Configure Virtual Serial Port

1)      /etc/securetty  -append
ttyS0
ttyS1

2)      /etc/inittab  - uncomment and modify
S0:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L 115200 ttyS0 vt100

3)      /boot/grub/menu.lst – modify the line of running kernel
root (hd0,0)
    kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.16.60-0.69.1-smp root=/dev/vg00/lvol1 vga=normal nomodeset 3 resume=/dev/vg00/lvol2 splash=silent showopts
crashkernel=256M@16M console=ttyS0,115200
    initrd /initrd-2.6.16.60-0.69.1-smp

Kdump memory requirement

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Configuring crashkernel on RHEL6.0 and RHEL6.1 kernels
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some mappings of ram and appropriate crashkernel values:

ram size        crashkernel parameter        ram / crashkernel factor
>0GB            128MB                        15
>2GB            256MB                        23
>6GB            512MB                        15
>8GB            768MB                        31

Linux Swapiness

The swappiness parameter controls the tendency of the kernel to move processes out of physical memory and onto the swap disk. Because disks are much slower than RAM, this can lead to slower response times for system and applications if processes are too aggressively moved out of memory.

swappiness can have a value of between 0 and 100

swappiness=0 tells the kernel to avoid swapping processes out of physical memory for as long as possible
swappiness=100 tells the kernel to aggressively swap processes out of physical memory and move them to swap cache


The default setting in Linux is swappiness=60. Reducing the default value of swappiness will probably improve overall performance for a typical desktop installation. A value of swappiness=10 is recommended, but feel free to experiment.

To check the swappiness value use command: cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

To make a change permanent, edit the configuration file with your favorite editor:

vi /etc/sysctl.conf
and add following parameter to the end of the file like so:
vm.swappiness=10
Save the file and reboot.

System-wide File Descriptors (FD) Limits

Many application such as Oracle database or Apache web server needs this range quite higher. So you can increase the maximum number of open files by setting a new value in kernel variable /proc/sys/fs/file-max as follows (login as the root):
# sysctl -w fs.file-max=100000

Above command forces the limit to 100000 files. You need to edit /etc/sysctl.conf file and put following line so that after reboot the setting will remain as it is:
# vi /etc/sysctl.conf

Append a config directive as follows:
fs.file-max = 100000

Save and close the file. Users need to log out and log back in again to changes take effect or just type the following command:
# sysctl -p

Verify your settings with command:
# cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max

OR
# sysctl fs.file-max

1) Add the following line to /etc/security/limits.conf

webuser hard nofile 64000
then login as webuser

su - webuser
2) Edit following two files for webuser

append .bashrc and .bash_profile file by running

echo "ulimit -n 64000" >> .bashrc ; echo "ulimit -n 64000" >> .bash_profile
3) Log out, then log back in and verify that the changes have been made correctly:

$ ulimit -a | grep open
open files                      (-n) 64000

fsck - check and repair a Linux file system

       The exit code returned by fsck is the sum of the following conditions:
            0    - No errors
            1    - File system errors corrected
            2    - System should be rebooted
            4    - File system errors left uncorrected
            8    - Operational error
            16   - Usage or syntax error
            32   - Fsck canceled by user request
            128  - Shared library error

Improve Faster IO for your filesystem by chaning the READ AHEAD Value

[root@test oracle]# df -Th /oracle
Filesystem    Type    Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/oracle-oracle_lv
              ext4   1008M   34M  924M   4% /oracle

[root@test oracle]# time dd if=/oracle/test of=/tmp/test count=500 bs=1M
500+0 records in
500+0 records out
524288000 bytes (524 MB) copied, 6.2385 s, 84.0 MB/s

real    0m6.249s
user    0m0.001s
sys     0m1.886s
[root@test oracle]#

[root@test oracle]# blockdev --report /dev/sdb
RO    RA   SSZ   BSZ   StartSec            Size   Device
rw   256   512  4096          0      5368709120   /dev/sdb
[root@test oracle]#


I changed the read ahead value from 256 to 1024:

[root@test ~]#  blockdev --setra 1024 /dev/sdb
[root@test ~]# blockdev --getra /dev/sdb
1024
[root@test ~]# blockdev --report /dev/sdb
RO    RA   SSZ   BSZ   StartSec            Size   Device
rw  1024   512  4096          0      5368709120   /dev/sdb
[root@test ~]#

[root@test oracle]# time dd if=/oracle/test of=/tmp/test count=500 bs=1M
500+0 records in
500+0 records out
524288000 bytes (524 MB) copied, 3.79428 s, 138 MB/s

real    0m3.819s
user    0m0.003s
sys     0m1.589s
[root@test oracle]#


The read performace has improved from 6.2 Sec to 3.8 Sec. Faster IO.

Currently set to and Block device in lvdisplay ?

[root@test ~]# lvdisplay /dev/hits/hits1
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Name                /dev/hits/hits1
  VG Name                hits
  LV UUID                W7uUkN-WAIf-MrY7-u7oE-x9uy-AegG-WYATjI
  LV Write Access        read/write
  LV Status              available
  # open                 0
  LV Size                1.00 GiB
  Current LE             256
  Segments               1
  Allocation             inherit
  Read ahead sectors     auto
  - currently set to     256
  Block device           253:0

[root@test ~]#

Most of us would wonder few things with the output of # lvdisplay especially the bottom two lines.
currently set to and Block device.

Block device:

Block Devices refers to the DM (Device Multipath) Associated with the logical volume.

[root@test ~]# dmsetup ls --tree
hits-hits1 (253:0)
 └─ (8:16)

[root@test dev]# ls -l | grep -i "253"

brw-rw----. 1 root disk    253,   0 Jul  4 17:50 dm-0

[root@test dev]#

dm-0 is the device multipath associated with the logical volume hits1.