[thelist] Unix Friday Freebie

[Daniel J. Cody]

Since the venerable sgd's friday freebies are always windows based, and
since i need to test a new setting on the list relay servers, i thought
i'd share with some of us that are on the other side of force :)
(although scotts tips are always good, no doubt :)

<tip type="unix quickies">

Are you 'su'ing to root, but stuff isn't working? Make sure you use the
command 'su - root' to load env variables for the user you're su'ing to.

Got problems with memory exceptions and other bad memory problems with
solaris 7(2.7) and below? Upgrade to Solaris 8. All of those ebay
crashes we heard about last spring are due to some memory bugs in
solaris 7. Version 8 fixes most of these, along with a number of other
issues.

If you're running a server that deals with large files, don't use a
standard linux filesystem! By default, the ext2 FS reads and writes in
1024 byte chunks. This is nice for small files, but will kill
performance(the end all be all :) when you're dealing with large files
on DB, email, proxy, and web servers. Instead, have your FS write in
4096 byte chunks with the command mke2fs -b 4096 /dev/sda1 (for
example). You'll see an incredible amount of performance in your disk
I/O subsystem, which is *the* most common place for bottlenecks on
servers.

If possible, recompile your linux kernel to *not* include loadable
modules. And compile out the ones that you dont use. This will also
increase performance.(Do you really need a USB module on your
webserver?)

On AIX, Lsdev -Cc <device>  will list the available items, what address
they are at, the bus slot, and what name the system gave them.

</tip>

.djc.