[plug] Another (Possibly) Redhat specific squid tip

[John Summerfield]

On Sat, 21 Nov 1998, David Buddrige wrote:

> <snip my stuff>
> 
> John Summerfield wrote:
> >Bollocks.
> >fwiw Here are two lines from my /etc/passwd
> >nobody:*:99:99:Nobody:/:
> >squid:!:15:51:Squid - WWW proxy cache:/var/cache:/bin/bash
> >
> >My squid runs as "squid."
> >
> >Your observation is equivalent to 
> >   "The maximum temp yesterday was 30c."
> >   "It rained last evening."
> >and the conclusion
> >   "Next time the maximum temp  is 30c, it will rain in the evening."
> >
> >Flawed logic like this leads to superstition.
> >
> >Cheers
> >John Summerfield
> >http://os2.ami.com.au/os2/ for OS/2 support.
> >Configuration, networking, combined IBM ftpsites index.
> 
> Hey, chill out man... keep your shirt on... 8-)  I read the bit about 

It was too hot yesterday even to put it on.

When someone observes to facts and assumes a connexion between the two,
then howls of derision are entirely reasonable.

The best you could reasonably imagine is that their MAY be a connexion: you
can't say there IS a connexion.

otoh if you observed that disk I/O performs badly and that the command
"dmesg" reports lots of timeouts on ide0 that there is almost certainly a
connexion because the timeouts provide a plausible explanation for the
rotten performance.

However, even in this case, the error messages just might be issued
erroneously and you'd have to look elsewhere for the solution to the
performance problem: it might be the demands made of the drive exceed its
ability to deliver.

I remember a case somewhat like this: someone was complaining that Adabas (
a mainframe DBMS) was performing badly. A quick calculation revealed that
the drive concerend was performing one I/O operation about every 26 msec:
perilously close to what the drive could deliver under best conditions.

The problem was NOT the dbms, but in the demands the (rather small)
application was making of it.



> being able to set up a squid user in the squid doco (for which I have 
> already posted the url), and considered that option.  However since:
> 
> 1. Security is not a major issue, since I dial-out for a couple of hours 
> at a time.
it's not a great concern here either. However, I've seen a hacker try to climb
into my computer through the phone line.
> 2. A couldn't be bothered creating another user.

it's trivial, and a good principle.
As i recall, this does it:
useradd squid
and if you're running YP then
cd /var/yp
make


Cheers
John Summerfield
http://os2.ami.com.au/os2/ for OS/2 support.
Configuration, networking, combined IBM ftpsites index.