[ILUG] Squid's cache_mem variable

[Philip Reynolds]

Brian O'Donoghue's [Brian.ODonoghue at kbs.ie] 25 lines of wisdom included:
> I have been asked to increase the size of the proxies cache.
> 
> The proxy is running on a p120 w 80mb of ram and a 8gb hdd in pio mode.
> It is also a default gateway, but due to the stupidness of some of the m$
> machines on the network who refuse to address the Linux box 'even though its
> ip is specified as the default gw' we have to run a proxy service to force
> the end user's browsers to reference the DSL connection on the Linux box as
> opposed to the 'expensive' isdn connection on the NT machine.
> 
> My question is what is a reasonable value to set cache_mem to? I have read
> on some squid mailing list that 1/3 of the available memory would be a good
> idea. But 1/3 of 80mb 'real' and 30mb swap might tie up the box in reading
> from the hdd if 10-15 users were simultaneously making numberous requests
> against the proxy.
> 
> Basically 'others' would like to download lots of the same files onto
> numerous client machines so I have to build a reasonably sized cache as
> opposed to my instinct to build a minimal one.

I think what you might want is disk cache, which is cache_dir.

Some other options, just looking at the conf I have here is
maximum_object_size and minimum_object_size.

32MB is a decent cache_mem, if you have extra memory available, bump
it up. 8MB is a minimum, 16MB is probably preferable and seems more
in liking. However I think you might have got mixed up between
cache_dir and cache_mem. Please correct me if I'm wrong :)


-- 
  Philip Reynolds        
   RFC Networks          tel: 01 8832063
www.rfc-networks.ie      fax: 01 8832041