The New Linux Counter machine

On October 14, 1999, the Linux Counter moved to a new machine.

The new machine is a Compaq AlphaServer 800, with a 500 MHz CPU, 256 Mbytes of RAM and 27 Gbytes of disk, and is made available to the Linux Counter Project by Compaq Corporation, as part of their program to support the Linux community.

This means a fond goodbye to our old but overloaded server, which had been doing the counting business part-time, besides doing other work for EDB Maxware.

A quick comparision of the old and new machines will show why we think that we will now be in a much better position to serve the needs of the Linux community.

The software running on the new machine is much the same as on the old one, but slightly newer versions:

• Red Hat 6.0 as base distribution
• MySQL 3.22 as database
• Apache 1.3.6
• Perl as the main implementation language

The raw power of the new system will probably only be apparent next time we get a slashdot hit; the previous system maxed out at around 150 registrations per hour; preliminary performance measurements say that the new system is about 10 times faster, so we should be able to handle 1500 registrations an hour on a good day.

Of course, we don't know that before we see it. And the access line is still 256 Kbits/second - we expect that to become the bottleneck in any significant run on the counter.

Since the new machine is dedicated to the Linux Counter project, collaboration on the project will become much easier, since it is now possible to allow collaborators login accounts on the machine, something that was impossible for security reasons on the old, shared system.

Let's hope the new machine will live up to its promises!