[dba-Tech] Any ideas

LOL...I thought I was the only one allowed to be "Captain Obvious":(



Mark


-----Original Message-----
From: John Colby [mailto:jcolby at colbyconsulting.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2003 10:49 AM
To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues
Subject: RE: [dba-Tech] Any ideas


Uhhh... use a database?  ;-)

John W. Colby
www.colbyconsulting.com

-----Original Message-----
From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Martin Reid
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2003 10:32 AM
To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues
Subject: [dba-Tech] Any ideas


Anyone have any ideas re the following?

I have a system whereby each PC in the SCCs sends in one short line per
minute to a central server. Each line is of the form IP address, time,
date[, user id]. The central server is only a P450 with 256Mb memory but I
have used a P733 with the same results.

When a user logs in to a PC, it writes a line to the same file on the
central server as all the other used PCs. Each PC writes at the same second
each minute, but the PCs determine their second to write by chance,
basically. Thus the incoming data for the file is reasonably well spread
across 60 seconds.

On the minute, the software on the central server renames the input file,
thereby causing a new one to be created with the next record sent to it. The
central file is held on a share to which each PC has to authenticate.

When enough PCs are active, and I have not been able to deduce if there is a
threshold figure for that number, some or most of a record may be lost. That
can be seen from the input files.

During stress tests, when my PC was the only system communicating with the
server, My PC could send in about 630 lines per minute and none would be
lost. And this over a period of say an hour. However, when multiple PCs send
in lines, the data loss may arise with 50 PCs active. The difference is the
number of active network connections.

As I don't believe the data is being lost on the network (I have monitored
this and have not seen losses so far), it is most likely being lost through
the networking code/file system combination, and probably the former.

I was wondering if anyone had a better method for collecting this
asynchronous auditing information, one which did not lose data.
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