Subject: Re: Q:hp360 as a fileserver?
To: Andreas Brusinsky <brusinsk@ibdr.inf.tu-dresden.de>
From: Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>
List: netbsd-help
Date: 05/08/1997 10:41:17
On Thu, 8 May 1997 16:54:31 +0200 (MET DST) 
 Andreas Brusinsky <brusinsk@ibdr.inf.tu-dresden.de> wrote:

 > What would be the mainly best kernel-setup for a hp360
 > (68030 + FPU),8 MB RAM, a fast HPIB interface and a 300 MB
 > HPIB disk to use it just as a fileserver .

Well, for starters, you'll want to build a trim kernel.  Remove all
SPU options other than HP360, for starters (this speeds up several
conditionals in locore.s).  Also, remove all device drivers for devices
that aren't in the tree.  If you don't plan on using any of the compatibility
options, remove them, as well.  This gives the kernel a smaller footprint.

...you'll probably also want to remove DDB :-)

For NFS serving, I typically increase NMBCLUSTERS to 1024 (or 2048 if
it's going to be _REALLY_ busy, but I don't think that will be the
case on an HP 360 :-).

 > (releated: Does it make a difference if I connect the HPIB disk 
 >  to a HP380 with just a normal HPIB interface compared to the fast 
 >  interface of the HP360? Can I use the interface card of a hp360 in 
 >  a HP380?)

...the "fast" HP-IB interface is _much_ faster than the standard
HP-IB interface.  You can install the fast HP-IB in the 380, yes.
However, you're going to bottleneck on the disk, so there's really
no need to do so.

BTW, I know of an HP 340 (which is slower than a 360) with HP-IB disks
that is being used as a news server, and it seems to do quite well :-)

 > I assume I could increase some buffers that would otherwise be used
 > for user apps or ohter stuff.

...hm, yes, you could increase the number of buffer pages.  The hp300
port uses a flat 10% of physical RAM for buffers (because hp300s tend
to be long on memory and short on disk speed :-)  For 8M of RAM, you
have, 2048 4K pages (the kernel actually gets a few less than this,
but this is close enough :-)  This means that you get a bufpages
value of approx 204.  The option you use to adjust this is:

options 	BUFPAGES=xxx

..where xxx is the number you want to use for bufpages.

Jason R. Thorpe                                       thorpej@nas.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center                               Home: 408.866.1912
NAS: M/S 258-6                                          Work: 415.604.0935
Moffett Field, CA 94035                                Pager: 415.428.6939