[rt-users] RT2 Speed/performance problems.

[Dave Rolsky]

On Tue, 20 Aug 2002, Maren S. Leizaola wrote:

> 	Maybe I am picky our just a lazy admin, but I believe that decent
> system sould be maintainable, should be able install them in a snap,
> reconfigure them, see what it is doing. You should be able to rebuild in
> under one hour or less from nothing to live.

It sounds like you're lazy.  Despite what Larry Wall says, it isn't
_always_ a virtue.

Yes, it'd be super-cool if RT analyzed your mysql config and told you
"hey, your config is weak and without honor", but that'd be a hell of a
lot of work for Jesse with little payoff, since _most_ people who want to
run RT for a large set of tickets are going to take the time to do their
homework.

Alternately, I know Jesse offers commercial support.  I'm sure he'd be
happy to take your money in exchange for setting up RT for you in a
well-optimized way for your machine.

But to expect RT to magically configure MySQL, and possible Apache too, in
an optimized way, considering the ridiculously large variation in
hardware, OS, Perl versions, Mason versions, mod_perl versions, and so on
that RT supports (largely because its written in Perl and works with
mod_perl) is definitely a sign of serious crack abuse, as I believe David
Troy suggested earlier.

And of course, even with your whiny, rude email to this list, you've
already gotten lots of good solid suggestions on improving performance.
Imagine the positive response you would have gotten if you'd acted like
less of a prick!

> This was what I was referring to that RT2 has gone in the wrong direction.
> The installation is a nightmare if you compare it to just about any other
> Open source system I have had on my machines during the past 8 years...

Uh, yeah, whatever.  I have installed much Free Software, and while I
installed RT via the debian package (which isn't as good as it could be),
I can't imagine that the source install is worse than many things I've had
to deal with in the past.

> Look at what you have above, you have to tune, mysql, mason, the right
> version, make sure that mode perl does this, make sure that apache kills
> the process after etc....

All of which can be summarized in a very few lines.

1. Don't use the default mysql config.  Check out the examples that come
with mysql and modify one of those to suit.
2. Use Mason 1.05, 1.12, or 1.1201.
3. Don't set MaxRequestPerChild to 0, set it to some decent-sized number
(like 500 or 1000)
4. Use the most recent mod_perl that you can easily install (Debian's
current stable version is 1.26, and is probably fine.  Other GNU/Linux
distros may vary).

Of those, the only one that requires more than a few minutes work
(assuming you don't plan to compile a new mod_perl by hand) is #1, which
would take you about 20-40 minutes at best, assuming you have some idea of
the current load on the machine (can't give mysql _all_ of you free
memory).

> I don't doubt that you guys love it and without it you would struggle.
> Well maybe it is just me. I like systems software like postfix, Nuke, that
> do their job and let me get on with what I should be doing.

Good, go away.

This discussion can at least be in the archives for anyone else who's
struggling.  Maybe they'll take the time to read it and try a few things
out before whining about software provided to them for free (remember, if
you want professional support, it's available at very reasonable rates).


-dave

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