From: ANU::"ANU-NEWS%VM1.NoDak.EDU@murtoa.cs.mu.oz" 29-JAN-1990 15:03:12.23 To: GIH900 CC: Subj: Re: RE: A New Topic -- Tuning News Received: by anu (5.57/1.0) id AA16170; Mon, 29 Jan 90 14:03:13 EST Received: from uunet by murtoa.cs.mu.OZ.AU with UUCP (5.61+IDA+MU) id AA27492; Mon, 29 Jan 1990 14:00:22 +1100 (from ANU-NEWS@VM1.NoDak.EDU for gih900@csc.anu.oz) Received: from vm1.NoDak.edu by uunet.uu.net (5.61/1.14) with SMTP id AA25068; Sun, 28 Jan 90 21:53:54 -0500 Message-Id: <9001290253.AA25068@uunet.uu.net> Received: from NDSUVM1.BITNET by VM1.NoDak.EDU (IBM VM SMTP R1.2.1MX) with BSMTP id 1272; Sun, 28 Jan 90 20:52:06 CST Received: from NDSUVM1.BITNET by NDSUVM1.BITNET (Mailer R2.03B) with BSMTP id 1262; Sun, 28 Jan 90 20:52:05 CST Date: Fri, 26 Jan 90 13:47:23 GMT Reply-To: rand%MERRIMACK.EDU%VM1.NoDak.EDU@murtoa.cs.mu.oz Sender: ANU-NEWS Discussion From: rand%MERRIMACK.EDU%VM1.NoDak.EDU@murtoa.cs.mu.oz Subject: Re: RE: A New Topic -- Tuning News To: Multiple recipients of list ANU-NEWS In article <8910310355.AA11260@uunet.uu.net>, munnari!csc.anu.oz.au!gih900@UUNET .UU.NET (Geoff Huston) writes: > Tom Linoncelli writes:... > I would like to start a discussion on how to tune news so that it is > > Apart from setting up global buffers for the two indexed files there is little Well, I got around to doing this the other day and it helped, a bit. I dug up some DECUS symposium notes and followed Ken Henerson's notes on 'turbo charging' RMS files. I've wanted to post something more cohesive than this but work is getting in the way ;-) A short cookbook approach for those who don't know how to set Global buffers on files: First of all, if you want the quick way out and your site resembles mine (I keep about 450-500 newsgroups [news.groups] and for most groups Item_hold=1 [news.items]. About 30-40 are set to 4-7 days.) issue the the following 2 commands (assuming you have a few extra GBLSECTIONS and GBLPAGES hanging around) $ SET FILE/GLOBAL_BUFFER=3 NEWS_ROOT:NEWS.GROUPS $ SET FILE/GLOBAL_BUFFER=44 NEWS_ROOT:NEWS.ITEMS Where did these two magic numbers come from? To do this you need to have control of news.groups and news.items. So, stop news_batch and kick everyone off news. Do $ ANAL/RMS/FDL NEWS.GROUPS This produces a file NEWS.FDL (grrr). Do $ EDIT/FDL NEWS.FDL This drops you into the FDL Editor. Select, in order, INVOKE, OPTIMIZE, and LINE. Press RETURN a bunch of times (unless you know what you're doing) until a graph is displayed. Select FD. Press return at the FDL Title section. In the following display note: buckets in index, maximum bucket size, and pages required to cache index. Press returns through all of the KEY 1 stuff (technical, eh?) until you get back to the main menu. Select EXIT. Buckets in index should be pages required to cache index divided by bucket size. Edit news.fdl and add the line GLOBAL_BUFFER_COUNT n in the FILE section of the FDL where n is the number of pages required to cache index. If you want to be more productive, look at the compression stats in NEWS.FDL;-0 in the Analysis of Key sections. If a key or record is compressed (look in KEY description at top of file) and the stats are lousy (<50%) turn compression off by editing news.fdl.0. The FDL is now optimized. To apply it to news.groups do (whilst no one is using NEWS): $CONVERT/FDL=NEWS.FDL NEWS.GROUPS NEWS.GROUPS Now (huff, pant) do the same for news.items (this takes a looooong time). Each file you slap global_buffers on needs one GBLSECTION. You may also need to boost GBLPAGES, GBLPAGFIL, and RMS_GBLBUFQUO. Since global buffers count against a process' working set, make sure your news users can handle a hit of (max bucket size*pages required to cache index) pages for each of news.groups and news.items. Disclaimer: I know squat about rms file tuning. This improved my performance, yours may vary. Rand P. Hall UUCP: {uunet,wang,ulowell}!samsung!hubdub!rand Merrimack College CSNET: rand@merrimack.edu N. Andover, MA 508.683.7111 Dukakis = 15% tax hike + $1.3 billion deficit