UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

Hello,

i have changed a slow server with Solaris 7 to a bigger one with
Solaris 8 (Sun Ultra 2). Now i have a real bad performance
problem (only CPU).

Solaris 7 ran with standard FTP and Samba 2.0.7.
The new machine is running ProFTP and Samba 2.0.9.
There are a lot of NFS Shares and about 70 Samba
connections at the same moment.

Does anybody know problems with any of these software
components?

Thanks,
Oli

The machine has 2 GB RAM and 2 x 168 Mhz CPU.
The one before was smaller and worked better.

Top shows 99% Kernel CPU state. Average 24h is about 80%!

You might want to get some stats on what is happening on your system.
I don't know if Solaris has these utilities, but you could run a number of cpusar, cpusar -P 1, cpusar -P 2, mpsar -b, mpsar -d.

The cpusar will provide stats averaging both cpu's.
The cpusar -P ? will provide stats on separate cpu's.
I've noticed on a report that I created recently that our CPU #2 was hardly being utilised !!

Might be the same case for youself? Always worth a look.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for answering!

The problem is, that no tool shows the real CPU
Usage. Top shows the top 20 processes. But together
they cost about 5 % CPU Usage. If I sum all
processes, I get about 10%. Who uses the
rest?

prstat and other tools show the same.

You might try increasing ncsize in /etc/system try 5000 as well as doubling that for ufs_ninode (10000).

It sounds like you have a larger problem though. Solaris out of the box is tuned for workstation use, and it sounds like you have a server here. I'd look at increasing maxpgio and slowscan. Your hardware is definitly capable of handling the loads youre subjecting it to....what you have is a kernel tuning problem.

Have you checked the process table? Perhaps you have many small processes caused by an endless loop like:

A user has /bin/sh as a login shell and wants start another after login and writes in his .profile the following line which can cause such as situation:
/bin/zsh --login

Check for similar things and small problems on your system