Improve OpenSolaris Performance

So, you downloaded the latest version of OpenSolaris and it is installed and running. Well there are a few (I will add more as they become aware to me) things you can remove to improve performance and slightly clean up your system.

Following can improve performace:
Remove the Update Manager GUI, since at this time it does nothing in OpenSolaris (removes the update manager process).

# pkgrm SUNWupdatemgrr SUNWupdatemgru

Remove the Basic Registration Application (improve the startup of JDS/GNOME).

# svcadm disable svc:/system/basicreg:default
# pkgrm SUNWbrgr SUNWbrg

Following cleans the system up:
Remove PPP.

# pkgrm SUNWpppdt SUNWpppdu SUNWpppd SUNWpppdr SUNWpppg

Remove the UUCP Utilities.

# svcadm disable svc:/network/uucp:default
# pkgrm SUNWbnur SUNWbnuu

A complete Webserver in one download

So, you have your new machine and you need to get the Website up and running today, so what do you do:

1. Solaris comes with the Apache server, but if you want php, then you have to download it.
2. You obtain the software source from all the sites and start compiling..Get a life.
   
3. You down load the packages from http://www.sunfreeware.com, but which ones and have you got all those extra Perl modules.
4. Why can't I download one package and GO!

Well you can there is a great site called Cool Stack off the http://www.opensparc.net which have a few software packages which have been compiled and optimised for the Sun Hardware (SPARC /T1 or AMD).

• CSKamp. This package includes Apache2, MySQL5 and PHP5 built to work together.
• CSKmysql. This package includes a 64bit version of MySQL5 and is built with innodb.
• CSKperl. This package includes Perl 5. Note that Solaris 10 ships with the same version of Perl. However, in addition to being better optimized, CSKperl includes several perl extensions.
• CSKtds, CSKncurses, CSKphplibs. These packages are optional libraries required if you plan to use the corresponding PHP extensions.
• CSKmemcached. This package includes memcached, a distributed object cache system.
• CSKruby. This package includes ruby, rubygems and rails.
• CSKsquid. This package includes Squid Web Proxy Cache.

So, all you need is download CSKamp (OK! I lied 3 downloads in my case) CSKperl and "CSKtds, CSKncurses,CSKphplibs (combined as one download)"

And, yes you install the packages and you are ready to go and to prove it I obtained MediaWiki and it installed and ran with out any other modules, not bad and saved me a lifetime.


NOTEs:
- check out the FAQ since it shows you had to start packages up as services
- disable APC or upgrade to later version. (again see FAQ)
- the coolstack has now got an OpenSolaris Project

Benchmarking Sun X4100 using SiSoftware Sandra

Just had delivery of a new Sun Fire X4100 M2 with (2x AMD Opteron Model 2216, 4x1GB PC2-5300 DDR2-667 memory) and I thought I would test its performance compared to other machines. I decided that the best way is to install windows 2003 x86 on it and then use SiSoftware Sandra Lite XI SP2 (version 1135). The following diagrams are the results when Sandra was run from a remote PC session and windows fully patched (red show winner)

(a) Sun Fire X4100 M2
2x AMD Opteron Model 2216 @2.4Ghz,
4x1GB PC2-5300 DDR2-667 RAM

(b) Viglen
Intel Core 2 CPU 6600 @ 2.4GHz
2GB of RAM

(c) Xen/OpenSolaris
Using the Viglen above I installed OpenSolaris B78 with windows installed via Sun Xvm/Xen.

Processor Arithmetric	Dhrystone ALU (higher is better)	Whetstone iSSE3 (higher is better
x4100	35291 MIPS	26161 MFLOPS
Viglen	21734 MIPS	15158 MFLOPS
Xen	10377 MIPS	7260 MFLOPS

Multi-Core Efficiency	Inter-Core Bandwidth (higher is better)	Inter-Core Latency (lower is better)
X4100	3890 MB/s	116 ns
Viglen	7060 MB/s	74 ns
Xen	N/A	N/A

Physical Disks	Drive Index (higher is better)	Random Access Time (lower is better)
X4100	58 MB/s	7 ms
Viglen	67 MB/s	14 ms
Xen	117 MB/s	1 ms

Memory Bandwidth	RAM Bandwidth Int Buffered iSSE2 (higher is better)	RAM Bandwidth Float Buffered iSSE2 (higher is better)
X4100	10982 MB/s	10953 MB/s
Viglen	5011 MB/s	5041 MB/s
Xen	4762 MB/s	4784 MB/s

Memory Latency	Random Memory Latency (lower is better)	Speed Factor (lower is better)
X4100	91 ns	72.2
Viglen	99 ns	74.2
Xen	116 ns	80

Cache and Memory	Combined Index (higher is better)	Speed factor (lower is better)
X4100	25235 MB/s	15.7
Viglen	20174 MB/s	33.3
Xen	12570 MB/s	17.1

Building & Installing MediaWiki

I was asked the other day to install a Wiki and I thought I would publish the steps required to get the Wiki up and running. You most probably aware the wiki side is the easy part, since it requires a lot of other software installed on your system.

I will do this on a Solaris 10 SPARC system and since I believe in not installing to much non standard O/S software I will try to keep it down to the bare bones, but there is still a lot to do:

What I will require:

1. Perl
• I will install the non Sun version, since I want this more up to date, plus I have published an install guide before, but I will update this for latest release.
2. MySQL
• I have a choice of databases including Postgres and both come with Solaris 10, but again I will install my own version. I have more expertise with MySQL than Postgres, but that is my choice.
  
3. PHP
• This is the key for the wiki.
  
4. Apache Server
• I will use latest version 2.2 , even thought I have always used Version 1.3 before.
5. MediaWiki
• I have a little expertise of it and after some studying I believe it is the easies to setup (We will see!).

On route I am sure I will end up install other software, but this is the main tools to get my system up and running.