MySQL running at Warp Speed on Gentoo Linux

mrpete · Apprentice Joined: 01 Sep 2003 Posts: 184

Just installed Gentoo Linux along with MySQL 4.013 on a Celeron 1200mhz server with a SCSI disk. Admittedly a lot more testing to do but the following query:-

SELECT Name FROM Main GROUP BY Name;

on a table containing approx 1.1million records returned in only just 2.5s using Gentoo. This contrasts with 3.25s on a Suse Linux 8.2 setup and 3.65s on a FreeBSD setup using the same hardware. May not seem like a lot if you are doing infrequent queries but if you are running simulations where you're doing 1000s of them with just slightly varying WHERE clauses this is a huge timesaver. Well done Gentoo

madchaz · Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2003 4:14 pm Post subject:

this is the kind of situation where all that optimisation starts to show

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scriptkiddie · l33t Joined: 30 Mar 2003 Posts: 955

MY entire webserver now running runs atleast 7-8 times faster than when I used Red Hat and about 3-4 times faster than when I used Debian.

Although... the mysql speeds are incredible... the run 10-15 times faster than any distro I have ever used

mrpete · Apprentice Joined: 01 Sep 2003 Posts: 184

Entirely agree - if you have long running processor intensive programs - if you can shave off even 1s in one iteration it is a huge gain overall and saves me having to upgrade my hardware :lol:

scriptkiddie · l33t Joined: 30 Mar 2003 Posts: 955

I will admit though that MySQL doesn't run but 4-5 times faster than any distro when I have my P2 webserver up...

My last post was referring to the speeds on my P4 and AMD Athlon XP machines

mrpete · Apprentice Joined: 01 Sep 2003 Posts: 184

oubipaws - that's pretty impressive stuff. Are there any special optimisation settings that u used other than the defaults?

pytigger · Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2003 7:08 pm Post subject:

Actually for me it remains unclear, if you simple compared Gentoo on a Duron with RH on a P2 =)
Sorry, no offense, but if I get this a bit wrong, maybe others have similar misconceptions.
It would be nice if more people (those who have the ability/time/resources) did tests like that. I have head a lot of people complain that the special compilation part of portage is often not noticeable. (If you have 2% optimization, even under high load you still have just 2% off...).
I for my part noticed a bit of speed up from RH to gentoo. Now Linux even boots almost as fast as Windows XP (to be fair, my windows loads a lot of programs at boot time, what Linux currently doesn't), though I still can't connect to internet (weird problems that probably no one else ever had) and I still have other problems that surely make me regret the switch... Maybe I'm just too stupid for Gentoo

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And by the way - Gentoo needs an official WIKI!!

mrpete · Apprentice Joined: 01 Sep 2003 Posts: 184

Yep - Gentoo has definitely got its own way of doing things. One thing I've noticed though and is the 2nd main reason I've decided to use it (as well as being very quick) is that the forums are very active. If you've got a problem and post it on a gentoo forum - someone is likely to have a pretty decent answer fairly quickly. Almost as good as having commercial support

Interim · n00b Joined: 03 Sep 2003 Posts: 1

In each case, was MySQL compiled from source or added by packages (or default installation)? The most interesting comparisons are of course default distro MySQL vs custom compilation with optimization flags on same platforms, and then Gentoo comparison.

For example, on the FreeBSD system, did you use ports? Any modifications to your make.conf there?

Then you can isolate performance values derived from the "Gentoo" method vs just custom compilation of program in question.

Most solid admins do custom compilations of performance critical applications on Linux/Unix, in my experience in any regard.

Still, good info, thanks =)

Int.

mrpete · Apprentice Joined: 01 Sep 2003 Posts: 184

In the FreeBSD and Gentoo cases MySQL was compiled from the source. However, the default compilation options were used in each case. Eg to install on FreeBSD I went to the MySQL Server port and did a make install (I've seen some forum messages where the linuxthreads package has been said to improve performance so I installed this beforehand) and on Gentoo, I did an emerge mysql. For the Suse platform I just installed the binary package - so no compilation here. Once installed, the config files used for starting MySQL were the same. I'll be the first to admit there maybe some small loopholes in my set-ups but even so, the figures I've quoted above do look good for the Gentoo set-up.