Final compilation of solutions -- Re: Kernel 2.2.14, dirty buffers,
stalls in interactivity of system/NFS-clients ...
Okay, thanx to everyone on the Linux Kernel mailing list for helping
out a newbie. Sorry that I was a complete, oblivious moron and
totally missed the kernel docs on the VM system (DOOH!).
Anyhoo, here's a list (for reference) of things that I have looked
at, done and probably still need to checkout (most of the later can
only be done on downtime):
Sources of information:
/usr/src/linux/Documenatation/sysctl/vm.txt
http://www.bb-zone.com/Proc/chapter2.html#section2.4
[ The second is on Bodo Bauer's site, a guru at TurboLinux ]
Run-Time Tweaks (/proc filesystem):
/proc/sys/vm/bdflush
It takes 9 parameters (6 used -- 2.2.14 default in ()'s ):
1) Percentage of DB cache before fluishing (40)
2) Maximum # of DB to write per flush (500)
3) Number of clean buffers per refill (64)
4) DB refill threshold before flushing (256)
5) UNUSED (500)
6) Maximum DB age before flush (3000)
7) Maximum superblock DB age before flush (500)
8) UNUSED (1884)
9) UNUSED (2)
E.g.:
echo "25 50 64 256 500 1000 100 1884 2" > /proc/sys/vm/bdflush
[ The above is what I am running with now, seems to have removed
the massive disk writes I was previously experiencing on a
server with 1GB of RAM. ]
Kernel Tweaks to Consider:
A) Use the latest RAID Controller driver **
B) Mount filesystems with the 'noatime' option
(to avoid updating access times, therefore
removing disk writes on reads)
Hardware Downtime Tweaks to Consider:
A) Update RAID Controller BIOS
B) Set mainboard BIOS to enable 'passive release' and
'delayed transaction' (**?)
C) Avoid sharing IRQs (especially between NIC/RAID) **
D) Set NIC IRQ to a higher priority (lower IRQ)
[ ** I'm already doing/have done these. Not sure about C) though. ]
Again, thanx all!!!
-- TheBS
--
Bryan "TheBS" Smith -- Engineer, IT Professional and Hacker
E-mail: mailto:thebs@theseus.com,b.j.smith@ieee.org
Disclaimer: http://www.SmithConcepts.com/legal.html
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TheBS ... Serving E-mail filters to /dev/null since 1989
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