[squid-users] file system type/params optimal for squid?

Was about to move my squid directory off onto it's own partition and was
wondering
what filesystem to use, in the sense of is there a linux (x86)
filesystem that
performs best for squid? Any special params for block size? It's just
a single
SCSI disk.

I googled and didn't find any benchmarks and browsed over squid-cache.org.

I'd think there might be optimal allocation-chunk sizes. Perhaps some
average web-response
length? Is there such a thing for general web browsing?

I'm guessing but a journaling fs might slow it down?

I recently ran a Sandra filesystem benchmark on FAT32/NTFS and found
NTFS was around
3-4x slower than FAT32. Suprised me since NTFS is supposed to be MS's
state-of-the-fart
file system, but I wondered if the journaling was slowing it.

maybe no one has done such benchmarks?

I wonder...if one stuck a mySQL database on the back end of squid for a
FS driver and
ran mySQL using one big 'file' that was namd /dev/sdAx...or weirder
/dev/raw/sdAx (or whatever
the syntax would be).

Is it possible it would slow things down if you gave squid too large a
partition, i.e. is it
better to have 5% usage of a 10G partition or 50% usage of a 1G
partition? I.e. if some file
system block allocator randomly allocated blocks, the seeks might be
more of a factor on the
1st example? The OS spends less time looking for free space in 1st
case, but it might have
to cache larger data structures associated with the 1st.

I don't have an intuitive feel for the trade offs -- I mean if your disk
seek is speed of a CD, say,
then 1st case might be worse, but if seek difference is negligible, or
randomly unpredictable, then
OS speed might be more important (though any speed diffs could be hidden
in random noise of
random disk seek movement generated on other partitions.

Maybe it's all so dwarfed by network latency, the local fs doesn't
matter (really just 1-2 users
of cache)....-- in fact that's probably the case...might as well use a
rewritable CD-ROM for
all the speed we have here (about 1/100th internal 100Bt ethernet)...

Guess it's just random musing and procrastination tactics to keep me
from having to do chores...:-)

-linda
Received on Sat Oct 25 2003 - 15:08:30 MDT