Very Computer

I have been running FreeBSD for a couple years now, but have not had any
experience with multiple processors.  I will soon be setting up some *
servers on a box with 4 processors, and would like to "assign" each of the 3
servers a specific processor, while leaving the fourth entirely to system
processes and the like.
Can someone please refer me to some documentation that can help me to
achieve this goal?

--Abzcess

The idea here is to try to use threaded server processes, and trust (and
tune) the OS to keep the processors busy with them.  This may involve
you just sitting there watching it, and renicing the game server process(
es), to changing up and pruning your set of daemons etc.

in comp.unix.admin i read:

Quote:>I will soon be setting up some * servers on a box with 4 processors,
>and would like to "assign" each of the 3 servers a specific processor,
>while leaving the fourth entirely to system processes and the like.  Can
>someone please refer me to some documentation that can help me to achieve
>this goal?

the word you are looking for is `affinity'.  you can fixate a process onto
a single processor by setting the affinity.  sometimes that makes sense,
sometimes it doesn't.

--
bringing you boring signatures for 17 years

FYI-

CPU affinity makes a lot of sense when you take into account CPU cache.
Since each CPU has it's own internal cache, it's better to have CPU
intensive processes "stick" to one CPU.

Let's take setiathome for example... If I had 4 processors, I'd run 4
instances of seti and bind each game to a specific CPU.  This will permit
each CPU's cache to be the most effective.  You can't do much about the
other OS process requirements, just let the OS decide which process to
context switch.  I feel it would be a waste of the 4th CPU to not have it
also run seti.

Also... How would you set affinity with FreeBSD?  With Solaris it's pbind...
no clue about BSD.

Anyone?

Quote:> in comp.unix.admin i read:

> >I will soon be setting up some * servers on a box with 4 processors,
> >and would like to "assign" each of the 3 servers a specific processor,
> >while leaving the fourth entirely to system processes and the like.  Can
> >someone please refer me to some documentation that can help me to achieve
> >this goal?

> the word you are looking for is `affinity'.  you can fixate a process onto
> a single processor by setting the affinity.  sometimes that makes sense,
> sometimes it doesn't.

> --
> bringing you boring signatures for 17 years

in comp.unix.admin i read:

Quote:>CPU affinity makes a lot of sense when you take into account CPU cache.
>Since each CPU has it's own internal cache, it's better to have CPU
>intensive processes "stick" to one CPU.

can be.  but as always `it depends'.  the op wants to run game servers,
each to a cpu.  okay that sounds fine, but what if a cpu dies, should the
associated game die too?  if it's been bound to a single cpu that's what
will happen.  most likely a quad cpu system running four game servers will
likely have one server per processor purely due to the normal scheduling.
(if the hardware is *then the whole system will probably die anyway so
perhaps it's not a bad thing to force the affinities.)

Quote:>Also... How would you set affinity with FreeBSD?  With Solaris it's pbind...
>no clue about BSD.

nothing yet.

--
bringing you boring signatures for 17 years