Subject: [netatalk-admins] need for speed

From: "Paul Friedrich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 16:40:37 +0200

Hi!

I just installed a SuSE Linux on a Compaqu Proliant 800 with netatalk 1.4b2
in an office with 30 clients. The speed of opening files seems to be
decreased as compered to a AppleSahre IP6.1 Server running on a G3. Since I
don´t have that much experiance I was wondering if this is normal.

The two Servers have comperable hardware (10/100 Network, Softraid Level 5,
G3/300 MHz PII/450MHz...)

Now I can´t believe that Linux runs slower than ASIP.

Help please

    thanx alot

        Paul

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From: Alex Satrapa <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 10:18:17 +1000

>don´t have that much experiance I was wondering if this is normal.

I would expect the Linux machine to be slower than the Macintosh, mainly
because there is extra processing involved for the Linux box to convert
from Macintosh HFS semantics to Linux ext2 semantics. On top of that you
have the mapping from ".txt" to "TEXT/R*ch" for example.

In short, the Linux box has a lot more work to do in order to support
AppleShare clients.

Alex
Alex Satrapa                           Phone: +61 2 6257 7111
Senior Internet Engineer               Fax:   +61 2 6257 7311
tSA Consulting Group Pty Limited
1 Hall Street Lyneham ACT 2602         http://www.topic.com.au

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From: Dan Horth <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 16:19:39 +1000

Are you sure that you're connecting to the linux box over appleshare / ip?
check in the /var/log/messages file and see what happens when you connect
from a mac - you should see something along the lines of:

Jul  1 15:48:11 magma afpd[8095]: ASIP session:548(2) ....

if you are getting tcp/ip connections

we're getting speeds of up to 10Mb/Sec off of our 350Mhz Pentium II setup.

also I'd check that your raid is not being the bottleneck - have you tried
benchmarking it?

cheers, dan.

>Now I can´t believe that Linux runs slower than ASIP.

-----
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From: Hannu Krosing <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Jul 1999 13:28:50 +0300

> I just installed a SuSE Linux on a Compaqu Proliant 800 with netatalk 1.4b2

I'm not sure that SuSE comes with TCP/IP (asun) version of netatalk.

To get any decent speed you should be using the ASIP version.

You can try for example

ftp://contrib.redhat.com/libc6/i386/netatalk-1.4b2+asun2.1.0-5.i386.rpm

or get it from the original location

-------------------
Hannu

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 02 Jul 1999 00:51:46 -0700 (MST)

> In short, the Linux box has a lot more work to do in order to support

Okay. I have gathered a whole bunch of results on different boxes, with a
single, simple, test. The definitive answer to this question is: Your
milage may vary.

At:
http://bop.hollis.com/asipstats.html

There's a variety of results for different netatalk, AppleShare 6.x,
Helios, Xinet, NT servers. Just focusing on the G3 vs. X86, issue, there's
some fairly obvious differences in what's usually "stock" on Intel linux
hardware...I don't know what the proliant 600 is like, but:

1. G3 CPU's tend to be much faster, Mhz for Mhz, than X86.

2. It the Linux server running services Appleshare IP isn't? NFS? Gnome? X
windows? Most linux installs are big, messy, and filled with unused
software sucking up CPU and RAM. In contrast, ASIP runs almost no software
on the server. No NFS. No telnet. No shells. No NAT. No sendmail
filtering. No routing. No cron. Basically, if you stripped Linux down,
it'd be _very_ different.

3. Linux _can_ smoke a G3, with Gigabit ethernet. (see above chart)

4. Disk is not disk, RAM is not RAM. Intel hardware is known for cutting
corners, Compaq is no exception.

5. A tuned server is always faster than an untuned one....if the G3 has
been tweaked, it will be faster than Linux is stock. And apple pre-tunes
all server hardware and software.

6. Servers are bound to networks. A network designed for one server, at
full duplexing, can be different speed-wise for another server, with
a different NIC.

7. Again, referencing the above stats, a "G3" can be faster or slower,
depending on the LAN, the install, etc. Each site is different.

If anybody would like to add data to the pool, please do! Adrian has
requested that kernel versions of Linux be added as well, so if you send
me any data...

-Ronabop

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