toasters March 1997

toasters@lists.teaparty.net

25 participants
31 discussions

NFS v2 works okay, but statvfs won't tell me about inodes
by sthaug＠nethelp.no 17 Mar '97

17 Mar '97

Today I switched our F330 from NFS v3 to v2, since it's being used as a News spool and can't really do anything useful with the extra NFS v3 info. I got a nasty surprise when I found out that the Solaris 2.5.1 statvfs system call no longer returned number of inodes. In fact the fields u_long f_files; /* total # of file nodes (inodes) */ u_long f_ffree; /* total # of free file nodes */ u_long f_favail; /* # of free nodes avail to non-superuser */ are all set to 4294967295 (ie. -1) on return from statvfs. When I was using NFS v3, these fields had sensible values on return from the call. I can of course telnet to the NetApp and check the number of inodes directly, but I'd like to do it from the Solaris box which feeds the NetApp with news articles. Any good suggestions? Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug(a)nethelp.no

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Re: head count
by sthaug＠nethelp.no 13 Mar '97

13 Mar '97

> how does one test for a shortage of NVRAM? Run 'sysstat 1'. If the writes are spaced out (there are intervals with no writes), you probably have enough NVRAM. If you have continuous writes, you probably need more NVRAM. Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug(a)nethelp.no

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head count
by Tom Yates 13 Mar '97

13 Mar '97

anyone here using a toaster to serve /var/spool/mail, including to a mail gateway machine (ie, not just for reading)? any comments thereon? particularly, what flavour of toaster, how configured, and roughly how many mail users. Tom Yates - Unix Chap - The Mathworks, Inc. - +1 (508) 647 7561 MAG#65061 DoD#0135 AMA#461546 1024/CFDFDE39 0C E7 46 60 BB 96 87 05 04 BD FB F8 BB 20 C1 8C by the way, hello and welcome to all toaster owners out there. also to the many people from netapp who've subscribed to this list, for which, many thanks. hopefully this will be an information conduit without being a high-volume pain-in-the-bum.

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Re: head count (fwd)
by Tom Yates 13 Mar '97

13 Mar '97

forwarded with permission ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 12 Mar 1997 12:38:36 -0600 From: christopher williams <cgw(a)yoyodyne.io.com> To: Tom Yates <madhatta(a)mathworks.com> Cc: christopher williams <cgw(a)io.com> Subject: Re: head count No, but I'd sure *like* to. I had plans to get an F220 to replace the Solstice ODS software-raid system we're using for mail now. We currently support 5700+ users (with a SS10 that has a 125mHz HyperSparc, and 3 pop/imap servers that mount the mail spool from the mailhub). Those plans got ixnayed (due to money concerns, feh!) and now we're looking at getting an ALR PPro 200mHz running Solaris x86 with one of ALR's recommended hardware raid cards. Definitely _definitely_ not my choice. *sigh* I didn't reply to the list 'cos this prolly wouldn't be very useful to them. I just thought I'd reply to give my support for the idea; I don't know how well it works, but I suspect that it will work *very* well!!! I'd go with an F220 at the minimum, unless you can afford the 330 already (they're trivial to upgrade, so buying an F220 is a cheaper alternative). Depending on how many users you're going to have, I'd also recommend getting 4mb NVRAM. -cgw- -- christopher williams 512.462.0999 fall seven times cgw(a)io.com sen sys eng fnord stand up eight In message <Pine.GSO.3.95.970226112407.19938G-100000@sproing>, you write: > anyone here using a toaster to serve /var/spool/mail, including to a mail > gateway machine (ie, not just for reading)? > > any comments thereon? particularly, what flavour of toaster, how > configured, and roughly how many mail users.

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Re: head count
by Andrew Hobson 12 Mar '97

12 Mar '97

On Wed, 12 Mar 1997 12:31:08 -0500 (EST), Tom Yates <madhatta(a)mathworks.com> said: > anyone here using a toaster to serve /var/spool/mail, including to a mail > gateway machine (ie, not just for reading)? We're using a scheme similar to the qmail maildir format to store the mail (each message in a different file in the user's directory) so that we don't have to worry about file locking via NFS. All access is via POP. > any comments thereon? particularly, what flavour of toaster, how > configured, and roughly how many mail users. We are using a F540 with 256MB of cache and about 36GB of disk. We have two 500 Mhz Alphas and one PPro 200 as MX machines doing about 700,000 messages a day to over 100,000 mail users. Two 500 Mhz Alphas run pop daemons. Works like a dream. Drew -- "Joe, release me from your Kung-Fu grip." -- Stacy Lavelle

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Video
by Paul Ryan 06 Mar '97

06 Mar '97

Does anybody have experience using the NetApp box to server Video thanks

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Re: Netapp for Usenet news
by Roger J. Anderson 06 Mar '97

06 Mar '97

>I'd be interested to hear what people do with the snapshots on a NetApp >which is used as News spool. My feeling is that it's mostly wasted - >we're not concerned with a user accidentally deleting files here. > >Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug(a)nethelp.no > Just set snap reserve to 0 and disable snapshots. If snapshots were previously on you may have to do some cleanup w/ snap delete SNAPSHOT_NAME. Roger J. Anderson Consulting Systems Engineer Network Appliance, Inc. 5001 Spring Valley Road Suite 400E Dallas, TX 75244 (W)972-383-1233 (FX)972-419-6380 (Pager)1-800-SKYPAGE Pin#249-4408 Customer Service 1-800-220-4622 rogera(a)netapp.com support(a)netapp.com http://www.netapp.com

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Re: Netapp for Usenet news
by sthaug＠nethelp.no 06 Mar '97

06 Mar '97

> > I saw the web pages on netapps home pages about using a netapp for > > news. Any more recent experiences? What kind of configuration are you > > using? > > Two F-540s (one for alt.*, one for everything else including overview, > active file, and history) with presently five DEC Alphastation 500/333s > with 512MB (one "writer" running INN, four reader machines that mount > the spool and invoke nnrpd out of inetd.) We peak at about 2000 > readers with room for more. I'd be interested to hear what people do with the snapshots on a NetApp which is used as News spool. My feeling is that it's mostly wasted - we're not concerned with a user accidentally deleting files here. Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug(a)nethelp.no

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Netapp for Usenet news
by Dror Matalon 05 Mar '97

05 Mar '97

Hi folks, I saw the web pages on netapps home pages about using a netapp for news. Any more recent experiences? What kind of configuration are you using? Thanks, Dror Dror Matalon Voice: 510 649-6110 Direct Network Access Fax: 510 649-7130 2039 Shattuck Avenue Modem: 510 649-6116 Berkeley, CA 94704 Email: dror(a)dnai.com

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Re: Netapp for Usenet news
by sthaug＠nethelp.no 05 Mar '97

05 Mar '97

> How many people do you have reading at the same time? Also do you use > the standard Seagate 4 gig disks? Any reason that you decided to > go for a 330 rather than a 220? Almost no readers so far (I've counted 50). We expect this configuration to handle several hundred readers. Standard Seagate (Hawk) disks. F330 mostly because of better expandability than the F220. Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug(a)nethelp.no

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toasters March 1997