[ILUG] Re: SLES9 performance (running Oracle 9i)

[Breno Gomes]

>> You also don't mention what kind of applications you are running and
>> what file system you are using. 
> reiserfs....
> Oracle 9

I am supporting a departmental server running 10g. It was upgraded from 
9.2.0.6 64-bit on SuSE SLES 9 x86_64. The box is primarily designed for 
desktop use, but a bit of work made it a fast and reliable DB and PHP 
server. There are several possibilities you can search.

DB, OS and CPU must be 32 or 64 bit.

1. Check if you have the recommended package versions
glibc-devel-2.3.3-98.47 (required by gcc-3.3.3-43.34)
libstdc++-devel-3.3.3-43.34 (required by gcc-c++-3.3.3-43.34)
compat-2004.7.1-1.2
compat-32bit-9-200407011229
gcc-3.3.3-43.34
gcc-c++-3.3.3-43.34
glibc-2.3.3-98.47
glibc-32bit-9-200506071326
glibc-devel-32bit-9-200506062332
make-3.80-184.1
openmotif-libs-2.2.2-519.4
orarun-1.8-31
irqbalance-0.09-37.1
kernel-smp-2.6.5-7.244
libaio-0.3.102-1.2
libaio-devel-0.3.102-1.2
libaio-32bit-9-200502241149
libaio-devel-32bit-9-200502241149
XFree86-libs-4.3.99.902-43.48
XFree86-libs-32bit-9-200506062332

2. Settings
LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.19

3. Kernel parameters in /etc/sysctl.conf
SEMMNI  128
SEMMNS  32000
SEMOPM  100
SEMMSL  250
SHMMNI  4096
SHMALL  2097152
SHMMAX  Set to half the size of physical RAM. max is 4294967295

Use "sysctl -p" to make changes effective

4. Check or add to /etc/security/limits.conf
*               soft     nproc     2047
*               hard     nproc     16384
*               soft     nofile    1024
*               hard     nofile    65536

5. Make sure you have set /etc/pam.d/xdm and /etc/pam.d/su
session     required     /lib64/security/pam_limits.so

6. Bash profile
if [ $USER = "oracle" ]; then
     if [ $SHELL = "/bin/ksh" ]; then
         ulimit -p 16384
         ulimit -n 65535
     else
         ulimit -u 16384 -n 65536
     fi
fi


It is also a good idea to have a DB node and services' node.
Check JVM and Java processes - they can start several processes and use 
significant amount of CPU.

orarun.rpm can be downloaded from
http://www.novell.com/products/server/oracle/software.html

I hope this helps to spot the bottlenecks.

Breno