gaeta@picker.picker.com (jay gaeta) (03/28/91)
Some time ago, I posted the following questions: > I have set up Bnews 2.11 to "SPOOLNEWS" (Get the feed, unbatch files later). > I am trying to figure out why my system gets so slow during unbatching... > suspect disk I/O problems... > Would like to feed unbatched articles to a sister site... I would like to summarize the responses I received and what I have learned through experimentation. (Keep in mind that I am a "novice" news user/administrator). Background information: Bnews 2.11 running on a '386 clone (25Mhz), AT&T Unix Sys V Rel 3.2.2 (from AT&T), ISA bus, ESDI disk, Lark ESDI controller. Newsfeed from UUNET, using Telebit T2500 modem. (1) Could not get reliable modem communications at 19200BPS, or 9600BPS. (4800BPS works reliably). The problems were NOT with UUNET, Telebit modem, Unix, Phone lines... Problem: UART on serial board and serial driver. PC's typically use inexpensive UARTS (NS8250, NS16450) with a single character deep FIFO. Solution: replace UART with compatible NS16550A (16 character deep FIFO), and port public domain FAS2.08 driver. (2) System performance deteriorated during newsfeed. The problems were NOT related to (1) above. Rebuilding Bnews with "SPOOLNEWS" defined did not help with "disk I/O performance". In fact, it created new problems. I suspect that the "SPOOLNEWS" option/rnews -U combination damages news files. I received a reply that supports my concerns: > From: gordon@sneaky.lonestar.org (Gordon Burditt) > If I run rnews -U (it doesn't seem to work quite right - mangles articles) > it sits there looping over the .rnews directory and runs an rnews (which > will run as 3 processes) for each batch file there. ...and several replies with "THE KEY" information: > From: celit!billd@UCSD.EDU (Bill Davidson) > compress is usually more of a problem than disk I/O... (IMPORTANT - Bnews 2.11 includes it's own sources for "compress". On my system, Bnews installs compress as /usr/lib/news/compress. I have compress installed for "general" use in /usr/local/bin. This confused me at first.) An improperly built compress, will hog all available memory causing swapping and scheduling problems. I rebuilt the Bnews compress with "appropriate values" for USERMEM and SACREDMEM. Voila the problem has been solved!!! I had also asked the following question: >I have set up Bnews to "SPOOLNEWS", and would like to (if possible) >send the batched files before they are unbatched. Is this a feasible >idea? And received the following GOOD advice: > From: celit!billd@UCSD.EDU (Bill Davidson) > I don't think it's a very good one... > ...your site will not update the "Path:" header as it should > before sending the news on. As long as you don't compress the outgoing > batches, I suspect that the load of an outgoing feed shouldn't be too > great unless your serial interface also put's large loads on the system > (mine does). You could also try to limit the amount batched with the > "-m" option to sendbatch. I personally only batch a maximum of 512Kb > per hour to any given site during work hours. I also renice my batch > script to +19. If I turn off compression the impact of batching is > pretty low though I usually have compression on. I agree with Bill. (By the way, it did not make sense for a "novice" (me) to change the way Bnews works; LOTS of people use Bnews without my problems.) I also took Bill's advice and rebuilt Bnews with the NICENESS define set to 19 (I figured it could'nt hurt.) (3) Several individuals suggested that I switch to CNews: > From: Icarus Sparry <I.Sparry@gdt.bath.ac.uk> > I would suggest that you change to CNews. This runs MUCH MUCH faster > than BNews, and you can probably install it without any problems and > without having to alter anything to feed your sister site. I will consider this in the future, clearly I need to learn more about CNews. Now that I corrected the compress problem, Bnews seems to be behaving well... Thanks to the many individuals that provided assistance. I'll try to return the favor sometime. -- Jay Gaeta (216)-473-2441 Picker International, Inc. 595 Miner Rd, Highland Heights, OH 44143 (UUCP: ...!uunet!picker!gaeta) (Internet: gaeta@picker.com)