Re: Thoughts on subject breakdown

[Mat Kovach <mkovach@cleveland.lug.net>]

On Sun, May 02, 1999 at 09:29:00PM +0900, Justin Couch wrote:
: Couldn't agree more. However, what constitutes "tuning" of a system
: without reference to what you are actually going to be doing with a box.
: Apart from the machine that sits in the corner doing nothing, the box
: typically has one or two specific functions that it should be tuned for.
: Someone that builds a web server is very likely to have a completely
: different hardware setup to the local departmental database
: necessitating a different config for a "tuned" system (log/swap
: locations, on/off machine syslogging etc).
: 

Very true.  System tuning is always a hard balance of functions vs. 
functionality.  I see alot of cross referencing involved in a well put 
together page :->

: I suppose this bring us down to a little more basic question: Linux
: Performance Tuning - what is the basic aim of the information? Are we
: providing the Every-man-and-his-dog site or just focusing on the higher
: end "professional" tuning services? That is, what level of knowledge
: assumption do we make? If we have to tell them that you shouldn't really
: run a swap file and the database log on the same partition or that you
: need to have swap space X times physical memory, are we providing
: "tuning" information or just basic setup that any reasonable unix
: sysadmin should know anyway? 

"resonable unix sysadmin" -- is there such a beast?  I think many of the people
looking into Linux as this time don't have the basic UNIX sysadmin skills 
so while providing basic system info ( sway size, etc) seems really stupid to
us, from input from the CLUG members and some of the training class I do, I've
learned to include the small points.  Now, we could deciede to state that 
these performance, configuration, tuning points assume you have a reasonably
configured system and if you don't understand that these will not be of help
to you.

: I see this along the same lines of  hardware recommendations (RAID vs
: Single disk) that the reader should know already. I am biased towards
: the higher end type site. However, I do like the idea of a general
: "before you get started, have you checked these points" set of pages
: that are sufficiently general so long as the focus of the site is not
: that way inclined.

Excellent idea.  Maybe one of the these that we need to deciede is what is a
good "baseline" to starting applying some the the performance changes?  If you
plan on making changes suggested here, make sure you have checked, a, b, c.  
This could get some of the lower level system stuff taken care of and hopefully
make people understand trying to get great disk i/o out of 4 year old IDE
drivers just won't work :)

What I think we need to make sure that un-experienced Linux users understand
that they will have to make sure their systems are up to a certain level before
the points here can have a the respected effects.

-- 
Mat Kovach                                      mkovach@cleveland.lug.net
Cleveland Linux User Group                       http://cleveland.lug.net