Moving on
Last time I said I’d benchmark FreeBSD and compare its results to the ones I got on my previous post.
I installed FreeBSD 8.0, used ports to install the needed packages and started doing the same benchmarks. At first, I had problems with ab because of a known bug. The solution given by the author didn’t work. I tried many versions of ab, patched or not, and the error kept showing up.
After failing for a few days, I decided to give httperf a go. I installed it on both systems - Linux Gentoo and FreeBSD 8.0. I had problems with the open files limit on BSD and promptly changed my sysctl configuration. Now I had problems with refused and reconnected connections. I changed my sysctl configuration again, but it was a no go. I changed apache’s configuration but then again, didn’t work. I investigated the issue for a while and everyone pointed to the same things I already tried. I kept trying and retrying solutions and nothing seemed to work.
Tonight a friend reminded me that my primary focus is not the distribution I’m using nor the operating system. Some people say BSD is faster, others say it’s Linux. In fact, they perform very similar and their differences won’t matter at all to my final purpose. I’ll have to deal with a bunch of other serious bottlenecks and this ain’t one of them. This is a Rails-oriented blog and let’s keep it that way.
So, I guess I’ll go with Linux from now on. I’m more familiar with it and, after all, it’s the most common choice out there. Moving on…
