On Sun, Sep 03, 2006, Greg Wilson wrote:
> Adrian,
>  
> I'm using the defaults for everything in Squid (except cache memory) at this 
> stage so that's
>  
> cache_dir ufs /var/spool/squid 100 16 256
>  
> I've only just found out that Raid 5 probably isn't the best thing to run 
> Squid on as access isn't particularly fast.

RAID5 will be a bit slower but it won't be noticeable under your little load.

> I've checked the DNS settings and all looks good. I've done some DNS testing 
> from the Squid server and responses are very quick.

> One of the Squid tests I've run on the box is an ISP speed test that 
> downloads a single large file and reports download speed. This is one of the 
> tests that runs 2/3 slower than direct. In this case there is only one DNS 
> lookup and then only if the file isn't on the webserver that does the 
> testing. This indicates that DNS is not the problem.

Agreed. 

> I was suspecting I had a duplex mismatch between the Squid box and the 
> firewall. It's directly connected to a Netscreen and was auto-setting to 
> full-duplex although mii-tool was reporting it's partner as half-duplex. It's 
> a problem for me to physically get to the server as it's at our ISP's POP. I 
> didn't want to lose contact with it so I've set both to half-duplex 100 Mb. 
> I'd rather have full duplex but as the Internet link is only 1.5 Mb that 
> shouldn't be a bottleneck.

Cool.

> As the problem is severe I'm expecting something major rather than 
> fine-tuning but I can't see anything int he logs that indicates a problem. 
> Server load seems low but Squid is still slow.

Please check:

* Make sure that squid is compiled with the null fs
* change cache_dir to be

cache_dir null /

  That way you're taking the disk storage subsystem out as a possibility

* restart squid;
* Try the transfer test again
* if its still being slow then its not due to the disk configuration! :)

It could be other things, like:

* Socket send/receive buffers aren't big enough (check what it says during 
configure;
  they're normally set at 64k which is enough.)
* Could be other transmission errors (try netstat -in, netstat -p -s tcp; see 
whether
  there's high numbers of retransmissions and/or errors.)

Let me know if you're still stuck.




Adrian

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