What operating system is your server running?
 

Linux!

4:59pm up 395 days, 19:31, 2 users, load average: 3.20, 2.59, 1.40

Linux 2.4.17 #1 Tue Oct 8 13:33:14 EDT 2002 i686 unknown
#

FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE (kernel) #0: Tue Apr 29 01:30:38 PDT 2003

Lots of freebsd..

I've been using Linux for almost a decade now.. with some freebsd and solaris thrown in there.. In the end, I always go to Linux, because I just know it so well.. it's trained into my finger's reflex actions.. Freebsd is nice though, my customers who use freebsd usually require less of my time, but more "bleeding edge" applications can be a hassle..

What is it you like about FreeBSD?

To me freebsd is best as either a database server, a backend mailserver, or an nfs server.. I wouldn't use FreeBSD as a static content webserver though, the options are pretty limited compared to Linux with things like Tux, fnord, etc..

Debian baby!

Linux 2.4.20ac1 localhost.punkrockgeekboy.com #5 Mon Mar 17 09:32:55 EST 2003 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

4:12pm up 106 days, 1:02, 27 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

Geeks

FreeBSD can run anything linux can.

i prefer the stock security of a FreeBSD box, and admiteddly it's the "feel" of the operating system.

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html

making server OS decisions based on solid data is groovey...

:thumbsup :thumbsup

<img src="http://bill-gates.blewme.com/fuckbilly.jpg">

FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE :thumbsup

Not EVERYTHING .. Admittedly, some of the features I like about linux don't lend towards stability or traditional systems design.. But a lot of my customers are failed dot-coms, and small adult sites that need to do more with less.. Being able to setup Tux as a static content webserver is nice..

Like one of my newer clients had 10 servers and wanted to trim costs.. I rebuilt things in a way that he only needed 5 of the servers, and things were a LOT more redundant than before, with every server running all of his sites, a load balancer in front of them, a nfs server behind so everything could be easily kept up to sync..

The main thing Linux was nice for in that situation was it's ability to handle static load.. He pushes out about 5 million static page views a day with that configuration, thanks to the Tux webserver.. which admittedly is kind of a flawed idea, running a webserver in the kernel.. but it's been pretty stable so far (I've got a co uple customers who I setup tux on over a year ago, with 100% site uptime since)) .. Tux is REALLY fast..

Solaris has a tux clone.. I can't think of what it is right now, but it was buggy last time I tried it..


In the end, it really is a feel thing.. Linux ends up being nice because documentation and configurations more and more are geared towards it.. Try setting up courier imap + vmailmgr + squirrelmail + php on freebsd someday, you'll lose a fistful of hair!

oh man
I just stepped in some nerd shit......

Not so interesting since it's about 5 companies participating.. It'd be more interesting it if were like the uptime project, with thousands of different servers listing their uptime. There are actually several different ones...

Here's one :

http://www.uptimes.nu/index.php?area=statistics

This one seems more biased towards linux :

http://uptime.0rd.net/page.php?page=toplist


I wonder if there are any good studies.. Ideally ones that classify a system's main purpose (file server, mail server, db server, web server, usenet server, irc esrver, etc) and then have thousands of daily monitored boxes .. would be easy to do with xlm-rpc and rpc.statd.

oldy but a goody.

bash-2.03$ uptime
4:27pm up 266 day(s), 10:23, 3 users, load average: 0.11, 0.15, 0.16
bash-2.03$ uname -a
SunOS devcache2 5.8 Generic_108528-11 sun4u sparc SUNW,UltraSPARC-IIi-cEngine

honestly, i don't think there's too much of a leader in a speed war. i don't know as much about linux, but the configurability, customization and optimization that can be done with FreeBSD is pretty crazy. i think either system, finely tuned, could do the job equally well. i think it comes down to personal preference. i've never seen a FreeBSD box being "slow". a friend of mine used to run a web server off a crapped out p133 laptop, and that server could handle so many static webpages it was insane. the traffic numbers it could handle are downright crazy. in a lot of cases of web page serving, the bottleneck comes with apache. there are better alternatives out there if you're willing to put in the time and specialize your setup. :)

I agree with you on that. Apache sucks
for static content, but it really isn't built for static content.. That's what content accelerators/proxies are for..

Some of the better ones I've used are :

Tux http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/t...ual/intro.html
Fnord http://www.fefe.de/fnord/
Boa http://www.boa.org/

Fnord is nice, because it uses tcpserver .. I'm a big fan of tcpserver/ucspi based applications (qmail & djbdns all the way for me).. Boa is nice because it's a bit more extensible than the others.. but tux is still the mean monster when it comes to pushing out lots of static content (even better when you gzip the content).

http://www.spec.org/web99/results/res2003q2/

Anybody interested in doing some benchmarking and submitting results?

warez2k

*grin*

Has anybody ever actually paid for windows?

A server OS selection should be tailored to the application requirements, i.e. multithreading, # of threads needs, memory management, multi-processor support, etc, etc. For a basic static content web server, it really does not matter that much.

My personal favorite is Solaris 9 with a kernel HTTP caching. Get a SUPER cheap Sun Ultra 1 or 2 on Ebay for $60-$80 with lots of memory... fine tune the TCP stack, install static/stripped build of Apache without the extra modules, enable module NMAP to server static content from the memory and you are all set. The perfomance is almost identical that you would get from a $3,000 box.

My 2Cents,
--A

How is Solaris's kernel http caching? The last time I played with it was a few years ago, and it was really unstable (it was beta then) ..

Is the performance really that good? The memory architecture of those old suns' can't compete with a dual ddr box that I could build for $750 (the kind that I lease out for bigserverhosting.com) .. Combined with Tux & apache behind it for serving content, I'd think the linux box should be able to stomp all over the solaris box .

I should really play around with solaris more.. I've got a dual ultraII 300 box with a gig of memory , that I got for free.. bet it'd make a great virtual hosting server... Been trying to talk one of my customers into giving me their old e4500 with 10 procs and 8 gigs of memory, and a 10-disk jbod for a week's worth of consulting.. I've been thinking that'd make a GREAT virtual server hosting system..

Maybe I should set the dual ultra ii up and benchmark it against one of my boxes this weekend.. Any tuning tips for solaris so I can make a good comparison?

Amen! Instead of OS holy wars, we should just use the best solution available (as long as it's not windows if possible). My favorite is a tuned up & hacked apache 2.0 and a 2.5 kernel running reiserfs, and putting all the static content into a ramdisk.

I've been looking at some cards that allow you to put like pc2100 memory into them, that have a built in battery backup, that you can use as a solid state disk.. those might be really cool..

Not a bad option either, but I'm still worried that apache 2 isn't very stable.. it's a rather new product compared to apache 1.3 .. built in gzip compression is nice though.

RH 7.2

*shrug*

I like it. :thumbsup

*grin* .. rh 7.2 .. hope you've made
sure to keep up with redhat's errata rpms .. just had a customer who hadn't, and some script kiddy got his customer db, sold it to a spammer ;(

:thumbsup
I'm a geek. That kinda shit gives me wood. heh.

The hack, or keeping things up to date?