FreeBSD Handbook
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Chapter 6 Configuration and Tuning

Table of Contents
6.1 Synopsis
6.2 Initial Configuration
6.3 Core Configuration
6.4 Application Configuration
6.5 Starting Services
6.6 Virtual Hosts
6.7 Configuration Files
6.8 Tuning with sysctl
6.9 Tuning Disks
6.10 Tuning Kernel Limits
6.11 Adding Swap Space

Written by Chern Lee. Based on a tutorial written by Mike Smith. Also based on tuning(7) written by Matt Dillon.

6.1 Synopsis

Configuring a system correctly can substantially reduce the amount of work involved in maintaining and upgrading it in the future. This chapter describes some of the aspects of administrative configuration of FreeBSD systems.

This chapter will also describe some of the parameters that can be set to tune a FreeBSD system for optimum performance.

After reading this chapter, you will know:

Why and how to efficiently size, layout, and place filesystems and swap partitions on your hard drive.
The basics of the rc.conf configuration and /usr/local/etc/rc.d startup systems.
How to configure virtual hosts on your network devices.
How to use the various configuration files in /etc.
How to tune FreeBSD using sysctl variables.
How to tune disk performance and modify kernel limitations.

Before reading this chapter, you should:

Understand the basics of Unix and FreeBSD (Chapter 3).
Be familiar with keeping FreeBSD sources up to date (Chapter 21), and the basics of kernel configuration/compilation (Chapter 9).

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