Performance slow down with increasing log files size?

Rails
1

Dear all,

I have been noticing this.

Whenever I delete my log files and restart lighttpd, my rail site
runs very fast.

However when my log files become large, my rail site becomes slower.

Then I repeat the process of deleting log files again, and my site is
fast again.

Is this a normal behavior? Is there something I can do to make
performance scale better?

Thank you,

Sharkie

2

On Mar 23, 2006, at 10:15 PM, Shark Fin S. wrote:

is fast again.
http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails

You should look into a log rotator. This way your logs get swapped

out for you in timed intervals or by filesize aqnd your site can run
fast because it doesn’t have to append text to the huge log files on
each request to your site.

-Ezra

3

So is it true that appending text to a larger file takes longer than
to a smaller file? The reason I am asking is, I am wondering whether
the slowness really comes from my large log files.

Thank you,

Sharkie

4

On Fri, 24 Mar 2006 16:43:23 +0700, Shark Fin S. wrote:

So is it true that appending text to a larger file takes longer than
to a smaller file? The reason I am asking is, I am wondering whether
the slowness really comes from my large log files.

That depends on what file system you’re using. In general, any
improvement
in a [sequential, random, keyed] [read, write, update, create, delete]
operation will result in a slowdown in one of the other operation types.
Different file systems optimize for different use cases.

And it’s not always linear. I remember a file system that would work
fine
up to a certain file length, and then hit a dramatic slowdown as it
reorganized its two-level tree into a three-level tree. HPFS used to
have
great difficulty with directories that contained more than a thousand or
so
files, to the point where sendmail became a write-only application,
because
it could never work through the queue.

I’m no expert on current file systems like ext3, xfs, or Reiser, but if
you
would prefer not to rotate logs, you should check into these, and see
which
is optimal for your use.

Jay L.