Chapter 6. Linux General Optimization

Table of Contents
6.1. The /etc/profile file
6.2. Benchmark Results
6.3. Benchmark results-i586
6.4. Benchmark results -i486
6.5. The bdflush parameters
6.6. The buffermem parameters
6.7. The ip_local_port_range parameters
6.8. The /etc/nsswitch.conf file
6.9. The file-max parameter
6.10. The ulimit parameter
6.11. The atime and noatime attribute
6.12. Tuning IDE Hard Disk Performance
6.13. Better manage your TCP/IP resources

At this stage of your configuration, you should now have a Linux server optimally configured and secured. Our server contains the most essential package and programs installed to be able to work properly and the most essential general security configuration. Before we continue and begin to install the services we want to share with our clients/users, it is important to now tune our Linux server. The tuning we will perform in the following chapter will be applied to the whole system. It also applies to present as well as future programs, such as services that we will later install.

Generally, if you don't use a x386 Intel processor, Red Hat Linux out of the box is not optimized for your specific CPU architecture, most people now run Linux on a Pentium processor. The sections below will guide you through different steps to optimize your Linux server for your specific processor, memory, and network, as well as your file system.