Re: [squid-users] reiserfs, 2,4 kernel, and squid

Jesus M. Salvo Jr. wrote:

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> Where I work, there is an opportunity to use Linux as a server where all are
> nt/w2k servers, mostly due to licensing issues. The administrator, an msce,
> has approached me for some help in getting squid up and running to replace ms
> isa server.
>
> We have been running squid-2.3STABLE on a redhat 7.1 distro and an ext2
> filesystem on a very old hardware, pentium mmx and even an ISA ne2000 card,
> as a proof-of-concept. The permanent setup will use a much better hardware,
> possibly a pentium II, PCI network card, and 128Mb of memory or more.
>
> To cut the story short, I would like to maximise the performance of the box,
> using a 2.4 kernel and using reiserfs instead of ext2, and using
> squid-2.4STABLE to make use of diskd.
>
> The question now is:
>
> Which 2.4 kernel is best reiserfs + squid?
>
> 2.4.0 to 2.4.3 seems to be out of the question, based on this:
>
> * http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=reiserfs+2.4.3+squid
> * http://www.namesys.com/download.html ( under DANGER )
>
> It seems that the best option is either:
>
> * 2.4.5 + reisefs umount patch
> * 2.4.7
> * 2.4.4
> * 2.4.10-pre4
>
> Can anyone out there using squid-2.4STABLE give feedback on what 2.4 kernel (
> plus any patches ) are you using ...and for how long??

I'll say it again (check the list archives for several posts with more
detail on the subject. 2.2 is slightly faster (and much more stable in
my experience) for Squid on single CPU machines.

If you /insist/ on using 2.4, I've been having pretty good luck with
2.4.5+ac5(includes the umount fix)+tons of other patches.
2.4.8+ac12+tons of other patches is great on IDE boxen and ReiserFS is
fine, but it has a bug on SCSI machines leading to hideously destructive
crashes (filesystem corruption is rampant on ext2 filesystems during
these crashes).

 
> Worst case, I can go back to a 2.2 kernel ... but we wont have the zero-copy
> feature of 2.4.

Squid does not make use of zero-copy features of kernel 2.4.

I recommend using 2.2.18 or 2.2.19 if you have no plans to use anything
but Squid on the machine. 2.4 is cool, but it is quite hard to create a
stable version of it, and it's hardly worth the effort, given that 2.2
is faster for Squid.

As Chris has just said, 2.4.10 is probably a 'winner' for the 2.4 kernel
and ReiserFS. I'm looking forward to it, and it appears from my vantage
that all of the people who need to be coordinating things /are/ actually
doing so now. In 2.4.0-2.4.9 there was always some piece or multiple
pieces of the code that were enough out of sync with other pieces that
patches were needed to even achieve some amount of stability. In other
words, no kernel from 2.4.0-2.4.9 could be sucessfully used with the
combination of components that I needed to work together without heavy
patching.
                                   --
                      Joe Cooper <joe@swelltech.com>
                  Affordable Web Caching Proxy Appliances
                         http://www.swelltech.com
Received on Sat Sep 22 2001 - 01:25:53 MDT