
|
|
.Xr config 8
|
|
manual page and the handbook are good starting points for learning how to
|
|
do this.
|
|
Generally the first thing you do when creating your own custom
|
|
kernel is to strip out all the drivers and services you do not use.
|
|
Removing things like
|
|
.Dv INET6
|
|
and drivers you do not have will reduce the size of your kernel, sometimes
|
|
by a megabyte or more, leaving more memory available for applications.
|
|
.Pp
|
|
.Dv SCSI_DELAY
|
|
and
|
|
.Dv IDE_DELAY
|
|
may be used to reduce system boot times.
|
|
The defaults are fairly high and
|
|
can be responsible for 15+ seconds of delay in the boot process.
|
|
Reducing
|
|
.Dv SCSI_DELAY
|
|
to 5 seconds usually works (especially with modern drives).
|
|
Reducing
|
|
.Dv IDE_DELAY
|
|
also works but you have to be a little more careful.
|
|
.Pp
|
|
There are a number of
|
|
.Dv *_CPU
|
|
options that can be commented out.
|
|
If you only want the kernel to run
|
|
on a Pentium class CPU, you can easily remove
|
|
.Dv I386_CPU
|
|
and
|
|
.Dv I486_CPU ,
|
|
but only remove
|
|
.Dv I586_CPU
|
|
if you are sure your CPU is being recognized as a Pentium II or better.
|
|
Some clones may be recognized as a Pentium or even a 486 and not be able
|
|
to boot without those options.
|
|
If it works, great!
|
|
The operating system
|
|
will be able to better-use higher-end CPU features for MMU, task switching,
|
|
timebase, and even device operations.
|
|
Additionally, higher-end CPUs support
|
|
4MB MMU pages which the kernel uses to map the kernel itself into memory,
|
|
which increases its efficiency under heavy syscall loads.
|
|
.Sh IDE WRITE CACHING
|
|
.Fx 4.3
|
|
flirted with turning off IDE write caching.
|
|
This reduced write bandwidth
|
|
to IDE disks but was considered necessary due to serious data consistency
|
|
issues introduced by hard drive vendors.
|
|
Basically the problem is that
|
|
IDE drives lie about when a write completes.
|
|
With IDE write caching turned
|
|
on, IDE hard drives will not only write data to disk out of order, they
|
|
will sometimes delay some of the blocks indefinitely when under heavy disk
|
|
loads.
|
|
A crash or power failure can result in serious filesystem
|
|
corruption.
|
|
So our default was changed to be safe.
|
|
Unfortunately, the
|
|
result was such a huge loss in performance that we caved in and changed the
|
|
default back to on after the release.
|
|
You should check the default on
|
|
your system by observing the
|
|
.Va hw.ata.wc
|
|
sysctl variable.
|
|
If IDE write caching is turned off, you can turn it back
|
|
on by setting the
|
|
.Va hw.ata.wc
|
|
loader tunable to 1.
|
|
More information on tuning the ATA driver system may be found in
|
|
.Xr ata 4 .
|
|
.Pp
|
|
There is a new experimental feature for IDE hard drives called
|
|
.Va hw.ata.tags
|
|
(you also set this in the boot loader) which allows write caching to be safely
|
|
turned on.
|
|
This brings SCSI tagging features to IDE drives.
|
|
As of this
|
|
writing only IBM DPTA and DTLA drives support the feature.
|
|
Warning!
|
|
These
|
|
drives apparently have quality control problems and I do not recommend
|
|
purchasing them at this time.
|
|
If you need performance, go with SCSI.
|
|
.Sh CPU, MEMORY, DISK, NETWORK
|
|
The type of tuning you do depends heavily on where your system begins to
|
|
bottleneck as load increases.
|
|
If your system runs out of CPU (idle times
|
|
are perpetually 0%) then you need to consider upgrading the CPU or moving to
|
|
an SMP motherboard (multiple CPU's), or perhaps you need to revisit the
|
|
programs that are causing the load and try to optimize them.
|
|
If your system
|
|
is paging to swap a lot you need to consider adding more memory.
|
|
If your
|
|
system is saturating the disk you typically see high CPU idle times and
|
|
total disk saturation.
|
|
.Xr systat 1
|
|
can be used to monitor this.
|
|
There are many solutions to saturated disks:
|
|
increasing memory for caching, mirroring disks, distributing operations across
|
|
several machines, and so forth.
|
|
If disk performance is an issue and you
|
|
are using IDE drives, switching to SCSI can help a great deal.
|
|
While modern
|
|
IDE drives compare with SCSI in raw sequential bandwidth, the moment you
|
|
start seeking around the disk SCSI drives usually win.
|
|
.Pp
|
|
Finally, you might run out of network suds.
|
|
The first line of defense for
|
|
improving network performance is to make sure you are using switches instead
|
|
of hubs, especially these days where switches are almost as cheap.
|
|
Hubs
|
|
have severe problems under heavy loads due to collision backoff and one bad
|
|
host can severely degrade the entire LAN.
|
|
Second, optimize the network path
|
|
as much as possible.
|
|
For example, in
|
|
.Xr firewall 7
|
|
we describe a firewall protecting internal hosts with a topology where
|
|
the externally visible hosts are not routed through it.
|
|
Use 100BaseT rather
|
|
than 10BaseT, or use 1000BaseT rather then 100BaseT, depending on your needs.
|
|
Most bottlenecks occur at the WAN link (e.g.\&
|
|
modem, T1, DSL, whatever).
|
|
If expanding the link is not an option it may be possible to use
|
|
.Xr dummynet 4
|
|
feature to implement peak shaving or other forms of traffic shaping to
|
|
prevent the overloaded service (such as web services) from affecting other
|
|
services (such as email), or vice versa.
|
|
In home installations this could
|
|
be used to give interactive traffic (your browser,
|
|
.Xr ssh 1
|
|
logins) priority
|
|
over services you export from your box (web services, email).
|
|
.Sh SEE ALSO
|
|
.Xr netstat 1 ,
|
|
.Xr systat 1 ,
|
|
.Xr ata 4 ,
|
|
.Xr dummynet 4 ,
|
|
.Xr login.conf 5 ,
|
|
.Xr rc.conf 5 ,
|
|
.Xr sysctl.conf 5 ,
|
|
.Xr firewall 7 ,
|
|
.Xr hier 7 ,
|
|
.Xr ports 7 ,
|
|
.Xr boot 8 ,
|
|
.Xr ccdconfig 8 ,
|
|
.Xr config 8 ,
|
|
.Xr disklabel 8 ,
|
|
.Xr fsck 8 ,
|
|
.Xr ifconfig 8 ,
|
|
.Xr ipfw 8 ,
|
|
.Xr loader 8 ,
|
|
.Xr mount 8 ,
|
|
.Xr newfs 8 ,
|
|
.Xr route 8 ,
|
|
.Xr sysctl 8 ,
|
|
.Xr sysinstall 8 ,
|
|
.Xr tunefs 8 ,
|
|
.Xr vinum 8
|
|
.Sh HISTORY
|
|
The
|
|
.Nm
|
|
manual page was originally written by
|
|
.An Matthew Dillon
|
|
and first appeared
|
|
in
|
|
.Fx 4.3 ,
|
|
May 2001.
|