Hello, FreeBSD developers and users. I have been running FreeBSD 8 in Oracle Virtual Box for quite a few weeks now and have decided that I like your operating system of choice. FreeBSD is fast, clean, efficient, and gets the job done—just what I need for my rig!
So I'm ready to migrate to real hardware, and I'd like to take advantage of compiling my own kernel with optimizations.
FreeBSD seems to have many kernel compile options, and I get the idea that the right mix of compile flags can make all the difference, and too many can be worse than none at all.
I had better talk about my system, though, so we know just what optimizations might be important.
We're working with an IBM PC 365, which originally came with a single 180 MHz Pentium Pro with 256 KiB L2 cache and 32 MiB RAM. Were that the current system, I would install stock FreeBSD and be done with it.
Since I discovered FreeBSD, though, I thought I'd splurge my operating system savings on hardware and did some pretty heavy-duty hardware upgrades to this baby (hence the need for kernel optimizations).
Currently she houses two overclocked 233 MHz Pentium Pros with 1 MiB L2 cache each and 512 (128x4) MiB RAM. (I know, I know, this might seem like overkill, but they were cheap and represent the best clock-to-performance ratio Intel had ever released until Core2 came along.)
In addition to that—as if that weren't enough—I also installed a 500 GiB hard disk optimized for 24/7 high-end media availability. Even though I'm not doing any video serving, and the controller can only see 128 GiB of it, I figure that if it's fast enough for multimedia then it's fast enough for me.
The RAM chips were $70/ea and the hard drive was $130. I bought the processors almost ten years ago, so I can't remember their exact cost, but it was something like $50 each, so call it a hundred.
All told that's just $500, money I think was well-spent.
So now back to the OS. What do I need to do to get it to run as fast as possible? Rest assured, I know how to use Google, so I have come across some literature about the topic, but therein lies the problem.
I keep coming across crap like optimization differences between FreeBSD kernel versions as well as optimizing for specific apps. Advice from one version of FreeBSD using some version or another of an app can be wildly different, and I have to say that this isn't very helpful.
But that's why I'm asking the true, died-in-the-wool, hardcore FreeBSD users who actually need to get something done with their systems everyday. I need to make this machine as efficient as possible and I know you know how to do it.
So tell me, FreeBSD-ers, how do I optimize my FreeBSD kernel and make this baby scream? Let's get'er done!
So I'm ready to migrate to real hardware, and I'd like to take advantage of compiling my own kernel with optimizations.
FreeBSD seems to have many kernel compile options, and I get the idea that the right mix of compile flags can make all the difference, and too many can be worse than none at all.
I had better talk about my system, though, so we know just what optimizations might be important.
We're working with an IBM PC 365, which originally came with a single 180 MHz Pentium Pro with 256 KiB L2 cache and 32 MiB RAM. Were that the current system, I would install stock FreeBSD and be done with it.
Since I discovered FreeBSD, though, I thought I'd splurge my operating system savings on hardware and did some pretty heavy-duty hardware upgrades to this baby (hence the need for kernel optimizations).
Currently she houses two overclocked 233 MHz Pentium Pros with 1 MiB L2 cache each and 512 (128x4) MiB RAM. (I know, I know, this might seem like overkill, but they were cheap and represent the best clock-to-performance ratio Intel had ever released until Core2 came along.)
In addition to that—as if that weren't enough—I also installed a 500 GiB hard disk optimized for 24/7 high-end media availability. Even though I'm not doing any video serving, and the controller can only see 128 GiB of it, I figure that if it's fast enough for multimedia then it's fast enough for me.
The RAM chips were $70/ea and the hard drive was $130. I bought the processors almost ten years ago, so I can't remember their exact cost, but it was something like $50 each, so call it a hundred.
All told that's just $500, money I think was well-spent.
So now back to the OS. What do I need to do to get it to run as fast as possible? Rest assured, I know how to use Google, so I have come across some literature about the topic, but therein lies the problem.
I keep coming across crap like optimization differences between FreeBSD kernel versions as well as optimizing for specific apps. Advice from one version of FreeBSD using some version or another of an app can be wildly different, and I have to say that this isn't very helpful.
But that's why I'm asking the true, died-in-the-wool, hardcore FreeBSD users who actually need to get something done with their systems everyday. I need to make this machine as efficient as possible and I know you know how to do it.
So tell me, FreeBSD-ers, how do I optimize my FreeBSD kernel and make this baby scream? Let's get'er done!
Including this one. 
Intel is really doing themselves a disservice by keeping their "product naming manager" employed.